Environment Variable "Bulk Edit" Option Missing

[davidschwab]

Describe the bug In the latest Postman GUI application, under manage environments, the "Bulk Edit" feature is no longer present.

Expected behavior This feature was present in prior versions.

App information (please complete the following information):

• App Type Native App
• Postman Version 6.2.1
• OS: macOS

[vkaegis]

@davidschwab Thanks for writing in! This was an intentional change. Most of the functionality of Bulk Edit (drag to select, paste to replace etc.) is available in the tabular view itself.

That said, is there something we missed out? Do you feel there is something you cannot do in the tabular view itself?

[davidschwab]

The bulk edit allows you to do just that: edit in bulk. You can easily copy (edit if needed) and paste everything in one shot. Trying to do the same in the grid format is painstakingly slow in comparison. This is a step backwards, please bring the bulk edit feature back.

[a85]

@davidschwab I understand that but we'd like to map bulk editing flows to the editor. You should be able to multi-select as well as add in bulk through the data editor.

The raw text format has become an ad-hoc data format with people reporting bugs on how the raw editor is unable to convert to proper header values and how whatever they are pasting does not get automatically converted to proper values. This means that we are fixing an endless amounts of bug and on the side, creating a mini format that has the capability to do data transforms of all kinds. The data editor will introduce more complex forms of editing that just can't be done through manual key-value pairs - complex object types, session values as well as data types for editors. That's not possible for us to do if we keep maintaining the bulk editor on the side.

[otto-pflucker]

I thought that there was no possibility to select multiple variables, copy them and paste them until I realized that with the SHIFT and ARROW keys it could be done, but it was difficult to discover it because the background color of the selected variables is TOO SIMILAR to the ones not selected. You almost do not notice that you've selected something, so it's easy to think that functionality does not exist.

[vkaegis]

@otto-pflucker Yep, we realized this ourselves. 😅 We'll be rolling out improvements to the editor over the coming versions, as well as refining the interactions around it. Stay tuned for updates!

[mecvamecva]

The multi-selection is not working as the old bulk edition at all. I have multi-selected and copied to a text editor. It was pasted as a single line JSON and then I formatted it to be more readable. Then I have edited the value of one variable and tried to paste it back to Postman's environment by multi-selecting all variables again. It pasted it as a new variable that the name was the entire JSON structure. It would be great if you bring back the "bulk edit" option or urgently improve the multi-selection feature.

[ChrisSimmons]

@a85 Is it possible to reveal this new data structure similarly to the older bulk edit view? I totally see where you're coming from if you're limiting your data storage format to simple K/V like this, but this is a frustrating loss of functionality. Is there a compromise? Maybe "bulk edit" in JSON form?

[ykhodos]

A simple thing that is currently not possible in the environment editor is to view a long values. It is sort of possible, but not convenient since the values are wrapped around. It is not possible to copy/paste multiple rows from one env editor to another. To put is simple Bulk Edit feature is very convenient and I vote for putting it back. Please...

[arosszay]

I'm adding to the existing pool of users who want the Bulk Edit feature to come back. Someone thought that getting rid of this would HELP us? Please discipline that person as they clearly didn't consult their customers before making that decision (facepalm). Bulk Edit was THE ONLY way I interacted with Environment Variables in Postman.

Really, the best part about the Bulk Edit function was simply the readability. The grid view cuts off the names of the variables due to the ellipses that famously appear in table grid structures. Can we please have the Bulk Edit back so I can read through my list and have an EASY way to read the names and values of the variables when referencing them in my test code? But I don't mean to say that the actual ability to Bulk Edit wasn't helpful, that too was certainly a good and helpful feature. Now, instead we get to add, one-by-one, hundreds of variables each of my new tests use. Needless to say, my Boss was surprised (not in a happy way) when I told him how long writing new tests in Postman is going to take.

I hope the Postman team does the right thing and bring back Bulk Edit for Environment Variables. Thank you.

[ChrisHackett]

Please put bulk edit back. (Even if it is a "use at your own risk" category). As a software developer I am always reluctant to eliminate features that are very useful in a product.
Bulk edit was always extremely useful as we are constantly creating, editing, expanding environments with minor differences between them.

[otto-pflucker]

Please put bulk edit back.

[DDBdrift]

This is NOT a feature - it's a bug! Bulk Edit enables developers and testers to copy-past updates instead of tweeking each entry

[scarbon]

Missing the bulk edit feature, it was great to be able to just past for example 20 variables or even the editing which I did outsid. It would be great to bring the feature back, i welcome the current value but not at the expense of bulk edit

[GianniBortoloBossini]

For developers this is a MUST HAVE feature. Please put bulk edit back. Thanks :)

[pliske]

I very much miss bulk edit.....I am constantly adding new environments. It was great to be able to copy the data from a text file and place it in the bulk editor .. boom, it was done and worked great.

removing it really has caused me lots of extra work and time.

[yuliaSharabi]

The bulk edit was very us-full for my team, I'd like to join the people that are saying that this is a MUST HAVE feature.

[AlwinTS]

Please restore the bulk edit option. It's a MUST. Below my use case: For development, test, acceptance and production I have all different settings an keys to use. In an Excel document I keep track of the keys and values to make sure that on release of the product all keys are available in the new tests. I made calculated column from where the settings can be copied to and from bulk edit fast.

[vdcardenas]

I'm considering using an earlier version. I really need the bulk edit. It never gave me problems.

[EthanNevo]

Totally agree- Postman is used predominantly by developer types, who really appreciate bulk edit. Yes, a nice GUI is fine for tweaks and simple edits, but having some bulk editor was really powerful and helpful. Never had a problem with it.

[rajat304]

Please bring back bulk edit in the environment... It is one of the best features of the postman.

[daubrecq]

Missing the bulk edit for environment too. Please, bring it back.

[panagath]

Yes, bring the bulk edit back please. We use the environment variables to set session tokens and similar data that change regularly and they are many in every go. I cannot keep copying 20 values one by one etc. The bulk edit was the most useful thing in postman. For now I have to use the older version for this

[sarahalhawi92]

+10 please bring it back!

[jkewley]

+1

[dbkaynor]

The new system in very inconvenient

[grimsqueek]

I agree wholeheartedly with the others saying bring back bulk-edit. I have a similar workflow to panagath, where a lot of environment variables change often. To account for this I use a script to generate the variables and put them in my clip-board ready for insertion into Postman. This is no longer possible.

Copying variables between environments is really not something I do at all, as every test environment is unique.

[d1820]

My team also has a great need for bulkEdit, even if is just swapping the table view for a JSON editor that we can easily copy paste into. We use it to do mass partial test case scenario workflows where its faster to update a batch of values, versus having to manage and track against many duplicated environments, or doing import/exports or variables all the time.

[Dil-nlaycock]

The loss of this feature is also impacting me a lot. I used to be able to use bulk edit to easily copy environment config, find and replace (either by eye, as I could see all the values, or CTRL+F find) and then I have my new environment config. Now I either do it painfully within the UI, clicking each value to look for my replacements, or export as json and edit it externally before importing as a new env. As I also don't use the 'initial value/current value' functionality, the environments window has now become a huge pain to me.

[dbkaynor]

ME TOO!!!!!!

On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 10:15 PM Dil-nlaycock notifications@github.com wrote:

The loss of this feature is also impacting me a lot. I used to be able to use bulk edit to easily copy environment config, find and replace (either by eye, as I could see all the values, or CTRL+F find) and then I have my new environment config. Now I either do it painfully within the UI, clicking each value to look for my replacements, or export as json and edit it externally before importing as a new env. As I also don't use the 'initial value/current value' functionality, the environments window has now become a huge pain to me.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/4898#issuecomment-433289009, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABW7k64lsLb0FgiiXrnUt3W4oYmU39xHks5uopp9gaJpZM4ViJIo .

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[jonismobile]

Please put it back, the removal of this feature, slows development and is cause to look at other tools

[BenBK]

+1

[apsys]

Please bring back Bulk-Edit option. Our team is facing lot of pain to manually copy paste each K,V.

[Sveijk]

Please bring Bulk Edit back🙋‍♀️

[vgosai86]

+1

[zparizek]

working without the bulk change is really painful. Multiple select doesn't work if you need to select more than one page of variables. Is there at least a way how to edit the underlying json file?

[bondjw07]

This was a huge feature that is very painful not to have anymore. Looks like there is no chance it's coming back with is a shame. I understand the bugs that were coming in due to people putting in data with different formatting, but at least give us an override with a "use at your own risk" option. Even an option to edit the background json file. Anything would be better than the individual text boxes.

[ghost]

I have scripts that would query a database and output variables in a text format that was compatible with the bulk edit feature. Very disappointed in the removal of this as it was something I used weekly to update my environment.

[sarahalhawi92]

When is bulk edit going to be brought back? Honestly it was working absolutely fine don't know why it's been changed it is way worse than before!!!

[davidschwab]

@a85 This is unacceptable that the bulk edit feature hasn't been brought back yet.

If you ate your own dog food you would admit the grid edit is crap and make the bulk edit available again.

I can't believe we're still having to ask for this back. Don't force us to drop Postman and go elsewhere.

[a85]

@Davidschwab I do eat my own dog food, I built Postman because I got sick of using text editors and curl. I’d like to know the use cases better on why the editor is needed which is why this thread exists. However if you’d like Postman and me to engage on the thread, I’d suggest being civil on the thread. We don’t prioritise development because somebody yells the loudest. The bulk editor in its earlier form was NOT fine. It prevented other more critical things from being done with an exponential support cost because if there is a text editor everyone will stick in whatever they can in it and expect it to work.

[davidschwab]

@85 Thank you for responding. I apologize for sounding so frustrated, but I am. And it sounds like a number of others are as well.

The exponential support has been pushed onto end-users having to manually enter in a bunch of individual cells on the grid edit.

I guess we are just not going to agree on this.

[jonismobile]

the feature for us is most used when developer modifies the variables after modifying the API in bulk edit they copy out there variables and paste them in a sharepoint doc, then slacks the team that modifications were made and the team can paste in the needed changes in there bulk edit. or when there is a new developer they can populate there variables quickly and be up. it seems like you could read in any white space delimited paste in. if it does not match don't accept and tell them why. if you are not going to add please let us know. this one is a deal breaker for me.

[panagath]

We use the bulk-edit very often as we need to be able to quickly edit some variables so we can use them for security/authorization/parameterization. We have tools that generates these for us and we just want to be able to quickly add them to postman so we can use the endpoints. By removing it we have to manually paste each value one by one in a mechanism that does not work that well (some times you have to double click or it even thinks you are selecting and it does not give you edit etc.). Right now we have all rolled back to an older version of postman.

You have kept the bulk edit for headers but have removed it for environment variables...I don't understand why it is a problem in the one case and not the other.

At the end of the conversation, you could just say that the feature is there but you do not support it...

[ykhodos]

@85, I don't know what problems the environment editor caused to the others. It worked just perfect for me. So I personally see the editor removal as a setback. Also the introduction of INITIAL VALUE and CURRENT VALUE is confusing (if for somebody it isn't , would you care to explain ?)

[jkewley]

As an aside, I've been wondering about the naming of the two values as well. I know it's subjective, but I think something like 'local value' and 'synced (or shared) value' are more intuitive.

I convinced my company to invest in PM Pro and, while not a showstopper, I see the removal of bulk edit as a step backwards. It's clear that there's demand here for it, so I'm hoping the PM team adds it to their short term backlog.

[mstaalesen]

@a85 Previously, when I wanted to quickly remove a lot of environmentvariables I would just go to bulk edit, select the row where I wanted to delete from and either do shift + ctrl + end (or drag with the mouse). Neither of these options are available with the new way of "Bulk editing".

If you try to select more than the ~30 env variables that are displayed in the GUI and then scroll downwards, Postman removes the selection from all the variables. If I do shift + ctrl + end, it does not select all environments from the cursor to the end of the environmentlist.

If I do shift + down arrow, it takes 0.5 - 2 sec per row to get highlighted. So when I want to remove 3-400 environmentvariables, it takes quite some time.

My resolution to this is: Create a "clean" environment with only the bare necessities, and when Postman inevitable gets superslow because of all the environmentvariables I just delete the environment and reimport the "clean version" of it.

I get that you use the tool, and that it is to be GUI focused - but I would love to see a use case where you use it on a daily basis with 2-5 environments with 3-500 environment variables (of different sizes), together with > 20-30 collections with 100+ requests in them. The tool gets so sluggish so quick because of the environment variables stored. So it would really be nice to have an effective method of deleting them. If it has to be by GUI, then at least let us delete as many as we want, and not just the ones displayed in the GUI at any given time.

[ghost]

@mstaalesen although I certainly won't pretend to know all the ways you use the Postman GUI application, perhaps its good to know the Postman API exists if you didn't already, and maybe at your scale you would benefit from using it:

• Postman API Docs
• Newman CLI on Github

[d1820]

Just as an option, we are currently looking to move all env vars out of postman and store in db.. we then only store the env and username in postman variable.. at the global collection level we make a request to pull vars in and set them all in JavaScript.. using foreach against. pm.set...

now we are able to have quick edit and sub selection again.. yes we had to setup an api endpoint to get them and yes we had to setup a storage container, but since the roll back of this obvious postman miss is no where to be seen this will solve our company issues...

[mstaalesen]

@mavame We use Postman to close the gap between testers and developers in teams where the testers are mainly "high level" (not that used to coding) testing. The test suites are maintained in Postman and then exported as collections and pushed to our git repos. We then use newman to execute the tests in our CI-pipelines.

I've been looking into the Postman API, but I'm not sure how that can solve our usecase / challenge. Very much appreciate the input!

[a85]

@mstaalesen I hear you. We have some ideas that are being implemented. We took a call to prioritize security and usability concerns around variables this time, but the next iterations of Postman will solve this problem. Our rate limiters in getting stuff done right now is actually the number of people that we have on the team (we are actively hiring and trying to double the size of the team asap).