A function to close and open sections in a notebook?

Questions
1

Hi, All!

I want to write a function in Mathematica 9 that opens and closes all sections in my notebook. I do it as follows:

openCloseAll[nb_, target_String, to : (Open | Closed)] := 
 Do[SelectionMove[cell, All, CellGroup, AutoScroll -> False];
  With[{content = 
     Block[{$Context = "FrontEnd`", $ContextPath = {"System`"}}, 
      NotebookRead[nb]], from = to /. {Closed -> Open, Open -> Closed}}, 
   If[MatchQ[content, Cell[CellGroupData[{Cell[_, target, ___], __}, from]]], 
    NotebookWrite[nb, Cell[CellGroupData[content[[1, 1]], to]], 
     AutoScroll -> False]]];, {cell, Cells[CellStyle -> target]}]

Then I create two buttons to deal with sections:

Button["Close sections", openCloseAll[EvaluationNotebook[], "Section", Closed]]

and

Button["Open sections", openCloseAll[EvaluationNotebook[], "Section", Open]]

At last, I create a section with a single cell in it (a comment between two expressions - it is important!):

something1
(*a comment*)
something2

The resulting file attached below is the first notebook. When I push successively “Close sections” and “Open sections” buttons, I see a garbage in the section instead of the first two lines of the cell (see the second attached file). What happens?

open_close_problem.nb (7.74 KB)
open_close_problem_processed.nb (8.19 KB)

2

Hi Vladimir,

Obviously, you are trying to use the solution from this old answer by Kuba.

First of all, I would say that the old solution is not only highly inefficient, but also can easily corrupt the contents of the Notebook – for example, if you click inside of the Notebook during evaluation of the script. The dangerous is NotebookWrite part which should be rewritten using FrontEndTokenExecute["OpenCloseGroup"].

The NotebookRead part makes that solution highly inefficient and should be rewritten using CurrentValue[cellObj, "CellGroupOpen"]. But I’m not sure that this command works in Mathematica version 9.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Mathematica 9 installed, so I can’t test specifically for that version. I recommend rewriting at least the NotebookWrite part which is the only part of the solution that could corrupt your Notebook.

3

Thank you, Alexey.

I’ll try to modify my code following your advice.

There is CurrentValue[] command in Mathematica 9.