Concatenate certain rows into a cell ignoring duplicates - google-sheets

Question

I have a google form and I would like to sort it's responses in a separate sheet on google sheets. The results of the form look sort of like this.
Id Job
1 Shelving, Sorting
2 Sorting
1 Cleaning, Shelving
3 Customer Service
2 Shelving, Sorting
which I would like to format into
Id Jobs
1 Cleaning, Shelving, Sorting
2 Shelving, Sorting
3 Customer Service
Is there a formula I can use to accomplish this, noting that it ignores duplicates and groups the different ids? Ordering of the jobs does not matter.

Answer 1

Working example here.
The code is like:
=unique(transpose(split(join(", ",filter(B1:B10,A1:A10=1)),", ")))
where
filter(B1:B10,A1:A10=1) gives you all the B values where A = 1
join(",", filter(...)) joins the list with the ", " separator (e.g. "apple, orange" and "kiwi" becomes "apple, orange, kiwi"
split(join(...)) splits the list into an array (e.g. back to [apple, orange, kiwi]
transpose(split(...)) converts the horizontal list to vertical list
unique(transpose(...)) gives you the unique values (unique() only works with vertical list)
After this, you need to transpose then join the list
Note you must keep the separator consistent (e.g. always "," or ", ")

Answer 2

This is Apps Script code instead of a function. To use it, you will need to use the Tools menu, and open the script editor. Then select the function name from the drop down list, and then click the "Run" button.
To use this code, you need to have a source and a destination sheet. You will need to change the sheet names in the code to your sheet names. In this code, the source sheet is named 'Data'. You will need to change that to the name of your source sheet. In this code, the destination sheet is named 'Output', and is at the bottom of the code. This code gets data starting in row two, and writes the output data starting in row two. I tested it with your values and it works.
function concatCellData() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var sh = ss.getSheetByName('Data');
var colOneData = sh.getRange(2, 1, sh.getLastRow()-1, 1).getValues();
var colTwoData = sh.getRange(2, 2, sh.getLastRow()-1, 1).getValues();
var newData = [],
newDataColOne = [],
colOneValue,
existInNewData = false,
colB_One,
colB_Two,
dataPosition,
thisValue,
combinedArrays = [],
arrayTemp = [];
for (var i=0;i<colOneData.length;i+=1) {
colOneValue = colOneData[i][0];
dataPosition = newDataColOne.indexOf(colOneValue);
existInNewData = dataPosition !== -1;
if (!existInNewData) {//If it doesn't exist in the new data, just write the values
newDataColOne.push(colOneValue);
newData.push([colOneValue, colTwoData[i][0]]);
continue;
};
colB_One = [];
colB_Two = [];
combinedArrays = []
arrayTemp = [];
colB_One = colTwoData[i][0].split(",");
colB_Two = newData[dataPosition][1];
colB_Two = colB_Two.split(",");
var combinedArrays = colB_One.concat(colB_Two);
//Get unique values
for (var j=0;j<combinedArrays.length;j+=1) {
thisValue = combinedArrays[j].trim();
if (arrayTemp.indexOf(thisValue) === -1) {
arrayTemp.push(thisValue);
};
};
newData[dataPosition] = [colOneValue, arrayTemp.toString()]; //Overwrite existing data
};
ss.getSheetByName('Output').getRange(2, 1, newData.length, newData[0].length).setValues(newData);
};