Extract Orphan Lines Only From Excel (.xls) Compare

[kengrubb]

I'm using BC4 Standard on Win7 Ent 64 bit

I'm doing a File Compare of two .xls files, and I'd like to extract just the orphan rows from the left file.

There were only 10 left orphans, so I just went through it manually using CTRL-Mouse Click to select those rows, Copy, and Paste to get the results. However, if this were a large file with lots of orphans, this might not be a practical solution.

I went sifting through the Script Reference for BC, but I'm not seeing a way to select the orphans.

I did a Table Compare Report, HTML report, Copy to Clipboard, and pasted the results into an editor. It looks like I could data munge a solution looking at DataItemSigOrphan, but it stills seems rather inelegant and brute force.

[kengrubb]

In a backhanded way, I think I'm asking for a Show Orphans button as a long term solution while seeking a shortcut in the interim.

[Aaron]

Hello,

In the Table Compare, you can enable Toggles display filters (right click the Display Filter area), which allows individual statuses to be toggled on or off, including Left Orphans or Right Orphans. Is this the behavior you are looking for?

[kengrubb]

OK, I figured it out. Display filter mode Toggles versus Favorites. That works.

In Display filter mode Favorites, there aren't as many options possible as in Display filter mode Toggles. In Display filter mode Favorites, I would have expected something that looked a bit more like the DropDown layout for folder folder, albeit with fewer options.

Is an update in the works to Display filter mode Favorites?

[Chris]

Hi Ken,

We don't have any plans to change the Favorites mode for Display filters in the viewers (Table Compare, Text Compare, etc). Keeping it to just buttons instead of adding a dropdown keeps it simpler for most users. This is also why we don't display every available toolbar button by default, and we actually display less default toolbar buttons in BC4 than we did in BC3. Having more buttons is great for power users of BC, but it can be a little overwhelming for new users. We still provide Toggles mode for advanced users that need finder grained filtering.

[kengrubb]

No problem. I've switched over to Toggles on the Toolbar, and I think I like it better. However, I can also click the View Menu, and I've got Favorites.

[Rob]

I too had been looking for the view orphan buttons. Until I saw this post I assumed it wasn't available.
I would have expected the orphan buttons to be available in a drop down from the Diffs button like on the Folder Compare GUI.

I've switched to toggles too. I can understand reducing the complexity of the GUI, but from my use the orphan toggles are an essential part of the table compare.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the feedback, Rob. It seems more users are having trouble with the discoverability of this feature than we expected. I'll make a note in our Customer Wishlist to gather some feedback and take a look into this.

[sumangalam]

Easier Feature discoverablity ?

Hello Aaron,

I had also wanted to have this option of Orphans since a long time and absence of Dropdown made me think that it was not available at all. Though I was lucky earlier and came to know of the feature about an year ago by trial and error.

May I express my view : I have found discoverability of features an issue with the software. There are many features about which I came to know via this forum or trial/Error. I have wondered many times why you guys make so good software and not make discovery of features more easy.

Thanks again for the nice software.

With Regards

Sanjiv Bansal

[Aaron]

Thanks. I'll add this feedback as well.

[simmotech]

I too found this hard to discover!
I also would prefer the option of a Split Button for Diffs - the same as Folder Compare etc.

One other thing I would like to see not mentioned above is the displaying of match counts. e.g. If I am just showing Left Orphans, I want to know how many there are without having to go into Session, TableCompareInfo.
(maybe it could go into the pane footer where currently it has 'Row XXXXX' which is just a duplicate of the row header)

[Aaron]

Thanks for the feedback on the status bar, and it is on our wishlist to help with the discovery of orphan viewing without Toggles mode.