Moving Pages

What does it mean to move a page? When I talk about moving pages, I'm referring to moving it within the outline hierarchy of your Notebook Tab.

Pages Can Move Up, Down, In and Out

Depending on its location each page can be moved up, down, in or out. I'm going to take a moment to define exactly what I mean when I use these terms.

Moving Up or Down

While some pages in the outline hierarchy of your Notebook tab might be indented or outdented compared to others, notice that each page name is on a separate line.

Moving a page up, means moving it up one line. Moving down means moving it down one line. Up and down in this context have little relationship to outline levels in the hierarchy except that as you move a page up or down, its outline level may be adjusted to match that of the pages it is passing by. This may sound confusing, but it's fairly intuitive once you try it.

Moving In or Out

Moving a page in means that it will be indented, or moved one tab to the right. Moving out means that it will be moved one tab to the left. Each indent position corresponds to a different level in the outline hierarchy.

Of course, the normal rules of outlining are enforced. An indented page can only be indented beneath a parent page and all child pages of the parent page will be at the same indent position exactly one tab position to the right of the parent page.

In the screen captures below you can see that sometimes when moving in or out the page may jump down a few lines in order to be at the proper indent level. In the Moved Out screen shot below, the page was moved down, below its original siblings and at the same level as its original parent.

Moving Pages With Hotkeys

Hotkey	Shift+Up (move page up)
Hotkey	Shift+Down (move page down)
Hotkey	Shift+Right (move page in)
Hotkey	Shift+Left (move page out)
Right-click menu	Page -> Move Page -> Up
Right-click menu	Page -> Move Page -> Down
Right-click menu	Page -> Move Page -> In
Right-click menu	Page -> Move Page -> Out

With an understand of the the terms up, down, in and out from the previous section, moving pages with hotkeys is easy. Just hold down the shift key and press one of the arrow keys. Up arrow moves the page up, down moves down, right move in and left moves out.

Try this yourself to see just how easy it is. Create five or ten pages in a test notebook and move them all around using the hotkey sequences. It's fun!

Moving Pages With the Mouse (Drag and Drop)

In addition to hotkey support, you can simply move pages around using the mouse by dragging a page to a new location. Select the page you want to move by left-clicking on it. Continue to hold the left mouse button down while moving the mouse and dragging to a different location in the hierarchy. As you drag you will see a drop marker appear indicating exactly where the page will be dropped. To drop, simply release the left mouse button and the page will be inserted at the new location.

The Drop Marker

The drop marker allows you to see the insert location while dragging a page to a new location. In the screen captures below you can see how the marker appears for a few different scenarios. Notice the left edge of the marker line. As you drag, the left edge aligns with the indent level at which the page will be dropped.

Insert Levels

There are a couple of unique situations worth discussing in a little more detail. Notice the second screen capture above, Drop below Free write. If the page is dropped at this location where will it end up in the hierarchy? It would appear below Marta and at the same indent level as Free write. Remember the left edge of the drop marker tells us the level at which the page will be dropped. In order to insert a page at the same level as Free write and below it, the dropped page must appear below any and all children of Free write.

Now observe the third screen capture above, Drop above Characters, the drop marker is still between Free write and Characters as it is in the second screen capture, but the left edge of the marker is now aligned with the indent position of Characters. Therefore, the page will be dropped at the same indent level as Characters and above it. The dropped page will become the first child of Free write.

Forbidden Drops

Perhaps it is obvious, but I'll say it anyway, a page cannot be dropped on itself or on a child of itself.

Mouse Positioning and Child Drops

If you are very clever, then you have already been wondering how to drag the mouse to indicate that a page should be dropped as a child. The last screen capture above, Drop as child of Matilda, indicates that dropping as a child of a page is possible. But how do we do that?

When dragging over an existing page, the position of the mouse with respect to the name text is important. What do I mean by this? In the image below, the page name Matilda is separated into three zones:

• top half of the name text (yellow)
• bottom half of the name text (red)
• area to the right of the name text (green)

As you are dragging, the region where the mouse pointer is located determines the drop location. This may sound complicated, but remember the drop marker will always show you what the current drop location would be. The images below show you how the mouse position corresponds with the visible drop marker.

When the mouse pointer is over the text of the page name and in the upper half of the text, the drop marker will be drawn above that page and at the same indent level.

When the mouse pointer is over the text of the page name and in the bottom half of the text, the drop marker will be drawn below that page and at the same indent level.

When the mouse pointer is to the right of the page name, the drop marker will be drawn below that page and indented at the level of a child of that page.