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

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

thanks Dominik
I downloaded trial versions of UltraRecall and Writing Outliner
Will give them a go
regards

Andrew

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

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.

Andrew Mckay wrote:

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

You know, that is a completely reasonable list. In fact, I would say that's a bare-minimum list for a basic outlining program. And yet... Is there any so-called outliner on Windows that does all this? As far as I can tell from the hour I've spent researching this this morning is The Guide may be the only one. And it isn't even being developed any longer. That tells you why a lot of us suffer from CRIMP. You see, it is NOT our fault!

Every other application I've looked at (and I haven't looked at all of them by any means) fails in some requirement. For example, MyInfo does not offer the printing options you're looking for.

I was going to suggest you just use The Guide, but the problem there is that The Guide only offers a very broad RFT export, so that you will have a difficult time exporting your notes to a new application should you decide to do so in the future.

Steve Z.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Andrew Mckay wrote:
>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

You know, that is a
completely reasonable list. In fact, I would say that's a bare-minimum list for a
basic outlining program. And yet... Is there any so-called outliner on Windows that
does all this? As far as I can tell from the hour I've spent researching this this
morning is The Guide may be the only one. And it isn't even being developed any longer.
That tells you why a lot of us suffer from CRIMP. You see, it is NOT our fault!

I wonder if Whizfolders could do something like this? Admittedly I haven't tried but I vaguely recall that it does have a preview function and that the items were numbered.

Dr Andus wrote:

I wonder if Whizfolders could do something like this? Admittedly I haven't
tried but I vaguely recall that it does have a preview function and that the items were
numbered.

Excellent suggestion. Whizfolders does, indeed, print the note text beneath numbered titles. The only issue I can see is that I haven't found a way to get the note headers to print left-justified: they only seem to print centered on the page.

Here's the URL for Whizfolders: http://www.whizfolders.com/

Steve

You ought to give Ecco Pro a try. It will do all that for sure. Your application sounds like something that Ecco would be very good for. Development stopped in 1997, but many users still have not found anything better. There is an "Ecco Extension" program - still in development - that greatly extends the capabilities of Ecco. There is an active Ecco Pro community that will help you.

http://forums.eccomagic.com/forum/Attachments/pre-release-Manual_Install_001.zip

user guide PDF file available here
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecco_pro/files/

Ecco Extension 4.5.6.9 also at the same location:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecco_pro/files/

Ecco, particularly with EccoExt, has very good cut/paste capability with other programs. Export/import is good too.

jim

Thanks Dominik,JB,Steve Z,Dr Andus, jimspoon

I have downloaded UltraRecall, Writing Outliner,my info and whizfolders
Will download ecco later on . That should keep me out of trouble for a while

I am going to give them all a go and will post some brief feedback on what works for my needs

Andrew

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Dr Andus wrote:
>I wonder if Whizfolders could do something like this? Admittedly I
haven't
>tried but I vaguely recall that it does have a preview function and that the
items were
>numbered.

Excellent suggestion. Whizfolders does, indeed, print
the note text beneath numbered titles. The only issue I can see is that I haven't found a
way to get the note headers to print left-justified: they only seem to print centered
on the page.

Here's the URL for Whizfolders:
http://www.whizfolders.com/

Steve

I like the look of whizfolders. The center justified printing on note headings is fixed in Tools-General/Settings-Printing Multiple Topics and then un click the centered box near the bottom.

Strange option as a default ( the centered option )!

After doing the above the print looks really neat but I am battling to get the export to rtf to look the same or similar to the print ( I print to pdf to get a print preview and the pdf does look good )

I'll spend some more time on the rtf export

Andrew

Andrew Mckay wrote:

Thanks Dominik,JB,Steve Z,Dr Andus, jimspoon

I have downloaded UltraRecall,
Writing Outliner,my info and whizfolders
Will download ecco later on . That should
keep me out of trouble for a while

Another option might be Natara Bonsai 5 Desktop Edition (http://www.natara.com/bonsai/Index.cfm There is a print preview and can number the outline automatically. But I don't know if there is a way to print certain branches only (it might require copy and paste into a new file).

Hi Andrew,

Goalenforcer Hyperfocus can generate a MS Word report with headings and sub headings automatically numbered for you (including goals, multiple level of sub-goals, tasks).

You can see a sample at:
http://www.goalenforcer.com/mswordoutlinereport.html

Adrian

Citavi can be used in this manner - takes a little thinking to get to the printing a hoist part - butit can be done.

zman

OK some very brief feed back from a few PIM/Outliner software I have tried in the last week.

I only focused on the numbering and the export capability of exporting to rtf .As much as I wanted to eliminate the need for editing in word I have to accept that some is needed for me produce an acceptable report. So I placed a lot of emphasis on keeping the editing in word to an absolute minimum.

I did try to give each software a fair chance and I may well have not found the way to export the way I wanted to, so any mistakes or oversights on my side I would appreciate being corrected. All the comments below refer only to the exporting to rtf only

Whizfolders - pretty good but no automatic numbering that I could see
the guide- very good with excellent automatic numbering
todolist - no rtf export. txt export did have good numbering but with annoying square brackets around the article text
essentialpim - very strange export could not work it out
myinfo - good with automatic numbering
smereka - very strange exporting nodes in separate files from all I could see
noteskeeper - pretty good but no automatic numbering that I could see
notecase - good with automatic numbering
mynoteskeeper - pretty good but no automatic numbering that I could see
the journal - no automatic numbering
treepad business - good with automatic numbering

Next step I spent most of my time looking at myinfo,notecase and treepad business. I could not see that much difference and they all had a similar learning curve. I found that I was doing the least amount of word editing in treepad business so that was the choice I have made. I will admit to being impatient and I could well have rushed this one but I need to stick to one for now, see if it works for me and start using the software to help and assist me in my work.

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions. There were a few I did not try and have earmarked for future rainy days

Andrew