I need to export a filtered list. I find many topics of exporting while searching the community, but what I find is:
Questions about exporting Glide to other platforms/formats
Questions about exporting data sheets to other platforms/formats
Examples of building elaborate sheets with multiple template columns and join lists, building webhooks, using Zapier or Integromat, and more.
What I need is very simple:
Friends of the Library has 1,000 members with different renewal dates.
Glide Page has a membership page including choice components to filter for member level and expiration month.
In June, Membership Director filters the list on āexpiration = Julyā resulting in 87 records.
Membership Director needs to export the data of those 87 lines to MS Excel in order to merge them into a MS Word renewal letter and envelope.
It seems to me that exporting a filtered list for other purposes would be something that almost everyone might need sometime. Am I just not finding it or is it not a feature Glide offers?
Itās not a built in feature if you are looking for data thatās dynamically filtered via the app.
I guess what I would do as the simplest solution, is to make sure that your filters are handled in the data instead of the built in inline list filters. Such as a single value column that populates the month across all rows, then an IF column to return ātrueā if each row matches that month. Then filter your list based on if that IF column value is true.
Then I would create a template column that joins all of the columns you need into one, with some sort of delimiter, such as a comma. Then create another IF column, similar to the one above, but instead of returning ātrueā you return the template column. Then create a joined list column that returns a joined list of all the values in that final IF column. For the joined list delimiter, make sure itās a carriage return.
Then on your screen, add a button that will copy the joined list value to the clipboard. Copy and paste whatās in the clipboard to notepad and save it as a CSV file.
Open the CSV in Excel.
That would be the absolute simplest solution with what we have right now. You could get a little more involved with a third party service that would take that joined list and convert it to a CSV or Excel file, but if your looking for simple, this is my best idea.
@Jeff_Hager , I guess Iām wondering why it isnāt a built-in feature. As a non-programmer, I donāt know what is involved, but as an end user, I find it to be very common and assume everyone would need it at some point.
Just so you know someone else is in this boat-similar issue. I donāt need to export but filter in multiple ways. Templates resolving to Boolean so it can be used in google/roll-ups is the best practice. Painful and as unintuitive as it may seem-it usually gets the job done and using āduplicateā reduces some of the pain-like that glass of wine!
@MattLB, Can you tell me a little more about āneed to filter in multiple ways?ā Iām getting pretty good at compound filters. If what you need matches my needs, Iām happy to share my mechanics.
I need to find data within a range (meetings set for example ). There are filters to do that with an inline list but not to use for other features such as āroll upā.
Now say you want this range for 3 different dates (meeting set, meeting complete, next step due) then you need more filters. Next you want to find all meetings set in between April and July for each of your sales team. Another template. What about meetings set by your sales team with a specific partner. Another template.
Eventually resolving to a t/f to report/roll up.
At least that is what I understand best practice to be. BTWā¦I am not a developer and probably have about the same time using the system as you (e.g. Since April)
You say, āNext you want to find all meetings set in between April and July for each of your sales team.ā ā I have been searching and posting about needing to filter between 2 dates for quite some time now. Just doesnāt seem to be a computed field that Glide has built yet. For the example I listed in my original post, I want to filter on āmembership expires between July 1 and August 31.ā Havenāt found anyway to do it. Instead, I use a date format column to change the expiration date to MMMM, YYYY and then filter on a single monthāas shown below.
For my Festival Chasers app, I managed to build a compound filter system that allows me to ask, āWhat events are happening on Saturdays in August in Texas that plan to have food trucks at the event?ā ALL of those conditions must be TRUE for the event to appear on my calendar and map tabs. Is that along the lines of what you want to build?
To fix the date range issue I created a table with three years of dates. I used an array column to find a date within a week. The week gives me the month and the quarter. All done in google sheets with Glides Magic.
I can find the date within the range and get week, month, quarter and year for any given date.
Please donāt take this the wrong way. Iām not trying to be snarky or sarcasticā¦but probably because itās not a highly requested feature. Especially with this specific use case with a dynamic filter. What might be an important feature for one person may not be important for 99.9% of the other glide users. You can export data, but itās the raw data. Not whatās been filtered on the screen on the end userās device. Personally, I donāt have a need to export filtered data to a spreadsheet, but Iād love a way to simply print the screen. Iāve built some decent on-screen invoices within my app, but with no way to get them on paper short of sending the data through a third party service to be formatted into a PDF. Just hasnāt been a priority for me to figure out.
There are a ton of feature requests out there. Some benefit a large group of users and some are very specific use cases that only affect a small number of users. Iām sure glide has to prioritize which feature requests have the best ratio of cost to develop, and benefit to the company and the end users.
Thereās also the consideration of how many features can glide throw at us without becoming too overwhelming and complicated to use. Reading your past comments, I know there is a lot already out there that you are still learning about.
For something like this, it depends on how you aquire the start and end date, but usually, you can use single value columns to populate those dates in every row of a table. Then I would is an IF column, but you need to think a little backwards to structure but correctly. I would do it like this:
IF Date < StartDate THEN 'false'
ELSE IF Date > EndDate THEN 'false'
ELSE 'true'
That IF column will return true if a dat is between the start and end dates. By working backwards, you eliminate all of the outside possibilities and return false. What you have left is a date that greater than or equal to the start date, and less then or equal to the end date, so it returns ātrueā. The ātrueā value is what you can check for in a filter. Or, in the case of the āeasyā solution I provided before your wine break, you could return a template column value of comma delimited values instead of ātrueā.
I donāt consider it snarky or sarcastic at all! Iām thrilled by how active the experts are in the community to help brainstorm. While I agree with the most requested features are the priorities, Iām just surprised that this seems like a less requested feature. I would have thought that needing to compare two dates to filter on would be huge!
Earlier this week, I attempted the start/end dates matched with on or before/on or after to no avail. Going to attempt your longer version after the wine wears off.
Or attempt to lie to the software (one of my favorite things to do) to find another solution.
Sorry, I may have misunderstood what you were referring to. As for a bit often requested feature, I was referring to the export process that I outlined in my first reply. If you are referring to filtering and IF statements in general, then I wholeheartedly agree that there should be an overhaul on how that works. There are some inconsistencies and limitations with how conditional logic works in Glide. Iāve ran into scenarios where it would have been a lot easier to achieve with actual code. Iāve ranted about it in my feature request below.
As for handling a date range in a filter, I think itās possible, provided you are using all AND conditions. If you have OR conditions mixed in, then you are stuck with building that logic into the table. Strictly AND or OR logic is quite limiting without being able to mix them. I also know that there are some intricacies when filtering dates. Some conditional operators, such as WITHIN donāt look at the time. Iām also pretty sure that ON OR BEFORE and ON OR AFTER also donāt look at time. They only look at date, ON is only a split second moment that a date and time could match. I think BEFORE and AFTER factor time into itās compare. Iām not sure itās even that well documented. Dates in general can get really confusing no matter what. Especially when you are applying formatting on top of them. Itās one of those things I usually have to play with to set it up right.
Ahhhhā¦in the exporting, I guess not everyone needs the filtered exports. In my world, we have powerful relational databases that are industry specific. Then we rely on queries and exports to feed the information into Excel and Word for solicitation letters, acknowledgement letters, charitable contribution tax receipts, campaign reports, gala table seating, and on, and on, and on. Iām trying to use Glide for the smaller organizations that donāt have $10K-$20K per year for user licensing fees, training programs, and support subscriptions required for those databases.
Specifically for the Member Tracker module Iām creating, it isnāt of much use if my client canāt get a filtered spreadsheet to create a āitās time to renew your membershipā mail merge.
And to repeat myself, Iām extremely grateful to you and other experts that spend so much time on this site and generously share your insight.
you could return a template column value of comma delimited values instead of ātrueā.