How to Rename Table Columns

Published on 22 May, 2019 by Milos Gregor


Table columns renaming is easy if you do it directly in a spreadsheet. Different it is inside the Reshape.XL add-in. In a spreadsheet, you click the selected cell and overwrite it.

In the Reshape.XL add-in, you use the Rename function. Its use is very simple. After adding the described function to Side Panel, you can change the names within the Properties box. If you click on this function in the Side Panel, a list of dataset variables (with checkboxes) is displayed. To change the name, just set the selected checkbox to TRUE and then enter a new name in the displayed text-box. After pressing the Run button, new column names will be applied to the table.

In addition to the Rename function, the add-in has another interesting function for variables renaming - Rename_At. This function is interesting if you work with more variables. Use this feature to edit multiple names at once. This adjustment involves adding a custom string prefix or gto the current names.

As an example, we can use a chemical analysis table. In this case, the prefix “Cat_” can be added to the variables (columns) that list the cation concentration values (e.g. “Cat_Ca” or “Cat_Mg”). This feature is useful if you work with large number of columns and you need to group (categorize) them in some way.

For a practical example of described functions, see the following short video tutorial.

See also complete documentation for Rename and Rename_At functions.