Mathematica‘s Undo & Redo — How Useless?
Let’s face it — we like Mathematica for so many reasons, whether it is the symbolic computation, creating nicely formatted dynamic documents or the extensive documentation center. It has developed to such a powerful tool over the past years that it became indispensable in a lot of research areas. But as much as we like it and find it a very useful tool it might as well drive us crazy — every now and then, when we get stuck in the dead end street of “Undo” in Mathematica.
It is almost striking that although Mathematica is such a developed program, it offers only one level of Undo. We all know it — we compute something, want to try different parameter choices or whatsoever, so we change the same line a few times. But then, if we want to go back several steps — we simply can’t. Even worse, the one level of Undo is not very well developed and it is not accompanied by one level of Redo — there is just no Redo action at all.
Now, each time a new version of Mathematica is released, I’m so certain that they’d have fixed this, but no. Mathematica 9 is out now and that’s what the documentation center says about Undo:
We want the Wolfram developers to know, that we want to be treated like big boys and girls who are totally capable of handling several levels of Undo & Redo.
We want the number of Undo & Redo steps to be an option to choose in the Mathematica setup (like what Photoshop offers).
Sign now! Petition closed. Undo is now available!
By Guangyue Han March 3, 2013 - 1:57 pm
I cannot believe this! It is the most basic functionality one needs!
By Bernardo Sulzbach October 8, 2013 - 9:48 pm
1. Enter a 200 term matrix term-by-term.
2. Delete it (ops).
3. Type ].
Ctrl+Z brings your “]” back.
“Clap, clap, clap”
By you rock May 8, 2014 - 9:07 pm
you rock for posting dedicating a website for this fundamental problem.
By Matt June 11, 2014 - 11:51 am
Apparently it is too hard doing it, but surely it must not be too hard as to not have it.
By Ben Wilson September 16, 2014 - 12:55 pm
Need more levels of undo/ redo!
By Luke October 14, 2014 - 12:49 am
I can see how it’s difficult to undo the *execution* of a cell, without saving the entire kernel state. But it’s incredibly easy to have many levels of undo for *edits* to text and input cells. That’s really all we need. I’ve personally implemented an undo/redo stack in my own programs; it’s super easy. I don’t know why Wolfram can’t add that. I don’t think users really need to undo actual execution of a cell, and I don’t think users expect to.
By Marta October 8, 2015 - 8:59 am
Omg since I am a beginner I thought it was my fault!!! It’s insane! The only “solution” I’ve found is to save a newnotebook every time I’m going to make a big modification. Still….it’s insane! 0.O
By Dirichlet November 11, 2015 - 8:56 pm
For me, the undo command works in version 10.0.3 (more than one time).