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Click Workspace in the left rail to open the workspace view. It shows the contents of one collection at a time, or the top level of your workspace. This page covers everything you can do there, with the mouse and the keyboard. Shortcuts use Cmd on Mac and Ctrl on Windows/Linux.

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Finding your way around

  • Breadcrumb. The top bar shows where you are. Click any level to go back up. When you open an item from the workspace, its page shows the same breadcrumb and a back arrow to its collection. When you open an item from the Protocols list or from Protocol runs, the trail starts there instead, and the back arrow returns you to that list. See Finding your way back.
  • Search. The search bar in the top bar opens the command palette.
  • Add. The Add button creates a collection or captures something into the collection you have open. You can also right-click empty space for the same menu, or drop files anywhere on the page to upload them there.

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Views

Choose a view with the switch on the right of the header: Your view, sort, and filters are one choice for the whole workspace. Bower remembers them for you and keeps them as you move between collections. On a phone, you get Folder view and List view.

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Scope, filters, and sort

  • Scope chooses between the items directly in this collection and everything inside it, including sub-collections. At the top level, the options are Top level and Everything.
  • Type filters by kind: notes, protocols, collections, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, video, audio, code, archives, equipment, and Instrument data (microscopy, flow cytometry, mass spectrometry, sequencing, structures, and more). Documents cover PDF, Word, and TXT files; spreadsheets cover Excel, CSV, and TSV; presentations cover PowerPoint and Keynote; code covers R, Python, MATLAB, and notebooks; archives cover ZIP, RAR, 7z, and TAR.
  • Modified, Created by, and Tags filter by date, the member who created the item, and tag. (The Created by filter used to be labeled People.) On a narrow window, the filters fold into one filter button that shows how many are active.
  • Sort orders by Name, Last modified, Date created, or Type, in either direction.

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Selecting items

In List view, a single click opens a row. Use the row’s checkbox to select it instead.

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Acting on items

Open an item with a double-click, or with Enter. Everything else is in two places:
  • The action bar appears when you select something. It shows the actions that apply to your selection. A grayed-out action tells you why it can’t run, for example “Merge works on notes only.”
  • The item menu opens with a right-click, Shift+F10, the context menu key, or a long-press on a touchscreen. It’s the same menu on tiles, cards, rows, and the page tree.

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Copy, cut, and paste

Cmd+C copies the selected items and Cmd+X cuts them. Open the collection you want, then press Cmd+V, or right-click empty space and choose Paste.
  • A copy makes duplicates. You can paste the same copy more than once.
  • A cut moves the items. Cut items look faded until you paste them. Press Escape to cancel a cut.
This uses Bower’s own clipboard, so it carries items between collections, not between apps. Copying text you’ve selected on the page still works as usual.

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Drag and drop

Drag items onto a collection, in the workspace or in the page tree, to move them there. Bower stops a move that can’t work, such as a collection into itself or into a collection you can only view, before anything changes. If a collection with the same name is already there, Bower renames the collection you moved.

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Undo

After a move, paste, or delete, a message at the bottom of the screen offers Undo for a few seconds. Undoing a move also restores a collection name Bower changed.

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The page tree

The panel on the left is the page tree. It opens with the workspace view and closes when you leave it; on a narrow window, open it from the rail.
  • Favorites lists the items you’ve added to favorites, once you have some. Favorites are personal: your teammates don’t see them, and they follow you across devices. You can keep up to 50, and drag them to reorder.
  • Shared with me lists items shared with you that sit in a collection you can’t open, so they have no place in the tree. It appears only when there are some.
  • The tree shows every collection and its contents. Drag an item to reorder it, or onto a collection to nest it. To reorder from the keyboard, focus an item and press Alt+Up / Alt+Down. The order is shared: everyone in the workspace sees the same arrangement.
  • Trash is at the bottom of the panel.

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Trash

Deleting moves items to Trash. They stay there for 30 days, then Bower deletes them permanently.
  • Deleting a collection moves everything inside it to Trash too.
  • The Trash page lists everything in Trash, with search, sort, and a type filter. Restore items from there, or delete them permanently before the 30 days are up.
  • Restoring an item whose collection is also in Trash puts it at the top level of the workspace.
If you need to keep data longer, export it before the 30 days are up.