Template Editor Overview

The Template Editor is the screen you use when viewing and editing schemas within a selected Template (go to Creating a New Template for more information).

Note: Microsoft Silverlight® is freely available and must be installed on your computer prior to running the Template Editor. In the event Microsoft Silverlight® is not installed then a blank window with the download link is displayed instead of the Template Editor window - . Click on the link to install the application.

Figure 1 - The download link for Microsoft Silverlight®

Note: Silverlight is not supported by Internet Explorer 64 bit. If you install Silverlight and attempt to use it a Microsoft error message will be displayed. The error message is misleading as it says that you do not have Silverlight installed, but if you return to the MS site it will confirm that you have the latest version installed.

Three types of template are available:

• Simple Delimited (go to Simple for more information).
• Fixed Width (go to Fixed Width for more information).
• Quantum (go to Quantum for more information).

To open the Template Editor page:

1. In the Data Processing menu, select Templates.

The Template List opens as shown below - .



Figure 2 - Example of the Template list

The Type column allows you to identify the template type; Delimited, Fixed Width or Quantum.

2. Click on the name of the required template in the Template List, or move your mouse pointer into the Template Name cell of the template row, click on the drop-down menu arrow and choose Edit.

The message "Please wait while schemas are downloading from server" is displayed. On completion, the Template Editor page opens - .

Figure 3 - Example of the Template Editor page

This page is organized into three panels:

• The Available Variables panel contains a list of the available variables that are not currently selected for the template. You can select which columns are displayed in the list, and the order in which they are displayed (go to Showing and Hiding List Columns for more information). Imported variables will be loaded into the Available Variables panel.
• The Selected Variables panel lists the variables that are selected for inclusion in the template. You can select which columns are displayed in the list, and the order in which they are displayed (go to Showing and Hiding List Columns for more information).
• The Variable Details panel displays the details of the variable currently selected in the Selected variables panel. The properties displayed depend on the type of the variable. If you need more space on the screen, you can open and close this frame by clicking on the Pane Open/Close button in the border, or resize it by clicking on the blue frame and dragging it up or down.

In this page you can navigate through the available variables, change the way variables are displayed, change the template-related properties of the variables, and update the template from the project (go to Updating the Template from Project for more information). You can 'flatten' a template (go to Flattening a Template for more information), you can save an existing template under a different name (click Save As), and you can undo changes (click Undo). You can also filter the displayed variables, sort them by their properties, and search for variables (go to Navigating through Variables for more information). Note that when searching, you can use the * and ? characters as wildcards in the column search fields.

For all template types, the toolbar in the Selected Variables panel allows you to:

• Add variables to the Template (go to Adding Variables to the Template for more information).
• Duplicate variables (go to Duplicating Variables for more information).
• Delete variables from the Template (go to Deleting Variables for more information).
• Move variables within the Template (go to Moving Variables for more information).
• Customize the template view.

For Fixed Width and Quantum templates:

• Modify Assign Start, Finish Length values (go to Assigning New Range Values to a Variable for more information).
• Set Spread (go to Spread for more information) or BitString (go to Bitstring for more information).
• Set Length - The column length can be changed using "Change length To" or "Change length By".
• Change Multi - Multi variables can be changed in several ways (go to Changing a Multi Variable for more information).

For Quantum templates:

• Start Card and Start Position allow you to change the cards.

Important
After you have made changes to the Template, click Save to save the modifications. If you do not do this, any changes you have made will be lost.

Backing Up a Template

If you wish to back up a Survey Data template, you can export the file and store it or generate a duplicate of the template.

Note: We recommend you duplicate your Template to create a back-up copy if you plan to apply a number of changes to your existing Survey Data Template.