but I am not smart enough to figure out how to do this.
Maybe one of the smart people here take pity on us. But, in the meantime, I'm not letting this go until I've solved it with Excel...
1. In
Rules for file display for the view, add the modifier
Remove duplicates of [nested field]. The "remove duplicates" function will operate on the nested field as a whole, so different combinations of multiple values (e.g., the subject field is a nested keywords field, and multiple keywords are commonly assigned) will count as unique. I don't see a way to deal with that in MC, but it can be handled in Excel without much difficulty...
2. Export a playlist as text, and import it into Excel—as described previously.
3. In Excel, delete all columns but the one with the nested field data. If there are items with multiple values, those values will be delimited by semicolons, so...
4. Save the file as text, close and re-import it as text, this time setting the delimiter as ";".
5. Multiple values will now be separated into additional columns. Cut & paste the contents of these additional columns to the end of the first column. Resort the first column. In a normal situation, this column will now have many duplicates. To remove them...
6. Select the column, select
Data - Filter - Advanced filter, and set
Unique records only. This will filter the list in place. You may then copy & paste the result wherever you like.
7. Optional: If you prefer the different levels of the nested values to be separated into columns (i.e., rather than "Level1\Level2\..."), save the file as text, close and re-import it as text, this time setting the delimiter as "\". The
Autofilter feature could then be used to filter the results. This would be an excellent way to present the list if it is very long.