Outline Editor

Overview

Using an outline editor is the simplest way to organize ones thoughts. Instead of distracting you with styling, formatting and fonts, the outline editor nudges you to focus on the structure and flow of your thoughts, notes, arguments or stories. This will help clarify your thinking more than anything.

Each bullet point in the outline is a discreet piece of information, called a node. Nodes in Tana are the Lego pieces of your knowledge. Their atomic nature allow them to be rearranged, reused, and remixed in many ways. For more on nodes, see Nodes and references

Miss documents? Any node can become the "document" you are focusing on - just zoom into it. And when the same information needs to exist in different contexts, don't duplicate it - make a reference to it instead. In this way, the "node-as-document" adapts to your shifting needs and focus without the disadvantages of creating documents with stale information.

Basics

• Indent your information. Indenting your information makes it easy to expand or collapse details as needed, and infuses your information with structure and relationships.
• See how your ideas relate to one another. Information isn't equal - it exists in relation to other information. The outliner makes relationships as easy to read as a table of contents, or a family tree.
• Nodes are expandable and collapsible. This gives you full control over how much context you want to see, making complex information more digestible by breaking it down into manageable, collapsible parts.
• Use references to refer to the same thing in different places. If you update this information or change your mind about it, it'll update everywhere it has been referenced.

Documentation

The outline = List view

By default, everything in Tana is viewed as a List. Changing the view settings of a node will affect how its child nodes are viewed. See Views for more on the types of views.

The hierarchy of the outline

A node or reference has relationships with adjacent nodes in the hierarchy, which can be described as follows:

• A sibling exists on the same level relative to a node
• A parent exists one level outdented from a node, making the node a direct ancestor of it. A grandparent exists two levels outdented.
• A child exists one level indented from a node and is a direct descendant of it.
• If the child of a node is not a reference, the node is then considered the owner of the child node. It is also a parent to the node.

Fields and field values are treated as part of the hierarchy too.

• In Tana, fields are considered a type of node that also exists within the outline hierarchy.
• Relative to a node, a field that is applied to it is considered a child, and the field value is considered a grandchild of the node.

Move nodes within the outline

To indent/outdent nodes

• Use Tab to indent a node to make it a child of the node directly above it.
• Use Shift-Tab to outdent a node to turn it into a sibling relative to its old parent

To move one or more nodes up/down

• With mouse, click and drag the node bullet up and down
• With keyboard, press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Up arrow/Down arrow

Navigate between nodes

To zoom in on a node

• With mouse, click on the node bullet
• With keyboard, press Cmd/Ctrl+. (period) to zoom into the node that has the caret

To zoom out or go back

• With mouse, press the top-left arrow to go back
• With keyboard, press Cmd/Ctrl+, (comma) to go back

To expand all children of a node

• With mouse, right-click on the node bullet > Expand all. You can also expand nodes by clicking on the indentation line (a thin, grey vertical line) to the left of the nodes you want to expand.
• With keyboard, press Cmd+Ctrl+Down (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+Down (Windows)