What should be the label/name of the button?

Question

I have two sections in a user interface - "Top section" and "Bottom section"

"Bottom section" - is a data grid with at least 100 rows x 100 columns. I guess the requirement is that when we change a value in a cell the corresponding row with all its values is added to the "Top Section". And now in the "Top Section" you can make changes to the values as well for that row.

So let us say you updated 4 values in 4 different rows in the "Bottom Section", the "Top Section" will now have 4 rows and will allow you to change the values as well.

I guess we can provide a button to clear all the changes that were made to "Top Section", how should we name the button? "Undo All" - "Clear All" - "Reset All".

Again, from application perspective, the idea is to query the server and get the latest data when we click that button.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I'm a little unclear on what it is you're trying to do. So you've got cells that populate I think dynamically? And you want to know what to label a button that 'updates' the cells?

Well, if that's the case, I'd label it 'Update Table' or 'Update Cells/Data', OR if the action's executing some kind of data submission ( although I'm not sure if that's what you meant by your last sentence) then it might be appropriate to label the button submit.

I can't really offer any solid suggestions for specific label names without knowing the context of the behavior, but as a general rule you just want to try and identify a label that is as descriptive, identifiable, and unambiguous as possible in light of the context it's in. So, for example, if the label is triggering an action that is familiar in another (ideally similar) context, such as clearing a form ("Clear"), submitting or committing data ("Submit"/"commit Changes") use those conventions that're already likely to be familiar to your users.

Hope that helped.

Answer 2

I would go for "Clear all changes". It's how you described what it does, almost verbatim.

Aside from that I can imagine the connection between the top and bottom sections, and being able to update values in two places, could be confusing. If you update values in the top section will it also dynamically update the corresponding value in the bottom section, and vice versa? Perhaps the bottom section should be limited to selecting the row, rather than editing. It's hard to say without knowing a lot about the system.