Table editor

The common table editor of sections such as tags, connections and alarms: adding rows, duplicating and series duplication (fill handle), deleting, cell editing and validation, the password window, cell selection and clipboard, search, sorting, group filter, moving columns, Excel and undo.

HMI tags, Connections, Alarms, Users, Cycles and many other sections are edited with the same table editor. This topic describes the common behavior that applies to all of them; the meaning of the columns is covered in the topic of the relevant section.

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1. Inner tabs — the tables of the section.
2. Group bar — filter by group.
3. Add
4. Excel — export / import, template.
5. Search in table
6. Connection filter
7. Header — clicking it sorts.

Parts of the table

• Inner tabs: if a section has more than one table, they are at the very top (for HMI tags: Tags, Structure instances, Structures (UDT), Scaling and quality).
• Group bar: in sections that can be grouped, the All button and the group buttons; to the right of them, Add new group. Clicking a group button filters the table to that group (and its subgroups). About groups: Project tree.
• Toolbar: Add, duplicate, delete, move up / down; (in grouped sections) Move to group; three Excel buttons; the Search in table… box; on the right, the number of records (169 kayıt; 12 / 169 kayıt while a filter is active).
• Color filter: in HMI tags, the connection names are listed as chips with their colors and tag counts (Internal at the end). Clicking a chip filters the table to the tags of that connection; clicking it again removes the filter.
• Table: the first column is the row number; the heading of required columns has a *; at the bottom is the Add new row row.
• Inspector: shows all fields of the selected row as a form; a change made there passes through the same rules as editing in the table (Inspector).

Row operations

Series duplication (fill handle)

You can duplicate a row, or a block of consecutive rows, downwards as many times as you like, as in Excel. The names of the new rows are unique, and the tag address advances by the size of the data type. In this way you can generate, for example, the tags of 16 motors without typing them one by one. Series duplication works in all tables edited with the table editor; only the Languages table does not have it.

Dragging with the fill handle

1. Select the row or block

   Click a row. To duplicate a block, select consecutive rows with Shift+click. If the selection has gaps (separate rows with Ctrl+click), the fill handle is not shown.

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   1. Fill handle — in the last row of the selection, the bottom-right corner of the active cell. Drag it down.

2. Drag the handle down

   Over the fill handle the cursor changes to a plus sign. While dragging, the rows to be added appear below the block as a faded preview, with the calculated name and address. Next to the cursor, the number of rows to be added and a summary of the last row are shown. When the cursor reaches the bottom or top edge of the table, the table scrolls automatically. Esc cancels.

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   1. Preview rows — the rows that will be added on release, with name and address already calculated.
   2. Cursor information — number of rows to be added and the name / address of the last row.

3. Release

   The rows are added below the block. The source and new rows remain selected, and the new rows are briefly highlighted. If a search filter is active, it is cleared (the new names might not match the search). The whole operation is a single undo step: Ctrl+Z removes all new rows together.

With a number of copies: Duplicate as series

Right-click the row or block and select the Duplicate as series… command. In the window, enter the number in the Number of copies box; the preview shows the first four and the last new rows with their changing columns. Duplicate adds the rows; the operation is again a single undo step. The command is inactive if the selection is not contiguous.

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1. Number of copies — how many times the block is added one below the other.
2. Preview — the first four and the last new row; the columns that change (address) are shown.
3. Total — number of rows to be added.

Values of the new row

The same rules apply to the fill handle, Ctrl+D and Duplicate as series…:

The address sizes are those used by the Live driver: in S7, String n+2 bytes, WString 2n+4 bytes, DateTime 12 bytes (8 on S7-300); in Modbus, MC and FINS, 32-bit types take 2 words and LReal 4 words. If the generated address exceeds the address range of the driver (for example, if the Modbus register number exceeds the limit), the value is still written and the cell is marked as faulty; Check project lists this.

• At most 5000 rows are added at a time. In tables with a row limit, only as many as there is room left for; when the limit is reached, the cursor info says so.
• A copy of a tag generated from a structure instance, or of a connection status tag, becomes a normal (independent) tag.
• Even while sorting by column header is active, the new rows appear below the source block.
• The fill handle is not shown while a cell is being edited; finish editing with Enter or Esc.

Cell editing

1. Select the cell

   Click the cell. Check box, drop-down list, color and image cells open with a single click; a text or number cell is edited with a second click (or a double-click). A click counts when you release the mouse button: if you drag to another cell, the cell does not change and an area is selected.

2. Start editing

   Enter, F2, double-clicking, or starting to type. In a text or number cell, the first character you press opens the cell and becomes the start of the text.

3. Enter the value

   In some cells (such as the address), a help box opens below the cell and checks the value as you type.

4. Confirm

   Enter confirms the value; Tab confirms it and moves to the cell on the right (Shift+Tab to the left); Esc cancels. Clicking elsewhere also confirms the value.

Navigation: the arrow keys move between cells, PageUp / PageDown page by page, Ctrl+Home / Ctrl+End go to the first / last row.

Validation

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1. Cell being edited — Enter confirms, Esc cancels.
2. Validation box — tells why it is invalid.

• An invalid value is not written. If you try to confirm it with Enter or Tab, editing stays open and the error appears below the cell. If you leave by clicking elsewhere, the value is discarded and the reason is reported in the Value not accepted window.
• Rules depend on the column: required field, unique name, name pattern (“The name must start with a letter; it may contain only letters, digits and "_".”), number range, driver address rules.
• Marked cells: if a stored value later breaks the rule (for example, the connection of the tag was deleted), the cell is marked in the error or warning color; the reason is shown when you hover over it. These problems are also listed in the Information tab (Check project).
• Locked cells cannot be edited (for example, the address of an internal tag).

Password window

All passwords in Studio are entered through the same window. You cannot type directly in a password cell in a table: double-click, Enter or F2 opens the window. Form fields such as the SQL password and the camera password have a read-only box with a Set… / Change… button.

• Type the same password in the New password and Password (again) boxes and press Save. If a password exists, the window title is Change Password.
• The password must be at least 6 characters. If it is shorter, the message The password must be at least 6 characters. appears; if the two boxes differ, The passwords do not match. appears.
• Cancel leaves the current password unchanged.
• Shorter passwords entered earlier keep working. The rule applies only to a newly entered password.

Searching, sorting, filtering

• Search: the Search in table… box searches all visible columns for the text you type (differences between upper / lower case and Turkish letters are ignored).
• Sorting by header: clicking a column header sorts the table ascending, a second click sorts it descending and a third click returns to the original order; clicking the sequence-number header also returns to the original order. Only the view is sorted: the row order in the project, the sequence numbers and the export to Excel do not change. Number columns are sorted as numbers and text columns with Turkish collation (Tag_2 < Tag_10); empty values stay at the end in both directions. The order is frozen at that moment so that a row does not move away when a cell is edited.
• Filters work together: the group, the connection chip and the search can be applied at the same time.

Moving columns

Drag the column header more than 6 pixels and drop it, or right-click the header and select one of the commands Move to start, Move one column left, Move one column right, Move to end, Move before column, Move after column (Reset column order returns to the default order). The column order is not written to the project; it is stored on this computer (in the WebView2 profile of Studio); the sort menu is in the same right-click menu (Sort ascending, Sort descending, Clear sorting). While dragging, Esc cancels the operation.

Cell selection and clipboard

In tables you can select a rectangular cell area, copy it and paste it. Text copied from another table or from Excel can be pasted too.

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1. Copied cells — dashed frame.
2. Selected area — paste writes here.

Pasting follows these rules:

• A single value is written to every cell in the selection.
• If the selection is an exact multiple of the source, the source repeats. For example, a two-row source is written twice into a four-row selection.
• In all other cases the source is written at its own size, starting from the active cell.
• No new rows are added. Cells that fall outside the table are not written.
• Validation is the same as for importing from Excel. A cell that does not fit is skipped and the rest are written; a window gives the count and the reason, for example 5 cells written, 2 cells not written.
• Undo: one paste is a single step; Ctrl+Z undoes all of it.
• Passwords are not copied or pasted. If the selection includes a password column, that column is copied empty, and a value pasted into a password cell is skipped.

Right-click menu

When you right-click a row (if it is not selected, it is selected first; if it is part of a multiple selection, the selection is kept), the menu offers these commands: Edit: <column> (F2), Copy (Ctrl+C), Paste (Ctrl+V), Add new row (Insert), Duplicate (Ctrl+D), Duplicate as series…, Move up, Move down, section-specific commands (for example Test connections… and Move to group ▸ in Connections), Select all (Ctrl+A), Delete (Delete) and Excel ▸. With a multiple selection, the command names include the count (Duplicate 3 rows). When you right-click an empty area, only the add, Select all and Excel commands appear.

Excel

The three buttons on the toolbar are present in every table:

For details and limits, see Importing / exporting with Excel; the CSV commands specific to tags are described in Transferring tags with CSV / Excel.

Undo and redo

Every change in the table enters the undo stack of the project: Edit›Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Edit›Redo (Ctrl+Y or Ctrl+Shift+Z). The stack holds at most 100 steps and, as its size grows, the oldest steps are discarded; saving the project does not clear the stack, but opening another project resets it. An undone operation counts as an unsaved change.