Automatically Selecting Multiple Selections in a New Cell

[LaurenMaine]

We are a publishing company and we publish individual pieces of content on multiple dates.  I have a different sheet that I'd like to have all of those dates be put together into 1 cell (see attached). Is there a way to do that so that if I fill in a date in the "Publish Date 1", "Publish Date 2", etc. cells, that it will automatically add them into the column on the far right that is referencing another sheet?  I did it manually in the attached screenshot just to show what I would like to happen. Thanks in advance!

[Ron_Daniel]

@LaurenMaine - how we do it would depend on your ultimate goal. Can you explain how you need to parse the data, and how you're using/viewing it? Example:
- I need a calendar that lets me look at any given date and see a list of articles published on that day, along with the number of times each article has been published so far.

[LaurenMaine]

Hi @Ron! 

It got a little complicated unfortunately, but I wanted to end up with another view, similar to what's attached), where I can show all segments scheduled to publish on a particular day, whether they're republishing or original content.

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Doable, but kinda tricky!  You'd need a formula field that'd help you concat all the dates together like this:

IF(
  {Date 1},
  DATETIME_FORMAT({Date 1}, 'MM/DD/YYYY') & ','
) &
IF(
  {Date 2},
  DATETIME_FORMAT({Date 2}, 'MM/DD/YYYY') & ','
)

And then you'd use an automation to paste that text value into the linked field to the other table:

The main consideration here is that you're going to need to convert the primary field of your linked table to a text field in order for this to work, and if you want the date for filtering etc purposes you'd just use a formula field to parse it again:

Link to base

[Ron_Daniel]

@LaurenMaine does this work? If so, I can share the formulas with you. If you need them linked as individual entities (example: A segment published on date 1 needs to be separate from the same segment published on date 2. This might be to indicate differences such as publishing platform, page placement, etc.), then I'd recommend a three-table setup rather than two tables.

[LaurenMaine]

HI @Ron_Daniel Thank you!  I think this might work... It does make me have to think a while, but I think it might work... And then I could just create a calendar view that shows everything that is publishing on a particular day... That would make it a lot easier I think to look at for me (in the Publishing Dates tab).