I'm trying to simplify semi-complex text strings into much simpler ones – specifically names into hashtags. For example:
Tomáš Rosický
into
#TomasRosicky
or
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
into
#AlexOxladeChamberlain
This could be achieved by nesting loads of substitute()
formulas, but would be really unmanageable (especially when you consider characters like ę
or Č
need inclusion. I'm also trying to do this at scale, with an ever-increasing list of thousands of names. Is there a way of doing this neatly in one formula in Google Spreadsheets?
Best Answer
You need a custom function contained in a script. For example, the output below is from entering
B1 = hashtag(A1)
, etc, wherehashtag
is the custom function at the end of this post, placed in a script (go to Tools > Script Editor to paste it in).The custom function relies on diacritics-removal function from Stack Overflow answer by rdllopes, with a correction for ß->ss.
I don't know how this is going to perform on thousands of names; you may want to process them in batches. Google offers a limited amount of computing power to Sheets users.