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Outliner program for printing basic reports with automatic numbering
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Posted by Andrew Mckay
Jun 19, 2011 at 05:28 AM
Everyone has their own requirements which will determine the most suitable outliner/PIM for them.
I recently came across The Guide and seems to suit my needs very well but I do not want to jump 100% until I have tried a few of the many options available.
I run various housing projects with several Municipalities and every month I need to present a basic report on the progress. I want to be able to generate a basic report with the parents and child node as the headings and the notes which will give more info and which can be entered as text or a copy and pasted from word/excel/emails/.
In between the meetings as new things happen I can simply update my notes or add new headings so when the report is needed I simply make a few basic updates,print preview, print and am ready to go.
The basic key features I need to have
Print preview feature, this is important.
I want the headings and sub headings to be automatically numbered for me.
The notes ( from the 2nd pane )come in neatly below the numbered headings
Ability to export as text.
Able to choose parents/nodes/child nodes and just print those selected
So far I have tried a few and I am finding the Guide produces the best basic reports especially the automatic numbering which has impressed me with its simplicity and neatness. My main concern is the Guide project seems to have gone very quiet and I am not sure if it is being actively developed
Others I am trying at the moment include
TreeDBnotes. Seems to have a lot of options but I am battling to produce simple numbering when printing.
Todolist. Very active community and has ability to export to different formats ( csv,text,freemind,gnattprojects,html)
Others I have downloaded and have only looked at briefly Smereka,EssentialPIM and wikidpad
As mentioned above I am impressed with the Guide but the lack of development worries me and I have that nagging feeling that there could be something better out there. ( Is this the CRIMP that I first came across here ??? )
Any advise on what other options I could look at to produce basic reports with automatic numbering would be appreciated.I am looking at buying if it meets my needs so I do not want to limit myself to freeware.
regards
Andrew
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Jun 19, 2011 at 05:36 PM
The Guide is a very good and neat note taking and organizing too, indeed.
Other tools you could take a look at are (all are not free):
UltraRecall (http://www.ultrarecall.com/)
It allows you to export the selected notes in a tree to the OML (XML) format. The Export file then opens the outline in your standard browser. You can export the notes to an rtf file but then you don’t have any numberings.
Price: USD 99 (for the pro version)
Writing Outliner (http://www.http://writingoutliner.com/)
It’s a Word add-in an therefore you have all the formating capabilities of Word.
Price: USD 49 (introduction promo)
Mind Mapping Tool (MindManager for example: http://mindjet.com/)
You take your notes in a mind map and then you can export it directly to Word. If necessary, you can assign heading styles to each level of the mind map topics and decide until which level the topics are numbered
Price: USD 350
Dominik
Posted by Andrew Mckay
Jun 20, 2011 at 03:05 AM
thanks Dominik
I downloaded trial versions of UltraRecall and Writing Outliner
Will give them a go
regards
Andrew
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Jun 20, 2011 at 07:55 AM
Your welcome!
I suggest to give MyInfo (http://www.milenix.com/) a try as well. It is a good mix of The Guide and UltraRecall because it allows you to export the selected topics to an rtf file with numered topic titles.
Price: Standard USD 49 / Pro USD 89
Dominik
Posted by JBfromBrainStormWFO
Jun 20, 2011 at 12:42 PM
I’m able to paste into MS Word from BrainStormWFO and have Word automatically format that into an outline.
I can’t recall the exact procedure right now. It’s not difficult.