Undoing Deletions

It is possible to undo any deletions made with the clean data utility. Leaving the “Data value is” text field blank is effectively the inverse of placing the global “*” character in that field: the former Data value globally deletes values while the blank field globally restores them.

If you select one of the dependent variables from the Page Name dropdown list and you untick propagate, then only values that were deleted from that section of the Flat Data table will be restored. Alternatively, if you select propagate then all deleted values throughout the entire table will be restored and your workbook will be put back to its original state before you used the “Clean Data” utility. However, as with the “*” character, you can also use the Flat Data table filters to selectively undelete only a subset of data as the undelete function (as with the global delete character) will only delete Flat Data rows which are visible when its column filters are applied. This means you can also cherry pick which values you want to restore using table column filter combinations as described previously.

For example, if you filter on a single drug, then only data for that drug will be restored. By using a combination of Flat Data filters, the global search string “*”, and the blank “Data value is” field, it is possible to delete and restore any unique combination of data points.