Maintaining Text Elements

Purpose

Use this tool to create, maintain, and translate text elements for your programs. Any text that a program sends to the screen can be stored as a text element in a text pool. Text elements are:

List and column headers that appear in ABAP lists.
Selection texts on selection screens.
Text symbols you use in the WRITE statement.

For more information, see the text symbol documentation in the ABAP User's Guide.

Features

Text elements allow you to create language-independent programs. You can create different text pools for different languages. When a text element is changed or translated, there is no need to change the actual program code. Your program automatically detects the logon language and uses the text elements in the respective language.

You can also create standard text elements that you can copy and use in other programs. If you work only with text symbols and do not hard-code any texts in WRITE statements, your programs could be easily translated into other languages.

Starting the Text Element Maintenance Tool

To start the Text Element Maintenance Tool:

Use transaction SE32
In the Object Navigator (transaction SE80), open the program you want to edit and choose Goto → Text Elements.
In the context menu of the program you want to edit, choose Display → Text Elements.