New, Easy Outlining Software for Windows

Writing Software to outline your thoughts faster in a tree list. A new way to write in snippets with a constant overview of your writing roadmap.

The idea is simple but can prove invaluable for any serious writing, thinking or learning activity. Break up your thoughts as rich-text notes in a powerful tree list. Reorganize these notes easily by drag and drop. Print or export as a merged draft anytime.

Write and manage all your text in an easy two-pane outliner. Be creative and organize your own sections in the outline whether they are snippets, chapters, plots, characters, ideas or research notes. Manage all these in a free format rich-text editor with no special skills to learn except rearranging outline items by buttons or drag and drop.
"I've been an outlining fan for many years...I now believe that WhizFolders is the best surviving two-pane outliner available."

"I use it for my research and I can't imagine a writing program that is more efficient."
See more comments from the users.

"Writing long texts is almost impossible if you only have a normal word processor. The hierarchical writing with Whizfolders can make anybody a writer. You see what's missing and can fill out the holes. You see your own way of thinking and you can correct it easily."
-- A note recently received from a user that describes the value of WhizFolders to writers succinctly

How is this Outline Software different from Microsoft Word?

See all the slides at the top of the article Outliner with Word Compatible RTF.

VIDEO: How to outline notes better with a List. See many applications of this powerful concept.

Watch the following video to see why an Outlining List with an RTF Editor is an easier device for organizing your notes. If you have been using a text editor or word processor to manage your notes, find out how this list-based Organizing and Outlining is different and better. Use this tool for random brainstorming of ideas and notes as well as for organized writing where you prepare an outline and then can even merge all the notes into a single draft for printing or export.

Testimonial that says it all

"I use it for my research and I can't imagine a writing program that is more efficient. It's the perfect tool for any multipotentialite who loves nothing more than to have a tool that organizes and connects the wide range of ideas and thoughts we have floating around in our head."

See more testimonials from customers.

Outline software that encourages writing one short note at a time to plan and manage big writing tasks easily.

All you need is the right outlining tool that lets you quickly rearrange short notes in a new hierarchy.

Any writing, study and research involves making new notes and putting them in a proper place in the existing notes. Often, you also need to rearrange the existing notes as you get more familiar with the concept being written or studied. An Outline in WhizFolders gives you the intuitive features to place new notes, rearrange existing notes and join many notes to make the most productive use of your time. Being able to constantly rearrange your notes lets you think, write and learn faster! For example, when you are making notes from a book, your notes are often in a different sequence and hierarchy than those made by the author. This is the work of your "unique" genius. Similarly, when working on a new writing project, you need to constantly rearrange the notes that you write or collect.

The idea in WhizFolders is to outline the notes only by their "titles." You can select multiple titles easily and move them. Do you realize what you have been missing in your word processor all this time?

In a word processor, selecting the whole text of notes for moving would be too difficult or almost impossible. The multi-selection paradigm is missing in word processors.
Outline Software with emphasis on a tree list of note titles See a bigger picture below.

One program, many text applications!

In fact, this concept of a tree list is so flexible that you can use WhizFolders for many similar activities like writing, learning, a task list, a textual calendar, and more.
See the presentation.

How does it help when rearranging the notes?

Less scrolling: It's like looking at a table of contents, fully under your control. You have to scroll less to see the whole outline or structure of your document.

Drag and drop ease: Less scrolling also helps when you need to select a bunch of notes and move them to a different place in the hierarchy.

Powerful multi-selection, easy promote and demote and more. Let's continue this discussion below.



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See a Presentation

Discussion continued, this Outline Software Tool outlines all your note titles in a list. Why this kind of organizing and outlining is better to do in a list

Powerful multi-selection

You can select three different notes in different parts of the outline and bring them all at once under a previous section by a drag and drop. In a word processor, the multi-selection paradigm does not even exist, you can not select three different notes in different parts of a document at once.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not against the use of word processors.

A word processor is still very useful, but for presentation and not for outlining or starting a writing project. The idea is simple, use an outlining software or app like WhizFolders in the initial creative writing, research and brainstorming stages. When you are done, export the results to edit in a Word Processor for those fine presentation touches required of a manuscript.

Easy promote and demote

Just drag one or more note titles and drop them on another title. They become the child items of the target note. Simple right and left arrow buttons are also there to quickly promote or demote the levels of selected notes.

Auto processing of children

When you drag or copy a note title, its children are automatically included. When you do an export or printing, you get the choice of including the children if you did not select them to start with.

Easy inserts of new information

If you have to paste new information, you can quickly scroll to select a target in the list and paste. The information is pasted as a new note with rich text and pictures included. Auto pastes to collect web clippings or text from other applications is also possible.

Processing partial outlines

In many operations like printing and export, you may need to process only part of an outline. This is possible by the multi-selection feature.

Add-on features for organizing

In order to let you find desired items faster, you can assign color or icons to the note titles. In addition, you can assign keyword tags or insert hyperlinks. There are many more features like logical search, hoisting, and auto paste listed under "Major distinguishing features" below.

Even if you are a writer, you will often need to learn from other writers. The outlining list in WhizFolders is excellent for learning and can help you make notes on new subjects faster.

Here is an example. I was making notes from a book on copy writing. I used WhizFolders to deepen my understanding of the subject by organizing the notes in my own hierarchy and sequence.

It often happens when reading a book. The author's hierarchy and the order of the chapters may not match your own learning sequence depending on how much you already know about the subject. Organizing your notes in an outlining list helps a lot to understand the new subject because when you go to review your notes, you find them in the perfect order that you already have in your mind.

Outline Software being used for copy writing notes

What is the advantage of outlining in two panes here?

As you can see above, the left pane contains the hierarchical outlining list showing the titles of the notes. I call these titles "outline items" in the features section. You may have your own term for it, for example, some people know them as headings. The right pane shows the rich text content of the selected note. The advantage here is that you get a better overview of your whole outline with less scrolling because you only see the titles in the outlining list. A word processor shows you the content too in the same list but that requires too much scrolling and takes too much time to load huge outlines. Also, unlike a word-processor outline, each outline level item can have text or note content in it. Please see the presentation later for a more detailed explanation of the advantage of this approach. Also, we do have a "View Combined Outline" feature as described later that helps sometimes to see everything in one list.

Now please take a look at the outline in the left pane above. You can learn many aspects of how outlining helps from this example. The key points are explained below.

How to assimilate new information, breaking it up in manageable chunks

I made the above notes many years back when reading a nice book on copy writing. When I found something worth noting, I made a new note in the outline and put it properly in the hierarchy.

Note that I may not have followed the author's original hierarchy but made my own outline according to what I think fits where. As a result, I now have notes that I can review very quickly. Moreover, if I learn any new tricks that are related, I can insert them quickly in a proper place in the outline.

Reverse thinking, how to write a new book

Now let's take a look at this example from the reverse angle. If you were a writer, you could use this kind of outline to plan a new book on copy writing. You would be noting down thoughts and ideas on copy writing that come to your mind. But in this case, since the thoughts are random, you would be noting them down in different parts of the outline where they really belong. The end result would be quite like this but the sequence of creating the outline may not be same.

WhizFolders gives you features to easily move outline items from one place to another by simple drag and drop or promote/demote buttons. In the end, when you think a book draft is ready, you can print the whole book with the outline automatically converted into a table of contents. Or, you can export the whole or part of the outline to an RTF file for refining in a word processor or for sending to an editor.

Major distinguishing features of WhizFolders as a Writer's Outline Software and also a Note Taking Software

I'm not going to list the usual features that you find in many two-pane Outline Software Tools and Organizers. Instead, I'm going to show you unique features that you may not find in other programs. Note that what I call "outline items" in these features are actually the note titles or headings that you see in the left pane above. What you are outlining in WhizFolders are these note titles by arranging them in a hierarchy. The actual note content appears in the right pane when you select a note title.

Word-wrapped outline items

You don't have to horizontally scroll the outlining list to see complete items. Each item is word-wrapped.

Highlighting an outline item

You can highlight specific outline items by changing their highlight color or by changing the icons.

Hoisting and hiding

You can hoist part of an outline to concentrate on it. Other parts of the outline are hidden from you to avoid distraction.

View combined outline

WhizFolders is primarily a two-pane outliner. But at times, you want to view the complete outline along with note contents, indented. Deluxe edition supports this feature.

Pictures, tables and OLE objects

You can insert pictures, tables and OLE objects, such as Excel Spreadsheets. What's the use? You can keep usage notes about the spreadsheet in the same note.

Inituitive copy/pastes

Copy, paste works just the way you would want it to work. If you copy some outline items and paste them in the same or another outline, the child items are automatically pasted. If you paste them in an external application like Microsoft Word, a merged copy is pasted.

Print a draft from full or partial outline

Just select complete or partial outline in the list and do a print or export to get a merged draft that you can use in your word processor for those final finishing touches. Acopy, paste operation can also merge the selected outline items, with or without headings.

Web clippings

When you paste information from a web site, the location is automatically pasted for reference. This is a great way to quickly collect information from the Internet and later research it by using the links pasted with them.

Connect notes with links

You can insert links that allow you to jump from note to related notes. Helps tremendously when reviewing and brainstorming the notes.

Bookmarks for files and web

You can insert links going to external files, folders and web sites. So you can use WhizFolders as a launchpad or bookmark manager with the added feature of keeping helpful notes about those links.

To Do List or Task List

You can turn your outline into a simple, free format To Do List by showing Checkmarks on each item. See the presentation for an example.

Automatic paste (Watch Clipboard)

An outline note item is automatically pasted when you do a copy clipboard in another application. There is no need to switch back and forth between the other application and WhizFolders.

Logical search with AND, OR

You can find one or more notes easly by doing a boolean search for words with AND, OR, NEAR.

Tags or Keywords

Assign Tags (Keywords) to outline items and find them easily. Tags are used to assign relevant terms not present in the actual text of an item.

Precise drag and drop

When dragging items in the outline from one position to another, precise drop marks appear to guide you as to where the dragged items will be dropped. You can drag and drop multiple items and even complete branches of items. See the presentation for a small video on this feature.

Word compatible RTF export

You can export the merged outline in Word compatible RTF or outline format. This helps give fine finishing touches to your final draft in Word.

Audit Database

You can recover old or accidentally deleted notes from a "changed notes" database.

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