Hello,
Is there a way to move entire rows or columns in Spreadsheet editor with click+drag or any other way?
Thanks
1 Like
Hello @mano
Unfortunately, this feature is currently unavailable. I forwarded your suggestion to our Developers for further consideration.
Please consider this. It would really modernize the concept of spreadsheets and improve workflow. This is a reason I seek other editors than OnlyOffice or LibreOffice as the workflow is so time-consuming a bit dated here and there.
My primary way of using spreadsheets is to accumulate information, e.g. while researching. I don’t know which rows and columns I’ll be adding before I do and I never know how they are to be arranged. It all depends on the information acquired and changes made along the way. Rows and columns are constantly moved and rearranged. Today this is so tedious that I often purposely add many empty rows/columns in between just to avoid having to go through the tedious process. But it always becomes annoying and time-consuming anyway as there is no quick and easy way to re-arrange.
When the number of times this is done adds up, it becomes a large part of the time consumed and it makes the software feel old-fashioned and tedious.
Dragging columns or rows around (even dragging a row to the column bar) is a very intuitive and simple way for novice users to work. It reduces the clutter needed elsewhere and decreases the learning-curve (and that time could be spent learning other stuff).
Holding the associated keyboard key (e.g. Alt) could bring up visual GUI cues to show the user that you can re-arrange by holding Alt and dragging with the mouse. As well as other functionality that holding Alt enables.
It should also work for cells, by having them “light up” when you move the cursor over them. The columns and rows could get a floating “mouse drag & drop indicator” while holding Alt. If tips are enabled, some short text could appear. The entire square of the column or row should be draggable as it is too tedious to aim into a small area and would also be unecessary. It makes sense for the user to point at what should be grabbed and release it where it should end up.
Preferably the row(s), column(s) or cell(s) should move in real-time. If there is already a selection of multiple cells, rows and/or coumns, I think Ctrl + Alt makes sense. A small help box could appear to make inform the user (“Move selection by holding Ctrl + Alt”), when UI tips are enabled.
To make this easy to understand the selection should “light up” when holding Ctrl + Alt as opposed to just Alt. When only holding Alt, the selection should fade (but not be discarded) to indicate that it’s being ignored.
I discovered that you can hold both left and right mouse button and then drag columns or rows but it results in a pop-up dialog asking you if you want to continue as it will replace the original content. This is not intuitively indicated.
To re-arrange you’d still have to insert an empty row/column and them drag and drop. I can also see situations where “drag to replace” is useful in addition to “drag to re-arrange”, although the latter is definitely the more useful one.
I do like the idea of holding both mouse buttons, though. For some graphical editing software the Alt key is used for deletion and Ctrl is used for addition (e.g. for wand tool). Similar approach could be used here.
At one hand, I can see the left + right mouse button being convenient for one-hand operation but the visual cues appearing by holding a key is a neat and powerful feature.
My suggestion would be Alt for “move to re-arrange” and left + right mouse buttons for “move to replace”. Floating visual indicators or key bind “cheat tooltips” could appear to make the “move to replace” functionality known without requiring prior knowledge or memorization (most people won’t memorize shortcuts, so this would solve or alleviate this barrier).
Hello @Eudyptula
Indeed, the suggestion was already registered. Once any news come up on this, I will inform you.