ABOUT EDITING YOUR DATA

The Edit Data menu item enables you to change your data. At the same time, the menu item safeguards both your original data and your changes. It does not, however, permanently save your changes. You must use the SAVE DATA AS menu item to do that.

While you edit your data you are never actually changing the original data. You also cannot 
accidentally destroy the original data by unknowingly replacing it with your changes. Nor can you 
accidentally analyze your incompletely changed data.

These features are all based on the following important aspect of ViSta: In ViSta, data can exist in 
two forms called a dataobject and a datasheeet. These two forms are represented on the workmap in two distinct ways: By a dataobject icon and by a datasheet icon. 

Data in dataobjects can be analyzed but cannot be edited, while data in datasheet objects can be edited but cannot be analyzed. This prevents data from being accidentally changed, and from being the prematurly analyzed. To analyze the changes you have made, you must first use the SAVE DATA AS menu item (see below).

When you use the EDIT DATA menu item it seems as though ViSta opens your dataobject and displays it to you in a window as a datasheet ready for editing. However, to safeguard your data, when you use the Edit Data menu item, ViSta unobtrusively creates a datasheet object from your dataobject and opens the datasheet object, not the dataobject.

If you look at the workmap, you will see that a datasheet icon has appeared. This icon represents the 
unobtrusively made datasheet object. You are editing the data in the datasheet object, not in the dataobject. In this way, your original data are safeguarded in its dataobject, and you can  
always return to your unedited data by clicking on the data icon from which the datasheet was unobtrusitvely made. 

SAVING YOUR CHANGES

The SAVE DATA AS menu item both saves your data to your computer's file system as a DATAFILE and produces a new DATAOBJECT on the workmap. The new data object contains your edited data and is ready for analysis. 

You can save your editing as often as you wish. Each time, you get a new datafile and a new dataobject, representing and saving your edited data at different stages of editing.

You can return to any previously saved edited version of your data by clicking on the appropriate dataobject or datasheet. 

You can close a datasheet window and reopen it. The editing you have done is not lost when you close the window, even if the changes have not been saved. 

LOSING YOUR CHANGES

YOUR EDITING CHANGES ARE LOST if you do not use the SAVE DATA AS item before you exit ViSta.
