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FAQ: Using a formula to remove the bracketed internal ID of a field

ExtendInsights Data Management | Building a pivot table or report off your data and don't want to see the [[nnnn]] referenced in the data?

Updated over 3 months ago

ExtendInsights for Data Management NetSuite masks the NetSuite internalID for picklist fields such as company name, item, etc. with your data by inserting a line break into a row. This means for any given row that is expanded you will also see the internal ID for certain fields expressed as [[nnnn]].

Customers that want to remove the reference to the internalID for reporting purposes can easily remove it by following the steps below.

Step 1: Load your template.

Step 2: Download your data using Reload feature.

Step 3: Insert a column anywhere in the template being sure not to add any value in Row 1 (it's fine to change the name of the column from ColumnN to something more descriptive in Row 2).

Step 4: Use a formula to look up the field and only import the characters to the left of [[.
=LEFT(A1,FIND("[[",A1)-2) is an example formula that assumes the field you want to remove the brackets from is in cell A1. 

Step 5: Excel should automatically copy your formula to the bottom of the table column and your new column will have just the value for your field without the [[nnnn]].

💡 Pro tip - Create/record a macro that you can run on-demand that inserts the column and then inserts the formula as well. Moving forward running the macro will be super fast. See this article for more information.

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