The SAP ABAP editor (SE38) is one of the most used transaction by ABAPers and many useful features remains unknown to many.

In this tutorial, we will try to reveal some useful features of the SAP ABAP editor (SE38).

Before proceeding, please make sure that the new front-end editor is activated (please refer to below screenshot).

To activate the new editor, open the transaction SE38 and in the menu ‘Utilities > Settings’, check the option ‘Front-End Editor (New)’.

Useful features of the SAP ABAP editor:

1. Code Completion

The code completion feature will suggest common keywords and recently used strings in the program. It can also suggest non-keywords (like custom variables and constants) used in the program.

Follow the following steps to activate this feature:

Step 1:

Open a program in SE38 and on the code screen, click on the small icon (highlighted in the screenshot below) at the bottom right of the screen.

Step 2:

On the tab ‘Code Completion’, please change the editor options as shown on the screenshot below.

Click on ‘Save’, once done.

Once done, we will notice that when writing code in the editor, SAP will suggest different keywords and non-keywords: For example:

Note: When SAP suggests a keyword or non-keyword, just press the button ‘TAB’, the editor will complete it automatically.

For example, when the suggest word appears when writing an IF statement, pressing the button ‘TAB’ will automatically complete the syntax.

2. Editor Splitter

The editor splitter is a nice feature which allows us to split the ABAP editor into two sections. This is useful when we want to refer to a piece of code which is at a particular point in a program.

For example, after splitting the editor into two sections, the first sections can be used to display declarations for reference purposes while in the second section of the editor we can proceed with coding.

To use the editor, please follow the steps below:

Step 1:

On the right top corner of the editor, drag the small button (highlighted on the screenshot below) downwards.

Once the button is drop, the editor will be split into two sections.

Step 2:

In the editor sections, we can scroll the code independently.

3. Code Selection in Block

A quick way to select a block of code is by pressing on the button ‘ALT’ and then select the appropriate code with the mouse. This can be useful when selecting a block of elements from a type.

To select a block of code, just click on press on the button ‘ALT’ and select the appropriate code with the mouse.

Example of code selection: