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Penombre docs

These are the canary docs, read from main: they can describe changes no release has shipped yet. Read the v1.8.66 docs.

Documents, sheets and presentations

Penombre creates and edits three kinds of document in the browser, from the New button in the sidebar.

KindSaved asColourEditor
Document.docxBlueRich text, tables, pictures and code blocks
Sheet.xlsxGreenA workbook of sheets, with formulas
Presentation.pptxOrangeSlides you design and draw on, from ten templates

The colour is the same everywhere the kind appears — the New menu, the file list, the grid tiles — so a folder of mixed documents can be read without squinting at extensions. It is the one place a fixed colour is used rather than your accent, because it identifies the kind, not the object.

In grid layout, a tile shows the file's first page instead of its icon: a document's opening paragraphs, a sheet's top-left corner with formulas worked out, a deck's first slide. That covers .docx, .xlsx, .pptx and .csv files, wherever they came from; .html documents and Markdown decks keep their icon. The page is drawn the first time a tile asks for it rather than at upload, and again after each save, since an editor saves every few seconds.

#Why those formats

A document is a Word file, a sheet an Excel file and a presentation a PowerPoint file: Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Google's apps, Keynote and every phone open them as they are. There is no Penombre-only container and no export step: if you stop using Penombre you keep files, not an archive to convert.

Documents, sheets and decks made by earlier versions (.html, .csv, .md) still open and save as themselves. A Markdown deck keeps its own simpler editor and cannot be downloaded as PDF or PowerPoint; a new presentation is always a .pptx.

#Word, Excel and PowerPoint files

A .docx, .xlsx or .pptx from anywhere else opens in the same editors, and saving writes it back as itself: same file, same place, same name.

#What a save keeps

Saving rewrites only the part of the file that holds what you edited and puts everything else back untouched, which covers more than the editor can show:

  • Spreadsheets — a cell you did not change keeps its formula, number format, style and shared-string entry exactly as they were. Editing one cell never disturbs another. Formatting you add is appended to the file's styles; see Formatting. A chart you did not edit is written back exactly as it was; see Charts. Data validation and conditional formatting you did not change are kept as written; see Dropdowns. Images and named ranges are left alone.
  • Documents — headings, list numbering, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, fonts, sizes, colours, highlighting, superscript and subscript, links, tables, pictures and code blocks all survive, as do page size, margins, headers, footers and the document's own style definitions.
  • Presentations — a shape you did not touch is written back exactly as it was, and one you changed keeps everything but what you changed. See PowerPoint compatibility.

#What a save does not keep

On the paragraphs and cells you actually edit, expect to lose:

  • anything anchored inside text you replaced, such as a Word comment or a footnote reference;
  • in a spreadsheet, a formula in a cell whose value you typed over — the new value replaces it, because a stale cached result is worse than no formula.

A formula you type into an .xlsx cell is written as a real formula, which Excel and LibreOffice calculate when they open the file. Pictures added in the editor are stored as PNG, JPEG or GIF, the formats every Word since 2007 draws.

Untouched content is not affected by any of this. If a document's formatting is elaborate, edit it in Word — Penombre is for fixing a figure, correcting a sentence or adding a bullet without leaving the browser.

#Limits worth knowing

  • The older .doc, .xls and .ppt formats are not OOXML and do not open in an editor; they download like any other file.
  • A file that cannot be read as an Office document reports an error rather than opening empty, and a save that cannot be written reports one rather than writing a broken file. In both cases the file on disk is left exactly as it was.

#Editing

Opening any of these files from the drive opens its editor rather than a preview. Changes save themselves two seconds after you stop typing, and again when you navigate away; the header shows whether a save is in flight and when the last one landed. If a save fails it is retried rather than dropped, and leaving the page with unsaved text prompts you first.

A save never overwrites changes it has not seen. If someone else saved the file since you opened it (in another editor, through WebDAV or the sync app), your save is refused and Penombre asks: Load their version drops your unsaved edits and reopens the file, Keep mine saves yours over theirs. Two people can edit the same file, but not at the same time: there is no live merge yet.

Word's tracked insertions and deletions open as suggestions (see Suggesting). A Word file with tracked moves, formatting changes or table row and cell changes still opens in view only, under a Tracked changes badge: the editor cannot show those, so a save would accept them without anyone deciding. Accept or reject them in Word first.

Autosave never makes a version. With file versioning on, File → Save as version keeps what is on screen right now; use it before a change you may want to undo.

Because these are ordinary files, everything else in Penombre applies to them unchanged: they can be shared, starred, moved, trashed and searched like anything else. A new document is created in the folder you are browsing, not at the root.

#The File menu

Every editor opens its menu bar with the same File menu:

EntryWhat it does
ShareOpens the Share dialog for this file
RenameRenames the file; its extension stays
Make a copyCopies it into the same folder and opens the copy
DownloadThe file as it is saved
Download asThe file converted, in each format its kind offers
PrintDocuments and presentations
Save as versionKeeps what is on screen now as a version
Version historyLists the versions, to download or restore

Clicking the file name in the header renames it too. Downloads, copies and versions save first, so they carry what is on screen. Share, Rename, Make a copy and Save as version only show for someone who may change the file, and the two version entries only while file versioning is on. Restoring a version keeps the current text as a version first, then reloads the editor. In the mobile app, which has no downloads or printing, the menu leaves those out.

Download as offers, for a document, PDF, Word, a web page, Markdown and plain text; for a sheet, Excel, CSV (the first sheet) and PDF; for a presentation, PowerPoint and PDF.

#Viewing and editing

The mode button in the header puts the editor in Viewing or Editing (or, in a document, Suggesting). Viewing hides the toolbar and every menu that changes the file, so nothing is changed by accident; searching, copying, printing, downloading and commenting still work. The choice is remembered per file, in this browser.

Someone who may not change the file gets View only instead of the switch: a person the file was shared with at Can view, a viewer of a shared drive, or anyone on a read-only volume. The server refuses their saves whatever the page does.

#Suggesting

In a document, the switch has a third position, Suggesting: what you type becomes a suggestion instead of a change. Typed text is underlined, deleted text is struck through rather than removed, and replacing a word does both, each in its author's colour. Deleting text you suggested yourself removes it outright. A suggested new or removed paragraph break shows as a ¶. Formatting (bold, fonts, colours, alignment), pictures, dividers, code blocks and table rows and columns are not tracked: they change the document as they would in Editing. A deletion never takes text with it, though: deleting text together with a picture, a divider or a code block strikes the text and leaves the rest where it was. Text typed through an input method (Japanese, Chinese, Korean) becomes a suggestion once the composition is done.

Click a suggestion to see who made it and when, then Accept it (it becomes part of the text) or Reject it (it goes away); the arrows step to the next one. The Suggestions menu lists them, reviews them in order, and accepts or rejects all of them at once. Typing inside a suggestion while Editing is a plain edit, not part of the suggestion.

Anyone who may change the file may suggest and review. Someone with View only sees the suggestions and who made them, but cannot accept or reject them; there is no comment-only access to suggest with.

In a Word file, suggestions are Word's own tracked changes: Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs show them as such, with their author and date. An older .html document keeps them as <ins> and <del>. Every Download as format except Word shows the document as if every suggestion were accepted; the Word download keeps them as tracked changes.

#Comments

Add comment starts a comment on:

  • the selected text, in a document (the speech bubble in the toolbar, Insert → Add comment, or Ctrl/⌘ + Alt + M);
  • the selected cell, in a sheet (Insert → Add comment, or the cell's right-click menu);
  • the slide on screen, in a presentation (the speech bubble beside Present).

Comments open in a panel beside the editor, and in a sheet that slides up from the bottom on a phone. The speech bubble in the header shows how many are open and shows or hides the panel. Commented text is tinted, with a marker in the page's margin; a commented cell has a flag in its corner; a commented slide a dot in the slide rail. Clicking one brings up its thread, and clicking a thread shows what it is about.

Each comment starts a thread. Reply in it, Resolve it once it is dealt with, Reopen it if it was not, and edit or delete your own comments. Deleting a thread's first comment deletes its replies. Resolved threads move to the Resolved tab.

A comment on text finds its words again after the document changes, so it follows the passage as text is added or removed around it. If the passage itself is deleted, the thread stays and says, in red, that its text is gone, rather than pointing at the wrong words.

Everyone who can open the file sees its comments and may add, reply to and resolve them, including people it was shared with at Can view: a file shared for review has to be reviewable. The file's owner and the people already in a thread are told of a new comment, as long as they can still open the file; the link in the notification opens it the way each of them reaches it (see Notifications).

#Who else is here

The header shows the initials of the other people who have the file open, each in their own colour; pointing at one says whether they are viewing or editing. Someone drops off about half a minute after closing the file. Only people who can open the file appear, and only to each other.

Two people editing at once do not see each other's typing, and the last save wins. When someone else shows as editing, agree on who writes, or switch to Viewing and comment instead.

#Documents

The menu bar holds everything (Edit, Insert, Format, Table) and the toolbar under it the common part: undo, headings, fonts and sizes, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, colours, links, alignment, bulleted, numbered and check lists, quotes, code blocks, dividers, tables and pictures. The usual shortcuts work: Ctrl/⌘ + B, I, U, Z. With the caret in a table, the toolbar also offers adding and removing rows and columns.

Type ``` at the start of a line for a code block, or ```python to name its language; the block is highlighted and its language can be changed from the block itself. Three Enters at its end, or ↓ on its last line, leave it.

Selecting text brings up a small bar over it, below it on a phone: text style, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code, colours, link, comment and clear formatting. It acts on the selection without taking the caret away, and Esc puts it away until the next selection.

Markdown works as you type it: # to ### and a space for headings, -, 1. or [ ] for lists, > for a quote, --- for a divider, **bold**, *italic*, `code`, ~~strikethrough~~ and [text](address) for a link. Markdown pasted as plain text (a README, notes, an assistant's answer) arrives formatted, tables and code blocks included. A page or a document pastes with its own formatting as before; paste with Ctrl/⌘ + Shift + V, or inside a code block, to keep the Markdown as typed.

#Sheets

Click a cell to select it. Drag, Shift+click or Shift+arrow keys select a range, and the box left of the formula bar names it (B2, A1:C4); type a cell or a range there and press Enter to go to it. Click a column letter or a row number to select the whole column or row.

Typing on a selected cell replaces what it holds; Enter, F2 or a double-click edits it in place instead. Enter writes the cell and moves down, Tab moves right, and Escape leaves the cell as it was. On a phone, tap a cell to select it and tap it again to edit it.

Type = to start a formula. The cell shows its result and the bar above the grid shows what you typed. While you type, the functions matching the name so far are listed with their arguments, and Tab or Enter picks one. Right after =, (, a comma or an operator, clicking a cell, or dragging across a range, puts its reference into the formula.

A formula can refer to a cell (A1), a range (A1:B10), a whole column or row (A:A, 3:3), and in a workbook to another sheet (Sheet2!A1, 'Q1 figures'!B2:B9). A $ keeps a column or row fixed when the formula is copied: $A$1, $A1, A$1. Arithmetic, comparisons, & for joining text and these functions work:

ABS, AND, AVERAGE, AVERAGEIF, AVERAGEIFS, CEILING, CHOOSE, CONCAT, CONCATENATE, COUNT, COUNTA, COUNTBLANK, COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, DATE, DATEVALUE, DAY, DAYS, EDATE, EOMONTH, EXACT, EXP, FALSE, FIND, FLOOR, HLOOKUP, HOUR, IF, IFERROR, IFNA, IFS, INDEX, INT, ISBLANK, ISERR, ISERROR, ISLOGICAL, ISNA, ISNUMBER, ISTEXT, LARGE, LEFT, LEN, LN, LOG, LOG10, LOWER, MATCH, MAX, MAXIFS, MEDIAN, MID, MIN, MINIFS, MINUTE, MOD, MONTH, NA, NOT, NOW, OR, PI, POWER, PRODUCT, PROPER, RAND, RANDBETWEEN, RANK, RANK.EQ, REPLACE, REPT, RIGHT, ROUND, ROUNDDOWN, ROUNDUP, SEARCH, SECOND, SIGN, SMALL, SQRT, STDEV, STDEV.P, STDEV.S, SUBSTITUTE, SUM, SUMIF, SUMIFS, SUMPRODUCT, SWITCH, TEXT, TEXTJOIN, TODAY, TRIM, TRUE, TRUNC, UPPER, VALUE, VAR, VAR.P, VAR.S, VLOOKUP, WEEKDAY, XLOOKUP, XOR and YEAR.

Dates are numbers of days, as in Excel: a cell holding 2026-03-14 is a date, =A1+7 is a week later and shows as a date too. TEXT writes a number or a date with a format code such as 0.00, #,##0, 0%, yyyy-mm-dd, dd/mm/yyyy, d mmm yyyy or hh:mm AM/PM. The conditions of COUNTIF, SUMIFS and the like are written as in Excel: ">5", "<>done", "ap*".

Errors read as they do elsewhere: #DIV/0!, #VALUE!, #REF!, #NAME? for an unknown function or name, #N/A, #NUM!, and #CYCLE! for a formula that depends on itself.

Copy, cut and paste go through the clipboard as tab-separated text, so cells move between Penombre, Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice. Copying takes the values; pasting cells copied in the same sheet keeps their formulas, with their references shifted to where they land, while a cut moves them unchanged. One copied cell pasted over a selection fills all of it, and a paste that runs past the last row or column grows the sheet. Fill down and Fill right copy the first row or column of the selection over the rest the same way.

Inserting or deleting rows and columns rewrites every formula that points past them, on every sheet, as Excel does; a reference to a deleted cell becomes #REF!. Sorting moves formulas as they are written.

Data sorts by the selected column, numbers first, then text, blanks last; the first row stays put while Header row is on, and it stays on screen as you scroll. Freeze first column keeps column A on screen too. In a workbook both are the sheet's frozen panes and are saved with it. Each column letter opens sorting and the column commands; drag its right edge to resize it, or double-click the edge to fit its contents. Right-click the grid, or long-press it on a phone, for cutting, copying, pasting, inserting and deleting. Find jumps to the next cell holding the text, results included. Edit undoes and redoes every change, up to a hundred steps back.

KeysWhat they do
Arrows, Tab, Shift+TabMove
Shift+arrowsExtend the selection
Ctrl/⌘+arrowsJump to the edge of the data
Ctrl/⌘+ASelect everything
Shift+Space, Ctrl+SpaceSelect the row, the column
Enter, F2Edit the cell
Enter, Shift+Enter while editingWrite and move down, up
Alt+Enter while editingStart a new line inside the cell
Escape while editingLeave the cell as it was
Delete, BackspaceClear the selection
Ctrl/⌘+C, X, VCopy, cut, paste
Ctrl/⌘+D, RFill down, fill right
Ctrl/⌘+Z, Shift+Z, YUndo, redo
Page Up, Page DownMove by a screen
Home, EndGo to the start or end of the row

A workbook (.xlsx) shows its sheets as tabs under the grid: click one to open it, + to add one, and the arrow on the open tab to rename or delete it, or double-click its name to rename it. A CSV is a single sheet and has no tabs.

#Formatting

In a workbook, the toolbar over the grid and the Format menu style the selected cells: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text and fill colour, font and size, horizontal and vertical alignment, text wrapping, borders (all, outer, inner, one side, or none, in a chosen style and colour) and merging cells, all at once or row by row, or splitting them again. Merging keeps only the top-left value, as Excel does. Clear formatting puts the cells back to the workbook's default, and the brush copies the selection's formats onto the next cells you select.

Number formats change how a number shows, never what the cell holds: automatic, plain number, number, thousands separator, currency (the symbol of your language, more under More currencies), accounting, percent, scientific, date, time, date and time, duration and plain text. Custom format takes an Excel format code (#,##0.00, 0.0%, [h]:mm, "$"#,##0;("$"#,##0)) and previews it on the selected cell. The decimal buttons add or remove a decimal place. The formula bar always shows the value as typed.

Formats move with their cells when you copy and paste within the workbook, fill, sort, or insert and delete rows and columns, and undo covers them. A paste from another application brings values only and keeps the formats already there.

A file from Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice opens with its formatting, theme colours included, and keeps it through a save: a new combination of formats is added to the file's own list rather than renumbering it, so conditional formats and charts that refer to those styles are unaffected. A CSV holds values only, so the formatting tools are off there.

Rows keep one height: wrapped text, or text larger than the row, is cut at the row's edge rather than making the row taller, and a row height set in the file is not shown. Text is clipped at its cell's edge rather than running on over empty neighbours; Wrap in Text wrapping wraps it instead, and is what Excel and Google Sheets read back. A font the file names is used when the browser has it, the app's font otherwise; none is downloaded. Text with no colour of its own on a dark fill is drawn white, as Google Sheets does.

#Column widths, tables and pictures

A workbook opens with its column widths and its frozen panes, and saves them back: resizing a column writes that column's width into the file and leaves the others as they were, and Header row and Freeze first column are the sheet's frozen row and column. A file that freezes more than one row or column shows the first one frozen and keeps the rest until you change it. Widths are converted as Excel does with a 7-pixel digit (Calibri 11, close to Arial 10), so a workbook whose default font is much larger or smaller comes out narrower or wider than in Excel. A CSV has no such settings: widths and the header row last as long as the page.

An Excel table draws with its table style under the cells' own formatting: header row, banded rows or columns, first and last column, totals row and borders. A cell's own fill, colour or border wins where it has one, as in Excel. A style defined in the file, which is what Google Sheets exports, draws as written; the built-in styles of Excel (Light, Medium and Dark, Medium 2 being the default) are not in the file and are approximated from the theme's accent colours, so they have the right shape and colour but not every shade. Inserting or deleting rows and columns moves or grows the table, and saving keeps its range and its column names in line with the header row, which Excel checks; deleting all of a table's cells removes the table.

A hyperlinked cell keeps its own font, colour and underline; one without a colour of its own is underlined in the app's link colour. The links themselves are left in the file as they are.

Pictures in a sheet, including the charts Google Sheets exports as pictures, float over the cells where the file puts them. They are shown only: they cannot be moved or deleted here, inserting rows does not move them, and saving leaves them exactly as they were.

KeysWhat they do
Ctrl/⌘+B, I, UBold, italic, underline
Ctrl/⌘+5, Alt+Shift+5Strike through
Ctrl/⌘+Shift+1Number with thousands separator
Ctrl/⌘+Shift+2, 3Time, date
Ctrl/⌘+Shift+4, 5, 6Currency, percent, scientific
Ctrl/⌘+Shift+L, E, RAlign left, centre, right
Ctrl/⌘+Shift+7Outer border
Ctrl/⌘+\Clear formatting

#Charts

A workbook's charts float over its cells, where Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice put them, and follow the cells they plot: change a value, or a formula's result, and the chart redraws. Column, bar, line, area, pie, doughnut and scatter charts are drawn with their title, legend, axis titles, axis limits, grid lines, data labels and the series' own colours. Hover a bar, a point or a slice, or tap it on a phone, to read its value.

Insert → Chart makes one from the selection, or from the block of filled cells around the selected cell. As in Google Sheets, a first row of text names the series, a first column of text labels the categories, and each column is a series unless the block is wider than it is tall. The chart editor opens beside the grid (under it on a phone) and changes:

  • the type, and for columns, bars, lines and areas whether they stack, side by side, stacked or stacked to 100%;
  • the data range, and whether the series run down the columns or along the rows;
  • the title, the legend's position, data labels and line markers;
  • the axis titles, the value axis' minimum and maximum, and its grid lines;
  • each series' colour (each slice's, for a pie), or Automatic.

Click a chart to pick it. Drag it to move it and its corner to resize it; both snap to the cell edges when you let go. With a chart picked, the arrow keys move it a cell at a time, Delete removes it, Ctrl/⌘+C then V pastes a copy, and the buttons on it edit, duplicate and delete it. On a phone, tap a chart to pick it before dragging it, so a swipe over a chart still scrolls the sheet. Edit → Undo undoes chart changes like any other.

Inserting or deleting rows and columns moves a chart's references as it moves formulas, and a chart moves with the cell it is anchored to. Renaming a sheet renames it in the references; deleting it breaks them, and the chart shows what the file last recorded.

Saving writes charts back into the .xlsx as Excel charts:

  • a chart you did not touch keeps its part byte for byte, fonts, effects and all; one you only moved or resized keeps it too, under a new anchor;
  • a chart whose references moved with inserted rows keeps everything but the references;
  • a chart you changed in the chart editor has only what you changed rewritten: its fonts, effects and number formats stay. Changing a pie into a line or another type that is not a sibling (column and bar are) writes the chart anew, with default fonts;
  • a new chart, or a new series, is saved with the colours it showed here, so Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice show the same ones. Automatic gives a series back the palette's colour for its place.

Combined charts, 3-D charts, trend lines, error bars, secondary axes, radar, bubble, stock and surface charts, and the types Excel 2016 added (waterfall, tree map, funnel and the like) are drawn as closely as the editor can and marked as such, or as a placeholder, and saved untouched. They can be moved, resized and deleted, not edited. A sheet's PDF export draws its charts under its table.

A workbook's list validations (Data validation → List in Excel, Google Sheets' dropdowns) show as chips: the value in a rounded pill in its colour, with a chevron. Click the chevron, or press Alt+↓, to pick from the list, which you can search. Typing into the cell lists the matching items too; ↑, ↓ and Enter pick one. A value that is not in the list gets a red flag in the cell's corner, or is refused with a message when the dropdown rejects invalid input. The list can be written out (Low,Medium,High) or read from a range, on the same sheet or another (Lists!A1:A9), and follows what that range holds.

Select two or more cells of one column holding text and Penombre offers Convert to dropdown under the selection. It lists every distinct value, the most frequent first, the same text in another case counted once, each in a colour of its own. Not now hides the offer for that range until the file is opened again. A column of numbers or formulas is never offered.

Data → Dropdown, or the cell's right-click menu, opens the dropdown editor on the cell's dropdown, or makes one over the selection. In it you set the range it applies to, add, rename and remove items, give each item a colour, and choose whether other values are refused. Renaming an item renames the cells that held it. Every change is one step of Edit → Undo.

Excel limits a written-out list to 255 characters with no commas in its items; the editor refuses an item that breaks either rule, and a longer list belongs in a range. The In-cell dropdown setting of Excel is honoured: a list saved without it shows its chips without the chevron.

The colours are saved as conditional formatting on the range of the dropdown, one "cell value equals" rule per coloured item, so Excel and LibreOffice colour the cells too. Google Sheets does not export its chip colours at all: a sheet exported from it opens with neutral chips until you colour them here. Rules Penombre wrote are marked as its own, and a block on the same range made only of such rules is read as the colours of the dropdown; every other conditional format, and every other kind of validation (whole numbers, dates, custom formulas), is saved exactly as the file had it.

#Conditional formatting

A workbook's conditional formatting is drawn: rules comparing a cell's value (equal, between, greater than and the rest), on its text (contains, begins with, ends with), on blanks and errors, custom formulas the editor can calculate, and two- and three-colour scales. Rules apply in the file's order of priority, and Stop if true is honoured. Data bars, icon sets and the other rule types are kept in the file but not drawn. Conditional formats cannot be edited here, and they stay where the file put them when you insert or delete rows and columns.

#Presentations

New → Presentation opens a gallery of ten templates — Midnight, Paper, Bold, Aurora, Swiss, Forest, Sunset, Blueprint, Pastel and Noir — each drawn with its title slide and three of its layouts. Pick one, give the deck a name and it opens in the slide editor as a real PowerPoint file (.pptx): the theme colours, the fonts, the master and eleven layouts are all inside it, so PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides and LibreOffice open it as the template looks.

Every template carries the same layouts: title, section header, title and content, two columns, comparison, picture with caption, quote, big number, agenda, closing and blank. Add slide under the slide rail starts a slide from any of them, and Layout moves the current slide to another, carrying its text along.

#Editing slides

  • Text — double-click a box, or select it and press Enter, to type in it. The toolbar sets the font, size, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, colour, alignment, bullets, numbering and line spacing, for the selected characters or, with no text selected, the whole box. Tab and Shift+Tab change a bullet's level. Text that overflows a template's placeholder shrinks to fit, as it does in PowerPoint.
  • Shapes and lines — rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, triangles, stars, arrows, callouts and more, with fill and outline colour, outline weight and corner radius. Double-click a shape to write in it.
  • Pictures — insert, paste or drop them on the slide. They are scaled to at most 1600 pixels and stored inside the presentation. Double-click an empty picture placeholder to fill it.
  • Drawing — the pen and the highlighter draw freehand with a mouse, a pen or a finger; the eraser removes whole strokes. Drawings are saved as ordinary shapes, so PowerPoint shows and edits them too.
  • Arranging — drag to move, the handles to resize (Shift keeps the proportions) and rotate. Objects snap to the slide's centre and edges and to each other; hold Alt to place freely. The Arrange menu aligns, distributes, stacks, groups and ungroups; arrow keys nudge, Shift by more.
  • Slides — the rail reorders them by dragging (on a phone, from the grip) and its menu duplicates, hides and deletes them. A hidden slide is skipped when presenting.
  • Speaker notes sit under the slide and are saved as PowerPoint's own notes pages.

Ctrl+Z/⌘Z undoes, and copy, cut and paste work within a slide, between slides and between presentations.

#Themes

Change theme moves an existing deck — one made here or uploaded — onto any of the templates. Every slide goes to the matching layout of the new theme and its titles and placeholders take the new look. Text, pictures and drawings you placed yourself stay where they are, and formatting you set by hand on a word or a shape stays too, as it would in PowerPoint.

#PowerPoint compatibility

Opening a .pptx shows its slides with their masters, layouts, theme colours and fonts. Saving rewrites only what you changed: a shape you did not touch is written back exactly as it was, and one you moved keeps everything but its position. Tables, charts, SmartArt, video and PowerPoint's own ink are shown and can be moved, resized and copied, but not edited; they survive untouched.

The templates use fonts that come with Windows, macOS or Microsoft Office — Century Gothic, Georgia, Gill Sans MT, Arial Black, Trebuchet MS, Palatino Linotype, Calibri, Rockwell, Courier New and Verdana. Where one is missing, PowerPoint substitutes its default font and the editor the closest match it finds, so a line may wrap a little differently.

#Presenting

Present fills the screen with the slides, hidden ones skipped. Arrow keys, the space bar, a click or a swipe move between slides, a number then Enter jumps to that slide and Escape returns to editing. View → Presenter view shows the current slide, the next one, the speaker notes and a timer, and can open the slides in a second window for the audience, kept in step as you advance.

On a phone the menus and the toolbar fit the width of the screen, and the slide rail runs along the bottom of the slide editor.

#Plain text files

New → Text file asks for a name and opens an empty file in a plain text editor, for configuration files and the like: name it with its extension (nginx.conf, .env, notes.txt). It saves the same way as the other editors.

Existing text files keep opening in the read-only preview. Edit in a file's right-click menu opens it in the text editor; it is offered for code and configuration files, .txt and .log, and files with no extension. A file that turns out to hold binary data is refused rather than opened, since saving it back as text would destroy it.

#The name follows the title

A document's file name tracks its own heading: retitle the first heading of a document (or of a Markdown deck's first slide) and the file is renamed to match, keeping its extension, the next time it saves. Sheets and PowerPoint presentations are never renamed this way.

This stops the moment you rename the file yourself. Once the name and the heading disagree, the name is yours and editing the heading no longer touches it. Characters a file name cannot hold (/, :, ?, *, ", <, >, |) become spaces, and a very long heading is cut to 120 characters.

#Notes

Any file can carry notes — see Sharing and collaboration and, for notes pinned to a moment in a track or video, Media and notes.

This guide lives in the project repo: edit it there, and this page follows within a day.