Displayr makes it easy to Hide data and analyses in your documents from being included in View Mode and exports, while still making them available to you to see and use as inputs in Edit Mode. You can tell if an item in the Report or Data Sources tree is hidden in Edit Mode because its font is grey and its icon has a slash through it. Similarly, items included on a Page that are hidden from View Mode and exports show diagonal grey stripes in Edit Mode.
This article describes how to Hide and Unhide:
- Items in the Report tree, such as Folders, Pages, items included in a Page, and standalone outputs in the Report tree - This is useful when you need to create inputs to items shown but viewers don't need to see the actual input data. Examples include, tables that feed visualizations, reference tables used to lookup a value, ad hoc calculations that are used by other outputs.
- Variable Sets - You may want to hide variables in your Data Set to prevent confusion when editing your document or to remove them from the list of available filters in View mode, Explore mode, and data exports. The latter is handy if you have filters in your data that you do not want your document viewers to have access to.
- Rows, columns, and categories in a table - You can hide categories to only show those that you are interested in in your table. This is especially helpful when you want to include categories, such as Don't Know, Other, Miscellaneous, etc, in the base of your percentages, but not show them on the table.
This article shows an example where, we go from a Displayr document that displays all pages, variables, rows, columns, outputs, and objects when viewed and exported:
To a state where selected items are hidden in View/Explore mode, and when exported to Office and PDF files:
Requirements
A Displayr document with Data Sources and/or outputs
Method - Items in the Report tree
The easiest way to hide an item in your Report (such as Folders, Pages, items included on a Page, and standalone outputs in the Report tree) is to select the item(s), right-click, and select Hide. Keep in mind that this feature works similarly to editing items in bulk. That is, it is recursive and applies to all items nested under a selected Folder or Page in the Report tree. So when you hide a Page, you are hiding the entire Page and everything included with it. The same thing goes for hiding Folders in the Report tree. To unhide items, select the item(s), right-click, and select Unhide.
You can further customize how items in the Report are hidden via the General > General tab in the item's Properties . When you click Hide, the menu items are Hidden from exports & publishing.
To Hide only items from exports to Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF, you can instead check Hidden from exports only. This is useful when you want to show a visualization in your online Dashboard in View and Explore Mode, but you don't want a table of the data plotted exported to Excel.
To unhide an item, right-click and select Unhide. Alternatively, you can untick Hidden from exports & publishing from General > General in Properties .
Method - Hide Variable Sets
With Variable Sets, you can choose where to hide the variable in the app, including the dropdown menus, Page filtering, explore mode, and exports. From the Data Sources tree, select one or more Variable Sets, right-click, and select Hide. You can Unhide variable sets by right-clicking and selecting Unhide.
When you click Hide from the menus, Variable Sets will have Hidden (except in variables and code) checked in their Properties > Data > Attributes section. This will hide the variable(s) from all dropdowns in Edit Mode and throughout View Mode (you will not be able to select them in any fields in Properties). You can still reference this variable in R or JavaScript code, if needed.
If you'd like to include the Variable Set in dropdowns, but exclude it from other parts of the app, you can only check the appropriate field(s) instead:
- Hidden in View Mode Filter menu - this will hide the variable(s) from the global filter drop-down in View Mode.
- Hidden in Explore Mode - this will hide the variable(s) from the filter selection in Explore Mode and will prevent users of your dashboard from applying it to tables or objects from there.
Variable sets with Hidden (except in variables and code) checked will not be exported if you export the data set. If you have lots of unused variables in your data set, you can Hide them in a separate data preparation document, export the data set, and then update your report with it. This removes those from the main reporting document, keeping your data set tidy and making your document run more efficiently.
Method - Hide rows, columns, and categories in a table
There are a few methods depending on how you want the hiding to affect other anlyses in your report and what type of table you are working with.
- Right click > Hide: To hide a row or column on a built-in drag and drop table, right-click the row/column/category header and click Hide. This will hide the category from all tables and visualizations that use the variable set, but it will still be included in the base of the table, NETs, and stat testing. If you'd like to treat the category as missing data instead and remove those cases from the base of the table, right-click and choose Delete. Note that if you hide a NET or merged category, it will be gone and cannot be unhidden.
- A Table Rule: If you'd only like to modify select tables in your document, you can use a table rule that won't affect the variable set itself. There are several built-in table rules that you can use to hide rows and columns by name or criteria (such as Hide Empty Rows and Columns), or you can write a custom rule (see How to Modify Table Rows and Columns Using a Rule).
-
The Properties: To hide rows or columns on a Specialty Table or visualization created via the Visualization menu, you will look for the appropriate field in Data > Row Manipulations or Column Manipulations in the item's Properties
. Note that case/response numbers that appear in the first column of a table with raw data/responses are actually row headers and cannot be hidden.
There are a couple of ways to unhide rows and columns in a drag and drop table:
- Select the table and from Properties, go to Data > Unhide Rows and Columns and click Unhide Categories Shown in Columns and/or Unhide Categories Shown in Rows, and then select the attributes you want to unhide. Note that hidden merged and custom NET categories are gone once hidden, and you will need to essentially remake them with Combine and Create NET.
- If you want to quickly unhide all rows and columns at once, right-click any row or column on the table and select Reset > Table Categories. However, this resets the rows and columns to how they were shown initially on import, and will also revert any renaming, reordering, and custom merges/NETs added.
Technical details
Right click > Hide and Unhide cannot be used if the variable set in the table:
Has the Structure of Text. Rows and columns of text data cannot be hidden.
Has the Structure of Date/Time. To choose which dates to include for data of this type, select the variable in the Data Sources tree and then use Data > Attributes > Date/Time Aggregation in Properties
.
Is a Banner. Data for banners is linked to the underlying questions. You will need to select the banner under the Data Sources tree and then use Properties
> Data > Attributes > Reset.
The Work With Rows, Columns, NETs, and Merged Categories section of the help center for more examples.
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