Project Browser

The Project Browser dialog is introduced in Origin 2025b to provide a list view of contents in the current project to help view and edit contents in the project, especially projects with many folders, subfolders, windows, sheets, or columns.

Key Features include:

View items of current project in list view.
Preview when mousing over the item.
Double-click the item to bring it up in workspace.
Dropdown lists at the top of the dialog to limit the item type and scope.
Keyword search at the bottom of the dialog
Context menu on selected items for further manipulation
Advanced Find… to open the old Find dialog with more capabilities.

There are 3 ways to open the dialog:

Click the Search icon on top of Project Explorer window
Press Ctrl key and double click empty area (workspace or toolbar)
From the menu Edit: Project Browser (F3)

This blog will introduce some common user stories to help user get familiar with the dialog.

Find by Size

Sometimes your project may be very large and you may wonder which folder or which window takes the most space. Choose Folders on the top and and click on Size column header to sort the list by size ascending/descending. Then you can double click the folder to show the active folder in workspace. Check further and decide if the folder should be cleaned.

Tip: You can right click inside the dialog and check Keep Dialog Open on Double Click to keep the dialog open after double-clicking on an item.

Find Window(s) by keyword

Type keyword at the bottom of the dialog to quickly locate a folder, window, sheet, column, etc. When you open the dialog, the focus is in the list box. You can press Tab key to get the cursor to the search box and start typing.

Wildcards (* and ?) are supported.
Aa button in front of the edit box is use to toggle case sensitivity.
Click the Funnel button in front of the edit box to specify which field to search.

Examples: Choose Window on top of the dialog.

Type e.g. status to find all items with status anywhere in name.
Type *2 to find all items with 2 at the end. Note: Type 2? to find all items with 2 as the second to last character.
Type *LR* to find all items with LR in the middle of name. It will exclude names starting or ending with LR.
Type 4/18/2025 to find window created/modified on that date

To view the beginning content of each Notes window in the middle table, right-click the column header and select Contents from the menu. Keywords search will only search those beginning contents in the table. To search in full contents in notes window or search text labels in Graph window, please click Advanced Find… button to use the old dialog. (More powerful but very complicated to use)

Bulk Rename Items

Finding window or folder names in Project Explorer and renaming is cumbersome. Bulk Rename in Project Browser can be used to rename selected item or truncate part of the names in one go.

Example 1: Rename generic folder names Folder1, Folder2, ….

Right-click folders you want to rename. Ctrl+B or right click and choose Bulk Rename…

There are two modes: Replace Entire Name or Find and Replace.

Choose Replace Entire Name and Replace with TSP$(i)

Click OK. Folders will be renamed as TSP1, TSP2, ….

You can also choose Find and Replace to rename part of folder name. For example, Replace TSP with T.

Folders will be renamed as T1, T2, …

As hint below Replace with box, LabTalk substitution notations are supported. E.g.

If you want to rename workbook names to be same as folder name it’s located at, replace with %@F
If you want to rename graph window name to be same as the 1st plot’s worksheet display name, replace with %(1, WS)
If you want to replace graph window name to be the same as the 1st plot’s column long name, replace with %(1, @LA) .

Please visit https://www.originlab.com/doc/LabTalk/guide/LabTalk-Substitution-Notation for more information on Origin’s substitution notation.

Example 2: Truncate window names

By default, workbooks are renamed with the imported data file name and extension. Sometimes the data file name is too long.

To truncate the file extension, in the Bulk Rename dialog, set Change as Long Name, choose Find and Replace, enter .csv in Find box and Leave Replace with as blank. Click OK.

To remove/truncate duplicated info in long name, in the Bulk Rename dialog, find the part of the string you want to replace and type your replacement string.