SharePoint User Group UK

Is there any -simple-out-of-the-box- way to create a view that would display a Group-By of a column that is a multiple entry ?

ie:

Client1 = UK, France, Italy
Client2 = France, Spain, Portugal

I want to see a Group-by view that wil display something like :

+ UK
       Client1
+ France
       Client1
       Client2
...

Sharepoint by default does not split multiple entries into many, and therefore will not allow Group-by of a multiple entry column, if it did I understand it will return
+ UK, France, Italy
       Client1
+ France, Spain, Portugal
       Client2

Basically a 1-to-many and back relationship will be nice.

Anyone has a workaround ?

thanks.

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Francois Souyri

thinking off the top of my head and after only 1 cup of tea this morning....
what if you create another table of 'countries' - join this with your main table in designer and do the group by on the countries table ?

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Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.

Sorry for the delay to reply, I was off.

Thanks for the response, however not sure it will work in this case, as I am not trying to link or merge 2 different tables (or create a new one as you suggested) but the data only comes from one single list. It's barely a View display feature that I am trying to achieve.

ie : another example could be as below

 list contains the following fields =   
[Name]    [Skills]
Joe           Microsoft, Oracle, Lotus
John         Microsoft, Tivoli
Jack         Microsoft, Lotus, Adobe

then I want to view the same list but <by Skills> as :

+Adobe (1)
          Jack
+Lotus (2)
          Joe
          Jack
+ Microsoft (3)
          Joe
          John
          Jack
+ Oracle (1)
          Joe
+Tivoli (1)
          John

 

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Francois Souyri

No, I don't think that this is possible out of the box. I've not seen a way, anyway.

However, it is possible to build that using custom code, I think. I noticed before that the Lists.GetListItems webservice gives multiple results for items if you've got a multiple-choice column on the list:

http://www.novolocus.com/2008/04/07/duplicate-rows-from-the-sharepoint-lists-webservice/

I couldn't think of why the Lists webservice would do this, but in the context of Group By, this would make sense! You could probably use this 'feature' too, and write your own web part.

Not an ideal solution, but it should work.