An output grid is a control that allows the user to view a range of items corresponding to a Table Named Range (TNR) from the spreadsheet model. These controls must be bound to a Table Named Range (TNR) (i.e. a two-dimensional range, including a width and height larger than 1 cell) and will contain an amount of rows and columns equivalent to the target range. Please note that output grids are limited to 10,000 cells by default to prevent any performance issues. If your table named ranges contain more than 10,000 cells (i.e. a grid with 10 columns and 1000 rows) you will get an error. This limit can be changed in server and private cloud licenses.
The Table Named Range property lists all Table Named Ranges (TNR) defined in your spreadsheet model (i.e. a two-dimensional range, including a width and height larger than 1 cell).
Upon selecting a target named range, a process will begin to generate all of the metadata for the cells contained within this named range. Once this process has completed, a list of detected columns will be present below, including a Confirm button to validate the existence of each detected column.
Users should confirm the existence of the columns and then subsequently Submit the control in order to save and update the column properties for subsequent edit.
Note: To mitigate detrimental performance side effects, the maximum allowable cells within a target range is configurable by the system administrator in the Configuration Settings section of the Designer. By default, the maximum cells allowed in a given Table Named Range is 1000.
As a result, users attempting to generate grid controls using named ranges exceeding this value will not be able to generate columns for these controls, preventing submission. To exceed the maximum target cell count, please reach out to your system administrator.
Select Has Header feature if the selected named range contains headers in its first row. This has an important effect upon calculations and can also aid in the auto-generation of columns for this grid control, so ensure that this value is updated appropriately
Enable Hide Header feature if you’d like to hide the column headers in the first row.
The Responsive feature will determine whether or not to collapse columns that exceed the width of the viewable screen under the record’s row. This is advised for output grids, as it can aid in displaying information to end users that are accessing the application from mobile devices. This is not advised for input grids, as it can cause undesirable column resizing and recalculation.
The Pagination feature to allow for pagination on your grid. All functions will work appropriately across pages, such as sorting and searching. This is particularly useful for large grids that often cause significant performance detriments in the user interface due to grid rendering. Only default pagination options are currently available, but future releases will enable more user control over these features.
Use Metadata Formatting option configures the grid to handle data formatting per-cell rather than per-column, which allows each cell of a table utilize a different value format.
The information for these cells will be pulled from the target Table Named Range (TNR), based on the information found within the Excel model. For example, a cell that has a Date type with formatting MM/dd/yyyy will automatically become a calendar-based input and will display the associated date in the target format.
Note that data entry will still comply with the pre-existing formats (as if you were to have set the column to Date). Thus, the input mask (while entering the input’s value) may differ from the output format (the value that is displayed once the user has submitted or modified the value).
This feature may not be available for very large tables – this is dependent upon the size of the Table Named Range (TNR) and your server configuration. If the table’s cell count exceeds configuration setting (called MaximumCellCount, defaulted to 1000), then the server does not generate a full set of the required metadata for these ranges. Thus, the Use Metadata Formatting feature cannot be utilized in these cases.
If you want to use the Use Metadata Formatting feature for large tables, then you may want to consider increasing the MaximumCellCount configuration setting to an appropriate value. For example, if the Table Named Range (TNR) represents a table having 10 columns and 200 rows, then the MaximumCellCount should be set to at least 2000 (10 x 200).
The default mode (when Disabled feature is disabled, or Use Metadata Formatting is unchecked) allows the user to set a Mask Type for each column separately. In this case, all cells in that column will use the same value formatting. For example, all data in the column are displayed either as percentages, dates, currencies, etc. For more information, see the Mask Type section on the Output Grid Column help page.
Once you have selected the Enabled feature (Use Metadata Formatting option is checked), each cell will be able to receive its own data formatting. This feature is called metadata formatting because it is based on the metadata information that is primarily collected from the provided spreadsheet model.
In this mode, the output grid table will allow each cell to use the same format that is set in the spreadsheet file, meaning that the values in each cell will be displayed in the same way as they appear in Excel.
Moreover, these formats can also be overridden in the Metadata Editor (Names) when required. For example, if you want to modify a cell’s format from decimal to integer but prefer to leave the cell’s format in the spreadsheet file as-is, you can simply set the new format for that cell in the Metadata Editor.
Also note that – in this mode – the column Mask Type options are not available, since the grid will be formatted on a cell-by-cell basis, rather than column-by-column.
Header Alignment feature will determine the alignment of all text within the header row of the grid. Content Alignment feature will determine the alignment of all non-header text within the body of the grid.
Visible indicates whether the output grid control is visible. This can be configured as Always or Never to indicate whether the output grid is statically visible or not. Alternatively, if any Boolean Single Named Ranges (SNR) exist (i.e. ranges pointing to a single cell that evaluates to TRUE or FALSE), then the visibility of the output grid can be configured to reflect the value of that named range using the ‘By Value Of’ setting.