Week 01/2023

New feature: Merge Nodes!

In Tana, references are always by id, not name, so you can end up with multiple nodes with the same name. You might also have nodes named differently which you realize are referring to the same concept. Now you can merge these nodes - this will combine node content, and update all references.

There are two ways to initiate this:

• You can put a a reference to the node you want to merge nested below the node you want to merge into (or you can move the node itself there). You then do Cmd/Ctrl-K Merge node, and choose the node to merge into.

Another alternative is selecting several collapsed nodes that are on the same level, to merge all of them into one (you can choose which one).

When a node is merged into another, all the children are combined (if they both have the same fields, children in that field are also combined), and all tags are combined, and the original node is put into trash. All references and inline references in the available workspaces are updated to point to the new node. (If there are workspaces that had not been loaded during the merge with references to the merged node, these references will clearly point to the new node).

Note that you cannot merge nodes that live in different workspaces.

Title expressions improvement

Tags can have title expressions, which generate node titles based on fields. You can specify fields using ${Field name}. You can also specify a max length using ${Field name|30…} (only show 30 first characters).

Now you can also choose whether you want the placeholder to appear if the field is empty by appending a ? - either ${Field name|?} or ${Field name|30…?}.

We have also begun including all field values, not just the first one.

Tana Paste improvement: Search Nodes

Tana Paste is a specialized format to represent Tana data structures in plain text, enabling you to “import” (through pasting) content from other tools. We just released a number of improvements.

• Add %%search%% to a node to make it a search node (search expression indented under)

In a search expression, we recognize system nodes (Set/Not set) and attributes (LINKS TO) etc.

• In addition to finding nodes in the library, you can now add a tag to to a link to find any node in your available workspaces with that tag, or create a new node with that tag in the library - so [[Stian Håklev #team-tana]] would match my node in the Tana Inc workspace, even if it is not in the library.

• You can also set the view of a node, using %%view:table%% %%view:cards%% or %%view:tabs%%

You can link to a tag using [[#tag]] (especially useful in search nodes)