Create an Amazing Outline

An outline doesn’t have to be a basic bulleted list—or a hassle to create. OmniOutliner’s powerful features and flexible designs let you create beautifully formatted, complex outlines with minimal effort.

Here are a few tips to help you master OmniOutliner faster than a speeding bullet.

Efficiency matters when you’re getting complex ideas in order—which is why OmniOutliner lets you outline without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. To quickly indent a row, for example, select it and press Tab (Shift-Tab outdents). Or move it up or down with the U or D keys. Just about every action in OmniOutliner is accessible with a shortcut, and with the Pro upgrade you can customize each one.

You already know how to reorder rows, but what if you need to completely revamp your outline? Click the Sidebar button to reveal the handy Sections view. Here you can see the big picture, expand and collapse individual sections, and rearrange multiple lines.

Most Mac apps support full-screen mode, but when you want to hunker down and work, enable Distraction Free mode (Preferences > General > Full Screen Mode > Distraction Free) to hide the toolbar, sidebar, and inspector.

And if your outline gets too unwieldy, choose View > Focus to zoom in on one section. You can switch among zoomed-in sections using the Sections sidebar.

Ready to give your ho-hum outline a little flair? Choose from a dozen themes (or many more with a Pro upgrade) to apply the perfect combination of colors, fonts, and styles. 

A Pro upgrade also lets you change the settings for any element in your outline. Select an item type, then pick your favorite font, size, color, formatting, alignment, line height, padding, and more. Once everything is perfect, choose File > Save as Template to add your custom document to the theme browser so you can use it for your next outline.

If you need to find specific text, use the Filter field to quickly search your document, notes, or just a specific column. But the Pro-only filters in the sidebar level this feature up: They let you save queries to show only rows that match combinations of criteria: keywords, checkboxes, numbers, text in notes, and more.