#Omnioutliner essentials series#
#Omnioutliner essentials mac#

But, the notion of “if you can think it, it is possible,” leads to the potential for thinking that you need to tweak the application and your document to be perfect in some way. If you are simply wanting to create simple lists and outlines, change their appearance a bit, and use them for keeping track of things, that is pretty straight forward. Its versatility and complicated nature make it an app that has to be learned with an overcoming of a steep learning curve, that is, if you want to use the more advanced features of the applications. But there are almost endless options for font styles, line heights, tab spaces, etc. OmniOutliner is one of the best apps I know for creating a simple, nested list, but also templates for creating budgets, keeping an inventory of things, planning projects, etc. “If you can think it, it is possible with OmniOutliner 3 Pro.” There is a good quote on the Omni Group’s site for OmniOutliner, There isn’t too much that is “wrong” per se with OmniOutliner, but there is one glaring issue that I encountered for the first couple of weeks of use of the app: it’s complexity and my own tendency to want to fiddle and tweak it. So, you can type something like, “12w148h” and OmniOutliner will convert it to “15w 3d 4h”. Something else great is that OmniOutliner has a nice short hand for durations. Another nicety is that you can then sort your rows by the columns’ data types allowing for ease of sorting your outline data. You can set a column to any data type that you want including dates and duration, amounts, checkboxes, pop up lists, etc. I love that OmniOutliner supports several different datatypes. Let’s first take a look at what OmniOutliner does the best. Below is my accounting of that experience. I have been using OmniOutliner 3 a little over 30 days now.

#Omnioutliner essentials mac#

In doing a quick search of the Mac App Store there are a few other outlining applications, but OmniOutliner is the one that wins with its feature set, ease of use, excellent interface, and design decisions. The outlining tool for the Mac is OmniOutliner Professional, plain and simple. This was several years ago before I switched to Mac and ever since then my use of the Microsoft Office suite (at least for personal use) has slowly been diminishing with the availability of excellent replacement apps on Mac as well as Google Docs. For many years I have used the Outline mode in Microsoft Word and then in Microsoft OneNote to make my outlines, take notes, create plans, and plan projects.

I love to be able to quickly make a list, add children to certain topics or ideas and then easily sort that list.

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#Omnioutliner essentials series#

Editor’s note: This is a featured post in our ongoing series “30 Days With” which outlines the use of a productivity tool, service, or product that we have used for the past 30 days.