Dragging and Dropping

You can drag items such as objects or text across modules and views, thereby moving, copying, cutting, or pasting objects using the mouse and keyboard. (For information on performing these operations with the menu, see Copying to the Clipboard, Cutting Objects, and Pasting Objects.

To drag and drop, do the following:

1.      Make sure the view containing the item you want to drag and the destination view are open. For more information on views, see Displaying Object Views.

2.      Click on the item you want and while holding the mouse key down, drag it to the destination view. For objects, a small arrow indicates how the item is inserted into the destination view.

• A left-facing arrow shows that the object is pasted at the same level as other objects in the new location such as when you paste a variable into a view containing variables. ATEasy allows two types of same level insertion into the destination view: Insert At and Insert After.  A visual effect, cursor changes, will occur as you drag around a destination object. If you want to insert At; that is, insert above the destination object, place the cursor at the top half of the destination object's icon. For Insert After, place the cursor at the bottom half of the object's icon.  As you drag around the icon, the cursor will change from on from the other.  As cursors are shown here, the first one is for Insert At, and the latter is for Insert After.
  

• A down-facing arrow shows that the object is pasted at a level under the object in the new location such as when you paste a test into a task.
  

  If you drag a table containing objects (for example, dragging a test containing tasks), all the subordinate objects are dragged as well.

3.      Do one of the following operations:

• To copy the item, press the CONTROL key. A Plus icon (+) appears by the cursor, as shown here, to indicate that the item is being copied: the original is left at the previous view while a duplicate is pasted to the new view. For information on copying through the menu, see Copying to the Clipboard.
  

• To move the item, do not press the CONTROL key. The item is cut from the previous view and pasted to the destination view. If the item is required at the previous location (for example, if a COM library used by a form), it is copied rather than cut. For information on cutting and pasting through the menu, see Cutting Objects and Pasting Objects.

4.      Release the mouse key to drop the item into the destination. If you try to drop an object into a view where an object with the same name already exists, ATEasy tries to merge the new object as explained in Merging Duplicate Objects.

For more information on tree objects, see Overview of Trees and Objects.

Using Drag and Drop

The following are some uses of dragging and dropping that can simplify your ATEasy operations:

●        Copying all variables from one module to another.

●        Moving a statement from one area of code to another.

●        Copying variable names from a module to the Watch window as explained in Watch Window.

●        Copying object names into task and procedure code as explained in Dragging Names to Code.

●        Turning a program that is under a project into a stand-alone file in the Workspace window.