How to Merge Columns and Simplify Your Data Table Efficiently | Clay

How to Merge Columns and Simplify Your Data Table Efficiently

Column merge issue: I have the following columns:

First Name 1 (static text column, imported from 1st source)
First Name 2 (static text column, imported from 2nd source)
First Name Merged (a merge column with 2 functions to merge the above First Name columns)

I need to remove First Name 1 and First Name 2 and keep only First Name Merged as a static column to keep the table cleaner. The table contains 14k records so I can't just copy and paste it (especially because Clay has bugs in copying 500+ cells) How can I do that?

6 comments

Clay
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To convert your merged column to a static column and remove the source columns: 1. Convert the merge column to static: Click on your First Name Merged column header → Edit Column → click the gear icon → switch from "Formula" to "Text with tokens" input type → Save settings. 2. Delete the source columns: Right-click First Name 1 → Delete → Delete Column. Repeat for First Name 2. This preserves all your merged data as static text while cleaning up your table structure.
Sources: Table columns | Documentation | Clay University Rename, Pin, Duplicate, Delete Column Select Column Data Type
Asher
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Max C. Two thoughts on my end!
1.
Is it a must to remove those original 2 columns? If not, 'hiding' them might be a good option. So when you download the table as a CSV, it wouldn't download the columns that are hidden.
2.
If hiding them is not an option, then considering writing all the columns into another new table, and just use Clay in the new table!
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Max C.
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I just found out a workaround:
Export Clay table to CSV
Import it in Google Sheets
Copy the all cells from First Name Merged column (Google Sheets are fast in that)
Create a separate column First Name FINAL
Select the first cell of First Name FINAL in Clay
Paste
Choose "Paste and overwrite"
It worked for me!
Asher
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Max C. That works too actually 🙂
1
Simon
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Add on question here: Max C. How would you go about removing ‘not found’ and similar values from pre-populated enrichments, such as Claygent? -C+P of blank values does not work -cmd + X does also not work Is that the best option here? -Create new column -Copy Paste all values in it -Filter for values to be removed -cmd + X and get stuff removed in a fast way?
Clay
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Hey Max, thanks for reaching out! There's several ways you can do this.
The fastest way is to select the cells containing "not found" values and simply hit the backspace key to delete them. You can select multiple cells at once or even entire ranges within a column to speed this up. If you want to clean in bulk, I would recommend using a filter to check if it is equal to "Not found". You could delete the values from here instead of spot checking. Or you could set a filter to "not equal to" not found values, if you only want to view the rows that worked.
The best approach is actually preventing these values from appearing in the first place! When setting up your enrichments (including Claygent): ** Click on your enrichment settings ** Look for "Run Settings" * Set conditions like "only run if [input field] is not blank" or "only run if [field] contains valid data" This way, the enrichment won't even attempt to run on rows that would just return "not found." Hope this helps!