(Bug?) Best way to handle (un)importance in files with > 160 columns

[danonymous]

Hello Scooter,

Chris, Aaron - hope you are well.

I am comparing delimited files with 160+ columns. Without going into the details of why, I need to have columns 2-45 or so be unimportant, and everything else be important.

I have tried

• Changing them (2-45) one at at time to be unimportant, but this is a bit cumbersome for anything more than a few columns.
• Setting all to unimportant, then making 1 and 46-160 important but again - cumbersome.
• Selecting several rows in the "Data Compare - Session Settings" dialog, right clicking, selecting Edit... from the menu, changing the unimportant checkmark, but it only modifies the first row which is selected in the range. So for example if I have rows 2-40 selected, right click, Edit..., and change the setting for importance, only row 2 will be changed. It would be great to have rows 2-40 changed.

Question: Is there a way to change the importance of a range of rows (columns)?

If not, would you please consider the last bullet point above as a bug report/enhancement request for a future release? Ideally if a range is selected, and the edit dialog is popped and the setting changed, I would like it to iterate all the items in the selected range and apply the changed value to all.

Thanks. Beyond Compare Rocks.
Dan

[Michael Bulgrien]

Question: Is there a way to change the importance of a range of rows (columns)?

Rows and columns are two different things.

For columns you can edit your file format and create a grammar:

Type: Columns
Text from column: 2
to column: 45

Set the grammar as unimportant and everything else as important.

For rows you can click and drag in the gutter (line number field) to select a set of lines then choose "Ignored" from the context menu to make them unimportant.

[Aaron]

Thanks, Michael.

How do Michael's suggestions work for you, Dan? Also, if all the columns are the same for all of your files, would it work to save these Session Settings as default Session Settings? Then you would not need to set them up again? Or save a Data Compare session with the settings set, and open that session first (then drag files in for comparison).