Undo is one of those features that you do not notice when it works
and immediately miss when it does not. In a table editor, undo needs
to cover not just typed values but structural changes: adding and
removing rows and columns, merging and unmerging cells, changing
column types, and resizing columns.
The keyboard shortcut is what most users expect: Ctrl+Z on Windows
and Linux, Cmd+Z on Mac. The undo depth (how many steps back you can go) determines how safe it feels to experiment.
Tablesmit intercepts the browser's default undo behavior and replaces
it with a table-aware undo stack. Each action (typing in a cell, resizing a column, merging cells, adding a row) is recorded as a
discrete step. Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z undoes the most recent step. Ctrl+Y
or Cmd+Shift+Z redoes it.
The undo history persists for the duration of the browser session.
If you close the tab, the history is cleared. This is the honest
tradeoff of a client-side application with no user accounts. The
session state lives in the browser and does not persist between sessions.
For tables you are actively working on over multiple sessions, the
practical approach is to export to Excel after each significant edit.
The Excel file serves as your version history. You can open a previous
export to recover an earlier state.
Free, no account, MIT licensed. tablesmit.com
This post originally appeared on the Tablesmit Blog at tablesmit.com/blog/how-to-undo-table-editing-online. Tablesmit is a free, open source table builder. Export to PDF, Excel, LaTeX, CSV, PNG. No account required. Try it at tablesmit.com.
Top comments (0)