This chapter contains an exhaustive list of every single menu item in OmniOutliner 5 Essentials, along with their keyboard shortcuts (where applicable).

The OmniOutliner menu holds commands related specifically to the administration of the OmniOutliner application itself. Check for updates, view and modify your preferences, and enter new license information here.

About OmniOutliner: This opens the About box so you can learn more about OmniOutliner, including the current version and build number, along with email links to Omni Sales and Support. You&'ll also find the Omni Support phone number; we&'re here Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Time.
Check for Updates (Omni Store Only): 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&ndasd,): This opens the Preferences window so you can further configure OmniOutliner to suit your needs and your work style.
Licenses (Omni Store Only): Show the Licenses dialog, where you can review your OmniOutliner software licenses.
Unlock OmniOutliner: Sign in to your Omni Account to associate this copy of OmniOutliner with it.
Manage Omni Account and Purchases: Open the Omni Account window, where you can manage your Omni Account and your OmniOutliner licenses. This command appears after you have signed in for the first time.
In-App Purchase (Mac App Store Only): Open the in-app purchase window to choose the version of OmniOutliner you would like to buy: the free 14-day trial, the Essentials Edition, or the Pro Edition.
Free Trial Mode (Trial Version Only): If you&'re running a trial version of OmniOutliner, these commands switch between the Pro and Essentials editions of the app so you can compare features.

Try Pro Edition
Try Essentials Edition

Services: Here you&'ll find a list of applications that OmniOutliner can share information with. Select something in a document, and then choose this menu option to see the apps that can receive that data from OmniOutliner.
Hide OmniOutliner (Command–H): Hides OmniOutliner&'s window. To bring OmniOutliner back into view, either click the app icon in the Dock, or use Command–Tab to use macOS&'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 macOS&'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).

The File menu contains options for creating, opening, renaming, exporting, and printing documents and templates.

New (Command–N): Open the Resource Browser, or (if chosen in General Preferences) create a new document using the default template.
Resource Browser (Shift-Command–N): Open 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 save 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 the original.
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.
Share: With content selected in the outline, choose another app as a destination for the selection (copied out as plain text). See Using the Share Button for details.
Export (Option-Command–E): Export your OmniOutliner document to one of the formats mentioned in Exporting from OmniOutliner.
Revert To: Opens Time Machine so you can sift through earlier saves of the current document and restore it from an older save.
Page Setup (Shift-Command–P): This opens the Page Setup dialog, where you can choose which printer to format the document for, and select a paper size, orientation, and scale for the document.
Print (Command–P): Opens the print panel, where you can customize the appearance of your outline for printing or PDF export. OmniOutliner&'s printing options are detailed here.

The Edit menu holds commands related to modifying the contents of rows, columns, text, and more. Cut, Copy, Paste, and Undo are all found here.

Undo (Command–Z): Undoes the previous change you&'ve made.
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.
Cut (Command–X): Deletes whatever you&'ve selected and places that on the Clipboard so you can paste it back later.
Copy (Command–C): Copies whatever you&'ve selected and places it on the Clipboard so you can paste it somewhere else, or in another document, later.
Paste (Command–V): Pastes whatever is on the Clipboard at the current insertion point or selection. Content pasted from external sources matches the surrounding OmniOutliner style by default; to retain any original text styles, choose Paste with Original Style instead.

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.

If you want each line to appear on its own row in OmniOutliner, first select a row by clicking in the gutter, and then paste in the text.

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): Selects either every visible row (collapsed rows are not selected), or all text in a cell (when the text cursor is inside a cell).
Deselect All (Shift-Command–A): Unselects 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

The Calculated status merits a bit of explanation. It is only available to parent rows where None is the current status, and the parent&'s children have some checked or unchecked status defined. Choosing Checked or Unchecked for the parent row would overwrite the child rows&' statuses, so Calculated offers the option to have the parent&'s row status reflect that of the children instead (checked if all children are checked, unchecked if all children are unchecked, or mixed if otherwise).

Edit Note (Command–&'): Edit the Note for the currently selected row.
Find: Use one of the following search options:

Go to Search Field (Option-Command–F)—Places the cursor in the search field of the OmniOutliner toolbar. (If you have customized the toolbar to remove the search field, this command does nothing.)
Find (Command–F)—Opens the Find dialog. Use the Find dialog to search for instances of a keyword in the document. If an instance is found, it will be highlighted in the row or note text where it appears (column headers are not searched). Optionally, use the Replace commands to overwrite an instance—or all instances—of the search term.

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).

OmniOutliner&'s Find dialog relies on Apple&'s implementation of regular expressions. More information, along with a list of metacharacters, can be found in Apple&'s NSRegularExpression developer documentation.
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 macOS offers up similar words from which you can select the correct spelling.

Speech: You can have macOS 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.

Start Dictation (fn fn): When dictation is turned on, OmniOutliner uses macOS&'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.

The Format menu contains commands for formatting the contents of your document, including font and text styles, built-in row styles, and more.

Heading 1 through Heading 6: Apply or remove the predefined heading styles included with your current document theme.
Highlight 1 through Highlight 3: Apply or remove the predefined highlight styles included with your current document theme.
Bold (Command–B): Applies bold to the current selection, or removes it.
Italic (Command–I): Applies italics to the current selection, or removes it.
Underline (Command–U): Applies an underline to the current selection, or removes it.
Strikethrough: Applies a strikethrough to the current selection, or removes it.
Apply Template Theme: Open a sheet similar to the Resource Browser where you can choose and apply a template theme to the current document.

The View menu contains options for working within your OmniOutliner document.

Show/Hide Tab Bar

Show or hide the tab bar beneath the document toolbar. The tab bar contains a tab for each open document in the window.

Show All Tabs/Exit Tab Overview (Shift-Command-Backslash)

Enter or exit the tab overview, which shows open tabs as a grid of preview images.

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(s) (Command–9)

Expand the currently selected row or rows.

Expand Row(s) Completely (Option-Command–9)

Expands the currently selected row or rows, and all child rows as well.

Collapse Row(s) (Command–0)

Collapses the currently selected row or rows.

Collapse Row(s) Completely (Option-Command–0)

Collapses the currently selected row or rows, and all child rows as well.

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).

Show/Hide Status Checkboxes

Choose to display or hide the clickable status checkboxes.

Show/Hide Note(s) (Option-Command–')

Shows or hide notes on the selected rows.

Show/Hide All Notes (Control-Command–&')

Toggle the visibility of the notes in your document.

Use Typewriter Mode

OmniOutliner keeps your scroll position static when you add a new row to an outline or select a row other than the current one (until you reach the very bottom of the window).

This command changes this. When in use, typewriter mode detects when your selection moves above or below the center of the document window, and adjusts the scroll position in response. This keeps the row you select front and center—just like it would on a typewriter.

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. 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 to open the sheet for customizing your OmniOutliner document toolbar.

Customize Touch Bar

This command appears when running OmniOutliner on a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar support, and provides customization options for the Touch Bar similar to those for the toolbar. See the Custom Touch Bar section for details.

The Organize menu contains options for adding, removing, and sorting the contents of your document.

Add Row: Insert a row beneath the current row.

By default, the Return key acts as the keyboard shortcut for adding a row beneath the current row. Likewise, Shift-Return adds a row above the current row.

(The Return key's functionality can be changed in Keyboard Preferences, which replaces this default behavior.)

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.
Keep Sorted: Choose one of these options to either reset or maintain the type of sorting you&'d like for your document. These parameters are non-destructive and do not change the actual organization of your outline—just order in which rows appear.

Clear Sorting—Removes any previously selected sorting choice. This is useful for when you want to resort a document using another method, or want to restore the original ordering of your rows.
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 Selected Rows: Sort the items in your document or selection, once, based on the following parameters. Choosing one of these options actually changes the order of the rows in your document—not just their apparent placement.

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.

Move Right/Left vs. Indent/Outdent

When it comes to organizing the content of your outline, it&'s useful 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.

However, when you Indent or Outdent a row, that row takes its children along for the ride.

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.

The Window menu contains options for working with OmniOutliner&'s windows.

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 restore it to view.
Zoom: This resizes the OmniOutliner document window to fit the content of your outline as well as possible, or (if used again) restore the previous window size.
Show Previous Tab (Control-Shift-Tab): macOS Sierra and later support grouping windows from the same application into a unified window with tabs for each document (similar to the tabs used by most web browsers). With multiple OmniOutliner documents sharing a window in this way, this command navigates to a previous tab in the row.
Show Next Tab (Control-Tab): With multiple OmniOutliner documents sharing a window, this command navigates to the next tab in the row.
Move Tab to New Window: If an outline is displayed as a tab in a window with others, this command detaches the document&'s tab into its own separate window.
Merge All Windows: Move all currently open OmniOutliner document windows into a single window with the documents separated by tabs.
Bring All to Front: Brings all open OmniOutliner windows to the front of any other application windows that are currently open on your Mac.

This menu contains options for accessing OmniOutliner&'s support resources and documentation.

OmniOutliner Help: Opens the in-app help document that you&'re currently reading.
Intro Video: Opens a page with an introductory video that showcases just some of the wonderful uses of OmniOutliner (the app that you&'re using right now)!
Quickstart Guide: Opens a page with a brief tutorial explaining OmniOutliner&'s most basic features. If you&'re brand new to the app, this is a great place to start.
Release Notes: Discover what&'s new in the latest release of OmniOutliner. Details you&'ll find here include bug fixes, additions, and changes.
News: Important information from Omni about recent changes to OmniOutliner or macOS that impact your use of the app. (This menu item only appears if we have such news to share.)
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 information about your version&'s license so we can better help you.

OmniOutliner 5 Essentials Reference Manual for Mac

Menu Commands and Keyboard Shortcuts

The OmniOutliner Menu

The File Menu

The Edit Menu

The Format Menu

The View Menu

The Organize Menu

Move Right/Left vs. Indent/Outdent

The Window Menu

The Help Menu