# Action Editor

The Action Editor is used to manipulate the statements performed by an action. You can have more than one Action Editor window open at the same time.

The action editor window is divided into a number of panels. The panels may be resized by clicking on dragging on the lines separating the panels.

The upper left panel, itself divided into two panels, contains a list of action groups and action functions within the currently selected group.

The upper right panel contains the function steps in the action. You can reorder items by drag and drop. You can do a text search in this panel by the standard Edit>Find menu items. You have the option of displaying line numbers before each statement. Certain runtime error messages describe a faulting statement by the action name and line number. The display of the line numbers can be enabled or disabled via the context menu.

The lower right panel contains the metadata associated with the action statement which is currently selected.

The lower left panel contains a description of the action selected in the Action Groups-Functions panel.

To add a new function statement to the end of the list, double click on a function in the displayed Function list. To place a function statement in a particular location, drag the function into the upper right panel where you want it to appear.

To delete function statements, select the items you wish to delete and use the Delete context menu item. Alternately, you can simply use the Delete key.

Function statements can be copied and pasted and even dragged between different actions.

Function statements can be disabled. When a function is disabled it will not be executed when the action is run. Disabled functions are displayed as starting with a # character and are dimmed. You disable and enable functions via the context menu. Disabled functions must be well formed and can be edited as if not disabled.

Note that most changes made to the displayed action can be undone.

The help panel typically displays information on the current selected function. If you want to see the help for a particular function step, select the item and click on the Show Function Help context menu item. Double clicking on a step will have the same effect. Help on action functions can also be found here.

To ensure that an action only contains statements that are valid for a desired context, use the Validate for Context context menu item.

You can choose to display or not to display line numbers before each function statement. Note that the setting is global for all action editor windows.

The Action Usage menu lists all referenced actions, separate files and inline. It shows if any referenced actions are missing. Clicking on an action name will open or show the action.

To save an action use the File>Save or File>Save As menu items.

Note: Most text fields in action statements have context menu items to facilitate the insertion of Escape Sequences. Typically, menu items will insert the unescaped value if the Shift key is down when an item is selected. For example selecting the Insert Yate Field>Album item will insert \[Album] when Shift is not down, or Album when it is.