Using an External Editor

As has been noted already, it is possible to open, view and modify the data using external editors such as spread sheets or text editors. Overall the process is done by moving data from Arbil to the external editor, making the necessary changes, and then moving them back to Arbil.

Moving data back to Arbil however posses some restrictions; for example, if you copy multiple rows in a table, the data format cannot be pasted back into Arbil. However it can still be viewed and edited in an external editor. For this reason after editing data in an external editor, such as Microsoft Excel, you can save you your data in csv format, and then import them to Arbil by right clicking on the preferred node and selecting import CSV. This way gives you the ability to import the data in a table format; in any other case you will have to import the edited data column by column, but not all at once.

If cells in a table corresponding to a single metadata file are copied, then the data will be in a format that can then be pasted back into any table in Arbil, provided that the data maintains the same formatting.

To open data in an external editor i.e. Ms Excel, select and copy the data from the table , then paste them in the editor you wish to use.

Editing data in an External editor

Figure 7.4. Editing data in an External editor