Editing cells

The grid works the way spreadsheets always have: click a cell, type, move on. This page covers entering data, selecting ranges, and the clipboard’s spreadsheet-specific behavior.

Enter and edit data

• Click a cell and type to replace its contents; press Enter to commit.
• The formula bar above the grid shows the selected cell’s true contents (the formula, not its result) and can be edited directly.
• Start with = to enter a formula — see Formulas & functions.
• Delete/Backspace clears the selected cell — or every cell in the selection.

Edits sync to collaborators immediately. If two people edit the same cell at once, the last edit wins — you’ll see the result within a moment either way.

Select ranges

• Drag across cells, or click one cell and Shift+click another to select the rectangle between them.
• Shift+arrow keys grow the selection from the keyboard.
• Click a row or column header to select the entire row or column.

Copy and paste

Copy (Ctrl/⌘ C) and paste (Ctrl/⌘ V) carry real spreadsheet semantics, not just text:

• Formulas travel and adjust. Pasting =A1+B1 one row down gives =A2+B2 — relative references shift with the paste. Use $ to pin: =$A$1 stays put wherever it’s pasted.
• Fill by pasting into a bigger range. Copy one cell and paste onto a range to fill it; copy a block and paste onto an exact multiple of its size to tile it.
• A marching-ants outline marks what you copied. It stays after a paste so you can paste again elsewhere; press Escape to dismiss it.
• Pasting to other apps produces plain values (tab-separated) — paste a range into an email or doc and you get the numbers you see.
• Pasting text from outside enters each cell as if you’d typed it — so pasted text starting with = becomes a live formula.

Rows and columns

• Insert a row or column from the header controls — neighbors shift over.
• Delete a row or column the same way — its cells go with it.

A quiet superpower: inserting or deleting rows and columns never breaks formulas. References in other cells keep pointing at the same data; references to deleted cells show #REF! so you know exactly what broke.

Undo

Ctrl/⌘ Z undoes your own recent edits on this device. Collaborative undo (undoing across sessions or teammates’ edits) isn’t available — for coarse recovery, keep important states shared early and often.

View-only sheets

If you have view access but not edit, the grid is read-only: you can select, inspect formulas in the formula bar, and copy — but nothing you type will change the sheet. A View only chip in the header reminds you why.