I asked a similar question quite a while ago with not much response. I'd like to ask again, and maybe using different words, to see if there is something now that someone is aware of. The way my brain works, there are times when tables work very well for me. Using bulleted lists within the cell of a table works well for keeping lists of indefinite numbers of items. However, I'm so used to outliners that if I make a table, say, in Word, that it's very frustrating to not be able to do things like collapse/expand and move items up and down easily. I'd love it if there was a tool that allowed mini outlines in a table cell or in some other GUI control that enabled multiple outlines that could be arranged both horizontally and vertically on a page.

Perhaps TreeSheets.

Snipped from TreeSheets.com

It's like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it's hierarchical.
It's like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact.
It's like an outliner, but in more than one dimension.
It's like a text editor, but with structure.

The number of applications that allow you to view your writing in a table format are limited and none of those, that I'm aware of, has anything like the outlining capabilities you're looking for. $Bill is probably right that TreeSheets is your best option. Some other tabular-oriented applications you might want to look at are:

- SuperNoteCard
--- http://www.mindola.com/index.php

- Writer's Blocks (which recently came out with version 4.0)
--- http://www.writersblocks.com/wb4quicklook.htm

- Notebox Disorganizer
--- https://sites.google.com/site/squirreltechnologist/home/software

But I'm pretty sure you're destined to be disappointed in your quest.

Steve Z.

In addition to the above, you might want to take a look to the Excel add-on XL Notes http://xlnotes.com/

Also, in addition to the praise for Treesheets http://www.treesheets.com/ I would say that Wouter, the developer, is very open to suggestions. If the program overall meets your requirements but there are improvements that you would like, do propose them to him.

With OneNote, you can easily add bulleted or numbered outlines to cells of a table.The outlines can be collapsed or expanded with keyboard shortcuts and you can move single rows of the table up and down with a keyboard shortcut. You can't collapse the table itself, though.

Have you looked at either RightNote by BauerApps http://www.bauerapps.com/index.html , or AM-Notebook by Aignesberger Software http://aignes.com/notebook.htm ?

--Ken

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

In addition to the above, you might want to take a look to the Excel add-on XL Notes
http://xlnotes.com/

Alexander,
Have you been able to download and try this program? The only thing I see in the download section is:

'Release soon!
Contact us to find more about XLnotes!'

Contact us to find more about XLnotes!'

I tried, but got the following announcement:

'5.7.1 : Relay access denied'

Wojciech wrote:

Alexander,
Have you been able to download and try this program?

Yes, but not recently; I first read about it here http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/6931 and tried it at the time.

Not very encouraging what you found. It sounds as if the program may have been abandoned.

Re: XLNotes

I've been using an older version of this for a couple of years. Very handy! I wrote to the developer 6 months or so ago and received a reply. I've been checking the site semi-regularly since then; the site has been updated and greatly expanded since I last visited, which is a hopeful sign. The feature set of the anticipated new version looks fantastic. I sure hope it pans out. As I say, I'm checking the site from time to time, and I'll be sure to post to the forum (in a new thread) whenever I find the download has appeared.

Also, the contact form works perfectly for me, so perhaps this error is unrelated to the site itself.

Cheers,
critStock

Hello, I thought I'd resurrect this question again, regarding whether there is something that allows you to have separate mini outlines within cells of a table. The items mentioned above just didn't cut it for me. OneNote is too unstructured and lacking of features, compared to Word, for example, as far as working with tables.

Thank you,
Nathan

I have a love-hate relationship with OneNote and share your opinion that it's too unstructured, but it's table features are one of it's core things I've always liked. They of course aren't 'smart' containers, where you can perform math, sort, and filter functions (Notion.so for that) but it's really flexible for grouping and nesting stuff. For me, it's the king of 'dumb-2d-gridding'.

Examples:
-I have thousands of 2-cell 'tables' scattered throughout my notes and their usual purpose is one cell to describe and the other to contain content. Usually links, attachments, and screenshots.
-OneNote is a pretty good 'folding outliner'... and you can fold a lot of stuff into an outline, including tables (which themselves can contain all sorts of good stuff)!
-I almost always drop rich content (anything non-text) into tables as it gives me a lot more control with annotating and arranging. A good example is a group of photos for a project. Strangely, it won't just attach a photo as a file icon, it insists on showing the whole photo. Normally this takes up way too much space. But you can shrink and expand photos by grabbing the corners. So a really good way to keep a group of related photos within a page is within a table cells. Just keep them all 'shrinked' to thumnail-size and expand on-demand. The table just flexes with no fuss but still maintains the array structure.
-You can nest tables within tables. Out of curiosity I tried to see how deep I can nest and became board after 8. I've never really pushed OneNote's 'infinite canvas' concept but now I'm wondering how usable an enormous nested grid would be.

The one thing it seems to not be able to do is to contain collapsible outlines within table cells. You can outline there, just can't fold the nodes.

I've been closely watching the development of the new OneNote app, and it would appear that custom tagging is FINALLY arriving to the Universal version, so for the first time in several years I'm hopeful that I might not need to abandon it as my main junk drawer. The way OneNote does IN-LINE content tagging is pretty rare and can be very powerful. It can really enhance long-form content within a page and can adds a dimension to outlining that most tools can't. The vast majority of note-takers apply metadata at the page/note level, not the paragraph/sentence level. That leads to different approaches. Yeah it's easy to bury content within OneNote due to it's lack of global metadata features, so it's not my home for everything. But it's options for arranging a ton of mixed content on a canvas is unmatched, I think. But it does require a different workflow than most alternatives, and I'm finding that comes with it's own 'lock in' effect since it's hard for me to get used to more granular tools that are technically better.

Assuming you knew all that and it still falls short.... I'd take a hard look at Notion.so. That's a very exciting beast. It's a wonderful combo of content nesting, 2d layouts, and database. The more I mess with it, the more I'm blown away by the posibilities. Once you get a feel for it, you can basically design your own custom platform. Now instead of searching for software that does X, my first instinct is to see if I can get Notion to do X. Usually it can.


ndodge wrote:

Hello, I thought I'd resurrect this question again, regarding whether
there is something that allows you to have separate mini outlines within
cells of a table. The items mentioned above just didn't cut it for me.
OneNote is too unstructured and lacking of features, compared to Word,
for example, as far as working with tables.

Thank you,
Nathan

Ok I just noticed like 12 typos in my post but it won't let me edit... Yikes I need to work on my grammar, getting lazy in my old age!

This sounds like something that QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis) tools do, if I understand it correctly; I had never thought OneNote could do this.

A critical question: are you talking about the desktop version (on its way out) or the 'modern' Windows app?


nathanb wrote:

The way OneNote does
IN-LINE content tagging is pretty rare and can be very powerful. It can
really enhance long-form content within a page and can adds a dimension
to outlining that most tools can't. The vast majority of note-takers
apply metadata at the page/note level, not the paragraph/sentence level.

Please ignore my previous question, the answer was in plain sight; I'm just not yet accustomed to this 'Universal' term...

nathanb wrote:

I've been closely watching the development of the new OneNote app, and
it would appear that custom tagging is FINALLY arriving to the Universal
version, so for the first time in several years I'm hopeful that I might
not need to abandon it as my main junk drawer.

Interestingly, Notebox Disorganizer is still available, and seems to work in contemporary Windows, despite its development having been stalled at the time of Windows XP...

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

- Notebox Disorganizer
--- https://sites.google.com/site/squirreltechnologist/home/software

I still use the desktop version exclusively, mostly out of spite of refusing to acknowledge the dumber 'Universal' version. I stopped to check the tabling differences about half way through my post :-). I was pleasantly surprised that both versions seem to be identical, at least with outlining/tabling.

I wouldn't compare it to QDA platforms though. I try to fill that gap via zettel tagging in OneNote but I realize it's not even close to the real deal.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

This sounds like something that QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis) tools
do, if I understand it correctly; I had never thought OneNote could do
this.

A critical question: are you talking about the desktop version (on its
way out) or the 'modern' Windows app?