There are various ways of starting the splitscreen editor:

• From any screen by entering Transaction SE39.
• From the Modification Assistant
• From the ABAP Editor, if the clipboard is not empty.

You can display or change any source code. You can display, change, compare, and save both code extracts in the splitscreen editor. The extracts may either both be in the same system, or one of them may be in a remote system. You cannot change or save a source code extract that you are displaying remotely. Equally, you cannot navigate in the remote system.

The splitscreen editor has an editing window on the left, and a display window on the right. The old SAP source code appears in the display window. Modified lines of code are flagged in the editor. You cannot switch the right-hand window to change mode.

The new SAP source code appears in modification mode in the editing window. You cannot change this code, but you can use the functions Delete, Insert, and Replace. The system compares the two versions and marks the differences on both sides. There is also a function that allows you to select a single block in the display window. You can then copy this to the corresponding position in the editing window. It is also possible to copy source code into the editing window using the Select, Copy to buffer, and Insert buffer functions.

If there is data on the clipboard during an ABAP Editor session, you can use the splitscreen editor to compare the two versions. The system starts the editor in compare mode. You can change the database version, but not the clipboard version.