Data-view

When a set of data is being presented in eLab, one of the common ways to display it is the data-view, which is a spreadsheet-like view of the data.

Figure 1.7. Data-view.

The data-view has a header and a set of alternating coloured rows that contain the data. By clicking on a column header you can sort the data based on the order of that column and an arrow appears in the header indicating the direction of the sort - a down arrow on a numeric column indicates that the column is sorted from the highest to lowest value.

It is often necessary to select one or more rows from a data-view so that you can apply some function to those items represented by these specific rows. You can select a single row by clicking anywhere on the row or select several rows by click one row at a time. If you accidentally select a row you can deselect it by clicking it again. You can also select a group of rows by clicking on a row and dragging the mouse over the remaining rows.

Each data-view has a menu that can be accessed by right-clicking on the column headers row. The bottom part of the menu displays a list of all the possible columns for the data-view. By clicking on a column name you can toggle between displaying it and hiding it. The top part of the menu contains the following functions:

Print. There are two print options, the top print option is a ‘quick print’ that prints the contents of the data-view using the default settings. The second print option displays a dialogue box for specifying your preferred settings.
Page Preview. Displays a preview of the screen as it would be printed.
Setup. Displays a Page Setup dialogue box for setting the page size, margins and orientation.
Copy. Copies all the data contained in the data-view to the computer’s clipboard. You can then paste the data into another program.
Export To. Displays a submenu that allows you to export a file in one of the following formats:
- Excel (XLS),
- Text (Comma Delimited; CSV)
- Text (Tab Delimited; TXT)
- Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Note: These options are often also available from the Ribbon Control and may vary depending on the context of the data and the user’s permissions.