When an uncovered coverage point needs to be excluded for various reasons, a user-supplied message may be associated with the exclusion, specifying the reason for the exclusion. This information can be useful documentation for a coverage analysis and is possible to achieve using the Covered GUI. This task is accomplished with the exclusion reason popup window which is automatically popped up when a coverage point is marked for exclusion (assuming that the capability is enabled in the exclusion preferences pane). Figure 29.1, “The Exclusion Reason Popup Window” shows what this popup window looks like.

Figure 29.1. The Exclusion Reason Popup Window

To specify an exclusion reason, you may do either enter the exclusion reason into the textbox located on the left side of this window or you may select a pre-created, general purpose exclusion reason in the drop-down table. To view this table, click on the down arrow button at the bottom of this window (see Figure 29.2, “Full View of the Exclusion Reason Popup Window”). To hide this table, click on the same button (which will be changed to an up arrow button). If a general-purpose exclusion reason is selected from the table, it will be displayed in the top textbox where it may be optionally edited for the current coverage point.

Figure 29.2. Full View of the Exclusion Reason Popup Window

Once the exclusion reason has been entered as desired in the textbox (please note that any formatting characters such as newlines, tabs and/or multiple spaces will be automatically removed and replaced with a single space character), simply click on the OK button which will associate the exclusion reason with the excluded coverage point and close the popup window. Note that the OK button will only be enabled if at least one character is entered in the textbox.

	Note
	Editing a general purpose reason in the popup window only has an effect for this coverage point; it does not change the general purpose reason value itself (this can only be done in the preferences window).

To not specify an exclusion reason with an excluded coverage point, simply click on the Cancel button.