The Sidebar

The Sidebar is located on the leading edge of the window, and contains three or four tabs, depending on the platform:

• Sections Tab — Lists all the Sections of your document.
• Styles Tab — Create, delete, edit, and apply or remove Styles. (Mac only)
• Filters Tab — Create, delete, edit, and apply or remove Filters.
• Batch Find Tab — Quickly find any rows that match a given string.

To show the Sidebar:

• Tap or click the Sidebar Button in the Toolbar
• Select Show/Hide Sidebar from 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.

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

The Filters Tab allows you to edit, apply, and save sets of rules, in order to control the visibility of rows in The Outline.

To create a Filter, select the + button in the bottom of the Sidebar, New Filter… from the Row Filters submenu on Mac, or Save (as) Filter while you are Filtering the Outline.

The filter editor appears, allowing you to define rules for rows that are visible when the filter is applied. Once you have filter rules set up the way you want, give it a title and click Done to save the filter.

The filter is added to the list in the Filters Tab (on all devices), as well as to the Row Filters submenu of the View Menu (on Mac only). Choose the filter from either location, to apply it to your outline.

While your Outline is filtered, the filter bar appears just beneath The Toolbar It displays the filter title, along with buttons to edit, refresh (rows created while the filter is applied aren’t filtered until you refresh), or dismiss the filter.

When a filter is dismissed, your outline returns to its original view state with all content visible.

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.