Shortcuts for Table Navigation

These mouse and keyboard shortcuts help navigate around a table. They are identical to shortcuts in Excel wherever this makes sense. (But not, Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn.)

The current cell is the cell you last clicked, and is highlighted. The current region is a highlighted rectangular area of cells. You can select a region starting from the current cell by dragging to or shift-click in the cell in the opposite corner.

Mouse or Trackpad operations

Click: Left-click in a cell to highlight it as the current cell.

Shift-Click: Click while pressing the shift key to highlight the rectangle from the current cell to to this cell as the current region.

Drag: Press left mouse button in a cell and hold it down as you drag to another cell to highlight the rectangle between the origin and destination cells as the current region.

Mouse Wheel: Scroll the table vertically without changing the selection.

Ctrl-Mouse Wheel: Scroll the mouse wheel while holding down control key to scroll the table horizontally without changing the selection.

Searching a table

Ctrl-F: Open the Find-dialog to search for text in the table. It searches starting after the current cell and selects the first matching cell, if any.

Ctrl-G: Repeat the previous Find, to find the next occurrence of the search text after the current cell.

Arrow keys

arrow (right, left, up, down): Move one cell in the given direction. At the end of a row (or column) it wraps to the start of next row (or column). At the end of the last row, it wraps to the top-left cell.

Down-arrow in list: In the last cell of a list index in edit mode, down-arrow or right-arrow appends an element to the index.

Shift-arrow: Move the current cell one cell in the given direction. The Anchor cell stays put, causing the selected region to grow or shrink. It does not wrap.

Ctrl-arrow: Move to the end of row or column in the given direction.

Shift-Ctrl-arrow: Selects the region from current cell to the end or start of row (for left or right arrow) or bottom or top of the column (for down or up arrow).

End, arrow: Two key sequence. Same as Ctrl-arrow.

End, Shift-arrow: Two key sequence. Same as Shift-Ctrl-arrow.

Home key

Home: Move the anchor to the first column, and sets the current cell to be the anchor (so only one cell is selected). If you are in the row headers, moves the anchor & current to the first row.

Ctrl-Home: Select the top-left cell in the table as the current cell.

Ctrl-End: Select the bottom-right cell in the table as the current cell.

Shift-Ctrl-Home: Select the region between the anchor and the top left cell. (Leaving current as top left.)

Page key

Page Up, Page Down: Move the current cell up or down by the number of rows visible in the window, and scrolls up or down to show that cell. (Selects one cell.)

Ctrl-Page Up, Ctrl-Page Down: Move the current cell left or right by the number of columns visible in the window, scrolling horizontally to show the new current cell. (This is not the same as Excel, in which Ctrl-PgUp, Ctrl-PgDown toggle between worksheets. Since we don't have worksheets, these do something else useful.)

Shift-Page Up, Shift-Page Down: Move the Current cell by the number of rows or columns that currently display on the screen, and scroll vertically by one page. Anchor stays the same, so that the currently selected region expands or shrinks by one page length.

Shift-Ctrl-Page Up, Shift-Ctrl-Page Down: Same as Shift-Page Up, but horizontally rather than vertically.

Tab, enter, and return keys

Tab: Move one cell right. Same as right arrow.

Shift-Tab: Move one cell left. Same as left arrow.

Enter, Shift-Enter: If editing, accept change, selection remains on cell just edited. If not editing, but in edit mode, current cell becomes anchor cell and begin editing that cell.

Return: If editing, accept changes. Move anchor down one cell, wrapping to top of next column if anchor is at the bottom. Set current cell to anchor (so only one cell is selected). If not editing, just move, do not start editing.

Shift-Return: If editing, accept changes. Move anchor cell up one cell, wrapping to bottom of previous column if at top. Set current to anchor, so only one cell is selected.

Ctrl-A: Select all (body) cells. If a row/col header is selected, selects all rows/cols.