Can I link two rows in a table together without merging content?

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Can I link two rows in a table together without merging content?

So, what I've got is a labor spreadsheet. First row contains a single worker's hours and rates with the last column being an equation figuring up the day's total billable rate. Second row is a description of the above worker's position and contains no numbers. I do not want to merge information in cells. The first column of the table is time in. What I'm trying to do is link the two rows together and then sort the table by column one, by time in. Otherwise, when I sort, it puts all the rows with times sorted correctly at the top then all the rows with descriptions at the bottom. Hopefully this makes some sense. Would love a litle help. Very new to Numbers. Thanks!!

Pages-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Jan 25, 2012 9:36 AM

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Answer 1

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,819 points

Jan 25, 2012 10:03 AM in response to SarahMcBJ

If I understand right (I'm not sure of that) you need to change a bit your table structure.

Use this one :

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) mercredi 25 janvier 2012

iMac 21”5, i7, 2.8 GHz, 12 Gbytes, 1 Tbytes, mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.2

My Box account is : http://www.box.com/s/00qnssoyeq2xvc22ra4k

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Answer 2

Jan 26, 2012 7:50 AM in response to SarahMcBJ

Sarah,

Putting some words to Yvan's example, Each Row needs to be a complete record in itself, depending on no other row, such as the one below. You may have a paper form that you are transcribing from, but the comments must always inhabit the same row as the data in the table if you want them to stay connected.

Jerry

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Answer 3

Badunit

Level 7

30,714 points

Jan 26, 2012 5:21 PM in response to SarahMcBJ

You might be able to do what you want but it's much harder than simply moving the information from the second row to the end of the first row (i.e., put everything for a person in one row). But if you absolutely need it the other way, here's one way:

Because you are sorting by the time in column A, both rows must have the time. You might be able to do this in the job description row with a simple formula like =A2 . You can format the text in these cells so they appear invisible.
To ensure the rows stay in the proper order (time on top, job description below) after sorting and to ensure rows don't get mixed up if two employees have the same time, you will want a new column that has an index number in it. Let's call it column B. B2 will have the number 2, B3 will have the number 3, B4 will have the number 4, etc. I am assuming row 1 is a header row. You can hide this column when you are done setting it all up.
To sort, you will have to use the Reorganize feature so you can set up a sort with two criteria. The first one on the list will be to sort by column A (the time). The second one will be to sort by column B (the index).

I didn't test all this out but that's the gist of a way to do it. The part with the index may not be absolutely necessary. You can try it without but if it ever gets messed up it will be a manual process to match all those rows up.

Also, you can sort by the index column alone and it will put the table back into the original order.

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