Clear a column

[jordanParticipant]

Is there a way to clear the data out of a column, but retain the column with the appropriate header?

[thopaParticipant]

I think you could try to select the rows and not the columns (maybe all with cmd+a) and delete them. You may be asked if all or only visible columns. This should delete the entries but not the columns.

[jordanParticipant]

Thanks for the response. That works, though a little cumbersome as I need to isolate the column and in my graph I have hundreds of columns that are nestled. 

[thopaParticipant]

I think if you try a secondary click on the marked rows you get an option to remove these rows only from a parent group of your choice. Maybe that is easier for your needs?

[jordanParticipant]

Ah, yes, that works very nicely. Thanks for the reply.

[dgteamModerator]

We could see adding an easier option for clearing the contents, but for now the advice given is correct.  For anyone wanting further explanation, here is a screen shot where the rows are selected first, then control-click on the header of the column you want to clear.  That will give the context menu for this column and select Empty selected rows.

[samParticipant]

Following up on this issue —

The method highlighted by @dgteam Moderator works, but it is unintuitive.

I spent 10-15 minutes doing countless other permutations of selecting columns, rows, different menu options, control-clicking, etc., trying to clear a column without removing the column definition itself. I  was completely stumped until I happed to come across this forum thread.

Please re-design the user interface so that one can quickly clear just the data from single column by selecting one or more entire columns (using command-click for multiple columns), then using either a  menu command under Edit or Data menus (e.g. Data –> “Clear Column Data”)  or perhaps with a control-click contextual menu out in the data display table  that reads “Clear column data” or similar.

Additionally, it should be possible to apply this to any number of simultaneously-selected columns. At present it seems like you have to do the control-click “Empty selected rows” on every column individually.

Further, and also frustrating, for whatever reason the “Empty selected rows” option doesn’t show up at all for certain field types, in my case Date with an ICU format applied. It is only offered as a contextual menu for Number and Text-type fields.

• This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by sam.
• This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by sam.
• This reply was modified 9 months, 2 weeks ago by sam.

[Author]

Posts