Selection and clipboard

Selection works on cells or on whole rows, in one range or several. Copy, paste, cut, clear and fill-down act on it the way a spreadsheet does, and every write goes through the same checks as typing.

Cells or rows

grid.SelectionMode = SelectionMode.Row;      // whole rows; the default is SelectionMode.Cell
view.WithRowSelector();                      // the thin selection lane on the left

In Cell mode a selection is one or more rectangles of cells; in Row mode it is whole rows. Api.Selection.Mode and the control's SelectionMode property are the same setting; ModeChanged reports a switch.

With the mouse and the keyboard

From code

var selection = grid.Api.Selection;

selection.Set(item: 0, column: 1);                     // one cell, also the current cell
selection.SetRange(0, 0, 9, 3);                        // a block: rows 0-9, columns 0-3
selection.BeginAdditionalRange(20, 0);                 // a second range, as with Ctrl+click
selection.ExtendTo(24, 3, keepExisting: true);         // keeps the first range
selection.SetSelectedItems(new[] { order });           // by item, whatever the sort order

object? current = selection.CurrentItem;
IReadOnlyList<object> items = selection.Items;         // the selected rows' items
selection.Changed += () => Log($"{selection.RowCount} rows selected");

Positions here are view rows and visible column indexes. When you know the item but not where the current sort put it, use SetSelectedItems or SetCurrentItem; Ranges and RowIntervals describe the selection as rectangles and as row intervals. Api.Events.SelectionChanged carries the current cell, the selected items and the ranges in one argument.

On the controls, SelectedItem, SelectedItems, CurrentItem and CurrentCell are bindable and two-way by default.

The selection footer

While a selection spans more than one cell, a footer under the grid says how much is selected and, when the selection covers summable cells, their sum. It can carry buttons: the grid draws them and reports the click, what they do is yours.

grid.Api.State.ShowSelectionFooter = true;
grid.Api.State.SelectionActions =
[
    new SelectionAction("Archive", FooterActionStyle.Outline, () => Archive(selection.Items)),
    new SelectionAction("Delete", FooterActionStyle.Danger, () => Log("delete")),
];

Copy, paste, cut

Paste reads tab-separated text — rows split on line breaks, columns on tabs — anchored at the top-left of the selection. A single value fills the whole selection; a block is written from the anchor and clipped at the grid's edge. Cells that are read-only, or that refuse the value, are skipped and keep theirs. The whole paste is one undo step.

Inside an open editor or a filter box, the same keys work on the text instead.

grid.Api.Commands.Copy();                       // Ctrl+C: tab-separated text
grid.Api.Commands.Copy(withHeaders: true);      // Ctrl+Shift+C: with the column captions
grid.Api.Commands.RequestPaste();               // Ctrl+V: the host reads the clipboard
grid.Api.Commands.Clear();                      // Delete: clears the editable cells

grid.Api.Events.SelectionOperationRejected += e =>
    Log($"{e.Operation} refused: {e.Reason}");

Some selections cannot be copied or pasted sensibly — several ranges of different shapes, overlapping target ranges, a selection beyond the copy limit. The grid then does nothing and raises SelectionOperationRejected with the operation (Copy, Paste, Clear) and the reason (IrregularMultiRangeSelection, IncompatibleTargetRanges, OverlappingTargetRanges, SelectionTooLarge).