Features

Add-in Reshape.XL includes 130 basic combinable functions. Using them you can quickly and easily make very complicated data transformations and processing. Their architecture and basic definition were strongly inspired by languages SQL and R.

Until now, similar features have been available only for programmers through the scripting languages. With the Reshape.XL add-in, these features are accessible also for you inside a simple to use visual interface. Add-in functions were divided into seven basic groups. These logical groups form the individual ribbon tabs.

#Reshape

The ribbon tab Reshape contains basic functions for editing the general character of your datasets. For example, the Group - Ungroup functions are used to create "virtual sub-tables". Following functions are performed individually in these sub-tables. The Gather and Spread functions serve as "Rows to Columns" and "Columns to Rows" transformations. With Transpose and Flip, you can rotate your datasets. Pack function allows you to automatically erase rows and columns that are completely empty.

#Variables

Ribbon tab Variables contains "column-based" functions. For example, you can format your variables (data type), select them, reorder, arrange or rename. The Complete function serves to complete the missing combinations in your dataset (implicit missing values to explicit). Next, you can combine or divide the variables. Finally, the described tab includes functions for working with missing values.

#Subset

Functions from the Subset group are used to select rows (records) from your dataset - "row-based" functions. You can filter these records in multiple ways - you can select unique records, you can randomly sample your dataset, you can select first or last N dataset records and finally, you can select dataset records using the sophisticated Slice function.

#Mutate

Mutate functions serve to modify existing or create new variables. You can edit / mutate your variables step by step or several at once. Here you can find also functions for "conditional editing" which modify your variables in relation to the defined selection criteria. Furthermore, you will find a number of other features that are well known from the SQL language, such as Lead, Lag or Coalesce commands or cumulative (e.g. Cumulative Mean) and ranking (e.g. Row Number or Rank) functions.

#Summarize

Another group is focused to summarization. These functions computes selected statistical values such as minimum, sum, mean, median, percentile or interquartile range. These functions can be applied to the entire dataset (all records) or to dataset groups.

#Combine

The following group of features can be used for datasets combining. The Join function is inspired by a similar function from SQL language and with different settings you can achieve different types of joins such as full join, left join, anti-join or outer join. In addition, you can use other functions that combines datasets such as Intersect, Except, Set_Diff or Union. Using the Bind_Cols function, it is possible to insert columns from one dataset to another one.

#Special

The last group contains a set of specific features. These are divided by the data type for which are designated. These functions you can use to process variables in numeric, string and date-time formats. For example, you can anonymize categories before your statistical analyses, parse time and date values from specific formats, or use several advanced string related functions.

Individual add-in functions can be optionally combined. In this way, you can design and execute very advanced types of data transformations and adjustment. On the other hand, their definition is extremely fast, simple and efficient.