The Sidebar
Along the leading edge of OmniOutliner’s window is the Sidebar.
The Sidebar lists the Sections of your outline, the Styles you’ve used (on Mac), and any Filters you’ve saved, and also supports doing a Batch Find.
Show or hide the Sidebar by selecting the Sidebar Button in the toolbar, or using the Show/Hide Sidebar menu command in the View Menu.
Sections Tab ![]()
The first tab of the Sidebar displays the Sections of your outline in a scrollable pane, representing a compact summary of the document hierarchy.
As with rows in the outline, sections in the Sidebar have handles that can be dragged to reposition them (on Mac), and sections with children have disclosure arrows that can be clicked to expand or collapse their contents.
If you select one or more sections in the Sections list, OmniOutliner focuses on those sections—making those sections and their subsections the only thing you’ll see in the outline to the right. Command-click on multiple sections in the sections list to select them, thereby adding them to the set of items focused in the outline.
Focusing on selected content can also be done with View > Focus (Shift+Command+F) and reverted with View > Unfocus (Option+Shift+Command-F), or by Control + clicking to reveal the contextual menu and choosing Focus or Unfocus as desired.
When sections of the outline are focused, that narrowed scope is reflected in the document stats displayed at the bottom of the outline. If the outline is focused when printing, only the focused sections will be printed.
Adding Sections With the Sections List
With sections selected in the Sidebar, new sections (rows) can be added just as they would appear in the outline, using the same set of controls.
Press Return to add a section beneath the selected one(s) that’s a peer of the lowest section selected. The cursor is placed in the outline so you can enter some text for that section.
Similarly, if you wanted to add another section at the same level but above the currently selected section, press Shift+Return.
Styles Tab ![]()
The Styles tab is only available on Mac. For iPad, iPhone, or Apple Vision Pro, see the Editing Styles section of the Inspectors chapter.
This tab includes Structural Styles at the top of the list, which are automatically applied to classes of objects, and Named Styles at the bottom of the list, which can be manually applied to items you have selected.
- To edit a Structural or Named Style, click on its row and use the Selection Style Group Inspectors, which apply changes only to the current selection.
- To create a new Named Style,
click
![]()
New Named Style
in the lower corner of the Styles tab.
Enter a memorable name in the Sidebar,
and use the
Selection Style Group Inspectors,
which apply changes only to the current selection. - To delete a Named Style, click on its row and then press Delete or select
- Delete Style
from the
![]()
More menu in the bottom of the Styles tab.
If you accidentally delete a style,
you can use
Undo
to restore it. - Structural Styles have a fixed order in the list, but you can drag Named Styles to reorder them.
Click on the
More menu in the bottom of the Styles tab
to open a mini-menu containing commands for:
Learn more about Styles in the Outline chapter.
Filters Tab ![]()
OmniOutliner’s filtering feature adds tools to create and save your own rules for customizing the visibility of content in your outlines. Saved filters are listed in the Filters tab of the Sidebar.
To create a filter, choose View > Row Filters > New Filter, or click the + button at the bottom of the Filters Sidebar tab. The filter editor appears in a sheet below the Toolbar, where you can set the rules for rows that are visible when the filter is applied.
You can set as many rules as you want, using the + and - buttons next to each line to add and remove them.
With the filter set up the way you want, give it a description and click OK. The filter is added to the list in the Filters tab and the View > Row Filters submenu; choose the filter in either of them to apply it to your outline.
For as long as your outline is filtered, the filter bar appears just beneath the Toolbar. It holds the filter description along with buttons to edit, refresh, and dismiss the filter (new rows created while the filter is applied aren’t subject to its rules until you refresh).
When a filter is dismissed, your outline returns to its original view state with all content visible.
One filter option that merits more detail is the is like condition, which matches the input string plus any wildcard characters to text in the chosen scope for the filter.
The is like condition works on any scope that contains rich text or is represented as a string. On these scopes, is like works like is (strict matching), but with wildcard characters available for optional use.
The two wildcard characters are *, which represents any number of characters (including zero), and ?, which represents exactly one character.
For example, Any note is like a*e matches any note with the first character a and the last character e, while Any note is like a?e only matches notes with three characters where a and e are the first and last character.
Batch Find Tab ![]()
Enter keywords in the search field at the top of the sections list to find all sections of the document containing those keywords. The list displays all rows with matching text, with the keyword text highlighted.
Click or tap a row in the batch find results to navigate to its corresponding position in the outline, with the keyword text selected.