Selecting Entries

Selecting entries in the Project Table or the Entry List allows you to perform operations on these entries. When you select an entry, the entry row is highlighted. The selection in the Project Table and the Entry List is synchronized, as they are just two views of the same table.

Entries can be selected and deselected directly from the Project Table in the following ways:

To select one entry and deselect all others, click in the Row column for the entry.
To select or deselect one row without affecting others, hold down the Ctrl key and click ("control-click") in the Row column for the entry.
To select a contiguous range of entries, click in the Row column for the first entry in the range, hold down the Shift key and click ("shift-click") in the Row column for the last entry in the range.

If the entry is not selected, you can click anywhere in the row except the In column to select it. However, if the entry is selected, clicking in any column other than the Row column or the In column puts the cell into Edit mode. It is therefore recommended to always use the Row column when selecting entries.

You can use the same actions to select all members of an entry group (see Grouping Entries):

To select all the entries in an entry group and deselect all others, click the group row.
To add all members of a group to the selection, shift-click the group row. If there are unselected entries between the group and other selected entries, these entries are also selected.
To add all members of a group to the selection or remove all members of a group from the selection without affecting other entries, control-click the group row. If the group is only partially selected, the first control-click adds the unselected entries to the selection, then the next control-click removes the entire group from the selection.

There are several other ways of selecting entries that meet certain criteria, many of which are on the Select menu. Some simple operations for selecting entries are:

To select all entries, choose Select → All, or press Ctrl+A (⌘A).
To select all entries at the highest level of the project hierarchy but not those in entry groups, choose Select → First Level of Entries.
To clear the selection (deselect all entries), choose Select → None, or press Ctrl+U (⌘U)).
To invert the entire selection (select unselected entries, deselect selected entries), choose Select → Invert All .
To invert the selection within each entry group choose Select → Invert Within Groups .

Some more complex operations involve selection by property values.

To select entries whose structures match a SMARTS pattern, choose Select → By SMARTS. See the Select by Smarts Panel topic for details.
To select entries that are in the Workspace and have atoms selected, choose Select → Entries with Selected Atoms. This option may be useful when working with alignments.
To select entries based on values of a property, right-click the property header and choose Select by Property Value. See the Select by Property Value Dialog Box topic for details.
To select the same number or percentage of entries in each selected group, starting either from the first (top) or last (bottom) entry in the group, choose Select → From Groups, and set the selection in the Select from Groups dialog box. You can select entries from the topmost groups only, or for each group at all levels of the hierarchy. Percentages are rounded to the nearest number of entries, so it is possible for no entries to be selected from a group. Groups are considered selected only if all their members are selected. If all entries are selected, including the ungrouped entries, entries are selected from the ungrouped entries as well.
To make a random selection of entries, choose Select → Random, and choose the number or percentage of entries to select and the range of entries to select from, in the Random Selection dialog box. Percentages are rounded to the nearest number of entries, so it is possible for no entries to be selected.
To select the first entry for each unique title in various collections of entries, choose Select → First Entry per Title from, and choose the collection of entries:
- All Entries—select the first entry for each title from all entries. Grouping of entries is ignored.
- Selected Entries—select the first entry for each title from the selected entries. Grouping of entries is ignored.
- Each Topmost Group—select the first entry for each title within each group that is at the top of the hierarchy. Any grouping within each top-level group is ignored.
- Each Level of Hierarchy—select the first entry for each title from each level of the hierarchy: the ungrouped entries, each group, and each subgroup. All groupings are respected, so if a group has subgroups, only the entries that are in the group itself (and not its subgroups) are used to search for different titles within the group.
This feature is useful if you have run an application (such as Glide), in which each compound is identified by a title, and the application returns multiple entries for each compound with different values of a property but the same title. You can then sort the entries by this property (if they are not already sorted), and use this feature to select the best result for each compound (highest or lowest property value).
A related feature is to deselect all entries except the first that have the same value of a property, within a collection of entries. Right-click the property header and choose Deselect Duplicate Values, then choose the item for the scope of the action from Across Entire Table, Within Topmost Groups, or At Each Level of Hierarchy. You can also use this feature on the title property from the Task Tool: click the Tasks button and browse to Project Table and Project Operations → Deselect Duplicate Titles
- All Entries—select the first entry for each title from all entries. Grouping of entries is ignored.
- Selected Entries—select the first entry for each title from the selected entries. Grouping of entries is ignored.
- Each Topmost Group—select the first entry for each title within each group that is at the top of the hierarchy. Any grouping within each top-level group is ignored.
- Each Level of Hierarchy—select the first entry for each title from each level of the hierarchy: the ungrouped entries, each group, and each subgroup. All groupings are respected, so if a group has subgroups, only the entries that are in the group itself (and not its subgroups) are used to search for different titles within the group.

To perform more complex entry selection based on entry properties, you can use the Select Entries by Property Values Dialog Box. Choose Select → By Property Values to open this dialog box and make settings to select only the rows specified, add the specified rows to the selection, or delete the rows from the selection.

For example, to select only the entries that are included in the Workspace:

Choose Select → By Property Values.

The Select Entries by Property Values dialog box opens.
Select Select Only.
Choose Inclusion state from the Property list.
Select Included (or Fixed)
Click Add, then click OK.

To add the Workspace entries to the selection, you would select Also Select instead.

To use a wider selection of conditions, you can create filters in the Edit Filter Panel, which you open with Select → With Filter → Manage Filters. The filters are named and listed on the Select → With Filter submenu, where you can choose one to perform the desired selection.

You can also select entries from plots in the View Chart Panel (Scatter default). This is a useful means of visually selecting entries on the basis of their properties.