Using the Tag Group Editor Spreadsheet

You can enter and edit Symbols, Substitutions, and Descriptions in the Tag Group Editor spreadsheet.

You can also use some special functions to automate data entry or to manipulate the data in the spreadsheet. These functions are described in the sections that follow.

Retrieving Fully Qualified Names for Substitutions in a Spreadsheet

A fully qualified tagname consists of four parts:

• Data system
• Node
• Tag
• Field

Each element is separated by periods, as shown in the following example:

Fix32.THISNODE.AI1.F_CV

In this example, Fix32 is the name of the data system, THISNODE is the node name, AI1 is the tagname, and F_CV is the field name.

From the Tag Group Editor, you can automatically:

• Insert a fully qualified name for an individual tagname.
• Retrieve the fully qualified names for all substitutions in a spreadsheet. (All of substitutions in the spreadsheet must be tagnames; none of them can be text.)

NOTE: It is strongly recommended that you use the fully qualified names of tags for substitutions in a spreadsheet.

Using the Data Entry Dialog Box to Define Substitutions

Double-clicking the item number in the Tag Group Editor spreadsheet displays the Data Entry dialog box, from which you can:

• Access the Data Source Browser expression builder to define the substitution.
• Create the data source for a substitution tagname.
• Retrieve the fully qualified name for a substitution tagname.

Sorting Data in the Spreadsheet

You can sort the data in any column in the Tag Group Editor spreadsheet.

Searching and Replacing Substitutions

You can make multiple changes to tagname substitutions. This involves:

• Converting the file to comma separated value (CSV) format
• Making the changes in a third-party spreadsheet or text editor
• Re-opening and re-saving the file in the Tag Group Editor.

IMPORTANT: GE ships two Tag Group Editors: one is for use with pictures and the other is for use with recipes. The Tag Group Editor discussed in this manual is intended for use with pictures. To use the Tag Group Editor with recipes, double-click the icon for the TGE.EXE program, located in your iFIX root directory.

Retrieving Symbols from a Picture

You may have so many symbols in a picture that entering all of them into the spreadsheet would be very time-consuming. To automatically retrieve all the symbols from a picture and insert them into the spreadsheet, you can use the Get Symbols From Picture button on the Tag Group Editor toolbar. The Symbols column is cleared and all of the symbols from the picture, including symbols that are used in a picture's script, are automatically inserted into the spreadsheet. You can then alphabetically sort the symbols by clicking the Symbol column heading.

NOTE: If you add new symbol substitutions on text, pushbutton, or variable objects to a picture, these symbols will NOT be read into the Tag Group Editor until the picture is resaved. New symbols on the objects in question will only be read into the Tag Group Editor when the picture is saved.

How Do I...