DUPLICATE OF Allow secondary or alternate column names
☑ cool new feature
☑ could help many users!
☐ removes a „bug“
☐ nice to have
☐ nobody needs it
#myTop10_2024
What inspired this wish list request?
Often incoming data is quite cryptic and some data curation is needed.
Jmp already provides nice solutions, which help the user to curate the data "on the fly", like recode.
Many of the curation steps are "persistent" - such that no further curation is needed when the data table gets updated with the latest data:
- formula columns
- column property: Value Label
- ...
A special issue are column names: Ho to handle cryptic Column names?
Here there is a clear trade-off between human-readability and compatibility to incoming data.
- The user might rename a column - but then the data table cannot be updated anymore.
- the user might add an additional column with the correct name and link it to the original column by a column formula - but this approach is just useful for a few column names.
- possibility to give columns different names in different languages
- save the alternative name as a new column parameter + Script to toggle between original and alternative column names.
https://community.jmp.com/t5/Discussions/Ho-to-handle-cryptic-Column-names/m-p/722751/highlight/true#M90501
I guess everyone has found their own workaround to deal with the problem.
Surprisingly, there is no "official" solution, like column alias
What is the improvement you would like to see?
Please add a new column property: Column alias
If a column alias is defined,
- the alias column name replaces the column name in the table header, all lists, reports, plots and views.
- the alias column name can be used alternatively in filters (so the user can search with the original and the alternative name)
- it can be used in Table operations like update and concatenate - as an alternative to the original column name
Why is this idea important?
Significant simplification of data curation 
more wishes submitted by 
@hogi Agreed, good idea! I am marking this one as a duplicate as it was posted after the other request. I will make sure we bookmark this post to reference when discussing this wish with development.
Hi Sarah, agree
Will be a huge improvement for Jmp - thanks for your support here .
Yes, indeed, there is a large overlap.
@Sarah-Sylvestre , @Ryan_Gilmore maybe combine both and merge the suggestions?
This wish was marked as a duplicate of
Allow secondary or alternate column names Unfortunately, the original wish just collected 2 Kudos up to now.
The wish has a huge potential to facilitate work life with Jmp - let's make sure that it gets enough attention
-> could you please follow the link and vote again?
Hi @hogi
Done. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
Regards
Mehul Shroff
Column Name Alias could provide a list of values - (e.g. for different languages, different types of plots)
In a graph, the user can select "use column name alias" with an index.
