In all datasheets, additional features can be accessed with a right click on the selected items.
Available options can vary with the view and the license level of your product.
Gives access to the Edit sub-menu, with the standard Editing functions and more.
Editing Functions
Cut, Copy and Paste functions are available for cell editing.
Copy Cell(s)
Copies the content of selected cells. Use it to get the contents of selected cells in a column as a list of values.
Paste
(Only active when right-clicking in a directory of the queries view) Pastes the contents of the clipboard as one or two column(s) of items, usually URLs in the first column and some additional info in the second.
Edit Cell
Allows for inline editing of a cell content.
Shuffle Rows
Reorders the datasheet rows randomly. Usually used to avoid sending ordered queries to a server.
Find in Selected Cell(s)...
Opens the find dialog and searches the entered string or regular expression in the selected cells of the current column.
Find in Whole Datasheet...
Opens the find dialog and searches the entered string in the whole datasheet.
Replace in Selected Cell(s)...
Opens the Replace dialog for replacements in the selected cells of the current column.
Replace in Whole Datasheet...
Opens the Replace dialog for replacements in the whole datasheet.
Copy from Column...
Copies values from a column to another.
Use Line as Column Headers
Uses the content of each cell in the selected line to replace the current column headers of the datasheet.
Rename Column...
In data views, this option allows you to change the header of a dynamic column.
Empty Cell(s)
Empties the selected cells of the current column.
Duplicate
Duplicates the contents of selected rows and inserts the duplicates as new rows after the selection.
Gives access to the Insert and Split sub-menu, with cell/row/column insertion functions.
Insert Row
Inserts a new blank row after the selection.
Insert Rows
Gives access to the String Generation Panel and inserts the generated strings as new rows before the selection. This Insert Rows function allows you to generate strings using the Query Generation Pattern format.
Split First/Last Names
If the selected cell values are recognized as people names, this function inserts new 'Fist Name' and 'Last Name' columns before the selected column (if these do not already exist) and fills them with the corresponding values found in the selected cell(s). Note that, for now, only one pair of First Name/Last Name columns can exist in the datasheet.
If the 'guess gender' preference of the Filter & Replacements panel contains values, an additional column will be created using these values to indicate the gender associated with the first name. This function based on a large dictionary of first names. When a first name is both used for male and female or when it is not associated to a gender in the dictionary, the program will opt for the third value entered in the preference.Split Cell(s) to Rows
If the selected cell values contain a character recognized as an item separator (;,-/), this function inserts new rows below the selected rows and fills them with the split values of the selected cells, duplicating the content of the other cells of the selected rows. Note that, as all 'intelligent' functions, this one can sometimes have unexpected results, but it can nevertheless save you a lot of time in many repetitive tasks.
Split Cell(s) to Columns
If the selected cell values contain a character recognized as an item separator (;,-/), this function inserts new columns left of the selected column and fills them with the split values of the selected cells. Note that, as all 'intelligent' functions, this one can sometimes have unexpected results, but it can nevertheless save you a lot of time in many repetitive tasks.
Insert Column
In data views, inserts a new blank column before the selection. This option only applies to dynamic columns.
Insert Index Column
In data views, inserts a column with an incremeted index. This option only applies to dynamic columns.
Duplicate Column
In data views, inserts a duplicate of the selected column. This option only applies to dynamic columns.
Indexed Duplicate Column
In data views, inserts a duplicate of the selected column where duplicate cells are suffixed with an index. This option only applies to dynamic columns.
Insert Cell(s)
In data views, inserts new blank cells before the selection. This option only applies to dynamic columns.
Gives access to the Delete sub-menu, to delete cells rows or columns.
Delete
Deletes the selected row(s).
Delete Unselected
Deletes the row(s) that are not selected.
Delete Column
In data views, deletes the selected column. This option only applies to dynamic columns.
Delete Columns
In data views, this options gives you access to a sub-menu allowing you to delete columns containing less than a certain number of populated cells. This option, which only applies to dynamic columns, is very useful to clean up large scrapes where useless columns have been created by poorly populated data fields.
Delete Cell(s)
In data views, deletes selected cells and moves left all the cells located at the right of the selected column. This option only applies to dynamic columns.
Delete Duplicates
Gives access to a sub-menu to delete cell duplicates (rows containing an identical value to the selected cell in the same column) or row duplicates (rows where all cells are identical to the cells of the selected row). It is also possible, through the same menu, to delete all cell or row duplicates of the datasheet.
Gives access to the Select sub-menu, with various ways to select cells or rows.
Select All
Selects all rows of the datasheet.
Invert Selection
Deselects all selected rows of the datasheet and selects all rows that were not selected.
Select Block
In the lists, tables, scraped and news views, this function will select the whole block (list, table, scraped page or rss feed) where the selected row is located. Note: the selection is done using the second group of digits in the Ordinal ID. (Use the column picker at the top right corner of the datasheet to show the Ordinal column, if it is not visible.)
Select if in...
In the lists, tables, scraped and news views, this function will select the cells of the selected column that are present in the chosen datasheet. Note: This function is very useful for instance to check in a query directory which URLs were already scraped with results present i the Catch. Its execution, however, can be very slow with thoudands of items in both datasheets.
Select Similar
Selects all rows of the datasheet with content similar to that of the the selected cell. The default threshold used for determining similarity is 40 (0 selecting only identical values and 100 selecting everything). Use the sub-menu items to increase or decrease the threshold and select more or less rows.
Select Identical
Selects all rows of the datasheet with content identical to that of the the selected cell.
Select Different
Selects all rows of the datasheet with content different from that of the the selected cell.
Select Duplicates
Gives access to a sub-menu to select cell duplicates (rows containing an identical value to the selected cell in the same column) or row duplicates (rows where all cells are identical to the cells of the selected row). It is also possible, through the same menu, to select all cell or row duplicates of the datasheet.
This sub-menu gives access to automation functions that you can apply to the URLs of the selected column in the selected rows of the datasheet. It gives you the capacity to explore the pages or documents and apply extractors, according to the current configuration of the application.
Browse
The program explores the links included in the current selection one after the other. During the exploration, all active extraction processes will be executed on page load, depending on the settings of the views' bottom panel.
Browse Selected Links & Series of Pages When Found
The program explores the links included in the current selection one after the other and if a series of pages is found, it will browse through these. During the exploration, all active extraction processes will be executed on page load, depending on the settings of the views' bottom panel.
Dig
The program explores the links found in the pages of the current selection's URLs. The exploration will be done within the domain of each link, with a depth of 1. During the Dig process, all active extractions will be executed on page load, according to the settings of the views' bottom panel.
Fast Scrape
Applies a Scraper to a list of Selected URLs. When this function is invoked, XML HTTP requests are sent to all the selected URLs, to retrieve the source code of each one. The most relevant scraper is applied to it, without loading images etc. and without any other extraction being performed. All extracted data is sent to the Scraped view (which is not emptied during the process, regardless of the state of the Empty checkbox).
Fast Scrape (Include Selected Data)
Same function as 'Fast Scrape' above, except that the data fields included in the selection will be added to the scraped results. This saves you the work of merging back the records after the scraping, if you need to keep information from the original data.
Fast Scrape Websites of Selected Links (Expert & Enterprise editions)
Same function as 'Fast Scrape' above, except that the scraper will not only be applied to the selected links, but also to all the links of the domain home page that match the filter preference settings defined in the General preference panel.
Apply a Generic Macro
This function allows you to apply a generic macro to the selected URLs. Generic macros are simply macros for which no specific URL is set in the Start Page field.
Fast Search for Contacts
The program sends queries to the site(s) and searches for emails without loading the pages in the browser. Available options in this sub-menu vary with the current page and context. They include:
In Selected Links
The program sends queries to the selected links, searching for email addresses and contact information.
In Websites of Selected Links
The program browses through the pages of the selected links and sends queries to the relevant URLs found (about, contact, team pages) to search for email addresses and contact information.
Open URL in a New Window
In the Firefox Add-on: When the selected data contains a URL, it will be opened in a new browser window.
Gives you access to the Download sub-menu. Note that a preference (in Tools>Preferences>Export) allows you to automatically rename the downloaded files.
Download Selected Files
Downloads and saves to the current destination folder on your hard disk, all documents and images found in the selected rows.
Download Selected Files in...
Downloads all documents and images found in the selected rows, opening the folder picker to let you decide where you want the files to be saved.
Gives you access to the First Names sub-menu.
The First Name Dictionary is used to enhance the recognition of contact in Web pages. A default dictionary of a few thousand first names from around the world is already included in the program. You can add your own using these options. Note that the dictionary can be saved and loaded from the File menu.
Remember First Name
Choosing this option when a first name is selected in the datasheet will add it to your dictionary.
Forget First Name
Choosing this option when a first name is selected in the datasheet will remove it from your dictionary.
Gives access to the Cleaning & Normalization sub-menu.
Clean Contents
Gives access to the String Cleaning sub-menu.
To Lower Case
Converts all characters of the selected cells to lower case.
To Upper Case
Converts all characters of the selected cells to upper case.
Capitalize Words
Converts the first character of each word in the selected cells to Upper case and the others to lower case.
Dust It
Cleans the text at best and capitalizes the words.
Zap It
Cleans the text from all non-alphabeltical chars and capitalizes the words.
Normalize All Figures / Selected Figures in Column
When this function is executed on a selection, the numerical data contained in each selected cell of the selected column (or in the whole datasheet, depending on the selected option) is reformatted and converted to the corresponding value in metric units (if a numerical value is found with a non-metric unit). Numerical values are normalized as much as possible, removing thousand separators, using dots as decimal separators, removing trailing zeros in decimals, etc. The purpose of this function is not to create a nice formatting but rather to homogenize the formats so that the values can be processed and sorted. Note: the feature is watched by dozens of unit tests in our system and works rather well. There are, however, many possible causes for misinterpretation of numbers in a text, so please do not rely on this function for processes involved in the piloting of commercial airliners, nuclear power plants, etc.
To Units: Values will be converted to meters, square meters, cubic meters, grams etc.
To k Units: Values will be converted to kilometers, square kilometers, kilograms etc.
Sends strings to a directory of Queries.
Send Cell(s) to Queries
Sends the selected cells to the chosen directory of the queries view:
New Directory: A new directory will be created with the selected items.
directoryName: The selected items will be sent to the chosen directory.Send Links(s) to Queries
The first links found in the selected rows will be sent to the chosen directory of the queries view:
New Directory: A new directory will be created with the selected items.
directoryName: The selected items will be sent to the chosen directory.
Exports the selected data to a file on your hard disk, in one of the available formats (Excel, HTML, Text, CSV, SQL).