Edit a Mind Map as an Outline

Dragging nodes around one at a time is slow when you want to rethink a whole map. Edit Outline opens the map as a list instead, one row per node, so you can reshuffle it the way you would reorganise notes in a document.

Open it

Beside it, Tidy Map lays the map out neatly again and tells you whether anything moved.

The first row is the root, a size larger. Every other row has a bullet and sits one step in from its parent, and each level has its own colour, so the nesting reads at a glance.

Edit the rows

You never type spaces to nest a row: its level is part of the row, so nothing can end up misaligned.

• Enter starts a new node after the one you are on, at the same level. On an empty row, it steps the row out a level instead.
• Tab and Shift+Tab move a row a level in or out, with its children.
• Backspace at the start of an empty row removes it; on a row with text, it joins the row onto the one above.
• Shift+Enter starts a second line inside the same node.
• Alt+↑ and Alt+↓ move a row, children and all, past its neighbour.

The toolbar above the rows does the same things with a tap: Outdent, Indent, Move Up, Move Down and Line Break. On a phone, where there is no Tab key, that is how you nest rows and break a line.

Bold, italic and underline

Select some text in a row and press Bold, Italic or Underline on the toolbar, or use ⌘/Ctrl+B, I and U. The rows show a node's formatting as it looks on the canvas. Other styling (colour, size, links) is not shown here and is left exactly as it was.

Paste a list in

Paste several lines into a row and they arrive as rows, nested from the row you pasted into. Pasting is forgiving, so a list from a document or another app works: bullets, numbered items, indented lines and # headings all become levels, **bold**, _italic_ and <u>underline</u> become formatting, and links or task boxes are reduced to their text.

What Save does

Save (or ⌘/Ctrl+Enter) applies the whole outline to the map at once. A short line beside the buttons tells you what it will do, such as "3 added, 1 renamed, 2 removed".

• Nodes you kept stay as they were. Each line is matched to its existing node, so colours, sizes, icons, comments and links stay put, even when you move a line under a different parent.
• New lines become new nodes, styled like the other nodes at their level and joined by matching connectors.
• Removed lines ask first. If any nodes would be removed, you are shown which ones and can choose Remove or Keep Editing.
• The map is laid out again when its structure changed (nodes added, removed or moved), in the outline's order, with the root staying where it was, just as Tidy Map does. Changing only words or formatting leaves every node where it is.

Cancel (or Escape) closes the dialog without changing anything.