Doing this, I have noticed a workflow-disrupting detail that can best be described as a bug, or at least “unintended undesirable behavior” in connection with filtering out rows.

To be more specific, the cell (column number) having focus after having filtered away a certain row depends on the lengths of the values inside the cells of the row that was just filtered away. Or, put in another way: After having filtered away a row, a cell in a “random” column will be focused/selected (i.e. getting the mint-green “cell cursor”), instead of focus staying inside the same column as previous.

I have put together a simple PoC for you to better be able to analyze this problem:

1.
Create a CSV document containing only the following two rows, and open this document in CSV mode (“Comma separated”, Cell Selection Mode):

1,filter_this,3
1,2,3

2.
Add a negative filter for the value “filter_this” in column 2, thus removing the first line from view.

For extra clarity, here is what this filter looks like when exported to a tsv file:
on filter_this 1 N 0 -1

Also, if it matters, I’m performing this filtering by invoking the following macro (using a keyboard shortcut) while having the “filter_this” cell active:
document.Filter(document.selection.Text, document.selection.GetActivePointX(eePosCell), eeFindKeepPrevious | eeFindNegative);

3.
As you will see, the first row will now be filtered away (just as expected), and the active cell (in the remaining row 2) will still be column 2, i.e. the same column that was active when we invoked the filter (just as expected).

4.
Now, do it all again, but with the only difference that the value of the first cell on the first line is first changed from “1” to “123”. That is, like this:

123,filter_this,3
1,2,3

The active cell after the filtering (i.e. step 3 above) will now consistently be in column 3 instead (i.e. NOT the same column that was active before the filtering), which is very workflow-breaking (i.e. requiring the user to localize which random column he has just been moved too before being able to continue work with e.g. filtering out more values or similar).

So, it would be really great if this behavior could be changed to be consistent (staying in the same cell column) instead of “random” like now, could you possibly please fix this?

(my guess would be that the previous “character column number” is currently used instead of the “cell column number” to decide the new active cell after the filtering, so in that case simply make sure to use the “cell column number” for this instead as long as you’re in Cell Selection Mode when the filtering occurs)

One thing that I’m longing for though is the ability to hide/collapse a column (i.e. without actually editing the contents of the file, but rather simply hiding the column from the GUI). This can be very handy when you only want to see and work with the contents of some columns in a file, but still want to keep the other columns remaining in the file too, just not currently see them and having them get in the way of your current work.

Is there perhaps already a way to hide columns like this in EmEditor, that I have just failed to see, or could such temporary hiding/collapsing of columns otherwise possibly be implemented in the CSV and Cell Selection modes of EmEditor?

It would practically only have to be the equivalence of setting the width of the column to zero, so hopefully it wouldn’t be super painful to implement either in its most simple design?

The only additional thing needed would perhaps be to implement a way of getting the column back visible again, and for that I could for example suggest adding a small “expand plus sign square” icon (i.e. like this: ) at the location in the field headers where the column is located, that can be clicked to immediately “expand” the column back into place again. And when I’m saying this, I just came to think that maybe every column (i.e. normal, expanded/visible ones) can all have a small corresponding “collapse minus sign square” icon on them (i.e. like this: ), to be able to quickly hide/collapse them just by a click of the mouse? That would be REALLY slick and efficient I think!

What do you think?