A document is not a single canvas. It is a collection of tabs, each with its own canvas, elements, layout, theme, and background. A new document usually starts with one tab, and you add more whenever a piece of work deserves its own space. The tab bar sits along the bottom of the editor, and the active tab fills the canvas area above it.
What a tab is
Each tab is a self-contained canvas inside the document. A tab carries its own elements, its own theme and background pattern, and an optional lock, all independent of the other tabs around it. Common ways people split work across tabs:
- An Overview tab with the high-level picture, and detail tabs behind it.
- One tab per system, team, or phase of a project.
- A scratch tab for ideas you are not ready to file yet.
Each tab also has its own mode (Diagram, Draw, Workshop, Pages or Plan), the same for everyone on it, chosen on its start while it is empty. The small icon at the start of a tab's name shows it.
Adding a tab
Press the + button at the end of the tab bar, or run Create New Tab from the command palette (Cmd / Ctrl + K). The new tab:
- is named
Tab 2,Tab 3and so on, after the number of tabs in the document; - takes the theme, background and font of the tab you were on, so it matches the work around it;
- opens in the same mode as the tab you were on: made from a Pages tab it is a Pages tab, from a Draw tab a Draw tab, and from a Plan tab a Plan tab;
- starts on that mode's own start, such as Start Making Pages or Start Planning, so you can begin from a template or close it to keep the tab blank.
Duplicate in the tab menu makes a copy instead: it is named after the original with "copy" on the end, sits right after it, and is a separate tab with its own elements from then on.
Naming and reordering tabs
Tabs start with default names like Tab 1 and Tab 2, and you can rename any of them:
- Double-click the active tab's name to edit it inline. Enter or clicking away saves, Escape cancels, and an empty name keeps the old one.
- Rename in the tab menu (and Rename Tab in the command palette) opens the same editor.
- Auto-rename on first edit: while a tab still has its default name, editing the label of its first element renames the tab to match. This only happens once, so later edits leave a renamed tab alone.
Tab names are capped at 60 characters. Runs of spaces and line breaks collapse to one, and anything longer is cut at the last whole word with an ellipsis, so a paragraph typed into a sticky can't turn into an unreadable tab.
Drag a tab left or right to reorder it. A blue bar shows where it will land: drop on the left half of a tab to land before it, the right half to land after it. Reordering only moves the tab in the list, it never touches the content on any tab.
Drag a tab up off the bar to the right edge of the screen instead, and it opens beside the tab you're on: see Side by Side Tabs.
The tab menu
Click the ⋯ button on the active tab, or right-click any tab (which switches to it first), to open its menu. Right-clicking an empty spot on the canvas opens the same menu, with Paste moved to a row of its own at the top. On a phone it opens as a sheet from the bottom of the screen.
Along the top sits a row of quick actions: Rename, Duplicate, Paste (greyed out until you have copied something), Side by Side (on a large enough window; Close Side by Side while two tabs are open), Lock Tab and Delete. Below them, everything else is a full-width row, in groups split by a line:
- Add to Folder and Add to Document.
- Import, Export, and Clear, which removes every element from the tab after a confirmation (undo brings them back).
To tidy a tab's layout, search for Auto Layout or Auto-align in the command palette. See Cleaning Up a Tab.
The session tools (timer, vote and poll) are not in this menu: they have their own buttons in the bottom bar.
Deleting a tab
Choose Delete in the tab menu. The tab goes straight away, and Undo brings it back. Once you reload or leave the document it is gone, unless another document also holds it (Add to Document), so export or duplicate anything you might want later. A few things to know:
-
Delete asks first only when it does something Undo can't take back: a form's tab deletes the form's link with it, and a board or sheet that forms send their responses to stops them taking responses.
-
A document always keeps at least one tab, so Delete is greyed out on the last one.
-
A locked tab can't be deleted until you unlock it.
-
Links on other tabs that pointed at the deleted tab are removed with it.
-
If the tab is also in another document, it is only removed from this one.
Share links
On a share link for a Viewer or a Participant, and on any link scoped to one tab, you can still click between tabs, but the + button, the tab menu, renaming and drag-to-reorder are all hidden. Only an Editor with a link to the whole document changes its tabs.
More with tabs
Each tab also carries its own menu of actions, covered in their own guides:
- Tab Folders group related tabs under one named chip so a long tab bar stays readable.
- Side by Side Tabs puts two tabs on screen at once, each live, with the toolbars following you between them.
- Linking Across Tabs turns any element into a jump point to another tab.
- Add a Tab to Another Document shares a tab into a different document: it is the same tab in both places, not a copy, so edits appear everywhere it lives.
- Importing and Exporting move a tab's contents in and out as a file.
- Locking a Tab makes a whole canvas read-only.
- Cleaning Up a Tab tidies a tab's layout in one click.
A shared reference tab such as a glossary can live in more than one document at once with Add to Document. Editing it in one place updates it everywhere.
Was this article helpful?