Data Sheet
A Data Sheet shows the details of data textually in a table as a data grid. It gives you the exact values of fields in your data, lets you sort or search it, and shows relationships between fields. Details of the focus item (perhaps from another view) are available. Learn about each Data Sheet feature below:
Focus Details: field values for the current focus item..
The current focus item can be shown in the top line of the Data Sheet grid. Focus on individual data points is shared by several charts, so this focus item may be coming from another view. This provides a way to see the details of a number of fields for the focus item. The focus line may also be inhibited.
From: Advanced Chart Property "Display Focus".
Sorting: order rows based on 1 or more fields.
Click a column header to sort the table by that column: alphabetically for String-type fields, and in descending order for numerical fields. Click again to reverse the order.
You may sort by multiple fields, by clicking on additional column headers. This is effective when you sort first by a continuous numeric field, like a Revenue amount, then by a smaller-cardinality categorical field, like geographical Region, and finally by the primary dimension, like Industry. Then each Industry is sorted by Region and by Revenue.
You may return to the original order by clicking "Clear Column Sort" in the Chart Toolbar, or on the popup menu, or by hitting Backspace on the keyboard.
Zooming out (see below) on a sorted table may reveal relationships between fields: numeric fields that are generally correlated, for example.
From: Column headers; Chart Toolbar "Clear Column Sort"
Search: select rows based on pattern matching.
Search a column for values containing a substring, and apply the current selection mode to those rows. Only displayed rows are searched, so Unselected rows cannot be re-Selected unless Display Unselected mode is in effect. Thus by default, Replace mode acts like Intersect mode, and Add mode has no effect.
Note that numbers are compared as strings, so commas can be significant.
From: Chart Toolbar "Text Search".
Show Unselected: show all rows or only selected rows.
Unselected rows are not shown by default. This allows you to see just the selected items easily, no matter where in the table of data they occur.
You can also choose to show all rows, Selected or Unselected.
From: Chart Toolbar "Display Unselected Data".
Zooming: Show an overview of lines.
By default, the Data Sheet zoombar allows scrolling in large tables, and can allow limited font size adjustment. (See Chart Toolbar button "Default Line Size".)
Using the Advanced Chart Properties "Display Mode" (values "Fit In Window" and "Display Pixel Height"), and "Allow Scaling", you may "zoom out" in a Data Sheet.
The zoombar on the right can be used to collapse the text to a "reduced representation", where values are represented as horizontal lines of a few pixels down to one pixel in height. More extreme zoom levels omit certain rows of data. This provides a representative view of large portions or all of the data. Numeric fields are shown as bars with length proportional to the magnitude of the value, so sorting by a numeric field provides an idea of the distribution of values.
Scrolling may be done by dragging the zoom bar with the left mouse button, by dragging in the chart with the middle mouse button (scroll wheel--not rolling it yet), or by using the Page Up/Down keys. Return to the default scale and position with the "Home" key or "Default Line Size" button on the Chart Toolbar, or by adjusting the zoom bar.
From: Chart Toolbar "Default Line Size"; Advanced Chart Properties "Allow Scaling", "Display Mode"; Zoombar.
Rearrange and Resize Columns: put columns in custom order and adjust their widths.
Drag a column by its header to the left or right (with Left Mouse Button depressed) to a new position to rearrange columns interactively.
Move the mouse between column headers and the pointer changes to a double-headed horizontal arrow. Drag with the left mouse button to adjust the boundary between those two columns only.
From: Mouse in Column Headers.
Export: write table to a file.
You can write the currently selected rows to a file. Only the fields shown in the chart are exported, in the order they appear. This gives you a way to choose which fields in a large table to export.
The default output format is comma-separated CSV, but tab-separated is also available by choosing output file type TXT.
From: Chart Toolbar "Export Data..."
Coloring: control how textual data is colored.
Textual data displayed in a Data Sheet may be colored like in other charts, according to the data values in some field; or all rows may be displayed in the "Selected" color (normally a dull purple), or all rows may use the "Foreground" color, normally black (the default).
From: Advanced Chart Property "Coloring Mode".
See also:
Last updated
