I am in the process of researching and making notes for a literature review, and I am having a hard time to organize notes in a coherent and neat way.

I looked for ideas on the internet and bump into www.organizingcreativity.com, which explain a very interesting way of capturing and later organizing ideas by using the Circus Ponies Notebook (CPN).

The gist is to make notes of each reference source in CPN, and then copy the bits of information for each source into an outline, delineating the structure of your final product and shuffling the pieces of information until the outline flows the way you like. Finally you'd use a different application for the writing (e.g. Scrivener) by following that outline.

I've been unsuccessfully looking for an application with similar capabilities to Circus Ponies Notebook but for PC in Windows 7. The closer that I got was with NoteShare, which is fine but definitely not optimized for PC. The main features I am looking for are:
- Easy to use drag and drop outlining
- Easy to copy and paste from sources and between different outlines
- Can include pictures
- Tags
- Desktop and offline version
- Check boxes is a plus

Thank you

The only application that comes to mind is OneNote. Though it is not an outliner, you can outline with it. I wrote about my own views of its outlining capabilities here:

https://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2012/07/19/announcing-the-onenote-smack-down/

If you find a better solution, I would love to read about it. Thank you.

Steve Z.

I'm a longtime user of Notecase Pro. Cherry Tree is a work-alike. This is a two pane outliner, but with the ability to putting images, files, links on the right, and outline headings on the left.

For longer works, I've used it for my notetaking, then either copy and paste to the writing part of the outline, or have two outline files next to each other on screen.

Notecase Pro is available as a Windows program, Mac, and Linux, which has further advantages if you tend to hop around machines. All of them work with Dropbox. Notecase also has encryption.

Also supports wonderful commands for editing the outline (shift-arrow), tags, mark and gather, and powerful searching.

Deevid wrote:

The main features I am looking for are:
- Easy to use drag and drop outlining
- Easy to copy and paste from sources and between different outlines
- Can include pictures
- Tags
- Desktop and offline version
- Check boxes is a plus

How about

RightNote:
http://bauerapps.com/rightnote/

TreeProjects:
http://personaldatabase.org/

To some extent ConnectedText might also fit the bill, but including pictures is a bit more fiddly (need to save it on drive first and then drag and drop, rather than copy and paste).

WhizFolders might be another possibility.

Dr Andus wrote:

How about

RightNote:
http://bauerapps.com/rightnote/

TreeProjects:
http://personaldatabase.org/

To some extent ConnectedText might also fit the bill, but including
pictures is a bit more fiddly (need to save it on drive first and then
drag and drop, rather than copy and paste).

WhizFolders might be another possibility.

And there is also Ultra Recall...

Thank you for your suggestions, I tried all of them, and none work well because unfortunately the drag & drop of bits of information is a critical feature I need.

So far Noteshare is the best option I've encountered, regardless that sometimes is clunky .

Thank you again

MyInfo, WhizFolders both allow drag 'n drop, have tags which may be helpful for organizing, cloning capability, and opening more window than once.

Daly

Deevid wrote:

Thank you for your suggestions, I tried all of them, and none work well
because unfortunately the drag & drop of bits of information is a
critical feature I need.

So far Noteshare is the best option I've encountered, regardless that
sometimes is clunky .

Thank you again

I recently used RightNote for a large (undergrad) academic project. I had one node for just dumping info as I researched, especially handy with Google Scholar, since it will give you formatted citations at the same time. It will also attach non-DRM PDF files and make them searchable.

When it came time to write the paper, I did a lot of rearranging, with the information already in the database, it was fairly painless. I suppose I could have used a proper academic tool but I already use RightNote databases for personal info and work notes. (I keep it on USB, as I work on multiple computers in many locations.)

RN does do drag and drop, btw. I had sub-nodes as small as one paragraph. The only thing I didn't like was that you had to either export or do a print preview to see them all together.