About Basic Operations

This topic provides information about the basic operations you can perform in the graphical area of the template editor.

This page discusses:

General Information

The Graphical area can contain the following elements:

  • Data
  • Structure elements
  • Blocks of nested structure elements
    Note: Nested structure elements can contain data.

Within the Graphical area, you can:

  • Copy and paste an element.
  • Delete elements.
    Note: If the element is a table cell, the whole column is removed.
  • Move elements.
    Important: To move a block of elements, the target structure element must be consistent with the type of structure to move. For more information, see Data, Structure Elements, and Instructions.
Note: You can copy, paste, or move a block of elements in a target position, which does not contain the same data scope as the data contained in the block. Errors are raised and you may have to change associated methods or receivers to correct potential errors. For example, to correct errors, you can have to change the receiver when a loop is moved outside its receiver scope.

Multiselection

Multiselection is available in the Graphical area for the move and deletion options. In addition, you can apply a global assignment to a set of elements and modify simultaneously properties of elements that support the same set of values. For example, you can add the same condition to all the selected elements.

Use Shift to multiselect elements. In the Properties tab, the background of the boxes changes depending on the properties values:

  • If the boxes contain the same values, the backgrounds remain white.
  • If the boxes contain different values, the backgrounds appear in orange and the <unmodified> text replaces the current value.

You can simultaneously modify the values of all the selected elements.

Copy/Paste

The Copy/Paste operation is available and can also be executed between two templates opened successively or opened in two tabs of the same browser.

If the copied block of nested elements contains data, these data are created in the targeted template and the block is pasted.

If variables with the same names exist in the targeted template:

  • These data are created with modified names.
  • The block of nested elements to be pasted is modified consequently.