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

[mstaalesen]

@a85 Probably going a bit off topic, In regards of usability, there are several small bugs with the editor as it stands now. I can try to create some videos to explain the problems if needed.

I hope you succeed in the recruitment!

[jongio]

Just discovered that this feature was removed. Please add it back. It makes our lives easier when we want to ask someone to enter in a ton of variables.

[craneyuan]

Please bring Bulk Edit back🙋‍♀️

[cbeckermedrio]

Bulk Edit was better than what we have now. I'd be fine with editing raw JSON too, it doesn't have to be Key-Value pairs.

[Sanjay-K-S]

Please Bring Back the Bulk Edit Option!! :(

[scott-wi]

The Bulk Edit feature was one of the best features when having to setup a machine with multiple new environments. There needs to be more developer-friendly features like this in Postman, not more regressions toward guis with non-programmer friendly features. Simply editing a key-value pair here is sufficient to get the job done, and this table is extremely time-consuming and error prone. I've not once had a need to use the "Initial Value" and "Current Value" feature at all, however, I find myself needing Bulk Edit on a near monthly basis. It greatly improves the speed of on-boarding a new team member. And since environment variables tend to contain secrets like API keys, it's not something we're privy to keep on cloud servers. Please bring this feature back.

[DDBdrift]

Getting even worse: After bulk editing parameters descriptions has moved to other keys!! Upgraded from "problem" to "disaster".

[AdaptableTester]

Need the bulk edit option for managing environments back pls.

[michaeltarleton]

Pls add this back!

[whitesoup12]

I'm surprised this is still an issue for people. Just select all the variables in the environment and copy them, which copies as a JSON object. Paste the JSON in an editor like VSCode, make your bulk updates, copy the new JSON, then paste it back into the environment. Easy as pie...

[jkewley]

I'm surprised this is still an issue for people. Just select all the variables in the environment and copy them, which copies as a JSON object. Paste the JSON in an editor like VSCode, make your bulk updates, copy the new JSON, then paste it back into the environment. Easy as pie...

Spent a few minutes trying to multi-select in the environment variables area. Kept hitting escape to try to remove focus from a field and set selection to the row, which closed the interface. What black magic do you use to select multiple rows? Where do you select when pasting?

[whitesoup12]

I'm surprised this is still an issue for people. Just select all the variables in the environment and copy them, which copies as a JSON object. Paste the JSON in an editor like VSCode, make your bulk updates, copy the new JSON, then paste it back into the environment. Easy as pie...

Spent a few minutes trying to multi-select in the environment variables area. Kept hitting escape to try to remove focus from a field and set selection to the row, which closed the interface. What black magic do you use to select multiple rows? Where do you select when pasting?

Select the bottom empty variable row, hold down shift, and press the up arrow to select everything.

[jkewley]

Can confirm this works. Thanks for pointing it out!

[d1820]

yeah that works, but when you have hundreds or thousands of vars, navigation through the json and selecting it all is a pain. it's obv postman team don't care to help out on this based on the amount of time this thread has been active.

I will have a post coming on how our company implemented our own bulk edit variable system. with GitHub and JavaScript if anyone interested. if postman won't help then we help ourselves 😁

On Fri, Nov 1, 2019, 2:03 PM JFK notifications@github.com wrote:

Can confirm this works. Thanks for pointing it out!

— 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?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAC4GH7TD7GP47T4TOOYMODQRSKT5A5CNFSM4FMISIUKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOEC4FBFI#issuecomment-548950165, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAC4GH5VQ726US4TUFCB6GLQRSKT5ANCNFSM4FMISIUA .

[jongio]

@d1820 Yes. Please share.

[d1820]

If anyone ( @jongio ) is interested this is how we added value back into using the postman variables system

https://github.com/d1820/PostmanVariablesSample

[GProSoftware828]

ANSWER- on a Mac, hold down the control button and click each row of the global variables (for instance) you want to copy. When you move your cursor out of the row when clicking, then you will see it get dehighlighted to show it was selected. When you have your rows selected, hit command + c for copy and click in the first row of the new environment for the variables, then hit command + v for paste. A basic copy and paste replaced the bulk edit feature. It's frustrating not having the correct keys sometimes. Other OS's might have slightly different hotkeys throughout the process.

[hfmm99]

Bulk Edit allowed easily to copy/paste variables among different environments, or copying all variables to Excel to do Alphabetic Sorting, is there any way to achieve this with the new UI? This is very useful and needed for my team, we have 4 Testing Environments (Local environment, Build, Test, Stage, Production), multiplied by 3 because we have three different Instances (Sprint, HF (Hotfix), PR (Point Release)), so adding three variables to all environments is a nightmare, before this was very easy with Bulk Edit option, also to copy the values and sort them in Excel, or to Compare values across environments using Winmerge or similar software. Please add this back, we used to love Postman, until this change :(

[findusl]

Please add bulk edit or something similar. For usecases, I wish to use bulk edit for the following purposes:

1. I wish to sync different environments to have the same keys in both. With bulk edit, I could take the new variables from one environment and copy them to the other. I would even already have the values if they are the same, which sometimes happens. But I don't have to copy key for key.
2. I wish to reorder variables. It improves readability and makes it easier to find variables in the long list. Currently the dragging option is very bad: sometimes doesn't move, sometimes too fast. Also I have to do it key for key.
3. I wish to see the whole values, not just this small cell. Sadly the window is not resizable

[tomhundt]

Workaround -- Export/Edit/Import

As a (mediocre) workaround, I've been doing this:

1. Create (add) a new environment, and set a bogus variable, for use as a template.
2. On the "MANAGE ENVIRONMENTS" screen (sliders icon, next to env name), download (export) the new environment.
3. Edit it in your favorite text editor. It's JSON, so you can move the fields onto one line, to make it easier.
4. You can use the Import button on the "MANAGE ENVIRONMENTS" screen, but that's no fun: you can also use the Import button in the top left corner, next to "New", which lets you drag and drop multiple files onto its "File" tab.

Here is what one of these environment.json files looks like:

{
    "id": "fb42bee7-d078-46b7-b0e6-e38f7ff757b0",
    "name": "dev2",
    "values": [
        {
            "key": "somefineapp_url",
            "value": "app_dev.example.com:10200",
            "enabled": true
        },
        {
            "key": "app_api_url",
            "value": "app_dev.example.com:10202",
            "enabled": true
        },
        {
            "key": "app_server_url",
            "value": "app_dev.example.com:10204",
            "enabled": true
        }
    ],
    "_postman_variable_scope": "environment",
    "_postman_exported_at": "2020-12-09T01:00:47.906Z",
    "_postman_exported_using": "Postman/7.36.0"
}

[martijnvanschie]

@tomhundt just tried this and it is currently the most workable version of managing environments. Unfortunate importing an updated environment (so the same file and the same id still creates a new one instead of overwriting the same environment.

[SeanLively]

Very poor user experience trying to add multiple variables across multiple environments in Windows. I was unable to find any kind of magic key combinations to select multiple rows. (shift-arrow works for 1 row, but not multiple)

[andrew-jones]

What about sort keys and diff against another env? It's currently a nightmare with 4 environments with ~50 keys. Also devs can sync over collections/environments with old data and its impossible to tell what was changed, when and by who.

[andrew-jones]

It would be great to store our environments and collections in git.

[efbgirotto]

Params, Headers and Body grids have bulk edit feature and works like a charm. Only env's grid doesn't have it... whyyyyyyy?

[scott-wi]

I've basically stopped using Postman because of this, we now use Swagger, which is a couple clicks more to test with, but easier to maintain sample data for since it can be stored in a repo or a wiki. Very unfortunate.

[mhartzell-incomm]

Crazy that the Postman team continues to ignore this request. Such a pain in the rear to make significant changes to environment variables. Maybe instead of "we're taking this away cause we can't fix all the 'bugs'", embrace "we're not gonna fix all the 'bugs', use it as your own risk".

It's never a good sign when companies that make developer tools start removing features for power users, despite public outcry. SMH.

[janacm]

Still waiting for bulk editing environment vars in 2022...

[bernardolm]

Be smart, bring bulk edit back...

[cavemon]

+1

[andrewbezzina]

agree , i can even figure out how i can select multiple lines, ist that related tot he tick box ?

[gaston-haro]

Allow users to insert multiple variables since you don't allow environment inheritance a lot of manual work is needed and without this the task is abominable.

[SeanLively]

Well, maybe 2023 is the year? It's sad that a tool for developers discourages the use of variables when it's so obnoxious to implement across multiple environments.

[adityaa-codes]

please bring bulk edit back !

[scott-wi]

bump

[ThomasSimoens]

Not saying that this feature wouldn't be amazingly useful, but for what it's worth, I've found workaround via Postman scripts that works for me:

function clearEnvironmentVariablesThatStartWith(string) {
    for(const env_key in pm.environment.toObject()) {
        if(env_key.indexOf(string) === 0) {
            pm.environment.unset(env_key);
        }
    }
}

So then later you can do clearEnvironmentVariablesThatStartWith('my_prefix') to do some clean up.

Hope it helps somebody

[rcm-jan]

2024/06/25 bump. I find this design decision very weird. As a guy who likes to do multiline edits, this feature is a must.

[r4r00t]

Bumping this.

[dhumphreys01]

bump too, major time sink without this feature.