grid

The grid

The grid is the main view of a project. Each row is a record. Each column is a field.

Editing

Click a cell to select it. Type to replace its content, or press Enter to edit in place. Copy, cut, and paste work across one cell or a selected range, including between qrate and other spreadsheet apps. Delete or Backspace clears the selected cells, and Esc drops the selection. On macOS, use Cmd wherever this guide says Ctrl. Every shortcut is listed in Keyboard shortcuts.

qrate saves your edits to the project file on its own. See Saving.

Every edit goes on the undo stack, including row and column changes. Press Ctrl+Z to undo and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y) to redo. Undo and redo also cover adding, removing, and reordering rows and columns, so a structural change is as safe to try as a cell edit. Undo goes back 200 steps by default. Settings ▸ Table ▸ Editing ▸ Undo steps raises that to 500, 1,000, or 2,000; each step keeps what it replaced, so a deeper history uses more memory. The change history keeps every change across sessions.

Settings ▸ Table ▸ Appearance ▸ Row density chooses Comfortable (the default) or Compact, which uses smaller text and fits more rows on screen.

Settings ▸ Table ▸ Appearance ▸ Row height sets how many lines of text a row holds: 1 (the default), 2, 3, or 4. All rows have the same height.

Undo steps, row density, and row height are defaults a project can override; see Projects.

Rows and columns

Right-click a row header for a menu to insert, duplicate, clear, or delete rows. Right-click a column header to insert, delete, or rename a column, or choose Freeze up to here to keep the columns up to that one in view while you scroll. View ▸ Unfreeze All Columns releases them. The Insert and Data menus offer the same commands for the current selection, and they work even while another panel has focus. Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down insert a row above or below the selection, and Ctrl+- deletes the selected row.

Drag a column header to move the column. Drag a row header to move the row; see Groups.

Right-click a column header and open Text to choose what the column does with a value that is longer than its cells. A check mark shows the current choice.

• Overflow (the default) shows one line and runs it to the edge of the cell.
• Wrap wraps the text to the column width. It fills as many lines as the row height holds and ends with an ellipsis (…) when there is more.
• Clip shows one line and cuts it off at the text edge, with no ellipsis.

Point at a wrapped or clipped value that does not fit to see all of it. Each column keeps its choice in the project. To show more of a wrapped value, raise the row height.

Groups

Rows can nest inside other rows, the way a series holds files and a file holds items. A project created from a folder tree starts nested; any project can be arranged by hand. A row with children shows a chevron in its header. Click it to collapse or expand the group, or press Ctrl+Alt+Right and Ctrl+Alt+Left to expand or collapse every group. View ▸ Expand All Rows and View ▸ Collapse All Rows do the same.

• Group rows. Select rows, right-click a row header, and choose Group (the item reads, for example, Group 3 rows). qrate inserts a new parent row above them and moves them inside it.
• Indent and outdent. Ctrl+] makes a row the last child of the row just above it at the same level. Ctrl+[ moves it out to sit just after its parent. Data ▸ Indent Row and Data ▸ Outdent Row do the same.
• Drag. Drop a row header on the top edge of another row to place it before that row, on the middle to make it a child, or on the bottom edge to place it after. A row always moves with its children.
• Delete. Deleting a parent row offers Delete and promote children, which keeps the children, or Delete row and descendants.

Every arrangement change is one undoable step. qrate remembers which groups you left expanded.

Search and replace

Open search with Ctrl+F. Search moves through matching cells in the grid. Open replace with Ctrl+H to replace one match or all matches at once. The search bar belongs to whichever view is showing, so a search carries on when you switch between the grid and the gallery.

Two toggles in the search bar look beyond the cells, and both narrow the view to the rows they match. The book searches the text inside linked PDFs. The picture searches what the linked images show, without using their metadata at all. See Visual search.

Filtering

Click the filter icon in a column header to open its filter. If a column has no filter icon, right-click its header and choose Filter ▸ Show filter dropdown, or pick the columns under Settings ▸ Columns ▸ Filters. To keep only the rows that hold one value, right-click a cell holding it and choose Filter by this value. It lists every distinct value in that column as a checklist. Uncheck a value to hide the rows that hold it. The grid shows only rows that pass every active column filter at once.

Filtering hides rows. It does not change or delete data, and it does not affect export or diagnostics, which both still see every row.

Gallery view

Switch the grid to a gallery of thumbnails with View ▸ Switch View ▸ Gallery, or press Ctrl+2. Ctrl+1 returns to the table. The gallery shows one tile per row, using the file or photo linked to that row. It is a way to review a collection by image instead of by cell, useful for photo collections in particular.

Notes

Right-click a cell and choose Notes ▸ Add note…, use Insert ▸ Note…, or press Shift+F2 to attach a free-text note to it. A cell with a note shows a small corner marker. Notes appear on the Notes tab of the Problems panel. If you set an author name in Settings ▸ Application, each new note records it.

Excel exports keep notes as cell comments, and Google Sheets exports add them as cell notes. CSV, JSON-LD, CSL-JSON, and ZIP exports leave them out.

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