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DaveShea
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Hi,

 

I am currently working at a site with SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1 under 9.4.

 

I have noticed that when using the Data Grid to view my datasets, I can no longer freeze column or rows, or hide columns or rows.

 

I am sure that I am missing something very fundamental here, but under previous EG versions, when I right-mouse click on a column header in the Data Grid I get a context menu that includes the following items:

 

Hide

Show

Hold

Free

 

Currently I am not seeing any of these items in the context menu and, for the work I am doing, I really need the functionality that these menu items offer.

 

I had wondered if this was related to Roles and Capabilities provided to my Profile, but with my friendly SAS Admin we have tried to find an Enterprise Guide Capability that covers this menu but we have been stumped.

 

I have seen a few screenshots of SAS EG 7.1 Data Grids in my research for this problem and am getting a little nervy that these menu items and this functionality may have been dropped from this version.

 

Please would some kind person allay my fears and show me how I can get that Data Grid working for me again.

 

Many thanks,

 

Downunder Dave,

Wellington

15 REPLIES 15
JuanS_OCS
Amethyst | Level 16

Hi @DaveShea,

 

please let me reassure you. On my role I have access to several installations of SAS. I have seen the feauture you mention on SAS 9.4/ EG 7.1, but I wanted also to be sure before coming back to you.

 

I could see this feature in all the installations. Maybe you only need an update on the software. 

Just to give you an example: the minimum version of EG I accessed was EG 7.11 HF2. If you get at least this version, you will have your required features.

 

Hope this may help you.


Best regards,

Juan

 

ChrisHemedinger
Community Manager

Hi @DaveShea, actually, I have to contradict @JuanS_OCS.  SAS Enterprise Guide 7.12 does not have the Hold/Hide features in the data grid.  The data viewer was completely revamped and includes some cool new things like Zoom and Copy with Headers, but it lost a few capabilities as well.

 

@CaseySmith can confirm the plans, but I know a few other people have noticed that these features are missing and hope that they can be restored.

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JuanS_OCS
Amethyst | Level 16

Well, this time I have to be thankfull to you @ChrisHemedinger for contradicting me and giving the right information to @DaveShea. You are right. I have not tested SAS EG 7.12.

 

This means, that if @DaveShea does not require the new options on SAS EG 7.12: would it be an option for him to donwgrade to SAS EG 7.11?

 

CaseySmith
SAS Employee

@ChrisHemedinger is correct...  the data grid was revamped in EG 7.12, which led to several improvements, but one of the side effects is the Hold and Hide features are no longer in the EG data grid.

 

We may add the Hold/Hide features back to the EG data grid in a future release.  However, our initial evaluation is that it would be a fairly large effort.

 

@JuanS_OCS, yes, downgrading to 7.11 is an option.  Creating views will also allow you to workaround some of the lost Hide/Hold functionality.


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BrunoMueller
SAS Super FREQ

Hi

 

If it is about having different "views" on the data, like which columns and rows to display. Then the Data Explorer is a great tool to do this. It will keep all the different views on the data stored in your project.

 

At the moment the Data Explorer does not work for data in the WORK Library, but thanks to @ChrisHemedinger blog entry http://blogs.sas.com/content/sasdummy/2014/02/17/favorite-eg-tricks-fecht/ there is a way to make it work.

 

One way to get to the Data Explorer is: File -> Open -> Data Exploration

 

Bruno

DaveShea
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Chris et al,

 

Thank you for all your responses to my post.

 

I have to say that I am very disappointed that the Hide/Hold feature of Data Grid has been removed in the most up to date version of SAS Enterprise Guide.

 

I have boxed the corner for SAS Enterprise Guide for some time now, facing especially stiff criticism from people who have spent a lot of the past 20 years with SAS Display Manager and the Full Screen Products (FSBrowse and FSEdit). The Data Grid has come under particular criticism from them as being "not anything like as good as Display Manager", but whilst they may not love Data Grid, they have grudgingly accepted it. Whilst the Data Grid has plenty of things that wind me up, it was improving release by release. As an example, the implementation of the WHERE facility on v7.12 is a huge leap forward, well done, but removing the Hide/Hold facilty is a very backward step.

 

The Data Explorer is not really an alternative to Data Grid, especially as it does not support data in the WORK library. It is a very elegent tool, but way too over-blown for quick looks and check of datasets (in whichever library they live), which is what Data Grid offers and what I do hundred of times a week.

 

The Data Grid is the place to start exploring the data that has just popped out of a piece of code or a task that I have just run, EG pushes the dataset in front of you with a flippant, " 'ere, take a look at this......". Commonly "this" is a dataset in the WORK library. The Data Grid is right in front of me when my code completes and displays to me the dataset(s) that I have created.

 

I am often dealing with datasets with a very large number of columns, so being able to quickly hold the first few columns (typically containing the columns making up the row identifiers) and being able to quickly hide or show some columns make my own data exploration much more fruitful. Whilst I am more than capable of creating a view to limit columns, I am struggling to see how I am going to scroll to column# 115 whilst holding columns 1, 2 and 3 for reference.

 

I would ask that SAS development re-consider this Hide/Hold facility for Data Grid and give the user an option to make a choice. I would easily forego the zoom in/out facility for Hide/Hold's return.

 

Cheers,

 

Downunder Dave.

SASKiwi
PROC Star

We use EG 7.11 and do find the Freeze, Hide etc features very useful. Not having them if we upgrade is a disincentive. It would be great if they were reinstated in a later version.

BrunoMueller
SAS Super FREQ

Hi

 

Please note, as mentioned earlier, the Data Explorer does support data sets from the work library. All you need to do, is adding this LIBNAME statement

libname worke "%sysfunc(pathname(work))";

Bruno

DaveShea
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Bruno,

 

Thank you for your contribution to this discussion.

 

I appreciate that Data Explorer is an alternative to Data Grid, but my main emphasis is on speed of being able to quickly inspect a dataset, most importantly, freezing some columns so that other parts of the rows can be scrolled into and out of view whilst the identifiers of the rows being inspected remain static. So far as I understand Data Explorer cannot hold columns or rows.

 

This is a basic facility that even Microsoft Excel has managed to retain for many years and that the Data Grid has had up until this most recent version of SAS Enterprise Guide. I have spoken to a number of colleagues about this removal of functionality and there has been a loud slapping of foreheads in response.

 

I think I've probably bored most readers enough already, but I really want this feature reinstated or at least made an option for those who want it.

 

If you want to see an example of how handy this is and are still aboe to do so, do the following:

1) open up SASHELP.DEMOGRAPHICS

2) drag the NAME and ISONAME columns to the far leftso that they are in column positions 1 and 2 respectively

3) right mouse click over ISONAME and select HOLD

4) scroll the dataset to the right.

 

See how handy is is to have the key identifier columns staying in place as you scroll right and left across your dataset? Try just re-arranging those two columns using Data Explorer, you need a lot of key strokes. Also, SASHELP.DEMOGRAPHICS only has 18 columns, I regularly work with datsets with 100 to 150 columns. If I'm trying to do quick 'n' dirty visual checks on a dataset, Data Grid is the tool of choice within SAS Enterprise Guide.

 

Cheers,

 

Downunder Dave

Wellington

CaseySmith
SAS Employee

Thank you for your feedback.  I am sorry for the inconvenience the loss of this functionality has caused.  We knew losing the hide and hold/freeze functionality in the data grid would be painful for some folks and scenarios.  Feedback we have received has confirmed this as well.  It was not something we wanted to do, but a necessary compromise we had to take.  I can't promise when, but we are hoping to be able to add this functionality back to the data grid in a future release.

 

Casey


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DaveShea
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Hi Casey,

 

Thank you very much for your reply, you have improved my weekend by about 90% ! This sort of response reminds me why I continue to stick with SAS.

 

I am really looking forward to seeing the return of the Hide/Hold facility in the Data Grid tool.

 

Whilst we are at it, how about a toggle button that switches the view from Table View (spreadsheet style) to Form View (one record layed out on the screen at a time), like SAS/Display Manager offers under the Viewtable facility ?

 

 

Many thanks.

 

Dave.

CaseySmith
SAS Employee

Whilst we are at it, how about a toggle button that switches the view from Table View (spreadsheet style) to Form View (one record layed out on the screen at a time), like SAS/Display Manager offers under the Viewtable facility ?

Dave,

 

I can see how that (FSEdit-like functionality) would be useful.  Will put it on our list for future consideration.

 

Btw, Chris Hemedinger created an example custom task ("Observation Editor" task here), that gets close, but not quite as nice as baked right into the data grid.

 

Casey


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DaveShea
Lapis Lazuli | Level 10

Casey,

 

Saturday just got better !

 

The down-side with Custom Tasks or anything not out-of-the box is that many sites that I work on will not allow add-ons of any sort to software, irrespective of its source (in this case the venerable ChrisH).

 

Having the FSBrowse functionality out-of-the box for SAS Enterprise Guide would be brilliant and I am sure would be a winner.

 

Cheers,

 

Dave.

Hélène
Calcite | Level 5

Hide/Show are still not present in SAS EG 7.15...

This is really a non-sense for experienced SAS users...

Can SAS inform us when this will be solved?

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