The items of a data grid can be on a single level (independent from each other) or on several levels (in a tree structure).

Upper-level items are called parents or nodes, and subordinate items are named children.

For example, the data grid of the Software module print formats directory contains parent items (nodes) and their child items (branches).

The or icons appear before the name of a parent item in the data grid. The icon appears if the node is collapsed (only the parent is displayed, all child items are hidden). The icon is displayed if the node is expanded (both the parent and all its child items are displayed).

Child items can in turn be parents for other items in the data grid. In this case, the or icons appear before their names in the data grid. If a child item does not have its own descendants, the () icon appears before its name in the data grid.

If the parent or subordinate items of the parent are inaccessible to a given user, the icon accompanying the name of this item is highlighted with a solid blue line ():

To expand a collapsed node or to collapse an expanded one, click on the node icon. To simultaneously expand or collapse all nodes of a tree, use the Expand tree (Ctrl+Num +) and Collapse tree (Ctrl+Num -) commands from the Additional functions menu.