# Output View Table Format
Tables of output may be formatted by displaying the output in a standard Output View or a Grid Output View. Output that is for inspection, presentation or printing is best formatted with a standard Output View, while the Grid Output View is offered to facilitate the copying of output to spreadsheets.
New Output Views are opened in the standard Output View format. The default Output View table format is saved with the default view settings.
A Grid Output View can be opened by giving the ‘Output | Grid Window’ when a standard Output View is open. The Grid Output View is opened with the same output as is shown in the ‘parent’ standard Output View and continues to be updated to reflect the ‘parent’ output while the parent view remains open.
There are advantages and disadvantages with each Output View table format. These are summarised as follows.
# Standard Output Views
Generally standard Output Views are best for the presentation or printing of output.
Advantages:
- Table header of the "active" table remains at the top of the window
- Output options may be specified directly.
- Output format is optimised for printing / saving as PDF
- Table formatting preserved well to spreadsheets if entire rows are selected and copied into a spreadsheet
Disadvantages:
- Individual columns may not be selected and copied to a spreadsheet
# Grid Output View
Generally Grid Output Views are best for copying tables into spreadsheets.
Advantages:
- Data is copied to the clipboard in tab separated format. This results in data being pasted in cells correctly when pasting to spreadsheet.
- Data may be selected by blocks, columns or rows of cells.
- Tables may be displayed in a grid. (‘Window | Settings | Grid’)
Disadvantages:
- Output format is optimised for regular tables of output but is not well suited to notes and other non-tabular output.
- Output options may not be specified directly (though the view does reflect the settings of the parent standard Output View).
Note that the Output View table format is independent of, and should not be confused with the spreadsheet format option.