Omni Outliner

Omni Outliner by The Omni Group is one of my favorite programs - and no - I don't know of an equivalent program for Windows. I have however, seen many requests for one especially from people who use Mac at home and Windows at work. So what is it? Its an outline on a grid - kind of a cross between a word processor in outline mode and a spreadsheet - only better! If you are the kind of person who likes - or needs - to get organized, its a great tool. If you spec out things to do, or need to organize things like who will do what task and by when and whether or not its completed - its a great tool. You can easily add in more items at any level without messing up all the formatting and having everything go weird on you like in a word processor. Its easy to indent and doesn't mess things up to add in another level - like on a spreadsheet. And it's easy to use and easy to learn.

 

You can add as many columns to your outline as you need. Your columns can be

You can show or hide the vertical and horizontal grid. You can color every other row for easier reading.

You can expand and collapse headings

You can write notes that aren't part of the outline and attach them to an item

You can add attachments to an item

You can even add audio or video recordings to an item (Pro version only)

You can shoose between outline numbering styles (Roman, Legal, Letters or Numeric)

 

Its impossible to describe all the possible uses for it - but check out the link to Omni above for some great examples and a free 2 week trial. Its one of those programs that is worth every penny and that I have never regretted buying. I think I've been using it since v1!

 

Want to share your document with someone who doesn't have Omni Outliner? You can save it as a PDF, export it to HTML, Text, Word, OPML (Outliner Processor Markup Language) or Keynote. And if you've been keeping your outlines in Word, there's a free app to import them into Omni. Now you can stop fighting with the program and start doing your work!