Table rows and columns

Everything you do to a table’s rows and columns is on its controls bar and in its right-click menu. You can insert, delete, duplicate, move, sort and align them, and set how wide each column is, with the file changing only in the lines each command touches.

Find a table’s commands

Every command in a table’s right-click menu is also on its own bar, so nothing is reachable only by right-clicking. The bar carries one the menu does not: Edit raw source, which shows the table as the pipes you typed. Cmd+Alt+E does the same thing.

• The bar holds icons in groups: insert a row above or below and delete it, then insert a column left or right and delete it. In a pane too narrow for the whole bar, its row and column buttons fold into the overflow, so the bar never wraps or gets cut off.
• The overflow button at the end of the bar opens the full list, in the same order as the right-click menu: duplicating and moving rows and columns, sorting a column A to Z or Z to A, aligning a column, padding the columns so they line up in the file, fitting or resetting the column widths, and showing a pipe table as a board.
• Each column header has a chevron that shows when you hover the header or select the column. It opens that column’s commands and selects the column as it does, so the menu always says what it acts on. The selector column carries no chevron, because it is too narrow to hold one without covering the click that selects the row. The row commands are on the bar and in the right-click menu.

Every command acts on your selection if you have one, and on the row or column of the cell you are in if you do not.

On the bar, a column’s chevron and the overflow, a command that cannot run where you are stays in its place, dimmed, so you can see it exists and why it is not available. You cannot delete the only column, move the first column left, or align a CSV block, which has nowhere to keep alignment.

The right-click menu works the other way: it offers only the commands that can run, so nothing in it is ever dimmed.

To reach the commands from the keyboard, press Alt+F10 inside a table. It moves to the bar, then to the chevron on the current column, then back to the grid. The arrow keys move along the bar and through a menu, and Escape puts you back in the cell you were in.

Add or delete rows and columns from the keyboard

1. Select whole rows, by the selector column down the left of the grid (its row numbers, when line numbers are on) or with Shift+Space, or whole columns, by their headers or with Ctrl+Space.
2. Press Cmd+Alt+= to insert a row below the selected rows, or a column to the right of the selected columns. Press Cmd+Alt+- to delete them. On Windows and Linux, use Ctrl in place of Cmd everywhere on this page.

The new row or column is selected, so pressing the key again adds another. The keys follow the menu’s rules, so they will not delete the only column. With only some cells selected, or a cell open for typing, they do nothing. The right-click menu shows them beside Insert row below, Delete row, Insert column right and Delete column whenever they would act.

Move rows and columns

1. Select the row or column by its selector column or header. Select several to move them together as one block, keeping their order among themselves.
2. Drag the selected selector column or header to its new place. It dims as it travels, and a line shows where it will land.

Dragging a selector column or header that is not selected marks rows or columns and moves nothing. So selecting by dragging down the selector column and then dragging it again to move them is two gestures, and the first one is safe.

From the keyboard, Alt+Up and Alt+Down move the selected rows one step, and Alt+Left and Alt+Right move the selected columns. They stay selected, so pressing again moves them further. At the edge of the table the key does nothing.

Sort a column

Choose Sort column A to Z or Sort column Z to A from the column’s chevron, the overflow menu or the right-click menu. The column sorts the way a person reads it:

• Numbers sort by value, including negative numbers, amounts with a currency sign, and percentages.
• Dates sort as dates. 2044-11-17 always does. A date with slashes, such as 17/11/2044 or 11/17/2044, does once the column shows which comes first, the day or the month.
• Text sorts ignoring case, by the words a reader sees, ignoring any bold or link markup around them.
• Rows with equal values keep their order, and empty cells stay at the bottom whichever way you sort.

Resize a column

Drag the right border of a column’s header. Only that column changes: the ones beside it keep the width they had, so widening the column you care about does not take the room from all the others. The table grows by what you added, and scrolls sideways in its frame once it is wider than the pane. A column will not go narrower than about six characters: the border stops there, and turns the warning colour while you hold it past that point.

Scroll a table to its right-hand end and there is a gap after the last column, so you can see the table has ended rather than wondering whether there is more past the edge. Tables inside a quote or under a list item have it too.

Until you drag one, Sheaf sizes each column to what it holds: a short column keeps its width, and the columns holding sentences share out the rest of the pane. Your first drag fixes every column where it is, which is what lets the one you are dragging move on its own. From then on the table keeps the widths you set rather than following the pane, and Reset column widths hands it back.

The table menu has two more commands for widths:

• Fit columns to content sets every column to the width of what it holds, so nothing in the table wraps. A table that comes out wider than the pane scrolls sideways in its frame.
• Reset column widths puts every column back to the width Sheaf chooses. Until a width has been set by hand there is nothing to reset, so it is dimmed on the bar, the chevron and the overflow, and left out of the right-click menu.

Show a table as a board

Choose Show as board from the table’s overflow menu or its right-click menu, and pick the column to group by. Each row becomes a card. See Boards.

Keys

Key	What it does
Alt+F10	Move to the bar, then the column’s chevron, then back to the grid
Shift+Space	Select the row
Ctrl+Space	Select the column
Cmd+Alt+=	Insert a row below the selected rows, or a column right of the selected columns
Cmd+Alt+-	Delete the selected rows or columns
Alt+Up, Alt+Down	Move the selected rows
Alt+Left, Alt+Right	Move the selected columns

Good to know

• A command changes only the lines it has to. Sorting changes only the order of the rows in the file: every row keeps its own bytes. A move is a single undo step, and it rewrites only the lines whose order changed.
• Column widths never go into the file. A width you set is a view preference. VS Code keeps it for this workspace on this machine, under the document and the table’s header row, so it is there when you reopen the file and nobody gets it from the repository.
• Widths follow the header row. Renaming a header in the grid keeps the widths. If the header row changes some other way, or a column is added or removed, the table goes back to the widths Sheaf chooses.
• In a browser tab, widths last as long as the page, and are gone when you reload or close the tab.