Mouse Tools
MotiveWave provides over 20 different mouse tools for manipulating the chart and its components. Some of the basic mouse tools are covered in this section. Other mouse tools are covered in other parts of the help documentation. A mouse tool basically switches the behaviour of the mouse cursor. The following mouse tools are supported. Click on the links below to view more information:
- Select Tool – Used to select multiple components.
- Time Drag Tool – Click and drag to shift the time frame.
- Zoom Tool – Select an area to zoom.
- Text Tool – Use to quickly add comments.
- Line Tool – Click and drag to add Trend Lines.
- Data Edit Tool – Use to edit chart data.
- Regression Tools – Creates Linear Regression Lines and Channels.
- Channel Tool – Creates channels.
- Fork Tool – Creates Andrew’s Pitch Forks.
- Elliott Wave Tools – Use to create Elliott Wave formations.
- Marker Tools – Use to create markers.
The active mouse tool can be changed from the Tools menu. This menu is available from the chart Tool Bar (shown below), and the Context Menu (right click on the chart area). The Tools button on the Tool Bar displays the currently active mouse tool. You will also notice the cursor changes when a new tool is activated.
Dual Nature
For convenience, all mouse tools have a ‘dual nature’. When hovering over a component or study the mouse tool will automatically turn into ‘Select’ mode 
. This enables you to select or move components and studies without having to switch the mouse tool. When hovering over a resize point of a component, the mouse tool will turn into ‘Resize’ mode enabling you to move a resize point on a component.
Occasionally, this dual nature can be an undesirable effect. To temporarily disable this feature, hold down the Alt key.
Snap to Location
This is a convenient feature for positioning Resize Points. Click here for details.
Time Drag Tool
The Time Drag Tool is shaped like a hand 
. Click and drag on an open area of the graph to move the time frame forwards or backwards.
If data for the given time frame is not currently loaded, it will be automatically loaded from the local database (if cached) or the application will request more data from your Broker/Data Service. In this case you will see an animated ‘Loading’ icon appear.
If nothing happens when dragging the cursor, you have most likely reached the Historical Limit. The historical limit depends on the instrument. Brokers/Data Services tend to have historical limits built into most instruments. For example, Interactive Brokers limits historical data to one year.
Zoom Tool
The Zoom Tool 
is useful for zooming in on a particular area of the chart without having to manually change the time frame and bar width. Given a selected area, this tool will automatically compute the appropriate bar size and width and adjust the time frame to display the selected area.
Additionally, the tool keeps a Zoom History. Each successive zoom operation gets added to an internal stack. Clicking the Unzoom button 
will restore the chart to its previous state.
The following screenshot illustrates the selection of a zoom area:
Data Edit Tool
Most of the time, the price history returned from your Broker/Data Service will be fine. Occasionally one of the bars will contain an erroneous trade that causes the price bar to be far larger than normal. This can obscure the rest of the chart.
Using the Data Edit Tool 
you can edit the local copy of the data to remove this anomaly. With this tool enabled, simply click on the price bar that you would like to modify. Alternatively, you can double click on a price bar using the other mouse tools to perform the same function.
The following screenshot illustrates the data edit dialog:
Note: the changes made to this bar may not be reflected at all time frames. This has to do with the way MotiveWave stores data loaded from your Broker/Data Service. The price history is stored locally in 1 minute, 5 minute, 30 minute and 1 day bars. Modifying a bar will affect the data in the closest bar size, but not the other bar sizes. If this same anomaly exists elsewhere in the data, you may need to perform the operation more than once.