The keyboard

Everything you do all day in Babbage has a key. This page lists every shortcut and mouse gesture in the sheet, the sheet list and the answers column. The Help button in the answers column shows a short version of the list at any time.

Babbage uses Ctrl. A key it does not know, held with Ctrl or Alt, does nothing at all, so a slip never types a stray character into your sheet.

Sheets

Ctrl+Tab wraps round: from the last sheet it goes to the first. With one sheet, it does nothing.

While you rename

F2 turns the sheet's name in the sidebar into a field. Type the new name, then press Enter to accept it, or Esc to leave the name as it was. Backspace deletes a character.

Moving around

A reference to an earlier line, such as line3, is drawn as a small chip showing that line's answer. The caret steps over a chip in one move, rather than into it.

Selecting

Hold Shift with any of the movement keys above to extend the selection.

Editing

Backspace right after a chip removes the whole reference, and Delete just before one does the same.

A run of typing without a space in it is one undo step, so Ctrl+Z takes back a word at a time rather than a letter at a time. Pasting, cutting, and each format change are steps of their own. Each sheet keeps its own undo history while you work in another one, and it comes back when you return to a sheet that has not changed.

If you have turned on Convert foreign numbers when pasting in Settings, a number pasted in another region's format, such as 1.234,5, is turned into the format Babbage is using.

Tab does nothing in a sheet, unless you have chosen it to finish variable names (below).

Finishing a variable name

Start typing the name of a variable defined above the line, and press Esc. Babbage finishes it. If you type mon and you have a variable called monthly rent, Esc makes it monthly rent.

• If only one name fits, it is put in at once.
• If several fit, a small list appears under the caret. Up and Down move through it, and Enter, Tab or Esc takes the highlighted name. Any other key closes the list and carries on typing.

The names are matched without regard to case and listed in alphabetical order. They are the names defined on earlier lines, never the line you are on. In Settings under Editing, **Key that finishes a variable name can be changed from Esc to Tab**. Then Tab starts the completion and Esc does nothing.

Counting a number up and down

Hold Alt, press on a number in the sheet, and drag left or right. The number counts by its last digit, a step for about every 6 points you move. Drag right to count up and left to count down.

The number keeps its decimal places and its thousands commas, and it never goes below zero. Every answer on the sheet updates as you drag. Releasing the button ends the drag, and the whole drag is one undo step, so Ctrl+Z puts the number back as it was.

Only a plain number is counted: digits with an optional decimal part. A number with a sign, an exponent, such as 1e3, or a suffix, such as 5k, is not.

The answers column

While an answer is highlighted, every other key does what it normally does. Typing or editing in the sheet clears the highlight.

In the sheet itself, hover over the name of a variable to see its value in a small tip beside it.

The sheet list

Any key closes the card's menu. A sheet moved to the trash is not erased: see Sheets and files.

Toolbar and panels

In a text field in the Settings panel, type and press Enter to save the value, or Esc to throw away what you typed. Esc there cancels that edit only; the panel stays open.

When you rename a variable that later lines use, Babbage may offer to rename those uses too. Click Update to change them or Keep to leave them. What it does on its own is a setting under Editing: **When a variable is renamed**.

Quick reference