Grouping by the multiple lines of text field in views

Question

I'm trying to group by a multiple lines of text field in SharePoint. However the field is not available to group by.

-Report Ending Date: 9/2/22
-Activities
Helping Client Rehabilitation
Walked the dog today and went grocery shopping for the client. 9/1/2022 by Jerry West.
Cooked breakfast for Mrs. Jones and put dishes in the dishwasher. 9/2/2022 by Mike Jones.
Driving Client During Vacation
Took Mr. Mack to pick up groceries and medication. 9/1/2022 by Jerry West.
Drove Mr. Mack to museum and picked them up at closing. 9/2/2022 by Mike Jones.
-Weekly Highlights
Taught the client dog how to do flips and caught a frisbee. 8/31/2022 by Jerry West.
Ms. Jones said the breakfast was the best she's had all year. 8/30/2022 by Mike Jones.

Answer 1

Hi @Michael Williams
If a column contains one of the following types of data, it can't be grouped：

1. Multiple lines of text
2. Choice, where multiple values are allowed
3. Hyperlink
4. Image

As a workaround, you could create a new single line of text column, use power automate to extract the key word from multiple lines of text column to single line of text column. For example, use substring(outputs('Compose'), 0, 10) to get the first 10 characters in step "Compose". Then use group by function in the new created single line of text column.

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Answer 2

Hi @Michael Williams
You could use power automate to extract string from multiple to single column like this:

The first expression in Compose is "string(variables('string'))"
The second expression in Compose2 is "substring(outputs('Compose'),0,3)", this is used to extract the first three characters in multiple lines of text column.

As a result, when I create a new item and fill value into multiple lines of text column, the field in single line of text column will be updated:

You could also extract the information according to the key word, for example, here is a similar flow to extract all the words before "Thanks".
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/587858/can-sharepoint-online-lists-or-microsoft-lists-be.html

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Answer 3

I'm working totally with on premises SharePoint 2016. I don't think I have the option for power automate.