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Column Preview Function
![](http://35.178.72.47/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Feed-Donkey-_-Column-Preview-Menu.png)
You can preview the data that your column header rules will output without having to export your data file and check it via this method. This can be a useful time saver to get a flavour or snapshot of the output.
Whilst it is a limited sample from the first 100 product records it is a true reflection of both the source data and also any process/ map rules that you may have applied .
For example:
If you built a header ‘product id’ to output product level data element PRODUCT_GID as ORIGINAL – this would populate your column exactly as it is stored in Shopify…
![](http://35.178.72.47/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Feed-Donkey-_-Column-Preview-Original.png)
But perhaps you would build this so that you only output the number characters from this string.
In this case there are at least a couple of ways of getting this result. But in the next example we’ve used a simple REGEX EXTRACT rule to clip out the part of the string that is made up from characters 1 to 9.
Whilst you are in the column builder you can check that this has had the desired effect with Column Preview ..
![](http://35.178.72.47/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Feed-Donkey-_-Column-Preview-Extract-Rule.png)
Just to re-iterate – column preview can only ‘see’ the first 100 product records on your product database if the data element you are using is not populated – you will not see any data in column preview.