Commands: macro.list, macro.get, macro.save (a macro object or its
fields; replace defaults to true), macro.delete, macro.rename and
macro.record, beside macro.run, macro.check and macro.debug. Saving,
renaming and deleting are undoable. The catalog gains View › Macros ›
Record Macro (parity 275 / 291).
The recorder builds on the recording buffer of top-level commands, so
nested commands are never recorded twice and trimming the journal loses
nothing. When it stops, commands a macro may not run are left out and
listed; a macro run while recording is replaced by its steps when it
has no inputs, and an Automate script run by the script's steps;
sheet.activate and selection.set steps are added where the sheet or
selection changed between commands without one, and runs of them
collapse to the last. With relative references (the default) the
selection when recording started is the example input: references in
and near it become tokens (Input.col(2), Input.rows(2..),
Input.col(2).below, Input.row(4).right, Input.cell(r,c)), exact
references in formulas become {{...}}, and the input's width, header
and column types are inferred from the example. A recording replayed on
a longer block of data writes in the matching places.
A toggle such as Bold is recorded with the state it set ("on": true),
as Excel records Bold = True, so a replay sets it instead of flipping
it again.
Automate scripts are unchanged: automate.* keep their commands,
parameters, storage and results, and View › Macros still lists the
scripts and a preserved VBA project.
macro.debug runs a macro one step at a time. start checks the macro as
macro.run does (policy, approval, inputs, footprint and output rule)
and pauses before the first step; step runs one step; continue runs to
the next breakpoint; runTo runs to a chosen step path, stopping at
breakpoints on the way; stop ends the run and keeps its changes or
rolls them back; state reports where it is. Breakpoints are the steps'
own flags plus a list of paths given with any action (breakpointsOnly
makes the list replace the flags), and they stop in every pass of a
Repeat.
The run lives on the session between calls, inside an undo group that
spans them (group_begin and group_end), so a debugged run is one undo
step "Run Macro: <name>", as a normal run is. A failing step ends the
run and rolls it back; so does a Stop step that asks for a rollback.
While a macro is being debugged, edits of the workbooks the run touched
(its own, and any other a step changed) are refused at the top level
with "Finish or stop the macro first"; other workbooks stay editable,
and selecting and queries still work. Every answer gives the next
step's path, kind, command, parameters as they would run now (tokens
resolved), the Repeat pass, the parameters of the step that just ran,
the steps executed and the cells changed so far. Each action gets its
own time limit.
If a command panics while a step runs, the session's panic guard rolls
the debugged run back as well, so its undo group never stays open.
footprint always ran its dry run with the default 60 second limit, so
macro.run with timeLimit 5 could run for over two minutes (a dry run,
then another after a shift) and fail with "ran longer than 60 seconds".
footprint now takes the run's clock and limit. make_way starts the
run's clock before the dry runs, so the checks and the run share one
limit, and macro.check takes timeLimit too.
macro.run runs a macro as one undo step ("Run Macro: <name>"); an error
at any step rolls everything back and names the step and its path (3,
2.1 inside a Repeat, 4.then.1 inside an If). It works in four parts:
- Policy (macro_policy). File, app, window, automate and macro commands
and Undo and Redo never run in a macro. Reading or writing files
(data.getData, data.fromTextCsv, insert.picture, Page Layout
Background, or an export with a path) needs the command in the
macro's permissions and the person's approval. A macro in a workbook
opened from a file asks before it runs. Approval holds for the
session until the macro's content changes; it is asked for with the
new EngineError::Approve and given with approve: true. A step that
would open a dialog or a web page fails instead.
- Inputs. Each declared input is bound (given, its default, or the
selection for the first one), whole columns shrink to the used range,
and the shape and column types are checked with messages that name
the cells: "Input column 2 (Amount) must hold numbers; C4 holds text".
- Footprint. Unless the macro may overwrite, it first runs in dry-run
mode on the real workbook inside an undo group that is rolled back,
with the session's clipboard, journal, windows and the document's
trust put back. CellStore::diff on every sheet, plus the cells
commands wrote (DocState::touched), sheets and objects, gives what it
would write outside its inputs; cells that only recalculated do not
count. Writing over data, deleting a sheet or deleting an object is a
conflict: ask (the new EngineError::Confirm, so programmatic runs fail
unless they pass onConflict or overwrite), fail, overwrite, or shift
the data down or right with Insert Cells and check again. A step that
would fail, for example past the edge of the sheet, fails the run
before anything changes. File steps and Solver stop the dry run early
and are reported.
- Steps run on a machine with an explicit frame stack: Repeat over the
rows or columns of a range with Row or Column bound, If on one cell
with Excel's comparisons, and Stop, which keeps the changes or rolls
them back. A run executes at most 100,000 steps within a time limit
(60 s by default, timeLimit to change; the web build has no clock, so
only the step limit applies there).
macro.check reports the bound inputs, the output anchor, the approval
needed, the footprint and the conflicts without changing anything;
nothing from an unapproved macro runs, not even as a dry run.
The item store read, listed and removed every workbook-scope name of the `_gc_<key>_<n>` shape,
visible or not, so saving an item removed a person's own visible name that happened to look like
one. Items are the hidden names the store writes; a legacy `_sc_<key>` name still reads. A visible
`_gc_` name is left alone by every operation, and writing an item that would need that name is
refused before anything changes: a hidden name beside it with the same name is the one an xlsx
file drops, so the item would be lost on save.
Paste Special › Formats copies cell styles and merged areas. It copies no conditional formats,
formulas or validation, so it carries nothing that runs. It still marked the destination
FromFile: copying a formula cell from an opened file and pasting its formats into a new workbook
made that workbook ask before running its own active content.
Formats pastes now count as passive, like values, column widths and notes. The comment and
docs/architecture.md no longer say that pasted formats carry trust.
execute treated any change in the group epoch as 'the group owns the step'. A command that edited outside its own group, or whose group rolled back before it edited, left that edit with no undo step or only part of it. Now only a group that was open before the command (or is still open after) owns the step; a command that opened and closed its own groups replaces their steps with one entry for the command.
A linked paste writes formulas even when it pastes values, but the values exception skipped the trust update, so a Local workbook stayed Local after linking to a FromFile one. The exception now applies only to unlinked pastes.
GridCraft keeps workbook data in hidden defined names so it travels
inside the xlsx file. The existing items write one name holding one
string literal, which past Excel's 255-character literal and
8,192-character formula limits gives a file Excel does not accept.
cmd/stash.rs stores an item `key` as hidden workbook-scope names
_gc_<key>_0, _gc_<key>_1, ..., each a formula of string literals of at
most 255 characters (UTF-16 units, as Excel counts them) joined with &,
at most 8,192 characters per name. Reading concatenates the chunks in
order and stops at a gap; it also accepts the older single _sc_<key>
name. Names are matched case-insensitively and only at workbook scope.
Keys are limited to letters, digits, _ and ., items to 4,194,304
characters, and junk around or inside the literals, duplicate or
out-of-order chunks, non-JSON and over-deep JSON all read safely.
keys(prefix) lists the stored items that start with a prefix.
Custom views, scripts, the watch list and scenarios keep their current
storage; nothing reads or writes the new names yet.
docs/architecture.md describes the engine building blocks added in this
series: undo groups, the recording buffer, document trust and this
storage.
Active content such as macros must not run only because a workbook was
opened. DocState gets a trust state: Local for workbooks made in the
session (new workbooks and samples) and FromFile for anything opened
with file.open. Active content in a FromFile workbook asks before it
runs. A second window on a workbook shares its trust.
The clipboard carries the trust of its source document. Pasting
formulas, formats (conditional formats hold formulas) or validation
from a FromFile workbook into another workbook makes that workbook
FromFile too; pasting values, column widths or notes carries nothing
active and changes nothing. Sheet moves and copies stay inside one
workbook, so its trust is unchanged. document.inspect reports the trust.
Session::grouped(label, f) runs f as one undo step on the active
document. On success the group leaves exactly one undo entry holding the
workbook from before the group; on error it restores the workbook,
selection, undo and redo stacks as they were and returns the error.
group_begin, group_end and group_rollback do the same across separate
calls, for an action that runs one step per call.
While a group is open on a document, undoable commands on it add no
undo steps of their own, so a long group neither grows the history nor
pushes older entries past the undo limit, and Undo and Redo are
disabled there. Groups nest: the outermost one makes the step, and a
failing inner group rolls back only its own changes. Closing a document
drops its groups, and a command that panics drops the groups it opened.
history.list reports whether a group is open.
Insert Copied Cells folds its nested steps into one undo step by
counting revisions; inside a group the nested steps push no entries, so
it now leaves the history alone there instead of removing entries from
before the group.
Templates hide grouped columns as width="0" hidden="1". Show Detail and the level buttons only cleared hidden, so the columns stayed invisible; they now reset a zero size, as Unhide does.
range.fill parsed the input once at the active cell, then put back the old
style of every target that already held a cell, so 5%, $5, 3/4/2026 or
=DATE(...) lost their automatic format there (0.05, 5, 46085), and empty
targets took the active cell's style. Each target now gets what
input_to_cell gives for it (parsed once per distinct style), as typing does.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Undo stored the selection at the moment of undoing (wherever the user had
clicked) in the redo entry, so redo jumped back there instead of to the
cells it changed. The redo entry now keeps the undone step's selection.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Found while testing crates/engine/src/cmd/data.rs:550 (custom_ok, used from apply_filter at :623)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Haiku 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
file.open takes {csvAsText: true}: a CSV, TSV or TXT file opens with every field as the text
it holds, with no number, date or boolean conversion, so identifiers such as GTINs, SKUs and
ZIP codes keep their digits and leading zeros and save back unchanged. The default is
unchanged. The CsvOptions.parse_values switch already existed in the reader.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The grid's look() and print's cell_look() layered a rule's fill, font and
borders onto the cell style but not its num_fmt, so a cell under a rule with a
number format kept its own. Take the rule's code when it isn't General (in a
differential style General means "not set", as layer_under treats it).
Print also re-formatted every non-General cell from its own style through
display::cell_text; format with the look's code instead, through a new
display::value_text_as that value_text now calls (CSV/Text output unchanged).
Show Formulas keeps cell_text.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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