Column Customization

Study Notes:

In this lesson we will take a look at how users may customize fields shown in the Portfolio, Watchlists, and other pages where columns are displayed.

First let’s take a look at columns on the Positions page in the Portfolio, which shows columns in default view.

Predefined View

While users may add, remove and rearrange these columns from the Preferences page, column display is also organized through “views,” which provide a much cleaner way to organize fields. At the top of page to the right of the tabs, you can see Portfolio View which is the default column set created for your portfolio. 

You can also see a total of five predefined views:

• Portfolio View
• Performance
• Dividend Focus
• Fundamentals
• Trending Tickers

Each view includes a related column set. This allows the user to quickly change column display just by selecting a different view. And those views can be applied to most pages. Further down the panel you can see user-built Custom views. More on this later. 

To see and modify the columns included in any view, open the Columns page in Preferences using the gear icon. Fields in the “Selected Columns” list are the columns you see on the page. 

Note that you can add, remove, and rearrange columns in any of your custom views. You cannot add, remove or rearrange columns from the predefined views.

Custom View

Users may create their own view by clicking on Column Management and then selecting the Custom Views tab.

At the bottom of this list the user clicks Add Custom View to create a new view called “My View.” Select the pencil icon next to My View to open the editing screen. User can rename the view in the top box.

Click a column to add it to the view selecting from the Available Columns list. Expand a category, then double-click or use the plus sign next to a field to add it.

When all fields are added, user may reorder them by clicking and dragging the three horizontal bars next to the column name. 

Once the user has finished managing the columns, simply close the Preferences box and the view is saved. 

The next time you use the View dropdown you’ll see your custom view, and by selecting it, column display is applied to the page.

A quick note. When looking at your columns, in several tools you may notice that a column is cut off or wonder if there are more columns than you can see. To see more columns, you can expand the real estate using the expand icon. You can also use the scroll bar. To see the scroll bar, hover your mouse above the bottom link until the scrollbar appears. Then just grab and slide.

Resources

IBKR Desktop User Guide