Clipboard

Keyboard-driven copy/paste for cell ranges, aligned with Excel selection UX; every paste is reversible through undo/redo.

How it works

The grid maintains an anchor/focus cell selection in the cell store. useSheetCommands registers the keys as the sheet's commands (useCommands), so they are listed in the shortcuts dialog, never fire while a field has focus, and copy, paste and clearing are bound only while cells are selected — the page's own copy works whenever the grid holds no selection. They route to two composables: useCopyRangeToClipboard and usePasteRangeFromClipboard.

Copy (Ctrl+C / Cmd+C) materializes the selected columns and filtered rows through filterDataSourceColumns — so computed columns copy their displayed value, not an empty cell (copy computed values) — and hands the sub-DataSource to copyToClipboard, which writes both text/plain (TSV) and text/html (a styled table, so pasting into Excel/Sheets keeps structure) via ClipboardItem, falling back to writeText where ClipboardItem is unavailable (e.g. Firefox). Hidden columns are excluded; the header row is included or not based on the isCopyIncludingHeaders toolbar toggle.

Paste reads TSV from the clipboard, parses it position-based (no header row expected) with parseClipboardValuesByPosition, and coerces each value to its target column's type via coerceValue. The Shift key selects the mode:

Overwrite pushes a PasteRangeCommand that snapshots the affected original rows, so undo removes any appended rows and restores overwritten cells. Shift-down reuses CreateRowsCommand with the anchor as start index, so undo removes the inserted rows. Both paths save the file after the command executes.

sequenceDiagram
  participant U as User
  participant T as useSheetCommands
  participant CP as useCopyRangeToClipboard
  participant PP as usePasteRangeFromClipboard
  participant CB as navigator.clipboard
  participant H as History store

  U->>T: Ctrl+C
  T->>CP: copy selected range
  CP->>CB: write ClipboardItem (TSV + HTML)
  U->>T: Ctrl+V / Ctrl+Shift+V
  T->>PP: pasteMode = Overwrite | ShiftDown
  PP->>CB: readText()
  PP->>PP: parseClipboardValuesByPosition → coerceValue
  PP->>H: push PasteRangeCommand (overwrite) or CreateRowsCommand (shift down)
  PP->>PP: saveSheet()

Selection UX

The anchor is preserved across Shift+click and Shift+Arrow; dragging re-anchors on mousedown.

The rows are the data table's grid (UI library), so the plain arrows, Home and End, Page Up and Page Down belong to the table: they walk its active cell, the one stop in the tab order, and the sheet makes each cell they land on the selection, as a spreadsheet's active cell is. A press selects its cell first and then takes it as the active one, so a Shift+click range survives the focus it brings. Enter on a cell opens its editor, and Enter or Escape in the editor hands focus back to the cell, saving or dropping the edit. The shortcuts dialog still shows the plain arrows as the sheet's, registered with nothing to run, while Shift+Arrow and the clipboard keys stay bound, since the grid reads no chord but Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End — so the table and the sheet never both answer one key.

Key files

All paths relative to apps/web/app.

Notes

• Copying is keyboard-only — the toolbar carries no copy button, just the isCopyIncludingHeaders toggle deciding whether a copied range leads with its header row.