1. The Toolbar—Along the top of OmniOutliner’s window you’ll find a row of useful buttons in the Toolbar. Fully customizable—including document-specific toolbars—the toolbar makes it easy for you to add columns and attachments, record and embed audio clips, and a whole lot more. See Using the Toolbar for more details.

2. The Sidebar—Along the left side of OmniOutliner’s window is the Sidebar. Fully collapsible, the Sidebar provides an outline view of everything in the Editor and keeps track of the styles you’ve used in your document. To learn more about the Sidebar, see Using the Sidebar.

3. The Outline—This is where you enter text in rows and columns, add notes, tick things off using the status checkboxes, attach images, embed audio clips, and a whole lot more. To learn more about how to use OmniOutliner, including details for creating styles and templates, take some time to work through the hands-on tutorial, Working in OmniOutliner.

4. The Inspector—Floating off in its own window are the Inspectors. Consisting of the Style, Column, Outline, Document, and Style Attributes inspectors, the floating window makes it easy for you to design your OmniOutliner documents with style, and when you don’t need it, you can just hit Shift-Command-I to make it go away until you need the Inspectors again. For more details about the Inspectors and what each of them do, see Using the Inspectors.

Using and Setting Keyboard Shortcuts

From time to time, we’ll mention keyboard shortcuts that you can use in OmniOutliner. If you’re new to the Mac or aren’t accustomed to using keyboard shortcuts, they can really help speed you along while working in OmniOutliner. Rather than having to grab a mouse or take your fingers off the keys while you’re typing to use your Mac’s Trackpad, you can just hit a keyboard shortcut to invoke certain menu commands.

Not every menu option has its very own keyboard shortcut, though. If you find that you’re using a menu option often enough that it warrants its own special keyboard shortcut—or if you want to change an existing keyboard shortcut to something else—you can do this with the System Preferences app on your Mac. To show you how easy this is to do, let’s create your first custom keyboard shortcut for OmniOutliner—for the Zoom to Actual Size menu option.

1. Before you get started, the first thing you need to know is where the Zoom to Actual Size menu item resides amongst OmniOutliner’s menu options. After some poking around, you find it in the View menu:

   

   It’s not that you need to know which menu the option is in (although, that is helpful in other ways), what you really need to know is exactly how that menu option is spelled out. When you go to create this keyboard shortcut, you’ll need to know that. Of course, you can always switch back and forth between OmniOutliner and the Keyboard system preferences pane if you need to, but it’s good to have this piece of information before you get too far along.

2. In the Dock, click System Preferences.

3. Open the Keyboard preferences panel, and then click on the Shortcuts tab.

4. In the sidebar on the left, click App Shortcuts; the area to the right lists any custom keyboard shortcuts you’ve created for other apps on your Mac.

   

5. Beneath the listing of custom shortcuts, click the Add button; it’s the one that looks like a plus sign (+). This opens a sheet in which you can create the custom keyboard shortcut.

6. In the sheet, do the following:

   • In the Application menu, choose OmniOutliner.app
   • In the Menu Title field, enter Zoom to Actual Size. Be sure to enter the text exactly as it appears in the menu, otherwise this won’t work.
   • In the Keyboard Shortcut field, enter the keyboard shortcut you would like to use. Since many popular design apps use ⌘–1 for zoom to actual size, that’s what we’ve used here for this example; you can use whatever you would like, though.

   When finished, the sheet should look similar to the following:

   

7. Click Add to create the new keyboard shortcut for OmniOutliner.

If you switch back to OmniOutliner and look in the View menu, you’ll see your newly-created keyboard shortcut for Zoom to Actual Size.

To learn more about using keyboard shortcuts on your Mac, read OS X Keyboard Shortcuts on Apple’s support website.

• OmniPresence is a free utility that you install on your Mac for synchronizing files. OmniPresence runs in the background, watching a “connected folder.” It makes sure the files inside are in sync with files in the cloud (a WebDAV server of your choice), and with your OmniPresence-enabled iOS apps.

  On iOS, OmniPresence is built into OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle. You’ll access OmniPresence folders and files from within the app’s respective Resource Browsers. The result is that all of your OmniPresence-enabled devices detect changes wherever you make them, and constantly sync up to keep your files up to date.

  To get started, you’ll need to download OmniPresence for Mac from our website.

  Note
  OmniPresence isn’t a replacement for your current sync solution for OmniFocus or OmniPlan:

  • OmniFocus uses its own built-in sync code (rather than OmniPresence) to push database changes to a WebDAV server and retrieve them from it; OmniFocus for Mac doesn’t require OmniPresence to be installed for its sync to function to work.
  • OmniPlan uses a publish-and-subscribe feature for sharing project files. For example, you can create a project plan in OmniPlan and share it (publish) with people on the team who are responsible for certain tasks. In turn, they subscribe to the project so they can see and report on the tasks they’re assigned.

• Omni Sync Server is a magical box that lives in a well-air conditioned room with our other servers and a herd of unicorns. Omni Sync Server is our own custom WebDAV server and it functions as a central hub for all your syncing needs; it’s what OmniPresence connects to when shuttling files between your Mac and iOS devices.

  With Omni Sync Server, we never ever look at your data without your permission. For example, when our Support Humans are working with you to restore a corrupt file or isolate a particular issue you’re having with our server. Beyond that, you can rest assured that your data is safe and secure on Omni Sync Server.

To use Omni Sync Server, you’ll first need to sign up for an account. Don’t worry, though, it’s free. If you don’t have an account already, head over to our website and sign up for an Omni Sync Server account today. Like, right now.

With OmniPresence turned on, the WebDAV server you designate (either Omni Sync Server or your own or a third-party WebDAV server) manages synchronization so that your files are always up to date. With each subsequent sync, OmniPresence compares your local files and applies any differences to your files on the server. This ensures that your files are not just up to date, they’re available wherever—and whenever—you need them.

We’ve also built in an automatic sync mechanism. When you save an OmniOutliner file to an OmniPresence-enabled folder (or when an Auto Save occurs), OmniPresence updates the file on the sync server. At a bare minimum, OmniPresence checks in with Omni Sync Server every hour and compares files in your sync folder. If nothing has changed, OmniPresence quietly goes back to watching over your files. This helps ensure that your OmniOutliner files are always safe, secure, and most importantly—up to date.

To install OmniPresence, follow these steps:

1. Open a Finder window and go to the Downloads folder on your Mac.
2. Locate and then double-click the file, OmniPresence-1.3.dmg.

   Note
   The filename you see might be slightly different. As of this writing, OmniPresence for Mac is at version 1.3 (thus the filename, OmniPresence-1.3.dmg). If you see a different number in the filename, don’t be worried; just go ahead and double-click that one. It just means that our engineering team have been hard at work to improve OmniPresence for Mac.

3. After agreeing to our license, you’re presented with the following window:

   

4. Drag and drop the OmniPresence.app icon onto the Applications folder to install OmniPresence on your Mac.

   

5. Close that window with Command-W
6. In the Finder window, eject the disk image.
7. In the Finder window, return to your Downloads folder. Select the file OmniPresence-1.1.dmg and press Command-Delete to move the file to your Trash. The next time you empty the Trash, that disk image will be purged from your system, saving you precious disk space. (You’re welcome!)

Even if you’re only using OmniOutliner on your Mac, syncing is recommended for the automated data backup it provides. Best of all, our Omni Sync Server is free, and we take care of managing the servers so your data is always available when you need it most.

Let’s get started! (No pun intended. Okay, maybe.)

1. Open a Finder window, and choose Applications in the Finder’s sidebar. (If you don’t see it there, choose Go ▸ Applications, or use Shift-Command-A.)

   

2. Scroll down in the list of applications installed on your Mac and locate OmniPresence.app.
3. Double-click the OmniPresence.app icon to open the app. OmniPresence installs and then pops open a menu extra in the menu bar; this is where you’ll configure and control OmniPresence.
4. Click Set Up Syncing:

   

5. Click Create a Synced Folder:

   

6. In the sheet that appears, you have the option to name the OmniPresence folder that lives on your Mac. We’ve pre-filled the New Folder with OmniPresence, but you can change this to whatever you’d like.

   Also, this folder is created within your Documents folder. You can also change this to something else, if you’d like. For example, you could opt to have your OmniPresence folder reside at the bottom level of your Home folder.

   

   When you’ve settled on a name and location for your OmniPresence folder—or if you’ve decided to go with the default options—click Save. This creates the folder OmniPresence uses to synchronize your files.

7. After creating the OmniPresence folder, your next task is to choose a server in the cloud where OmniPresence stores your synced files.

   

   You have two options to choose from:

   • Omni Sync Server: This is Omni’s free file server, which has specifically been designed to work in unison with OmniPresence.
   • Web Server: This could be your own WebDAV server, or a WebDAV server hosted by a third-party provider.

   If you have an Omni Sync Server account, enter your Account Name and Password in the applicable fields and click Connect.

   Note
   If you haven’t already set up an Omni Sync Server account, click Sign Up for an Omni Sync Server Account. This opens your default web browser and transports you to the Omni Sync Server site where you can sign up for an account and set your password.

8. After clicking Connect, OmniPresence connects to the server you’ve chosen and tests for server compatibility. This is more of an issue with third-party WebDAV servers than it is for connecting to Omni Sync Server, which has been designed to work with OmniPresence.

   

   OmniPresence lets you know if it is able to connect to Omni Sync Server (or the WebDAV server you’ve specified).

9. Click the checkbox for Open OmniPresence at Login if you would like OmniPresence to start up whenever your log into your Mac.

   

   At the bottom of that window, click Open Synced Folder. This syncs your OmniPresence folder with Omni Sync Server (or a WebDAV server). If you already have an Omni Sync Server account, OmniPresence creates new synchronized versions of those files in the folder you’ve specified.

   

That’s it! Once OmniPresence connects with Omni Sync Server and creates the sync folder on your Mac, you’re ready to go. Whenever you create files with OmniOutliner, be sure to save them to your OmniPresence folder (~/Documents/OmniPresence). OmniPresence syncs the files whenever you save, or when an Auto Save takes place on your Mac.

• You can create subfolders within the main OmniPresence folder for the files you sync. For example, you could have subfolders for OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, OmniPlan, and OmniFocus, as well as other files you want to sync.
• You can Pause and Resume syncing by clicking the OmniPresence icon in the menu bar.

• Click the Action menu (the gear next to the Pause/Resume button) for a host of OmniPresence options, including:

  

  • About OmniPresence
  • Release Notes
  • Open at Login
  • Check for Updates
  • Preferences and Privacy
  • OmniPresence Help
  • Contact Omni
  • Quit OmniPresence
• To stop syncing a folder you’ve connected, click its Info button and choose Disconnect. The folder on your Mac will be moved to the Trash and the files inside will no longer be synced. Any files left in the folder before disconnecting will stay safe and sound at the cloud server location you’ve specified. To reconnect and start syncing with those files again, just create a new folder connected to that cloud location.

  

• Unsure of when OmniPresence last synced? Click the OmniPresence icon in the menubar and then look beneath each folder name to see the date and time that folder last synced.

  

The sidebar on the left makes it easy for you to choose a file that you’ve recently worked on, or to select one of the pre-styled templates that we include with OmniOutliner 4.

The Recents section is similar to choosing File ▸ Open Recent from the menu bar. You’ll find a list of recently-opened files from which you can select and open quickly.

The Templates section offers a quick and easy way for you to open one of the pre-styled templates we’ve included with OmniOutliner. If you’re not sure which template to choose, you can click on one and tap the Spacebar to open a QuickLook view of the template file.

To close the QuickLook view, just tap the Spacebar again and the preview window goes away.

To manage your templates, use the Action menu at the bottom of the Resource Browser; it’s the one that looks like a small gear (). First, select one of the templates, and then click the Action menu and choose Show in Finder. A new Finder window pops open and places you inside the Templates folder. Once here, there’s no limit to what you can do with the templates. You can change their names, move the ones you don’t want to the trash, or add subfolders so you can categorize template files for certain tasks.

In OmniOutliner v4.4, we added the ability to add a Linked Folder to the Templates section of the sidebar. Start by clicking . Next, choose a folder in the sheet that appears and click Open to add the folder to the Resource Browser’s sidebar.

To remove a Linked Folder from the Resource Browser’s sidebar, first select the folder in question, click , and then choose Remove Linked Folder.

If you would like to import your OmniOutliner 3 templates, you can choose Add Resources to Library to select a file or template you’d like to add to OmniOutliner’s library.

You can use the Restore option in the Action menu to restore any of the default templates that you might have trashed earlier. Even if you delete these files from the Templates folder, copies of the templates files reside within the app.

Let’s say that one sleepless night you decided that you didn’t need any of the templates we’ve included with OmniOutliner. Blurry-eyed, you open the Resource Browser, and then one by one, choose Action ▸ Move to Trash. After all that work, you empty the trash, close your laptop and drift off to sleep. Then, around 5:38 a.m. you awake with a start and have this incredible idea for what you know will be a best-selling novel. Great. You’ve trashed the Book Draft template. What are you going to do? Fortunately, we thought about this for you. If you choose Action ▸ Restore ▸ Templates you can choose from any (or all) of the templates we’ve included with OmniOutliner and put them back on your Mac.

At opposing ends of the toolbar, you’ll find buttons for hiding and showing the Sidebar and the Inspectors. Above those, you’ll find the standard OS X window controls for Closing or Hiding the window or zooming to Full Screen mode.

At the center of the toolbar along the top, you’ll see a Document Icon which you might assume does nothing other than tell you what type of file this is. But if you hold down the Command key (⌘) and click that icon, you’ll get a tiny menu that shows you where the file is stored on your Mac. This is sometimes handy for when you’re working on duplicated files and you can’t remember where you saved the last revision.

Next to the Document Icon is the Filename. If you hover over the filename with the mouse pointer, a small chevron appears to its right. Clicking this chevron opens a small popup window, in which you can change the name of the file, add keyword/metadata tags to help make the file easier to find using Spotlight, or even move the file to another location on your Mac.

To customize the toolbar, choose View ▸ Customize Toolbar or Control-click on the toolbar and select Customize Toolbar. When you do, a sheet slides down from under the toolbar, revealing a slew of function-related buttons that you can drag up to the toolbar. For example, you could add the Group and Ungroup buttons to the toolbar. When you’ve finished making changes to the toolbar, click Done.

If you don’t like the changes you’ve made, or if you ever want to reset the toolbar to its default set, all you need to do is drag the bottom row up to the toolbar and then click Done to save the changes. The changes you’ve made to the toolbar are saved along with OmniOutliner’s preferences, so that you’ll see the same toolbar options with every document you create.

(Pro) If you have OmniOutliner 4 Pro, you can create document-specific toolbars by choosing View ▸ Create Document-Specific Toolbar.

You’ll start out with a bare-bones toolbar—containing only the Sidebar and Inspect buttons along with a long Flexible Space “button”—to which you can add whatever buttons you’d like. If you decide later that you no longer want that custom toolbar, choose View ▸ Remove Document-Specific Toolbar and the toolbar reverts back to the default button set.

The toolbar’s Action menu includes many of the commonly used options that you’ll find in the Edit, Format, View, and Organize menus. Rather than spreading these out over four different menus, we’ve placed the ones we feel you’ll use most in this compact Action menu for every doc you’re working on.

To attach a file, you can do one of the following:

• Drag anything in from anywhere, including files from a Finder window or text and images from a webpage.
• Click the paperclip icon in the Toolbar.
• Choose Edit ▸ Attach File.
• Click the toolbar’s Action menu and choose Attach File.

When attaching files by any method other than dragging and dropping things into OmniOutliner, you are presented with a file chooser, that looks very much like a Finder window. Use the file chooser to navigate through your Mac’s hard drive until you locate the file you’d like to attach.

In the chooser, you’ll notice two options that affect how the file is attached to your OmniOutliner document:

• Embed the file in the document—The default, this is fairly obvious what happens: A copy of the file you’ve attached is embedded within the OmniOutliner file you’re presently working on.
• Create a link to the file—Rather than embedding an exact duplicate of the file, as with the previous option, this copies the file’s location on your Mac’s hard drive into the OmniOutliner document.

You may not notice the difference between those two options when you’re working on your system. Attach a file using either option and the files appear within your Outline. The big difference, comes into play when you send your OmniOutliner document to someone else. For that, you’ll want to go with the default option (Embed the file in the document) so the person you’re sending the file to will also receive the attachment. If you choose the other option, all they’ll see is an icon and the filename of the file you’ve attached from your Mac. The problem is, because that file is on your Mac, they won’t be able to view or open that file.

When you attach an image or PDF file, a preview automatically scales to the width of the column in which it appears. Other types of files appear as an icon with their filename.

If you click an image or PDF file you’ve attached, the following popover menu appears:

You can choose to have the attachment Show as Image or Show as Icon, and you can change the Display name for the attached file from its filename (the default) to something more descriptive. Non-image files won’t have the Show as Image and Show as Icon buttons along the top. To open the file, click the Open with button, which recommends an app to use based on the kind of file you’ve attached.

First, the text for the microphone button in the toolbar changes from Start Recording to End Recording. The button also has a small Stop button applied to it. The other change you’ll notice is a red Recording bar appears just beneath the toolbar. If you’ve used OmniOutliner 2 for iPad, this looks very familiar.

In the center of the Recording bar, you’ll see a button to Pause recording, which changes the Recording bar’s color to gray, and a checkmark button (Save) to stop recording. In the gray bar, you’ll notice that Recording has changed to Paused, and the Pause button has been replaced with a Resume button.

Click the Resume button to continue recording where you left off, or click the checkmark (Save) button to stop recording. When you stop recording, an audio player clip shows up in your Outline.

Much like attachments, if you click an audio clip’s Info button (the little i icon at its right edge), a display options popover appears. Here you can opt to have the audio clip show up as a player (the default) or as an icon. More importantly, you can change the audio clip’s Display name from a random number string, to something more descriptive. This is particularly important if you choose Show as Icon at the top of the popover.

Be sure to read the Audio Recording Preferences section later in this guide for more information about audio recording options in OmniOutliner.

The Sidebar is open by default, but you can hide and show it again by choosing View ▸ Hide/Show Sidebar (Option-Command–1), or by clicking the Sidebar button in the toolbar. The Contents and Styles sections are independently scrollable within the Sidebar, so they can handle all of the content and styles you throw at them.

If you mouse over the right edge of the Sidebar, or the split line between the Contents and Styles sections, you’ll notice that the mouse pointer changes to a resizing handle. Click and drag the resizing handles to resize the sections of the Sidebar, or the Sidebar itself.

Rows with children have a disclosure triangle on the left edge. To view the child rows, click the disclosure triangle to flip open the list. Option-click a disclosure triangle to open or close all of the rows within.

• In the Sidebar, you can click to highlight a section of your outline: When you click to select a section of the document’s Contents, the Outline view changes to Focus on just that row and any of its children.

  

• Alternatively, while entering text in your outline, you can choose View ▸ Focus (Shift-Command-F).

  OmniOutliner retains a history of the rows you’ve focused on, and you can step back through that history by choosing View ▸ Unfocus (Option-Shift-Command-F). To bring your entire document back into view, choose View ▸ Unfocus All, or just click the Contents heading in the sidebar.

If you wanted to add another subsection to the section you selected, press Return. A new subsection appears at the end of the list, and the cursor is placed in the Outline View so you can enter some text for that section.

But what if you wanted that new subsection to come before the other subsections? If you click the section a second time, a blue highlight is placed around the section and its subsections.

Pressing Return inserts a new subsection at the top of the subsection list:

Similarly, if you wanted to add another section at the same level, but above the currently selected section, press Shift-Return:

OmniOutliner starts and adjusts the search criteria with every character you type, and the search results appear underneath the search bar. Click the item you’re looking for, and OmniOutliner highlights the row in the outline.

To clear the search field, press Escape or click the little at its right edge. When you’ve finished searching, click Done and the Contents pane reverts back to its former state of showing you everything in your outline. If you were previously focused on a particular row or section of your document, OmniOutliner restores the Contents pane and the Outline view to where you were when you cancelled the search. Optionally, you can choose Edit ▸ Find ▸ Hide Search (Option-Command-F) to make the search field go away.

When you click the Hide/Show Styles button, everything in the Styles pane goes into hiding, and the flippy button escorts itself to the bottom-right corner of the sidebar. Click the flippy button again and the Styles pane reappears. This is particularly useful for when all you’re doing is working on your outline and you just want to focus on that in the Contents pane.

The area above the split shows the styled () or unstyled () elements in your document, including a Whole Document item. The area below the split provides you with some Named styles, such as headings, highlights, and a rainbow of text colors you can apply to the contents of your document.

The Styles themselves are separated into two distinct categories—Document Styles and Named Styles:

• Document Styles, located at the top of the Styles pane, list all of the stylable elements in your OmniOutliner document. This includes a Whole Document item, Column Titles, Notes, a Topic column, and styles for the various rows in your document. Row styles are numbered according to their indentation level, and only appear in the list as they are created in the outline.

• Named Styles, located beneath the style separator line, mainly consist of the predefined styles included with the template you started from. Named Styles can be edited by first selecting the style name in the Styles pane and using the Style inspector to adjust the style attributes. To create a new Named Style, click the Add button (+) at the lower-left corner of the Styles pane. You can delete Named Styles by first selecting the style in the Styles pane, and then choosing Delete Style from the Action menu at the bottom of the sidebar.

To familiarize yourself with the Styles pane:

• Click the flippy Hide/Show Styles button a few times so you get the hang of how this works.
• Click the Add (+) button to create a new Named style.
• Click the Action button to open a mini-menu for creating new Named styles, duplicating or deleting a style, copying and pasting style properties, and for clearing styles from a selection.

By now you’ve probably been wondering what all of those little colored squares are that appear next to the styles in the Styles pane. We call these little squares Style Swatches, and very soon, you’ll see how powerful Style Swatches can be.

Style Swatches provide you with a visual representation of the style:

Style Swatches with a two-toned blue checkerboard pattern means that there are a multitude of style properties for that element.

An empty Style Swatch with a dashed border means there are no styles for that particular row or column. These elements automatically adopt the Whole Document style for the template you’ve chosen.

A Style Swatch that’s split diagonally with a darker shade on the upper half means that the style applies a transparent background color to the selection.

and

Solid squares with a letter A inside are text-specific styles, such as the font and its color.

To switch between the Inspectors, click one of the buttons in the Inspector’s toolbar along the top. If you’re not sure which button opens which inspector, hover over the button with your mouse and the name of that inspector appears at the top of the Inspector.

If you have the Inspector window open while you’re working in a multicolumn Outline, you’ll notice that the inspector automatically switches over to the Column inspector whenever you select a column heading. This makes it easy for you to set or change the column Type and its Summary behavior.

As you’re working in OmniOutliner, you’ll notice that whenever you are entering text in a row or column cell that the Style inspector is always available in the inspector window. However, if you want a particular inspector to show up as you’re moving along, you can double-click on the inspector icon in the Inspector window’s toolbar. This places a tiny green lock on the inspector so that it’s always available. To unlock the inspector, just double-click it again.

This comes in particularly handy when you want to examine the styles in your outline. Just place the lock on the Style Attributes inspector, and click around in your document to examine and tweak the styles as needed.

Type Styles

This section of the Styles inspector provides you with a variety of controls for changing the appearance of the text in your document:

Typeface, Size, and Color

Choose the font, size, and color for the selected text or row.

Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, and Underline

Click to apply the default Bold, Italic, Strikethrough, or Underline styles to the selected text or row. At the lower right of these buttons you’ll see a teeny-tiny triangle that’s pointing downward. This lets you know that there are additional options from which you can select. You can either click on the tiny arrows, or just click and hold to reveal the optional attributes menus:

Paragraph Styles

Choose the attributes for the rows within your document:

Text Alignment

The next row of buttons are used to left-, center-, right-align, or justified text.

Line Height (Pro)

Choose from a range of single to double spacing for your document. Line height adds spacing above the text within a row, where as Padding adds spacing between rows.

Background

Set the Background color for the selected row. Click the arrows on the right edge to choose from one of the presets we’ve offered, or click the color bar to open the Colors palette. Use the Colors palette to choose a custom color.

Row Features

Use these controls to set row features:

Handle (Pro)

Determines whether the row handle is always visible, only visible when you hover over the row, or never visible. Hiding the row handles makes it a little harder to drag and reorder your content; however, you can use the options in Organize ▸ Move to move rows up, down, left, or right.

Numbering

Choose a numbering style to use for the rows in your document. See Row Numbering for more information about numbering styles.

Gutter

Set a color to use for the gutter (the area where the row handle and status checkbox appear). Click the arrows on the right edge to choose from one of the presets we’ve offered, or choose Other to open the Colors palette.

The main purpose of a Gutter color is to help you see which level a row is on. As you can see in the previous image, the Gutter expands inward as child rows are added. If you set a Background color but do not set a Gutter color, the Gutter adopts the Background color automatically.

Padding Styles

Padding, unlike Line Height, adds spacing inside of rows, notes, and their children:

Row Padding

Set the amount of space (in pixels) above and below the text within the row. (As of OmniOutliner v4.1, Row Padding is available in both Standard and Pro editions.)

Above Note (Pro)

Set the amount of space above an inline note.

Above Children (Pro)

Set the amount of space between a parent row and its children.

Below Children (Pro)

Set the amount of space below a parent row’s children.

Named Styles

Choose a Named style to apply:

Included Styles

This popup menu lets you select and apply one of the Named styles, listed in the lower portion of the Styles section of the Sidebar.

Type

New columns always start out as Rich Text; however, you can change this to suit the needs of your outline to one of the following:

Checkbox

Unlike the Status Checkboxes that live as an integral part of the main Topic column, Checkbox columns can be used for anything from giving you another checkbox to tick off, to monitoring the state of something, and even for ratings. You can add as many Checkbox columns as you’d like, and you can show or hide them as needed with the options in View ▸ Columns.

When used in combination with OmniOutliner’s sorting features (Organize ▸ Keep Sorted or Organize ▸ Sort Outline), checkboxes can be used to denote a Yes or No (binary) state for almost anything—feature comparisons, things that need to be reviewed, and so on.

Date

Choose a date and optional time format to use in the column. The default date string is based on your locale, which is configured in System Preferences ▸ Language & Region. One of the many additions to OmniOutliner 4 is a new and improved date parsing logic that lets you type stuff like now, yesterday, 2d, september, thu, or –5w in a date column and have it know what you mean.

Use the Format menu to choose how dates and times are displayed in a date column. You can choose from a Short, Medium, or Long time string, or opt for something a bit more technical such as ISO 8601 (UTC) so you can show your friends just how nerdy you are.

Not satisfied with the options and formats we’ve provided? Choose Custom Format to create your own special date and time string to use for a Date-formatted column.

To use the Date Format Editor, just drag the items you’d like as part of the date/time string up to the field at the top of the dialog window. Items, such as Day of the Week or Month, have additional formats which you can choose by clicking the downward-pointing arrow. By default, the custom format uses slashes ( / ) for the delimiter, but you can enter another character (or different characters) or remove them entirely, if you’d like.

Duration

Use a Duration column for estimating or tracking the amount of time a task or project takes. For example, if you’re using OmniOutliner to make a list of all the things you want to do this weekend, you might add a Duration column so you can estimate how long it will take you to categorize your comic book collection and whether you should prioritize that over painting the garage.

Use the Settings popup menu to select from Work Time, Calendar Time, or to use a Custom time of your choosing. OmniOutliner formats the duration time based on the Setting you’ve chosen; for example, 12h in Calendar Time is equivalent to 1d 4h in Work Time (assuming an 8 hour workday). If you turn on Long format, OmniOutliner spells out the time durations; for example, 1d 4h gets expanded to 1 day 4 hours.

Use the hours per day, hours per week, and hours per month fields to adjust or fine-tune the Duration settings to suit your needs. For example, we prefer to have an 8-hour workday so we can have a great work-life balance, while the folks at a law firm or ad agency might enjoy working 80 hours per week.

Number

Choose Number as as the column Type when you have a numbered value that you’d like to monitor.

Using the Format popup menu, you can choose from:

• 9,999.99—Numbers with a two-digit decimal at the end. Large numbers will use a comma to separate thousands.
• 9999.99—Numbers with a two-digit decimal.
• 10000—Whole numbers; decimal numbers are rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. For example, 2.67 is rounded up to 3, while 3.14 is rounded down to 3.
• 10000%—A whole number percentage; a decimal number that gets entered is rounded up or down to the nearest whole number. For example, 2.67% is rounded up to 3%, while 3.14% is rounded down to 3%.
• 99.99%—Percentages with a two-digit decimal value, if needed. For example, 99% appears as that and not 99.00%, while 3.14159% is rounded to 3.14%.
• $9,999.99—Use this option for representing currency values based on the localized values you’ve set in System Preferences ▸ Language & Region ▸ Region. For example, if your Region is set to Asia ▸ Japan, the currency value would show up with the Yen symbol (¥).

Pop-up List

Choose the Pop-up List type when you have a column of repeating “options” that you need to choose from. For example, if you have a template document for creating recipes, you might want to create a Measurements column with options such as ounce, ounces, gram, and grams (to name just a few). Now when you go to enter an amount, all you have to do is select the applicable option from the Pop-up List rather than having to enter the text over and over again.

Pop-up cells now use OmniFocus’s Smart Match technology. As you type characters, OmniOutliner tries to guess the item you want—and those characters don’t have to be at the beginning or contiguous either.

What’s more, if you enter a new term that isn’t already defined as part of the Pop-up List, you can enter Command-Return to add it to the list.

Rich Text

Choose Rich Text for regular text; this is the default column style for new columns.

Summary

The first and most important thing to know about Column Summaries is that they only appear on the parent row for a group. For example, if you have a two column document that lists pricing information for a bunch of parts that you need, and you choose Summary ▸ Total, you’ll probably wonder “Where’s the total at?”. But if you group those rows together by selecting the rows and choosing Organize ▸ Group (Option-Command-G), you’ll see all kinds of magic happen.

First, you’ll notice that all of the rows you selected were indented and placed under a new parent row. And in that parent row, the total appears in the column with all of the pricing information, but with a gray background to the cell. The gray background is a transparent layer of black, which slightly darkens any background color you’ve assigned to the row style.

The options in the Summary popup menu change depending on what you’ve selected in the Type popup menu:

Checkbox

Summary options include:

None

There is no summary; the summary cell displays a checkbox that acts completely independent of its children.

State

Displays an empty checkbox if no items have been checked off, a checkbox with a dash inside if some items have been checked, or a filled checkbox if all of the items have been checked.

Hidden

The summary cell is empty, regardless of the state of the other checkboxes in the column.

Date

Summary options include:

None

There is no summary.

Minimum

The summary cell displays the earliest date (or time) in the column from among the child rows.

Maximum

The summary cell displays the latest date (or time) in the column from among the child rows.

Hidden

The summary cell is empty.

Duration

Summary options include:

None

There is no summary.

Total

The summary cell displays the total of all cells in the column.

Minimum

The summary cell displays the lowest duration in the column.

Maximum

The summary cell displays the highest duration in the column.

Average Leaves

The summary cell displays the average duration for the child items under the parent row in that column.

Hidden

The summary cell is empty.

Number

Summary options include:

None

There is no summary.

Total

The summary cell displays the total of all cells in the column.

Minimum

The summary cell displays the lowest number in the column.

Maximum

The summary cell displays the highest number in the column.

Average Leaves

The summary cell displays the average number for the child items under the parent row in that column. This only averages descendant leaves, which means that all contained rows with no children—no matter how many levels away they are—are averaged.

Hidden

The summary cell is empty.

Pop-up List

Summary options include:

Minimum

If the Pop-up List contains numbers, the summary cell displays the lowest number used in that column. If the Pop-up List contains text, the summary cell displays uses the first entry in the Column inspector.

Maximum

If the Pop-up List contains numbers, the summary cell displays the highest number used in that column. If the Pop-up List contains text, the summary cell displays the last entry in the Column inspector.

Hidden

The summary cell is empty.

Rich Text

Summary options include:

None

There is no summary.

Hidden

The summary cell is empty.

Alternate rows

Use the Alternate rows option to set a background color to alternating rows in your document. You can choose from one of the preset color options (Subtle Gray, Subtle Green, or Subtle Blue), or click the color bar next to it to choose a custom color or background pattern from the Colors palette.

Horizontal grid

Use the Horizontal grid option to add a thin line of color between the rows in your document. You can choose from one of the preset color options (Subtle Gray, Strong Gray, Subtle Green, Strong Green, Subtle Blue, Strong Blue, Subtle Red, Strong Red), or click the color bar next to it to choose a custom color or background pattern from the Colors palette.

Vertical grid

Use the Vertical grid option to add a thin line of color between the columns in your document. You can choose from one of the preset color options (Subtle Gray, Strong Gray, Subtle Green, Strong Green, Subtle Blue, Strong Blue, Subtle Red, Strong Red), or click the color bar next to it to choose a custom color or background pattern from the Colors palette.

Column headers

Choose whether to Show or Hide column headers. The Automatic option shows any text you’ve entered for a header, but hides the generic Topic header if you have only one column in your document. You can also do this by choosing View ▸ Column Headers ▸ Show/Automatic/Hide.

Using Grid Lines and Columns for Creative Templates

You can combine the Horizontal and Vertical grid to create documents that resemble a ruled sheet of paper. Just add another column and then change the font size for column headers, and you’ll get something like this:

Of course, that required a bit more tweaking (and not much, honestly), but you get the general idea, right? OmniOutliner makes it easy for you to customize documents and create templates that suit your every note-taking need.

Show row status

Choose this option if you want to display the Status Checkboxes along the left side of every row. These are different from the Checkbox option you can set on a column, in that Status Checkboxes are always located on the left edge of and follow the indentation level of your rows.

Inline notes

These buttons let you decide whether Inline Notes will wrap based on the first column of the document, or if they’ll span the width of all columns. Inline notes, which are styled using the Notes style, appear beneath the text you’ve entered in a row.

The first option in the Document inspector, Compress on disk, determines how your Outliner document is saved. This option is document-specific, which means that you can turn this on or off depending on your own needs.

If you check this box, OmniOutliner uses a simple Zip compression to squish your files down to the smallest size possible. Compressed files don’t just take up less space on your hard drive; they’re also easier to send to your friends and colleagues via email.

Leaving the Compress on disk option unchecked means your files won’t be compressed, and they’ll show up in the Finder as taking up a bit more space. You should consider leaving this unchecked if you are saving your OmniOutliner files in a version control or document management system, or so you can more easily run scripts (Python, Ruby, and so on) on the XML inside your document.

The metadata fields in the Document inspector include:

Copyright

Copyright statements typically declare who owns the legal rights to something. Since this is your thing, or your company’s thing, enter your name or your company’s name into this field.

Version

Version numbers are used to indicate a certain “state” of a project. For example, 0.1 might be a beta release while 1.0 might be an initial release. You can even go as far as adding a sub-version number, so you’ll end up with something along the lines of 4.0.1 when you correct a typo or something. The choice is yours, really.

Subject

Enter something similar to what you would enter as the subject line for an email; for example, Staff project assignments for OmniOutliner 5, or Fried Chicken Recipe.

Description

Describe the contents of your OmniOutliner file. For example, A list of bike parts, or Actors who’ve portrayed Batman.

Comments

Use the Comments field to enter more information about the file you’re working on. For example, you could provide additional detail about a project this file is associated with, or notes to yourself about other things that you’d like to add to the file.

Beneath the Comments field, you’ll notice a popup menu that’s set to Authors. This menu works in conjunction with the combo box below for creating metadata attribute and value pairs. What’s that? Too nerdy? Okay, let us explain…

Here’s how to create a metadata attribute and value pair using the popup menu and the combo box:

1. Select one of the options in the popup menu (Authors, Organizations, Languages, Keywords, or Projects, as further described next).

2. Click the Add button (the + sign) at the bottom of the Document inspector.

   

   When you click Add, the focus changes to the box in the middle so you can enter information about the item you’ve selected in the popup menu.

   

3. When you’ve finished entering some text, either press Tab or Return to save the metadata information to the file.

If you decide later that you want to remove an item, select it with the mouse and then click Remove (the − button, next to the Add button). To edit an existing item, double-click to highlight the text, and then enter your changes and press Tab or Return to save the changes.

Options in the popup menu include; all of these options can have multiple entries:

Authors

Enter the name of the person who created the document. This would be you, or perhaps you and a colleague, or you and the cat that won’t get off your lap while you’re working at 2 a.m. Of course, your friends at work might question why Sir Snugglepuss III is contributing to a secret project, but that’s for the lawyers to sort out.

Organizations

Enter the name of your company or the organization the document has been created for.

Languages

Enter the language, such as English or Japanese, or use one of the ISO 639 language codes, such as en or jp, to name a few.

Keywords

Ah, this is where you can have the most fun! Keywords increase the find-ability of your files more than anything else. This is because you can add tons of keywords to your file, and they can be as descriptive or outrageous as you’d like. The key (no pun indented) here is that the keywords are what help make each document unique when it comes to finding files with Spotlight.

Projects

If you’ve created an Outliner file for a specific project, enter the project name here.

As noted earlier, the information you enter in these fields, and through the popup menu, are registered on your Mac as additional metadata for that particular OmniOutliner file. When you do a Spotlight search, by clicking the Spotlight menu in the menu bar (or with Command-Space), all of the information you’ve entered into the Document inspector helps to make your files easier to find.

Now, rather than opening a Finder window and trying to remember where you hid that super secret file, you can press Command-Space, enter one of the keywords or something else that helps you identify the file, and Spotlight brings it up in the list of possibilities.

To open the file, highlight it with your mouse and press Return.

As you apply styles to the rows and columns in your OmniOutliner file, those styles start to show up here in the Style Attributes inspector. What you see in the Style Attributes inspector depends on where the cursor is currently placed in the document. The previous image shows that the cursor was on a Level 2 Row, and that the text in all Level 2 Rows are to be styled as 14pt text with a color of Chalk (which is just plain white).

But let’s say that you want the text in the Level 1 Rows to have that same white text. The easy way to apply that style is to click on the colored square in the middle of the inspector and then drag and drop that onto the Level 1 Row style in the Styles pane of the sidebar, and voila! The text for all Level 1 Rows are now 14pt white. This makes it easy for you to try out different styles. And remember, if you don’t like a change you’ve made, you can always press Command-Z to undo your last change and revert everything to normal.

What makes the Style Attributes inspector particularly useful, however, is that the order of the styles shown matches the priority of how the styles are applied to the selection. This allows you to see how the selected item’s style is calculated, so you can figure out why it looks the way it does. Additionally, you can click the little button at right to clear any styles that are causing you trouble without having to find the control you used to set them.

To print, choose File ▸ Print or use the standard keyboard shortcut, Command-P. This opens the standard Mac print dialog box, but as mentioned, we’ve added a few OmniOutliner-specific things to the print panel.

This chapter takes you through the intricacies of the Print Sheet, and shows you how to customize the printed output of your OmniOutliner document.

1. Print Preview on the left
2. Printer Settings at top-right
3. Printing Options at right beneath the centered popup menu

The Printer Settings area lets you choose a printer on your local network, any presets, define how many copies to make and whether to print on both sides of the paper, and whether to print the entire document or a specific page range. Regardless of what the popup menu is set to, the Printer Settings section never changes.

By default, the popup menu is set to Content, revealing the document-specific printing options. The Printing Options section changes based on the option you have selected in the popup menu. The changes you make in the Printing Options section affects how the Print Preview appears.

On the left side of the printing panel, you’ll see an exact replica of your OmniOutliner document, showing you how it will look when printed. You can use the arrow buttons beneath the preview to page through your document so you can verify that everything is in order.

As you toggle the various options on or off, the Print Preview changes accordingly. The only exception to this is the Include notes option. If you would like the Notes in your outline to be printed, you need to make sure that they are visible in the document by choosing View ▸ Show All Notes (Control-Command-'). If you don’t want to print all of the Notes, you can select specific rows and choose View ▸ Show Note (Option-Command-') to reveal the Note for that row.

OmniOutliner prints only the visible columns in your document. If you don’t want to print a particular column, choose View ▸ Columns and then choose from the submenu the column you want to hide. This “unchecks” that column in the menu. You can also Control-click on a column heading and then choose Hide from the contextual menu. To later make the column reappear in your document, choose View ▸ Columns ▸ Show All Columns.

• Page Number
• Section Title
• Last Modification Time
• Page Count
• Document Title
• Document Name
• Print Time

Just click inside one of the six boxes and choose the option from the Insert menu. For example, the following image inserts the Document Title and Print Time in the center and right boxes of the Header, respectively. For the Footer, the center box uses a combination of Page Number and Page Count (with “ of ” added in between), which would print as 1 of 3 or 2 of 3, and is particularly useful for long documents.

When you have finished setting all of the Printing Options for your document, click Print to print the file.

Each preference pane includes a Reset () and Help () button so you can revert back to the default settings, or get to this Help page quickly from within the app.

Options in General preferences include:

New Documents

Choose what happens when you create a new document, by either choosing File ▸ New or using the Command-N keyboard shortcut. You can choose between opening the new Resource Browser, or creating a new document based on the default template. If you want to change the default template, click Choose and then select one of the OmniOutliner template files on your Mac.

Links

Turn on or off the ability to make hyperlink (a URL such as http://www.omnigroup.com) clickable. If you uncheck this option, the URLs you enter are rendered as Rich Text and clicking them will not open the URL in your default web browser.

If you want to change the text label of a URL, Option-click on the link, change the Display title to whatever you would like, and then click Done.

Styles

Turn on or off the setting for a new row to adopt the style from that row’s sibling. When this is checked and you add a new row (by pressing Return or Shift-Return), that new row adopts the styles of the row you were previously in. When unchecked, any new styles you create revert to the default styles from the template you’ve chosen.

For example, let’s assume that you have a new document that uses the Blank template and you’ve unchecked this option. In your first row, you click the row handle and assign an orange background to the row. You then enter some text and press Return. The next row doesn’t pick up the orange background color; instead, it has a white background (which is the default for the Blank template). Now, if the Styles option were checked, the next row you created from the orange row would pick up the same orange background color.

These options are as follows:

When pressing Tab

By default, pressing Tab indents a row. You can change this to Go to next cell by switching the radio buttons. Holding the Option key inserts an actual Tab character, while pressing Shift-Tab outdents the current row.

When pressing Return

By default, pressing Return creates a new empty row. You can change this to Insert a line break in the current row by switching the radio buttons; however, pressing Option-Return always inserts a new line in the current row.

Similarly, with Split the current row at the insertion point set, you can split the current row into two rows at the cursors position by pressing Return. Even when this option is turned off, you can press Control-Return to split a row in two.

New rows are created

By default, new rows are Indented if there are children when you press Return. If you switch the radio button to Always at the same level, new rows are created at the same level as the line your cursor is on when you press Return.

When pressing Escape

There are two options for what happens when you press the Escape key. By default, pressing the Escape key opens the system-wide completion menu. This comes in particularly handy when you aren’t quite sure how to spell something. You can just type in the first few characters of the word, press Escape, and a popup menu appears with a list of possible options. To accept one of the options, you can click it with your mouse, or use the Down Arrow key to move the highlight to the word you need and then either press Tab or Return to accept that option.

Use the other option, Begin or end text editing, for times when you’re doing quick entry and need to move around in your Outline, editing rows and column cells more efficiently. Pressing Escape after entering some text in a row will highlight that row. Press Escape again places the cursor at the end of the line so you can continue typing.

Apply named styles with

By default, you can use one of the Function keys to apply one of the Named styles to the current row. (Named styles are found in the lower portion of the Styles section of the Sidebar.) To use the function keys (F1 through F9), you’ll need to press and hold the fn key and then press a numbered function key to apply the style. For example, to apply the Heading 1 named style, use fn-F1.

You can change this to Control + number by switching the radio buttons in the preference pane. This can make it easier for you to apply named styles since using the fn key along with the various function keys can be a little awkward.

Rearrange the Named Styles for Different Keyboard Shortcuts

As you may have noticed, not all of the Named styles in the Sidebar have a keyboard shortcut equivalent. Additionally, you cannot directly assign (or reassign) these keyboard shortcuts in System Preferences ▸ Keyboard ▸ Shortcuts since these aren’t tied to a menu item.

However, you can rearrange the Named styles by dragging and dropping them into different positions in the list. For example, if you find that you’re using the Orange text style very often, you can drag that up in the list and drop it into a position where it will have a keyboard shortcut.

The document elements you have control over include Bullets, Checkboxes, and Spacing, and there’s also a popup menu that lets you select the text encoding type for importing and exporting operations.

You can use the defaults, or change these up however you see fit, and based on your own document needs.

As you record audio, OmniOutliner creates a temporary file in which to dump the audio bits you’re recording. When you’ve finished recording, that temporary file goes away and moves into your OmniOutliner document. However, if OmniOutliner quits unexpectedly while you are recording, all hope is not lost. The temporary recording is still there, and the easiest way to get to it is from this Audio Recording preference panel. Just click the Open Folder button, and you’ll be whisked away to a new Finder window that’s open to the where the temporary file is stored. You can then drag that into OmniOutliner, or dump it in the trash if you want to start over from scratch.

You can choose to check for updates either Daily (the default), Weekly, or Monthly, or if you’re really impatient you can click Check for Updates Now.

There is also a checkbox to Send anonymous system information to The Omni Group when you check for an update. This is totally optional, so feel free to uncheck that box to turn this off. However, if you do choose to send information about your system (no personal information is ever sent), we promise to never ever share that information with anyone. The Omni Group only uses this information so we know which hardware and operating system types we need to target for future software updates.

CSV

When exporting a multi-column outline as CSV, OmniOutliner saves the .csv file using standard comma-separated values (CSV) conventions (i.e., each column is separated by a comma, and text with spaces is placed within quotations).

Excel 2010 Format (xlsx)

OmniOutliner exports the contents of your outline in an XML format that Excel 2010 can interpret and render.

HTML

Creates a like-named folder that contains an index.html file along with the necessary images and attachments that make up your OmniOutliner file. All of the styles you’ve used in OmniOutliner are converted to CSS and included in the index.html file.

HTML (Dynamic)

This option gives you everything that comes with the basic HTML export, plus an added outliner.js file. This JavaScript file is what makes the file dynamic, in that you can open and close the sections of your document just as you would in OmniOutliner.

OmniOutliner 3

Exports a .oo3 file which can be opened in either OmniOutliner 3 or 4 for Mac, and in OmniOutliner 1 and 2 for iPad. These files are not compatible with OmniOutliner 2 for Mac and earlier.

OmniOutliner 3 Template

Exports a .oo3template file which can be opened in either OmniOutliner 3 or 4. These files are not compatible with OmniOutliner 2 or earlier.

OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language)

Exports a .opml file, which retains the hierarchical structure of your outline. However, OPML files do not retain any of the styles you may have applied in OmniOutliner.

The Outline Processor Markup Language (OPML) is an XML document format that was specifically designed for outlines. Developed by UserLand Software for use as Radio UserLand’s native file format, OPML provides all of the structural goodness that you want in an outline, while making it easy to share outlines with other apps and services.

Despite its flexibility, the OPML file format only has provisions for structured hierarchical text; it does not recognize styles or attachments. While this might be fine for text-only outlines, if you’ve spent any amount of time styling your outline, you’ll probably want to preserve those styles by creating a Template Theme first, and then you can reapply that theme later. Just remember, however, that whenever you save or export to an OPML file, any styles (including that Template Theme) that you have applied will be discarded.

To create a Template Theme from a styled OmniOutliner document, choose File ▸ Save as Template. Later, when you want to reapply that Template Theme, choose Format ▸ Apply Template Theme.

Plain Text (fixed width)

Exports a raw .txt file without any styles. Child rows are indented with four spaces, and columns are aligned using spaces. You can adjust the number of spaces used in OmniOutliner ▸ Preferences ▸ Text ▸ Spacing.

Plain Text (with tabs)

Exports a raw .txt file without any styles. Child rows and columns are aligned using tabs rather than spaces, making this type of export useful for importing into spreadsheet apps such as Numbers or Excel.

PowerPoint 2012 Format (pptx)

OmniOutliner exports the contents of your outline in an XML format that PowerPoint 2012 can interpret and render. After exporting your outline as .pptx, you can then import the PowerPoint file into Apple’s Keynote app.

RTF (Rich Text Format)

Exports a .rtf file, which retains all of the styles you’ve applied in OmniOutliner. RTF is a standard document format that most word processors, such as Word and OS X’s TextEdit app can open. Export to RTF if your Outliner document contains only text and numbers.

RTFD (Rich Text Format with Attachments)

Exports a .rtfd file, which retains all of the styles you’ve applied in OmniOutliner. What sets RTFD apart from RTF is that an RTFD file can contain attachments, such as any images, audio clips, or anything else you attach to your OmniOutliner file. Most word processors, such as Word, Pages, and OS X’s TextEdit can open .rtfd files.

• .opml—A valid OPML file.
• .oo3—Files created with OmniOutliner 3 or 4.
• .oo3template—Template files created with OmniOutliner 3 or 4.
• .txt—Plain text and tab-delimited files.
• .rtf—All text styles and colors are preserved when importing an RTF file.
• .rtfd—As with RTF files, all text styles and colors are preserved, and any images are also brought along for the ride. Images are automatically scaled to the column width.

1. Open OmniGraffle and choose File ▸ Open.
2. In the Open dialog, choose any file whose extension is .oo3.
3. Click Open.
4. OmniGraffle presents you with the Import Outline dialog. At the top, be sure to select one of the themed templates, such as Circles or Lines, and then in the Outline Columns combo box, choose how you want column data to be styled (if your OmniOutliner has column data).

You can use OmniGraffle’s powerful Outline Editor (in OmniGraffle, choose View ▸ Show Contents ▸ Outline Editor) to add depth to the diagram you’ve created. When you’re finished, go ahead and export the OmniGraffle file as an OmniOutliner file and then open that up in OmniOutliner 4. The styles you’ve used in OmniGraffle should carry over to OmniOutliner. If you want to change those back to something else, choose Format ▸ Apply Template Theme and then select a template whose styles you’d like applied to the OmniOutliner file.

If you find a menu option that doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut but you really-really want one, you can always define new ones in System Preferences. For details on how to do this, don’t miss the sidebar in Getting to Know OmniOutliner 4.

About OmniOutliner

This opens the About box so you can learn more about OmniOutliner, including the current version and build number (in case you need that for technical support). And speaking of technical support, we’ve also included handy email links so you can inquire about Sales info or to contact our Support Humans with any questions you may have about using OmniOutliner (or any of our other products for that matter). And if you’d rather speak to one of our Support Humans, just dial the phone number we’ve included; we’re here Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time.

Check for Updates

If your Mac is connected to the Internet, selecting this option will connect with our servers to see if an updated version is available for OmniOutliner. If one is available, you’ll be asked first if you want to update, and if so, the new build will download and install on your Mac.

Preferences (Command–,)

This opens the Preferences window so you can further configure OmniOutliner to suit your needs and your work style.

Licenses

This opens the Licenses window, in which you can enter or delete a license, or if you are using an evaluation copy of OmniOutliner, you can click Buy Licenses to be taken to our online store where you can purchase a license key.

Services

Here you’ll find a list of applications that OmniOutliner can share information with. Just select something in OmniOutliner, and then choose this menu option to see which apps you can send stuff.

Hide OmniOutliner (Command–H)

Hides OmniOutliner’s window, suppressing it to the land of hidden apps. To bring OmniOutliner back into view, either click the app icon in the Dock, or use Command–Tab to use OS X’s application switcher to switch back to OmniOutliner.

Hide Others (Option-Command–H)

Banish the windows of other open apps to the land of hidden apps. As with Hide OmniOutliner, to bring a hidden app back into view, either click that app’s icon in the Dock, or use Command–Tab to use OS X’s application switcher to switch back to the app you need.

Show All

Choose this menu option to quickly bring all of the hidden app windows out of hiding.

Quit OmniOutliner (Command–Q)

This does what it says; it quits OmniOutliner. If you haven’t saved the file before, you’ll be prompted to save the file (giving it a name and specifying a location to save the file to). If you are working in a file that you’ve previously saved, you don’t have to worry about saving before you quit, thanks to OS X’s Auto Save feature. But, if you’re really paranoid, you can use Command–S to save the file before using Command–Q.

New (Command–N)

Create a new document using the default template.

Resource Browser (Shift-Command–N)

Opens the Resource Browser.

Open (Command–O)

Open an existing file.

Open Recent

OmniOutliner keeps track of recently opened files and includes the filenames in this menu so you can reopen a file and continue your work.

Close (Command–W)

Close the current window; use Option-Command–W to close all open OmniOutliner windows. You will be prompted to name and new, Untitled, document files before the window is closed.

Save (Command–S)

Save the contents of the current document.

Duplicate (Shift-Command–S)

Create a duplicate copy of the current document. The exact contents of the current window are copied into a new document window, which has the filename in the titlebar highlighted so you can enter a different name for the file. The file will be saved in the same location as its parent.

Rename

Choose this option to highlight the filename in the document’s titlebar so you can enter a new name for the file.

Move To

Choose this option to open a sheet and select another location on your Mac’s hard drive to store the file.

Export (Option-Command–E)

Export your OmniOutliner document to one of the following formats mentioned in Exporting From OmniOutliner.

Save As Template

Saves the current file as an OmniOutliner template file. Template files are stored on your Mac in ~/Library/Containers/com.omnigroup.OmniOutliner/
Data/Library/Application Support/The Omni Group/OmniOutliner/Templates.

Revert To

Opens Time Machine so you can sift through earlier saves of the current document and restore it from an older save.

Print Setup (Shift-Command–P)

This opens the Print Setup dialog, so you can apply any previously saved Settings, choose which printer to format the document for, select a paper size, orientation, and scale for the document.

Print (Command–P)

Sends the current document to your default printer. You can use Print Setup (Shift-Command–P) to choose a printer other than your default printer; for example, if you have a document that needs to print in Tabloid-Landscape on a color printer.

Undo (Command–Z)

Undoes the previous change you’ve made. OmniOutliner supports unlimited Undo, so go ahead and press Command–Z a few dozen times and watch all of your hard work disappear.

Redo (Shift-Command–Z)

Just like Undo, Redo puts back something that you’ve undone but have decided that you really want to be there. For example, let’s say that you were testing out the strength of pressing Command–Z repetitively, but then you want to put all of that back. Yep, that’s right; you can just hit Shift-Command–Z to put everything back in place.

Cut (Command–X)

Deletes whatever you’ve selected and places that on the Clipboard so you can paste it back later, or just ignore it.

Copy (Command–C)

Copies whatever you’ve selected and places that on the Clipboard as tab-separated values (TSV), so you can paste it somewhere else, or in another document, later.

Paste (Command–V)

Pastes in whatever is on the Clipboard.

Paste’s behavior is slightly different in OmniOutliner than what you find in some other apps. If you cut or copy text that has line breaks from another app and paste that into OmniOutliner, all of the text appears on a single row, but with those line breaks intact.

However, if you wanted each line to appear on its own row in OmniOutliner, first select a row by clicking in the gutter, and then use Edit ▸ Paste (or Command–V) to paste in the text.

Paste and Match Style (Option-Shift-Command–V)

Unlike Paste, this option pastes in whatever is on the Clipboard, but applies any predetermined style for that row or column in your OmniOutliner to the pasted material.

Duplicate Selection (Command–D)

Copy and paste the current selection into the current document automatically.

Delete

Deletes the current selection. Unlike Cut, however, Delete just wipes out whatever you’ve selected without placing it on the Clipboard.

Select All (Command–A)

Select every single thing in your OmniOutliner document.

Deselect All (Shift-Command–A)

Unselect every single thing in your OmniOutliner document. This is sometimes handy for when you’re not sure if something is selected and you’re about to paste something in.

Set Status

Use one of the following to set the status of a row’s checkbox:

• Checked
• Unchecked
• Calculated
• None

Edit Note (Command–’)

Edit the Note for the currently selected row or column cell.

Attach File

Attach a file to the document.

Start/Stop Audio Recording

Add an audio clip to your document.

Insert Time Stamp

Inserts one of the following time stamps on the current row:

Short Date (Command–/)

Inserts a localized numerical date string; for example: 10/05/2013.

Long Date (Option-Command–/)

Inserts a localized numerical date string; for example: October 5, 2013.

Time (Command–@)

Inserts a localized numerical time string; for example: 12:34:56 PM.

Short Date and Time (Command–|)

Inserts a localized numerical date and time string; for example: 10/05/2013 12:34 PM.

Long Date and Time (Option-Command–|)

Inserts a localized numerical date and time string; for example: October 5, 2013 12:34:56 PM PDT.

Find

Use one of the following search options:

Show/Hide Search (Option-Command–F)

Displays the search field in the Sidebar. When the search field is displayed, a Hide button appears to its left. Click the Hide button, or use the Hide Search menu option (or the same keyboard shortcut) to make the search field go away.

Find (Command–F)

This opens the Find dialog, in which you can enter something to search for. You can search for a text string, such as The Omni Group, or you can use a regular expression, such as Omni\s, to search for the word Omni followed by a space (\s).

Find Next (Command–G)

Find the next instance.

Find Previous (Shift-Command–G)

Find the previous instance.

Use Selection for Find (Command–E)

Uses the current selection as the search criteria when using Find. You can use this option before or after opening the Find dialog (Command–F).

Spelling

Choose one of the following options for checking the spelling and grammar in your document:

Show/Hide Spelling and Grammar (Command–:)

Opens the Spelling and Grammar window so you can check for any spelling or gramatical mistakes in the current document.

Check Spelling (Command–;)

Just checks the spelling in the current document. Who cares about grammar, anyway?

Check Spelling While Typing

Turned on by default, this option checks your spelling as you type. Any words you misspell get a red squiggle underneath and OS X offers up similar words from which you can select the correct spelling.

Speech

You can have OS X read aloud the text in the current row or note using the system voice you’ve set up in the Dictation & Speech preferences (System Preferences ▸ Dictation & Speech ▸ Text to Speech).

Start Speaking

Start speaking the text in the current row.

Stop Speaking

Stop speaking.

LinkBack

LinkBack is a way of embedding content between applications in such a way that you can always go back and edit the content with the software used to create it originally.

Edit LinkBack Item

If you have pasted LinkBack content from another app, select the object and use this command to open the content in the original app.

Remove LinkBack for Item

Selecting this option removes the LinkBack feature from the selected content so that this content can only be edited within OmniOutliner.

How LinkBack Works

LinkBack lets you embed content between applications in such a way that you can always go back and edit the content with the software used to create it originally.

For example, let’s say that you’ve used LinkBack to include some information from OmniGraffle in one of your OmniOutliner documents. To edit the OmniGraffle content that’s linked to from your OmniOutliner document:

• Double-click the OmniGraffle content in your OmniOutliner document. This opens an OmniGraffle window containing that content.
• Edit the content in the OmniGraffle window, just as you normally would.
• In OmniGraffle, choose File ▸ Save; the content in the OmniOutliner window updates automatically.

This makes it easy for you to roundtrip content shared by LinkBack apps without having to update the content in two different places. For more information about LinkBack, and a list of participating applications, check the LinkBack repository on GitHub.

Start Dictation (fn fn)

When dictation is turned on, OmniOutliner uses OS X’s speech recognition capabilities to convert the words you speak into text. When you’ve finished, just press fn fn again to stop dictation.

Emoji & Symbols (Control-Command–Space)

This opens the Characters window, which gives you access to a broader set of characters, including arrows, symbols, and even Emoji.

Copy Style (Option-Command–C)

Copies the style of the current selection and places that on the Clipboard.

Paste Style (Option-Command–V)

Pastes the previously copied style onto the current selection.

Clear Style (Control-Command–Delete)

Removes any styles that have been applied to an item and reverts the selection to the default style.

Font

Change the typeface and style of your text:

Show Fonts (Command–T)

This opens the Fonts window, from which you can choose another font, its typeface, and size.

Bold (Command–B)

Turns on or applies bold to the current selection.

Italic (Command–I)

Turns on or applies italics to the current selection.

Underline (Command–U)

Turns on or applies an underline to the current selection.

Outline

Turns on or applies an outline to the current selection.

Bigger (Command–+)

Increase the size of the current row or selected text.

Smaller (Command–−)

Decreases the size of the current row or selected text.

Kern

Use these options to change the spacing between characters:

• Use Default
• Use None
• Tighten
• Loosen

Ligature

Use these options to control ligatures in your document:

• Use Default
• Use None
• Use All

Baseline

Use these options to adjust the baseline of the current row or selection:

• Use Default
• Superscript
• Subscript
• Raise
• Lower

Show Colors (Shift-Command–C)

Opens the color palette so you can make all of your text chartreuse (if you’d like).

Text

Alignment options for text, images, and attachments:

Align Left

Aligns text and objects to the left margin of the current row or column.

Center

Aligns text and objects based on the midpoint of the current row or column.

Justify

Evenly space the words in a row or column so that multiline text uses the full width of the column.

Align Right

Aligns text and objects to the right margin of the current row or column.

Writing Direction

Change the writing direction:

Right to Left

Change the writing direction from Left to Right to Right to Left.

Row Numbering

Assign a row-numbering scheme to your document. Row numbers are based on their indentation level. Assuming that a row with no indent is the Parent, the first indented row would be a Child, and subsequent indented rows are Grand Children and Great Grand Children, unnumbered rows would have the following hierarchy:

The Row Numbers menu is split into two parts. The upper section of the menu lets you determine a numbered style to use as the prefix for the rows in your document. If you have set a numbered style other than None, the styles in the lower section—x., x), and (x)—can also be applied to the row number; for example 1.1.1., 1.1.1), or (1.1.1), respectively.

Set the formatting for row numbers:

None

When selected, the rows in your document will not be numbered.

1, 2, 3, 4

When selected, the rows in your document are numbered sequentially, starting with 1.

A, B, C, D

When selected, the rows in your document are lettered sequentially using uppercase letters, starting with A.

a, b, c, d

When selected, the rows in your document are lettered sequentially using lowercase letters, starting with a.

I, II, III, IV

When selected, the rows in your document are numbered sequentially using uppercase Roman numerals, starting with I.

i, ii, iii, iv

When selected, the rows in your document are numbered sequentially using lowercase Roman numerals, starting with i.

1, 1.1, 1.1.1

When selected, the rows in your document are numbered sequentially using section numbering, starting with 1 for the parent row, 1.1 for the next level of indented rows, and so on.

No Prefix or Suffix

Selected by default, this option implies that no characters will appear before or after a row number.

x.

This places a period after the chosen row number style; for example, 1.1.2..

x)

This places a closing parenthesis ) after the chosen row number style; for example, 1.1.2).

(x)

This places row numbers in parenthesis; for example, (1.1.2).

Apply Template Theme

Opens a sheet that looks similar to the Resource Browser so you can choose and apply a template theme to the current document.

Expand All (Control-Command–9)

Expand all of the rows in your document.

Collapse All (Control-Command–0)

Collapse all of the rows in your document.

Expand Row (Command–9)

Expand the current row.

Expand Row Completely (Option-Command–9)

Expands the row and all child rows as well.

Collapse Row (Command–0)

Collapses the current row.

Collapse Row Completely (Option-Command–0)

Collapses the row and all child rows as well.

Focus (Shift-Command–F)

Brings the current row (and its children) into focus by hiding everything else in your OmniOutliner document. This is particularly helpful, for example, when you want to focus on the outline for a chapter of a book or a parts list for an engineering project. You can also assign multiple levels of Focus based on the structure of your document. For example, if you have a row with a few nested children, you could assign focus to the one of the child rows, and again to one of its rows if any were nested.

Unfocus (Option-Shift-Command–F)

Removes the previously assigned Focus.

Unfocus All

Removes the Focus as applied to every object in your OmniOutliner document.

Zoom In (Command–>)

Magnify the view of your document. You can scale your document up to 400 percent.

Zoom Out (Command–<)

Demagnify the view of your document. You can scale your document down to 50 percent.

Zoom to Actual Size

Automatically scales your document back to 100 percent (normal size). This is particularly helpful when you’ve zoomed in to 400 percent and want to quickly return to a normal view.

Column Headers

Choose whether column headers are displayed using one of these options:

Show

Displays all column headings.

Automatic

Turns on column headings if there are two or more columns in your document (the Note column does not count).

Hide

Hides all column headings.

Show/Hide Status Checkboxes

Choose to display or hide the clickable status checkboxes. These are helpful for when you have an outline that pertains to a project (such as the outline for writing OmniOutliner’s documentation) and you want to tick things off as you go.

Show/Hide Note (Option-Command–‘)
Show/Hide Note Pane (Pro) (Option-Command–’)

Shows or Hides inline notes or the Note Pane. (Show/Hide Note Pane is an OmniOutliner Pro feature.)

Show/Hide All Notes (Control-Command–’)

Toggle the visibility of the Notes in your document.

Hide/Show Sidebar (Option-Command–1)

Choose whether to display the left sidebar that contains Search, Document info, and Styles.

Enter/Exit Full Screen (Control-Command–F)

Make it so OmniOutliner takes over the entire screen. The advantage of going to Full Screen is so you can focus on your work without other distractions. The Inspector sidebar will float on top of your window, and you can still access the buttons in OmniOutliner’s toolbar by moving your mouse pointer toward the top of the screen. To exit from Full Screen mode, use either Control-Command–F again, or press the Esc key.

Show/Hide Toolbar (Option-Command–T)

Choose whether to display the toolbar at the top of the document window.

Customize Toolbar

Choose this option if you want to customize the toolbar for every OmniOutliner document, except for any templates for which you’ve created a document-specific toolbar (see the previous menu option). See the earlier section, Customizing the Toolbar for details on how to customize and create document-specific toolbars (an OmniOutliner Pro feature).

Add Row

Insert a row beneath the current row.

Add Inside (Command–})

Inserts and indents a new row beneath the current row.

Add Outside (Command–{)

Inserts and outdents a new row beneath the current row.

Add Column

Inserts a new column after the currently selected column.

Remove Column

Removes the selected column.

Keep Sorted

Choose one of these options to either reset or maintain the type of sorting you’d like for your document:

Clear Sorting

Removes any previously selected sorting choice. This is useful for when you want to resort a document using another method.

Notes, A-Z

Sorts the contents of the document in alphabetical (A-Z) order based on the Notes for each row.

Notes, Z-A

Sorts the contents of the document in reverse alphabetical (Z-A) order based on the Notes for each row.

Status, Unchecked to Checked

Sorts the contents of the document based the state of the Status Checkboxes, from unchecked to checked.

Status, Checked to Unchecked

Sorts the contents of the document based the state of the Status Checkboxes, from checked to unchecked.

Topic, A-Z

Sorts the contents of the document in alphabetical (A-Z) order based on the Topics used in the document.

Topic, Z-A

Sorts the contents of the document in reverse alphabetical (Z-A) order based on the Topics used in the document.

Sort Outline

Sort the items in your document, once, based on the following options:

Notes, A-Z

Sorts the contents of the document in alphabetical (A-Z) order based on the Notes for each row.

Notes, Z-A

Sorts the contents of the document in reverse alphabetical (Z-A) order based on the Notes for each row.

Status, Unchecked to Checked

Sorts the contents of the document based the state of the Status Checkboxes, from unchecked to checked.

Status, Checked to Unchecked

Sorts the contents of the document based the state of the Status Checkboxes, from checked to unchecked.

Topic, A-Z

Sorts the contents of the document in alphabetical (A-Z) order based on the Topics used in the document.

Topic, Z-A

Sorts the contents of the document in reverse alphabetical (Z-A) order based on the Topics used in the document.

Move

Use the following commands to move, indent, or outdent rows in your document:

Move Up (Control-Command–↑)

Moves the selected row and its children up one row.

Move Down (Control-Command–↓)

Moves the selected row and its children down one row.

Move Left (Control-Command–←)

Moves the selected row and its children to the left while ignoring any of its siblings.

Move Right (Control-Command–→)

Moves the selected row and its children to the right, making them children of the preceding row.

The Differences Between Move Right/Left and Indent/Outdent

When it comes to organizing the content of your outline, it’s important to understand the differences between Moving a row right or left (up or down a level) and Indenting or Outdenting a row.

When you move a row right or left, it might seem like all you are doing is moving it and its children up or down a level in the hierarchy of your outline. However, Move Right/Left ignores any siblings (rows at the same level as the row you are moving), and will move right or left and up or down in the hierarchy as needed.

Take the following as an example:

With the Orange row selected, press Control-Command–← for Move Left. Notice that the Orange row not only moved to the left, but it also dropped all the way to the bottom of the list hierarchy. This is because you moved the Orange row Left, and to be at the same level as the Red row, the Orange row shifted left and down in the list below Yellow’s children.

(If you are trying this yourself, press Command-Z to undo that change before proceeding.)

However, when you Indent or Outdent a row, that row takes its children along for the ride. With the Orange row back in its original place, press either Command-[ or Shift-Tab to Outdent the Orange row. Notice how the Orange row, which was at the same level as the Yellow row, now becomes the Yellow row’s parent.

And if you press Command-] or Tab to Indent the Orange row, it now becomes a child of the Red row, and the Yellow row (and its children) holds its position as a child of the Orange row.

Take some time to shift some rows around with the Move Right/Left, Indent, and Outdent commands. And if you want to get really creative, toss in Move Up (Command-↑) and Move Down (Command-↓) to adjust the list hierarchy as well.

Indent (Command–])

Indents the current row.

Outdent (Command–[)

Outdents the current row.

Group (Option-Command–G)

Indents the selected rows and groups them together under a new parent row.

Ungroup (Option-Command–U)

Ungroups the rows of a selected group. Ungrouping does not remove a parent row; you’ll need to delete that separately, if you so choose.

Minimize (Command–M)

Relegates the current window to the right side of the Dock so it’s out of your way. To bring the window back into focus, you can either choose Window ▸ [filename] (look at the bottom of the Window menu for a list of open documents), or just click on the document’s icon in the Dock to make it zoom back into view.

Zoom

This resizes the OmniOutliner document window to make it smaller (and sometimes really small), or to snap it back to normal-sized. This performs the same function as clicking the green Zoom button () in the upper-left corner of the document window.

Show/Hide Inspector (Shift-Command–I)

Open the Inspectors.

Inspectors

Choose to go directly to one of the following Inspectors:

• Style
• Column
• Outline
• Document
• Style Attributes

Bring All to Front

Brings all open OmniOutliner windows to the front of any other application windows that are currently open on your Mac.

OmniOutliner Help

Opens the in-app help document that you’re currently reading.

Welcome

A little greeting from us to you. (Aw!)

Release Notes

Discover what’s new in the latest release of OmniOutliner. Details you’ll find here include bug fixes, additions, and changes.

Contact Omni

This queues up an email to omnioutliner@omnigroup.com so you can send us feedback about, or ask for help with, OmniOutliner. We’ve pre-filled the Subject line of the message with your specific build number and the license key for your version of OmniOutliner so we can better help you.

Adding a New License

To enter your license, follow these steps:

1. From the menu bar, choose OmniOutliner ▸ Licenses to open the Licenses window.
2. Click Add License. A sheet slides down from the License window’s titlebar.
3. Switch to Mail (or some other email client you may be using) and find the email message that contains the license key for OmniOutliner 4.

   Tip
   You can quickly switch between apps on your Mac using OS X’s built-in app switcher: Command-Tab. To keep the app switcher open, hold down the Command key after pressing Tab.

   When you press Command-Tab, the app switcher pops up onscreen as a row of icons for the apps currently running on your Mac. Continue pressing Command-Tab until you find the app you need—in this case, Mail—and then let go of the Command key. You can also use Shift-Command-Tab to go backwards in the list of running apps, or you can use the Left Arrow or Right Arrow keys to go backwards or forwards, respectively.

4. In the email message, you’ll need to locate the name used for the License Owner, and the License Key. Select the name next to License Owner, and choose Edit ▸ Copy (or use Command-C) to copy the name to the pasteboard.

   Note
   If you can’t copy and paste the information, you’ll have to type it in. Make sure you enter everything exactly as it appears in your license message, including the dashes.

5. Press Command-Tab to switch from Mail back to OmniOutliner.
6. In the Owner field, choose Edit ▸ Paste (or press Command-V) to paste the name you used to register OmniOutliner.
7. Press Command-Tab to switch from OmniOutliner to Mail.
8. In the email message from us, select the License Key, and choose Edit ▸ Copy (or use Command-C) to copy the license key to the pasteboard.
9. Press Command-Tab to switch from Mail to OmniOutliner.
10. Click in the License Key field, and choose Edit ▸ Paste (or use Command-V).

11. The Type drop-down menu is grayed out by default, which limits the license type to Personal for the current user account on your Mac. However, your license key can also be used for another Type, Computer:

    • Personal: This type is for your personal use, and will only be available on this computer when you are logged in as the user who installed OmniOutliner. You can install this license on more than one computer, but only for your personal use. You should not use the software on two different computers at the same time with this kind of license. If a Personal license is available, the application will always use it.

    • Computer: You can configure your Mac to use this type, which permits any other user account on your Mac to use OmniOutliner. See Configuring OmniOutliner to Support the Computer License for details on how to do this.

12. Click Save.

After clicking Save, the license key is verified, after which you’ll need to restart OmniOutliner to unlock any Pro features, if you’ve purchased OmniOutliner 4 Pro.

You could purchase OmniOutliner 4 from the Mac App Store, or you can purchase a license key direct from us right from within OmniOutliner!

To purchase a license:

1. Open OmniOutliner 4.
2. From the menu bar, choose OmniOutliner ▸ Licenses to open the Licenses window.
3. Click Buy Licenses.

After clicking the Buy Licenses button, you will find yourself magically transported (in your preferred web browser) to the Omni Store, where you can purchase a license for OmniOutliner 4. (Naturally, this only works if you have an Internet connection.)

1. Quit OmniOutliner.
2. Open a new Finder window.
3. Switch the Finder’s view settings to Column, by choosing View ▸ as Columns (or use Command-3). This makes it easier for you to traverse the folder hierarchy on your Mac.
4. Choose Go ▸ Computer.
5. Choose your Mac’s hard drive (if you haven’t renamed it, it should be named Macintosh HD), and then traverse through the following folders:

   • Library

   • Application Support
6. In the Application Support folder, create a new folder (choose File ▸ New Folder, or use Shift-Command-N) and name it Omni Group. You will need to enter your admin password to create a new folder at this level.
7. In the Omni Group folder, create a new folder and name it Software Licenses.
8. Open OmniOutliner again, and then choose OmniOutliner ▸ Licenses.
9. Click Add License.

When you click Add License, you’ll notice that the Type drop-down menu is no longer grayed out, and the Computer option is available for selection. Now just enter the Owner and License Key information you received from us, click Save, and you should be set.

1. Choose OmniOutliner ▸ Licenses.
2. In the Licenses window, select the license you want to remove.
3. Click Delete License.
4. An alert sheet appears, asking you to confirm that you really, really want to delete the license. If you are certain that you want to do this, click Delete. If you’ve changed your mind, click Cancel and then close the Licenses window.