Sidebar provides an alternative view to the design date presented on the drawing area. Sidebar is also interactive with the drawing area: selecting a design element in the sidebar will select it also on the drawing area and vice versa. When an element is selected, its properties and their values will be shown in the property sheet below the sidebar treeview.

Sidebar provides also means to operate on the selected elements. Double-clicking an object type in sidebar treeview will activate the creation of an instance of the selected type (this is similar to selecting the type for toolbar). In MetaEdit+ Workbench, holding down the Shift key while double-clicking will bring up the Symbol Editor for the selected type; holding down the Ctrl-key will open the Object Tool.

Double-clicking an object in the treeview will open property dialog for that object. Double-clicking property sheet will open the property dialog for the element currently shown in the property sheet (either selected object or graph).