You can split one field containing Text values into two fields. This may be useful if you have existing data that is not as refined as you like (e.g. a person’s name is recorded in full, but you want it split into “First Name” and “Last Name”).
Splitting a field affects all Entries that contain the field.
You cannot split fields that contain anything other than text values.
When you want to split a field, you will tell Dabble to find something in the middle of the text to use as a divider, such as punctuation (e.g. a comma) or a space or even some particular text that you want to throw away.
If you wanted to split a field containing first and last names into two fields (e.g. “John Smith” into “John” and “Smith”), you would split on the space between the names. If, on the other hand, the name was written “Smith, John”, you might split instead on ”, ” (a comma followed by space).
Note that Dabble only searches for the first instance of the text to split on. If you split on ”, ” and the field contains “A, B, C”, the result will be a field containing “A” and a field containing “B, C”. If you want to split a field into more than two components (e.g. to split “B, C” into “B” and “C”), you will have to repeat the split operation on the second field as necessary.
If a field value does not contain the text you split on, there will still be two fields, but the first field will contain the original value and the second field will be blank (it will have no value).
Once you complete the split, there will be two fields. The first will have the original field name with the text leading up to the divider, and the second will have the same field name with “2” appended and will contain the text after the divider.
If you make a mistake, you can use Undo to reverse a split operation. You can also use Merge fields to merge any two fields together into one again.