In a session
Pick up the pen
There is nothing to set up. A new board opens on the Pen, and a stroke lands wherever you put it: on the canvas, or over a chart, a screenshot, or a block of code already sitting there. The stroke records pressure, so it keeps the weight you gave it.
The Highlighter is translucent. It marks the one line you are about to talk about, and the line stays readable under it. Each tool remembers its own color and thickness when you move between them. While the pen is down, touch is suspended, and a hand resting on the glass does not pan the board.
Ink and tools has the rest of the palette.
The pen loop is an ordinary stroke on the board, drawn straight over the code.
The highlighter band is translucent, so the line it marks stays readable.
Pin a live demo without leaving the board
Add a LiveView of DAX Studio, SSMS, or a browser. When the query result is the thing you want to keep talking about, copy the LiveView and paste. The paste is a still bitmap of the last frame, a screenshot that stays on the board while you keep drawing.
Freeze the original LiveView if you want that same container to stay put and resume later. Disconnect if you want the last frame with no live controls; only Reconnect brings a feed back. Reconnect after you reload a board: Windows cannot save the capture permission, so the saved frame appears immediately and Reconnect restores the live feed. The states are drawn below.
The LiveView keeps following its window, so its numbers keep changing.
The paste is a bitmap of the frame you copied. It holds that result still, and takes ink like any other picture.
Keep ink on the slide you are discussing
A finished stroke that touches only one container (an image, a text block, or a LiveView) travels with that container when you move or resize it. A stroke that crosses two containers stays on the canvas. Delete the container and its linked ink goes with it. Undo treats the whole operation as one step.
1 sits wholly inside the chart container, so it travels with it. The dashed outline is where the container was.
2 crosses into the notes container, so it stays on the canvas.
Explain code
Paste DAX, SQL, or KQL, or drop a .dax, .sql, or .kql file. Use the title-bar chip to set the language — fifteen are highlighted — press F6 to format DAX, SQL, or KQL locally, then draw on the container. F6 works on the container as soon as it is selected, without entering edit mode.
F2 moves the container into edit mode. Ctrl+Enter goes back to display mode and keeps the changes. Escape also goes back to display mode, but cancels the changes and restores the text, language, and size the container had before.
The two modes resize differently. In edit mode the text reflows as you change the width, so a long line wraps onto more lines at the same size. In display mode a resize scales the whole visual, like a picture of the code, so the room still sees the layout you just formatted.
In edit mode the width decides where the lines break, and the code stays at reading size.
In display mode the same block is scaled as one picture, so the formatting you just applied survives the resize.
Talk to the room
The laser pointer shows on the screen and is not saved in the file. Preferences control how long the trail stays fully visible after you lift, how long it then takes to fade away, and how much a light touch is thinned out — a pen reports very little pressure on a quick tap, and the heavier trail weights keep that tap as readable as a firm stroke. A pen in the air shows a small high-contrast hover dot; the dot disappears on contact so it never sits under the nib. With the laser selected that hover dot is the laser itself, halo and all, and it draws a short comet as you move: the faster you sweep, the longer the comet, so the room can follow the pointer before you have touched anything. A physical mouse keeps a normal arrow.
The laser trail fades behind the pointer and is not saved in the file.
The pen carries a hover dot only while it is off the glass, so the marker never sits under the nib.
Fit what you are talking about
Double-click a container to center it and fill the view. Double-click empty canvas to frame everything on the board, or to reset an empty board. The canvas is unbounded: one finger pans, two fingers pinch-zoom, the mouse wheel zooms at the pointer. Finger drawing, when turned on in Preferences, makes one finger use the current tool instead; two fingers still navigate.
Double-click a container and it centers and scales until it fills the view.
Double-click empty canvas instead and the frame widens until the whole board fits.
Bring a workshop in
A .wimport file is Markdown that builds image and text containers. Drop it on an open board to add them under the pointer. File → Open, or a double-click in the released install, starts a new untitled board from the recipe. Save always writes a .wboard.
Missing pictures or scripts are skipped and listed in a dialog you can copy.
The import format is the contract for that file.
Each heading, picture, and paragraph in the recipe becomes a container.
Drop the file on an open board and they arrive under the pointer.
Bring a PowerPoint deck in
A PowerPoint deck becomes one picture per slide, so you can draw over the slides of a talk. A deck can start a new board or join an existing one, below its content. The import uses PowerPoint from Microsoft 365.
Each slide becomes a picture on the board, with one row for each section of the deck.
To keep the highest quality, the import uses SVG whenever possible and PNG as a fallback.
Bring a Microsoft Whiteboard board in
A board exported from Microsoft Whiteboard as a ZIP comes across with its ink at the same pen widths, pictures, shapes, sticky notes, text, lists, tables, connectors, links, and comments. It can start a new board or join an existing one, below its content, and anything left out is listed after the import. Export from Microsoft Whiteboard shows how to make the ZIP.
The board keeps its layout, and the connector stays bound to its shape.
Sticky notes become shapes in their colors, and comments move to a column on the right.
Pick up where you left off
Close SQLBI Whiteboard and the board you had open is there again the next time you start, at the zoom and position you left it. Turn that off under Preferences → Startup if you would rather begin on a blank board every time.
Closing a saved board that has changed asks first: Keep for next time leaves the file alone and brings the board back as it stands, and Cancel leaves the board open with its LiveView feeds connected. The board is also copied aside every thirty seconds, so one lost to a crash is offered back — at the next start, or when you next open that board. Only Save writes to your .wboard.
Keep boards next to the material they document
A saved board carries a picture of itself, so you can tell one board from another without opening any of them. Windows Explorer shows that picture as the thumbnail.
VS Code shows it too, once SQLBI Whiteboard for VS Code is installed. VS Code offers that extension on its own the first time you open a folder holding a .wboard file, so a board checked in beside the material it explains stays readable in the editor.
The board
Ink and tools
The session starts on the Pen. Each tool keeps its own color and thickness, so switching back returns you to the stroke you were using.
Palm rejection suspends touch while the pen is down, so a resting hand does not pan the board. Without a pen, Finger drawing or Mouse drawing brings Eraser and Pan to the palette. The toolbar is small. Preferences control whether it sits in a corner or follows a layout you prefer, and right-clicking it hides it altogether.
Navigation
The canvas is unbounded. Finger drawing changes what a single finger does; Mouse drawing moves double-click framing onto Ctrl. Nothing else changes.
Preferences → Board draws a faint grid behind the board, in Lines or Dots, whose spacing is fixed in board pixels and steps coarser as you zoom out, so the grid shows the zoom level; View → Grid turns it on and off, and it never appears in an export.
| Input | Does | With Finger drawing on |
|---|---|---|
| One finger | Pans the board | Uses the current tool |
| Two fingers | Pinch-zooms | Unchanged |
| Mouse wheel | Zooms at the pointer | Unchanged |
| Middle mouse, right mouse held, or Space | Pans while held | Unchanged |
| Double-click a container | Centers it and fills the view | Unchanged |
| Double-click empty canvas | Frames the whole board, or resets an empty one | Unchanged |
The window can sit in a narrow strip beside another app. F11 fills the monitor and hides the title and tabs. Ctrl+F11 hides the same chrome and keeps the window where it is. Escape leaves either unless a text container is being edited. Preferences → Startup → Go full screen when idle fills the monitor after 20 seconds without input in Whiteboard, even while you work in another app.
Drawing with a mouse
Preferences → Mouse drawing turns the left button into the selected tool, and defaults to on where Windows reports neither a pen tablet nor a touchscreen. The tool then stays selected instead of being handed back, and Ctrl with the left button is how you move and resize a container. A mouse reports no pressure, so ink is drawn at an even width; Calligraphy still varies, because its width comes from speed. Nothing about the pen changes, so this can be left on beside one. With it off, picking a tool from the toolbar with the mouse offers to turn it on, once a session.
Containers
Images, LiveViews, text blocks, shapes, and labels are containers. With a mouse, click to move, drag the circular handle to resize while keeping aspect ratio — hold Ctrl too with Mouse drawing on. Releasing the mouse returns to the drawing tool you had. Imported images accept PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, and SVG, including clipboard paste and Explorer drag-and-drop. An SVG is kept as its markup and redrawn at every size, so it stays sharp when you enlarge it.
Drag with Select on empty canvas to take everything inside a rectangle, or hold Select — a second tap does the same — and draw the outline by hand. Ctrl+A takes everything at once and Ctrl+Shift+A the ink alone; Ctrl adds to the selection instead of replacing it. Ink is taken with the rest, and the selection moves, resizes, recolors, reorders, and deletes as one. Preferences → Selection says whether an object has to be wholly inside the area, and whether the selection grows to what it touches.
The … at the end of the property bar holds the commands for whatever is selected: Delete, Copy, Duplicate (Ctrl+D), and the four depth commands, which are also on the View row. They reorder the selection and its linked strokes as one block; strokes cannot be reordered on their own.
View → Frame adds a frame the size of the screen: a slide drawn on the board. Select it by its dashed edge or its title tab, drag to move or resize it, and press F2 to rename it. Export uses frames as they are, first, and cuts the rest of the board automatically. Frames never appear in an export. View → Show frames hides them while you present. Hidden frames still define the slides, and the board saves the choice.
Text and code
Paste prefers an image when the clipboard has one, including a file SnagIt or another capture tool left on the clipboard. Paste plain text to create a selected text container.
SVG counts as an image, whether the source application published it as SVG or the markup was simply copied as text — the output of a DAX SVG measure pastes as a picture, not as a snippet. Copying an SVG container puts the markup and a bitmap on the clipboard together, so an editor receives the source and a slide receives the picture.
Help → Preferences sets Snippet format order: paste tries those languages from top to bottom, and Plain text comes last, so DAX, SQL, KQL, and Markdown are recognized while a bare word stays a note. Put Plain text first to keep every paste plain. Use the title-bar chip to change the language afterward.
Choose Prompt from the title-bar chip for AI instructions, or paste text tagged as Prompt by Prompt Assistant to select it automatically. Lines starting with - display as bullets, with wrapped lines indented under the item text. In F2, the original markers stay editable; copying and saving keep your text unchanged.
Choose Markdown from the title-bar chip for a formatted answer or a note, and headings, lists, tables, quotations, and code blocks keep their layout on the board. Pasting Markdown, or an answer copied from a chat with its formatting, creates one on its own. F2 edits the Markdown source and Ctrl+Enter renders it again; the corner handle scales the result and the right edge reflows it. An export carries the container as a picture, with the source in the deck's notes.
A mermaid code block in Markdown is drawn as a diagram: flowcharts, sequence and state diagrams, mind maps, Gantt charts, timelines, pie charts, and the other diagram types Mermaid offers. The diagram is drawn on your PC, and the board keeps it with its source, so it reopens and exports as it was.
A text container's width is its line width. Drag its right edge to change the width in columns and reflow the text; the handle shows the count. Shift on the corner handle does the same, and a plain drag of the corner scales the container like a picture. A new container is 65 columns wide, which is where the DAX formatter wraps.
F6 formats DAX, SQL, or KQL on the selected container, without entering edit mode, and wraps DAX to the container's columns. F2 edits the container, and double-click still centers it and fits it to the canvas; inside an edit F6 formats in place and Ctrl+Enter commits that format with the rest of the edit. SQL Server mode targets SQL Server 2025 T-SQL, keeps GO batch separators, and leaves an invalid script unchanged; KQL reads Kusto through Microsoft's own parser and likewise leaves an invalid query alone. Escape restores the previous text, language, and size.
The chip also offers Python, C, C++, Java, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, Visual Basic .NET, R, Rust, and PHP. These are highlighted but not formatted, and paste never picks one for you. F6 on one of them opens a link to that language's issue on GitHub, where thumbs-up votes set the order in which formatters are added.
Shapes, connectors, and text
The Insert tab holds nine shapes, three connectors, and Text. Drag on the board to draw a shape — hold Shift for a square — and choose its outline color, fill, and thickness with it selected. Type into it, or press F2, and the words sit inside the shape, in a font, a size, a color, bold, italic, and underline; the circle above it turns it to any angle, with Shift for 15° steps. Click with Text for a label on its own, which takes the same font and the same handle.
Drop a connector's end anywhere on a shape and it binds there and follows, so moving the shape takes the arrow with it; hold Ctrl at release to bind to the nearest point on the border instead, or choose Anchors → Auto to let a bound end move to the side facing the other end. A selected shape also carries four small arrows, one to a side, and dragging one out draws a bound arrow without leaving Select.
Select comes back once one object is drawn, and Escape returns to Select at any time. Preferences → Toolbar keeps it for the next one instead, adds Insert to the floating palette, or pins the Insert row into a second palette you can drag anywhere. Shapes, connectors, and labels are saved in the board, undone with everything else, and exported to a deck or a PDF as objects you can select and change — in PowerPoint the straight arrows are still attached to their shapes.
LiveView
View → LiveView captures a window or a display. The container behaves like an image: move, resize, frame, delete, undo.
Turn on Preferences → Live View → Pause when Whiteboard loses focus to stop capture while you use another application and keep the last frame visible. Returning to Whiteboard resumes the views that were playing, leaving manually paused views paused. Whiteboard's own dialogs do not interrupt capture.
Files
The File row holds six commands: New, Open, Save, Save As, Import, and Export. Ctrl+S and Ctrl+O save and open a .wboard without opening the row at all.
Export (Ctrl+E) writes the board as a PowerPoint deck or a PDF. The board is cut into areas where it is empty, one slide or page per area, with an overview first. The dialog shows the areas numbered on the board; the gap and text-size settings change the cut as you move them, and the order can follow the drawing or the reading direction.
Slide content → Editable, the default, puts images and text containers on the slide as objects with the ink over them; Picture is one exact picture of the area. Text containers also go in the speaker notes.
PDF writes one A4 or Letter page per area, each with a bookmark and a footer, or the whole board on one page. Vector pages keep the ink as paths and the text selectable.
The released installer registers that type and .wimport. The pre-release (Dev) channel does not, so it can be installed beside a released copy and the file association stays with the released one.
The command strip
File, Edit, View, Insert, and Help sit on a thin tab strip. Click a tab for a one-row command strip over the canvas; click the canvas to hide it. Edit and Help stay open after a command so you can run several; File, View, and Insert close on the first press on the board, so the Insert row is out of the way as the shape is drawn. Its pin turns that row into a palette you can drag anywhere and leave there. Drawing tools stay on the floating palette, which does not move.
Preferences
Help → Preferences is a searchable list: which monitor to open on, start full screen or go full screen when idle, whether to warn when there is nothing to draw with, finger drawing, what the pen's barrel button does, snippet format order, laser trail timing and weight, toolbar placement and layout, the Insert palette, what happens after inserting an object, and the daily new-version check. Mode comes first: Design has everything, Teaching keeps the lasso and leaves out the Insert tab, the shape, connector, and text tools, the bar above a selection, and Duplicate, and View → Design switches between them — a board keeps everything that is drawn on it either way. Settings about how something looks — the trail weight, the barrel button, where the toolbar sits and how it is laid out — show each option as a small picture instead of a name. Help → About shows the version. New settings are added as rows in Preferences.