Edit a Mind Map as an Outline

Dragging nodes around one at a time is slow when you want to rethink a whole map. Edit Outline opens the map as a list instead, one row per node, so you can reshuffle it the way you would reorganise notes in a document.

Open it

Beside Edit Outline on the root, Tidy Map lays the map out neatly again and tells you whether anything moved.

The icons on the root appear once it has at least one child; for a root on its own, use the menu. They follow your Element Indicators setting in Settings (under Editor), so with indicators turned Off the menu is the way in. Edit Outline isn't offered to someone viewing a shared document without edit access, or on a locked node or layer.

The rows

The first row is the root, a size larger, with no bullet. It can't be indented, moved or removed. Every other row has a bullet and sits one step in from its parent, and each level has its own colour, so the nesting reads at a glance.

You never type spaces to nest a row: its level is part of the row, so nothing can end up misaligned.

• Enter starts a new node after the one you are on, at the same level, carrying any text after the cursor with it. On an empty row, it steps the row out a level instead.
• Tab and Shift+Tab move a row a level in or out, with its children. A row can sit at most one level below the row above it.
• Backspace at the start of an empty row removes it; on a row with text, it joins the row onto the one above. Delete at the end of a row joins the next row onto it.
• Shift+Enter starts a second line inside the same node.
• ↑ and ↓ on a row's first or last line move to the row above or below.
• Alt+↑ and Alt+↓ move a row, children and all, past its neighbour.

The toolbar above the rows does the same things with a tap: Outdent, Indent, Move Up, Move Down and Line Break, each with a hover card naming its key. On a phone, where the dialog rises from the bottom of the screen and there is no Tab key, the toolbar is how you nest rows and break a line.

Bold, italic and underline

Select some text in a row and press Bold, Italic or Underline on the toolbar, or use ⌘/Ctrl+B, I and U. The rows show a node's formatting as it looks on the canvas. Other styling (colour, size, links) is not shown here and is left exactly as it was.

Paste a list in

Paste several lines into a row and they arrive as rows, nested from the row you pasted into. Pasting is forgiving, so a list from a document or another app works:

• Bullets (-, *, +), numbered items and indented lines nest by their indentation, and # headings nest by how many # they have.
• **bold**, _italic_ and <u>underline</u> become formatting.
• Links, inline code and task boxes are reduced to their text, and blank lines are skipped.
• The first line is the root. A second line at the root's level becomes a child of the root, since a map has one root.

What Save does

Save (or ⌘/Ctrl+Enter) applies the whole outline to the map at once. A short line beside the buttons tells you what it will do, such as "3 added, 1 renamed, 2 removed", or "No changes". If the root row is empty, Save is unavailable and the line reads "Write the root first".

• Nodes you kept stay as they were. Each line is matched to its existing node by its text, so colours, sizes, icons, comments, actions and links stay put, even when you move a line under a different parent. A line whose text you changed keeps the node that was in its place, renamed.
• New lines become new nodes, styled like the other nodes at their level and joined by matching connectors.
• Removed lines ask first. If any nodes would be removed, you are shown which ones and can choose Remove or Keep Editing.
• The map is laid out again when its structure changed (nodes added, removed or moved), in the outline's order, with the root staying where it was, just as Tidy Map does. Changing only words or formatting leaves every node where it is, so a map you arranged by hand keeps its arrangement.

Cancel (or Escape) closes the dialog without changing anything.