How to Show, Hide, Freeze, and Multi-Sort Report Columns in EDGEBIC

Every report grid in EDGEBIC by User Solutions can be reshaped from the column header right-click menu: Column Chooser shows or hides columns, Fixed Column pins one to the left while you scroll, and Shift-clicking a second header adds a secondary sort. All three apply to the report dialog you have open, so they are quick, safe, and reversible.

These are the three moves that turn a wide, dense report into something a planner can read in a stand-up meeting. They pair with grouping a report grid by a column, which is the fourth move in the same menu.

Before You Start

• You have a report open. Any of the grid reports work the same way: Late Jobs, Work Center Utilization, Earned Value, Scheduler Anomalies, Job Progress, and the rest.
• You know these changes are per-dialog and temporary. Nothing you do here alters the data, the schedule, or what anyone else sees.
• If you want the arrangement to survive, plan to export. Excel is the place a customized column set gets kept.

Showing and Hiding Columns

1. Right-click any column header in the report grid.
2. Choose Column Chooser. A small floating panel opens listing the columns that are currently hidden.
3. To hide a column, drag its header out of the grid and into the chooser panel.
4. To show a hidden column, drag it from the chooser panel into the position you want in the grid.
5. Close the chooser when you are done. The grid keeps your set until the dialog closes.

Use this first on the wide reports. Work Center Utilization and the anomaly scan both carry more columns than any single question needs, and removing the ones you are not reading makes the remaining numbers far easier to compare down a column.

Freezing a Column

1. Right-click the header of the column you want to keep in view, typically the job number or the work center name.
2. Choose Fixed Column, then Fixed Left.
3. Scroll the grid horizontally. The fixed column stays put on the left edge while everything else moves.

This is the single change that makes a wide report usable. Without it, scrolling four columns to the right leaves you looking at a row of numbers with no idea which job they belong to.

Sorting by Two Columns

1. Click the header of the column you want as the primary sort. One click sorts ascending, a second click sorts descending.
2. Hold Shift and click the header of the second column.
3. Each sorted column now shows an arrow with a small number next to it, showing its place in the sort order.

The arrow numbers are the confirmation that the multi-sort took. If only one column shows an arrow, the Shift did not register and your second click replaced the first sort rather than adding to it.

What Changes When You Reshape a Grid

How to Check It Worked

For the column chooser, scan the header row and confirm the columns you wanted are present and the ones you removed are gone. For the freeze, scroll right and watch that the pinned column stays on the left. For the sort, look for the arrow-plus-number indicator on both headers.

If a sort looks wrong, check that you are reading the right indicator. A number 1 arrow is the primary key, and rows are only ordered by the number 2 column within groups that tie on the first.

Making an Arrangement Last

Because these settings are per-dialog, the reliable way to keep a customized view is to export it. Arrange the columns, then export the report to Excel. The exported workbook carries the column set you built, so the file you circulate is the shape you designed even though the dialog will forget it.

One caveat if you also grouped the grid: a grouped export includes the group header rows, and whoever opens the workbook may need to ungroup in Excel before they can treat it as a flat data table.

A Quick Worked Example

A planner runs the Late Jobs report before a Monday customer call. The default sort already puts the worst jobs at the top by days late, which is the right primary key. She Shift-clicks the customer name header so each customer's late jobs group together underneath. She right-clicks the job number column and sets Fixed Column to Fixed Left so she can scroll out to the blocker-hint column without losing track of which job she is reading. Finally she opens the Column Chooser and drags out three columns nobody on the call will ask about. Ten minutes later the same report, run fresh, is back to its defaults, and she rebuilds the view in under a minute or works from the Excel export she took.

Common Mistakes

Expecting the arrangement to persist. It will not. Reopening the dialog resets to the report's own default sort and column set. Export if you need it to last.

Hiding a column you then look for in the export. Only visible columns are exported. If a number matters to the recipient, put its column back before you export.

Clicking instead of Shift-clicking for the second sort. A plain click on a second header replaces the sort rather than adding to it. Watch for the numbered arrows.

Freezing three or four columns. Pinning too many leaves almost no scrolling area, which is worse than not freezing at all. One column, usually the identifier, is the right answer.

Reshaping when the real question is what a column means. If the problem is that a column header is opaque rather than badly placed, column details gives you the definition and formula instead.

Next Steps

For narrowing rows rather than columns, how to filter a report with the filter editor is the companion move, and how to group a report grid by a column covers subtotals. For the full task library, see the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and for the platform overview, EDGEBIC.