The 
Groups pane shows all the guests in the current plan arranged in their groups.
The icon shown for a guest is determined from the details you have entered about their gender and age.
Guests who have declined or cancelled are shown with strikethrough text. Guests who have not been assigned to seats are shown in bold. Guests who are locked are shown with underlined text.
The icon shown for a group is based on PerfectTablePlan's best guess at whether the group is a family, couple etc. The group icon is just a visual cue, it doesn't affect anything else.
Select from the Mode drop-down list to change the behaviour of the pane (see below).
Type text in the 
Search field to find groups by name. The default behaviour is to hide non-matching names. E.g. if you type jo it will hide all groups without jo in their name (case is ignored). Click the 
cancel icon to clear the field.
You can change the behaviour to jump to the first matching group/guest name by changing Guest/group search in the Preferences window to selects first match. E.g. if you type jo it will first try to find a guest or group with a name beginning with jo (e.g. john) and if it can't find one it will try to find a guest or group whose name contains jo.
Click on the 
button to allow you to choose which columns are displayed.
Click Expand all or Collapse all to expand/collapse all the groups.
Check the various check boxes to hide/show columns.
Click on the Group name headers to sort groups by that column. Click on one of the other columns to sort by Group name and then by the clicked column. Clicking a column again reverses the sort order.
Note that changing the RSVP status of a guest from 
Accepted may unassign them from their seat, depending on your settings in the 
Preferences window.
Drop a plan file onto this pane to open it. Drop a vCard, text or CSV file onto this pane to import it.
Drag a guest from another PerfectTablePlan window to add them to the current plan.
Note Deleting a group deletes all the guests in it.
drag & drop
To assign seats left click on one or more guests or groups and drag them to a seat or table in the 
Floor plan pane, 
Table plan or 
Schematic pane.
To change group membership left click on one or more a guests or groups and drag them from one group to another within the Groups pane
Right click on a guest or group to display actions in a pop-up menu.
Double-click on a guest or group to display the Properties window.
Select more than one guest or group by using Shift+click or Ctrl+Click. Use Ctrl+A to select everything in this pane.
Click on a guest or group property to edit it.
Use the Enter, Tab or Ctrl+arrow keys to change row or column. Use the Space or arrow down keys to edit a drop-down list.