Forum Discussion
Combining data from multiple rows into a single row taking earliest date
I have a data set that looks like this: ID Name Driver's Liscence Submission Date Approval Date 341 Kenner, Jen 32214 9/16/19 9/15/19 318 Kenner, Jen 32214 9/18/19 9/19/19 ...
Could you upload an abbreviated version of your actual spreadsheet, so we don't need to recreate it?
Give us also an idea of the scope of your data: how many rows, how many duplicate names, typically?
An observation: one of the general rules of good database design is to never make "name" a field that includes first and last; rather, make each name a field of its own. It's too late for that now, but if you can at the same time break that field into two (or more, if you've got suffixes or prefixes) then do it. It's far easier to assemble two names into one--for printing output--than it is to break them apart.