Designer Dialog
- 3 minutes to read
The ExpressPivotGrid control provides an advanced Designer dialog which allows you to customize fields and field groups at design time.
To invoke the Designer Dialog, click the Designer… item in the control’s context menu. Alternatively, you can double-click the ExpressPivotGrid to invoke the Designer Dialog.
The Designer Dialog contains the Fields and Groups pages. These pages are described in detail below.
Fields page
This page allows you to:
create and delete fields;
access individual fields and display their properties in the Object Inspector. This is useful for hidden fields, since all the visible fields can be accessed via on-form object access provided by the ExpressPivotGrid.
The list within this page displays the pivot grid fields contained within the Fields collection. Each field is identified by its Name property’s value. The settings of the currently selected field can be accessed and changed via the Object Inspector. Note that you can customize the settings for selected fields simultaneously. Hold down the Shift or Ctrl keys while clicking field names to select multiple fields.
The following table lists all the buttons available within the Fields page along with descriptions of their purpose.
Button | Description |
|---|---|
Add | Adds a new field. This field is automatically selected within the list. By default, the headers of all the newly created fields are positioned within the filter header area. |
Delete | Removes the selected field from the list (i.e. from the Fields collection). |
Move Up | Moves the selected field to the top of the list. |
Move Down | Moves the selected field to the bottom of the list. |
Retrieve Fields | Available only for pivot grids bound to a data source. Creates fields for all the fields in the bound data source. The names of the created fields are designated automatically according to their respective bound fields. When retrieving, you have options to replace the fields in the list with newly created fields or append these fields to the list. |
Groups page
This page allows you to:
create and delete field groups;
customize individual groups.
The Groups list displays all the field groups contained within the Groups collection. Each group is identified by its Caption property’s value and displays all the fields that are associated with the group. The settings of the currently selected group or field within the Groups list can be accessed and changed via the Object Inspector.
The Unlinked fields list displays the fields that can be combined into groups. You can use drag and drop to move grouped fields between groups.
The following table lists all the buttons available within the Fields page along with descriptions of their purpose.
| Button | Description |
|---|---|
| Add | Adds a new group. |
| Delete | Removes the selected group from the Groups list (i.e. from the Groups collection). All the fields from this group are moved to the Unlinked fields list. |
| > | Removes the selected field from a group (ungroups the field). Alternatively, you can double-click a grouped field. |
| < | Places the selected field in the selected group as the last element. Alternatively, you can double-click a field in the Unlinked fields list. |
| Move Up | Promotes the selected grouped field. Using this button you can move fields between groups. |
| Move Down | Demotes the selected grouped field within a group. Using this button you can move fields between groups. |
To close the dialog, click the Close button.