Merging tables with Frame 7

Is there an efficient method of merging the text from two similar tables? The background:

Both tables are 3 columns, number of rows vary between 35-40. Both are
sorted ascending, by column, i.e. column 1 has entries for A-M, column
2 continues with M-P and column 3 has P-W. There is common text, but there
are also some differences.




The goal is to have both tables combined into one, sorted as described above.

If I try to copy/paste, I can add the selected rows to the existing table, but then sorting does not seem to work as expected.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

TIA,
Debby

If this is a one-shot requirement I don't think there's going to be any particular method that will do any better/faster than a manual cut/paste effort.

What I'd probably do is to copy each column of each table into a spreadsheet, so that you end up with two separate columns for each table. Save that. Then copy each column to a new single column, sort it. Save that. Then copy the sorted column and paste into a new FM document.

[edit] oh, and then just eyeball to remove the duplicates.

If it gives you the option to create a table when you paste, you can tell it the number of columns = 3. If it doesn't give that option, then paste and highlight the content, then use the Table > Convert to Table option.

You might be able to do this same cutting and pasting into a new table within FM, too, but the sorting may not be as good as it might be with a spreadsheet, as FM's table sorting mechanism has been known to be a bit problematic. If you have formatting to preserve then it might be better done in FM.

If this was more than a one-shot effort then you could script it with FrameScript.

Let us know how you get on with it --

Sheila

Thanks, that's a good suggestion. I never even thought "outside of the box" about putting it into a spreadsheet. I did end up manually copying and pasting.

And I agree with the problematic sorting in Frame - I still don't know why it wasn't sorting properly for me. The table broke across two pages, don't know if that had anything to do with it, though, because I could still select the whole column.

Thanks again for the suggestion!
Debby

Hi,
If your requirements are for a lot of these types of conversions - I have a website where you can upload your Table data from Excel and download a FrameFile with the content in your own company template.
It's quite easy and saves hours and hours of cutting/pasting etc.

I also have code to extract tables from Frame documents and create Excel worksheets...

have a look - <http://www.mifmasters.com/services.html>

Kind regards
David