Reordering Cells for Import

[Also refer to the section on New Cell Renumber Options.]

By default, when text is imported into a table, it starts at the upper-left corner, and goes across columns to the right, and then down to the next row. You can change this ordering, so text flows into the table in any sequence you specify. This is done from the Cell Renumber palette.

To reorder cells for import:

1. Activate the table.

2. Choose Show Cell Renumber from the Table menu.

3. The table cell numbering will be displayed. This is the order in which text will be imported into the cells. Enter the new number you will be applying to a cell (or a starting number for a range) into the "Next Number To Apply" box in the palette.

NOTE: You will usually want to see the data you are going to import while you are re-numbering cells. This is done by clicking Preview Data, to bring up the Data Preview window (see the section on Importing). To make sure a given data item will be imported into a given table cell, you should set the number for that cell to be the same as the number of the data item as shown in the Data Preview window.

To "remove" a cell from importing (that is, so it will be skipped on import), set "Next Number To Apply" to 0. (When set to 0, the number will not be automatically incremented if you drag across a range, so all the cells you drag across will be removed.) To "put back" a cell that has been removed for importing, you can simply apply a non-zero number to it again. When a cell has been removed for importing, it does not show any number in the cell number display.

4. Choose the radio button to indicate what should happen with the remaining cell numbers when a given number is changed. (See further discussion below.)

5. Click Start Re-Number Mode.

6. Click in the table cell to be re-numbered. Or for a range, click down on the first cell, then drag across the remaining cells (with the mouse button down). The "Next Number To Apply" shown in the palette will be applied to the cell; for a range, the number will be incremented for each new cell as you drag across.

7. When you are finished changing cell numbers, click Stop Re-Number Mode, or close the palette.

NOTE: After you re-order cell numbers, the table will default to use cell numbering on import. You can choose whether or not cell numbering is used on import, from the Import dialog. (See the previous section on Advanced Import options.)

How Cell Numbers Determine Import Order

Each cell's number corresponds to the sequence number of the data item that will go into that cell on import. This sequence number can be seen directly in the Data Preview window. For example, cell 4 will receive the 4th data item that is encountered during import. There are two important points to keep in mind:
1. Table cell numbers do not have to be in sequence, they only have to be unique within the table. For example, the lowest number could be 8, then followed by 10, 11, 14, 21, 32, ... In this case, the first seven data items would not go into the table, and then the eight data item would go into cell 8, and so on.
2. Data item numbers are always in sequence. The first item is always number 1. Data items whose sequence number has no corresponding cell with the same number will be skipped during the import. Also, you can cause only part of the data to be used via the settings for "Columns To Use" and "Rows To Use" in the Data Preview window.

What the "How to adjust other cell numbers" setting means

You have two choices for how other cell numbers are adjusted, when you change the number of a given cell:

• "Swap numbers" — If there is already a cell with the same number as the number being applied, that cell will get the old number of the cell being changed. For example, if you are changing cell 2 to be cell 8, and there is already another cell 8, then that cell 8 will become cell 2. As another example, suppose the table cells are numbered as follows: 2, 3, 5, 20, 17, 18, 25, 16, 22. Now if you change cell 5 to have the new number 18, the table cells will be numbered as follows: 2, 3, 18, 20, 17, 5, 25, 16, 22.

• "Pull down higher numbers to fill in" — Any cells whose current number is higher than the new number you are applying will have their number decremented by one. This will be done for cell numbers up to the number of the cell you are applying the new number to, or the highest number in the table, whichever is greater. Using the same example as above, changing cell 5 to 18, the new cell numbers would be: 2, 3, 18, 20, 16, 5, 25, 15, 22.

Also with this option, changing a cell from being skipped for import to having a number will cause all other cells with numbers greater than or equal to that number to have their numbers incremented by one.