Pesky State Dropdowns Fixed!

[Grumman 0]

Hey all. Not sure how many people will use this, but I know when I searched through the forum for answers on this I couldn't find one and so when I finally figured out a way to do it, I thought I'd share it here in case someone else was looking for a way to do this in the future.

 

When filling out forms, I was encountering state field dropdowns that were either formatted like "NY" "New York" or "NY - New York". I didn't want to have to change all my data over to fit the different sites, so I came up with this:

 

The data in your cells should be formatted like "NY - New York" If it's a site that needs "NY" or "NY - New York" then you're all set, your code should look like this:

 

change dropdown((<state dropdown>, 0), ($table cell(&sampletable, 0, 5))

 

If it needs the "New York" then your code should look like this:

 

change dropdown((<state dropdown>, 0), $substring($table cell(&sampletable, 0, 5), 5, $subtract($text length($table cell(&sampletable, 0, 5)), 5)))

 

Because the shortest state is Ohio, 4 characters, and you need at least 7 characters to distinguish North Carolina from North Dakota for example, there's no way to take just a normal substring to exclude the "NY - " at the beginning. So you have to take the text length of the cell and subtract the number of characters that "NY - " takes up.

 

I hope this is of use to someone, it's had me stuck for a few hours.

[warriorfullights 0]

Will keep it noted. Great post and thanks for sharing. Might use it some day.