In the Wolfram Language's unified symbolic architecture, every Wolfram Language notebook you see is represented as a symbolic expression that can be manipulated and controlled programmatically using the Wolfram Language. The Wolfram Language's low-level notebook programming functions give direct incremental access to notebook expressions, allowing you successively to perform arbitrary operations on the "selection" in any notebook.

Notebook Handles

Notebooks — a list of open notebooks (NotebookObject objects)

SelectedNotebook  ▪  EvaluationNotebook  ▪  InputNotebook  ▪  ButtonNotebook  ▪  ParentNotebook

NotebookLocate — locate a notebook, a web notebook, or a tag in a notebook

NotebookFileName  ▪  NotebookDirectory

Cell Handles

Cells — a list of cells in a given notebook (CellObject objects)

SelectedCells  ▪  EvaluationCell  ▪  ParentCell  ▪  NextCell  ▪  PreviousCell

Boxes

BoxObject — object representing an individual box

EvaluationBox  ▪  ParentBox

Operations on Complete Notebooks

Options, SetOptions, CurrentValue — get or set any option of any notebook object

NotebookInformation — information on open notebooks

NotebookCellData — data about the cells in the notebook

NotebookOpen  ▪  SetSelectedNotebook  ▪  NotebookClose  ▪  NotebookSave  ▪  NotebookPrint

NotebookImport — import structured material from a notebook

StripCellGrouping  ▪  CellStyleImportRules

Cell and Notebook Metadata

ExpressionUUID — a unique UUID assigned to a cell or notebook

CellTags — a list of tags associated with a cell

TaggingRules — an association of rules containing metadata for a cell or notebook

StyleHints — an association containing hints used to control stylesheet behaviors

AttachedCell  ▪  DockedCell  ▪  GeneratedCell  ▪  CellID

Symbolic Notebook Structure »

NotebookGet — get the symbolic representation of a displayed notebook

NotebookPut — display the notebook corresponding to a symbolic expression

CreateWindow — create a new notebook window with a given set of options

Notebook  ▪  Cell  ▪  RowBox  ▪  ButtonBox  ▪  GridBox  ▪  ...

Modifying Notebook Contents

NotebookFind — find a structure within a notebook

SelectionMove — move the selection in a notebook

NotebookRead — read a notebook structure as a symbolic expression

NotebookWrite, NotebookApply — write, apply content into a notebook

NotebookDelete — delete a notebook structure

AttachCell — attach a floating cell to a part of the notebook or window

ShowSelection  ▪  Visible  ▪  AutoScroll

NotebookSelection — a handle to a selection in a notebook

SelectionEvaluate  ▪  SelectionCreateCell

Global Front End Operations »

FrontEndTokenExecute — execute a menu-like front end command

$FrontEnd  ▪  $FrontEndSession  ▪  FrontEndEventActions  ▪  ...

FrontEndExecute — send an expression to be executed by the front end