Finding your place on a folio: go to a cell, keep the headers in sight

Every folio has a grid border: numbered columns along the top, lettered rows down the side. People use it to talk about a drawing — "the contactor in B13", "the report to 4-B7" — and QElectroTech uses it too, in cross-reference and folio-report labels.

This page covers two ways of using that grid while you work:

Going to a cell — type B13, or 4-B7 for a cell on another page, and the view zooms there.
Keeping the headers visible — when you zoom in, the column numbers and row letters stay at the edges of the view instead of scrolling away.

Both were asked for in issue #1034.

1. Going to a cell

Status: pending. This section describes PR #1036, not yet merged. Nothing here works until that lands — check the PR before trying any of this against your own build. This section will drop this notice once it does.

Press Ctrl+G (Édition → Atteindre un élément). The same popup that finds an element by its label also understands cell references:

Type the cell, for example B13.
The list offers Case B13 — or, for a cell on another page, Folio 4 (that page's title), case B7.
Press Enter. The view zooms onto that cell, with one cell of margin on every side, so you see the cell and its neighbours.

Escape closes the popup without moving anything.

What you can type

Case does not matter, and spaces are ignored.

You type	Goes to
`B13`	row B, column 13, on the page you are on
`4-B7`	row B, column 7, on page 4
`4B7`, `4 B7`, `p4b7`, `P4-B7`, `4/B7`	the same as `4-B7`
`AA3`	row AA — folios with more than 26 rows continue AA, AB, …

4-B7 is exactly what a cross-reference or a folio report prints with the default label %f-%l%c (see Linking wires across pages). So when a report arrow says 4-B7, you can type those four characters into Ctrl+G and land on its partner. If you changed the label format in your project, type the page number and the cell in this order anyway.

How the page number is counted

The page number is the folio's position in the project: the first tab is 1, the second is 2, and so on — the same number %f prints. It is not the folio's own label from the title block (%F), which you may have set to something like =A1 or 12a.

Move a folio, and its number changes — exactly as the cross-references in the project renumber when you do.

Columns that start at 0

If Configuration → Configurer QElectroTech → Général → Numéroter les colonnes de cartouche à partir de 0 is on, the first column is 0, and that is how you type it: B0 is the first cell of row B. The popup always reads cells the way your border draws them.

You typed	Why nothing is offered
`B40` on a folio with 17 columns	the cell is outside that folio's border
`9-B4` in a project with 3 folios	there is no page 9
`P3`	this is row P, column 3 on the current page. If the folio has no row P, nothing is offered. A page number always needs a cell after it — there is no "go to page 3" on its own

When a label and a cell look the same

An element labelled K1 and cell K1 can both match K1. The popup keeps the element first when its label matches exactly, so Enter still jumps to the element, as it did before this feature; the cell is listed second — press Down, then Enter.

Only an exact match counts. An element labelled -F1 does not match F1 exactly, so typing F1 lists the cell first and -F1 after it.

2. Keeping the row and column headers visible

Status: pending. This section describes PR #1038, not yet merged. Nothing here works until that lands — check the PR before trying any of this against your own build. This section will drop this notice once it does.

Zoom in on a large folio and the border's column numbers and row letters scroll off the screen, so you can no longer tell which cell you are looking at. Turn on Affichage → Garder les en-têtes visibles (View → Keep headers visible) and two bars appear along the top and the left of the drawing area:

The top bar repeats the column numbers, each one above its column.
The side bar repeats the row letters, each one beside its row.

They follow every scroll and zoom, so the labels always sit over the cells you are looking at.

How the bars behave


Default	Off. Turning it on is remembered the next time you start QElectroTech
Size	Always the same thickness on screen, whatever the zoom — they do not grow as you zoom in
Zoomed far out	When the cells get narrower than their numbers, only some labels are written: every 2nd, 5th, 10th… column (0, 5, 10, …) and every 2nd, 5th… row (A, F, K, …)
Beyond the folio	The bars are blank past the edge of the border
Folios with a header hidden	If a folio's properties hide its row or column header (Afficher les en-têtes under Lignes or Colonnes), the matching bar is hidden on that folio too
Dark colour scheme	The bars use the application's colours, so they follow a dark scheme
Turning it on or off	The drawing area shrinks or grows by the bars' thickness; the same part of the folio stays in the middle of the view

What they are not

The bars are part of the window, not of the drawing. They are never printed and never appear in a PDF, PNG, SVG or DXF export — what prints is the folio's own border, exactly as before.

Limitations

After changing Numéroter les colonnes de cartouche à partir de 0, the bars show the new numbering at the next scroll or zoom.
With two QElectroTech windows open, the menu item turns the bars on or off in the window it was used from only. (Afficher la grille behaves the same way.)