Spreadsheet Column Menu

The Column item on the Spread menu offers a number of different ways to change attributes for columns within a spreadsheet.

Attributes/Format

This opens the Column Attributes/Format dialog, which enables you to change the column name, change the way its values are displayed, and edit other properties of the column.

Rename

This opens the Column Names and Properties dialog, which allows all the column names to be edited in one place.

Convert

This opens the Change Sheet or Column dialog, which converts the columns of a vector spreadsheet to other types or changes the spreadsheet type.

Copy

Copies currently selected columns to the Clipboard. If there are no selected columns the current column will be copied.

Cut

Copies currently selected columns to the Clipboard. If there are no selected columns the current column will be copied. The columns will have their values replaced by missing value(*), or deleted from the spreadsheet if you have selected this option (see Spreadsheet Options).

Paste

Pastes Clipboard data into new columns inserted after the current column.

Names

This sub-menu performs operations on the names of columns.

Copy

This copies the column names in the spreadsheet to the Clipboard. If columns are selected, just the selected columns names are copied to the Clipboard. The list of column names is comma delimited, and so are in a useful format for pasting into Genstat commands.

Paste

This pastes the data in the Clipboard into the column names and modifies any invalid characters to ensure the resulting names are valid Genstat structure names. Column names must start with a letter (A-Z, a-z or %), and can only contain letters, numbers, a percentage symbol % or an underscore.

If columns are selected in the spreadsheet, only these columns will be renamed.

Change Case

This allows the case of column names to be changed for either the selected columns or all columns if there is no selection. This opens the Change Case of Column Names dialog to prompt for the case to be used (lower, upper, toggle or title).

Descriptions

This sub-menu lets you move the columns or selected columns descriptions to and from the Clipboard using the 3 items.

Copy	This copies the column descriptions in a spreadsheet to the Clipboard. If columns are selected, then only the selected columns’ descriptions are copied to the Clipboard. The column descriptions are copied onto the Clipboard as a comma delimited list where each description is quoted with single quote marks (i.e. ‘kg/ha’,’%’,’2004-5′). Column descriptions copied using this item can be pasted to other spreadsheets and can be useful for constructing Genstat commands.
Cut	This cuts the column descriptions from a spreadsheet and copies them to the Clipboard. If columns are selected, then only the selected columns descriptions are cut from a spreadsheet.
Paste	This pastes the text on the Clipboard into the column descriptions. If columns are selected, then only these columns will be modified.

Promote First Row

This sub-menu can be used to move the first row of a spreadsheet to specify column names or descriptions.

to Names

This menu item uses the text in first data row of the spreadsheet as the column names. The first row is removed, and the columns are all renamed. If all the remaining items in a text column can be read as numerical values, then these text columns are converted to variates. This operation may be useful after first creating a spreadsheet from an Excel file, or from the Clipboard, and the first line of data was meant to be the column names.

to Extra

This menu item uses the text in first data row of the spreadsheet as the column extra or description. The first row is removed, and the columns have their descriptions changed to the values in the first cell of column. If all the remaining items in a text column can be read as numerical values, then these text columns are converted to variates. This operation may be useful after first creating a spreadsheet from an Excel file, or from the Clipboard, and the first line of data was meant to be the column descriptions.

Duplicate

This opens the Duplicate Column dialog which allows all a duplicate of a column to be inserted into the spreadsheet with a new name, and perhaps a new type.

Get/Move

This opens the Get Columns from another Spreadsheet dialog, which enables you to get or move columns from another spreadsheet to this spreadsheet.

Reorder

This opens the Reorder Columns dialog which allows order that the columns are displayed in to be altered.

Hide/Show

This opens the Hide or Show Columns dialog that lets you control whether columns are displayed or hidden in the spreadsheet.

Compare

This opens the Compare Columns dialog that lets you compare 2 columns to find differences between them. All the columns in a spreadsheet can be compared with another spreadsheet using the Compare Spreadsheets menu.

Protection

This opens the Column/Sheet Protection dialog which allows columns to be protected (i.e. read only) or unprotected.

Set Default Widths

This changes the widths of all columns to the minimum required to show each cell’s contents without truncation. Individual columns can be resized by clicking on the end of the column heading and dragging to resize the column, or else double clicking the end of the column title to get the default width for that column. If multiple columns are selected they will all be resized.

Conditional Formatting

This opens the Conditional Formatting of Numeric Values dialog, which allows you to set up to 3 conditional statements to control the colours used to display the items in numerical columns.

Temporary missing values

This opens the Temporary Missing Values dialog which allows cells in a spreadsheet to be set to missing for statistical calculations, whilst still maintaining their values within the spreadsheet.

Cell Colours

This opens the Set Cell Colours in Spreadsheet dialog which allows cells in a spreadsheet to be set to different colours.

Run Analysis

If the spreadsheet has had analysis commands set up with the Analyse Spreadsheet Columns dialog, this menu runs the analysis for the currently selected columns, or the current column if no columns are selected.