Stepping a Selection Through Each Value of a Field

Two years ago I posted an entry in this blog describing a macro that would let you step through all of the values of a field. The macro would successively select each value of a field. Shortly after I posted that entry the need for it became obsolete. QlikView has a much better method for stepping through the values of a field and it’s much easier to use than a macro.

Choose a listbox for a field that has the values you want to step through. Select one of the values. Now, just click the Down Arrow on your keyboard. QlikView moves the selection down to the next value. Every time you press the down arrow the selection moves down to the next value. Try it now – it’s easy! You would use this technique while watching the graphs and charts on your QlikView document and see the changes in the graphs and charts as the selection changes. You can quickly step through dozens of different products, or sales regions, or whatever you’re interested in. When you use this technique to step through date values it becomes a way to animate the charts and show behavior of data over time. The up arrow on your keyboard moves the selection the other way.

This is a case where the listbox works better than a multibox. You can click the drop-down arrow for a field on a multibox that contains a selection and then click the down arrow and it will move the selection, but then the list of values closes and you have to click the pull-down arrow again to get it back.

Now, try selecting several values at once on the list box… and then click the down arrow. The group of selections all move down one value. Now, try pressing the Page Down key on your keyboard and the group of selections move down several values. If this was a field of dates and you had selected seven dates then pressing Page Down would move down an entire week. The values that you select don’t need to be contiguous values and the technique still works.
Sometimes you might need to lock some of the other selections in order to better control the values that you step through.

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