Column Explorer

Visual column analysis with histograms, value counts, and time-series charts.

Overview

The Column Explorer is a panel on the right side of the screen that gives you instant visual summaries of every column in your data. Toggle it open with the Explore button in the toolbar. Each column gets its own card showing a chart tailored to the column's data type.

Card Types

Explorer cards are displayed at a compact 280×300px size. The chart type depends on the column's data type:

Categorical (Text) Columns

Text columns display a bar chart of unique values with their row counts. The most frequent values appear at the top. This is useful for spotting:

  • The distribution of categories (e.g., status values, regions, product types).
  • Inconsistent values that need cleaning (e.g., "USA" vs "us" vs "United States").
  • Null or empty values that may need attention.

Click any bar to instantly create a filter for that value.

Numeric Columns

Numeric columns display a histogram showing the distribution of values across configurable bins. You can:

  • Adjust the number of bins to zoom in or out on the distribution.
  • Choose aggregation options to view sums, averages, or counts.
  • Click a bin to filter your data to that range.

Histograms help you spot outliers, skewed distributions, and gaps in your data.

Date Columns

Date columns display a time-series chart that shows how your data is distributed over time. You can adjust the granularity (day, week, month, quarter, year) to see patterns at different scales.

Filtering from Charts

One of the most powerful features of the Column Explorer is click-to-filter. Click any bar in a categorical chart, any bin in a histogram, or any segment of a time-series chart to create a filter for those values.

When you click multiple bars across different columns, the filters compose with AND logic. For example, clicking "Active" in a status column and "US" in a country column filters to rows where status is Active AND country is US.

Searching Values

Within a categorical explorer card, you can use the search box to filter the value list. This is helpful when a column has many unique values and you need to find a specific one.

Tips

  • The Column Explorer updates automatically when you apply pipeline operations, so charts always reflect your current view.
  • Use categorical cards to quickly identify data quality issues before building a cleaning pipeline.
  • Combine click-to-filter with the Pipeline for an interactive exploration workflow.