Archive for March, 2010
Auto project backup and more – Writing Outliner Word Add-in BETA 2
Posted in: Version History by Edwin on March 31, 2010
Hi Folks,
I’m getting a great amount of valuable feedbacks from emails and the beta test forum since the first beta of Writing Outliner Word Add-in was release 15th this month, thank you all, guys!
Of course in such a short time I couldn’t get all suggestions and problems fixed, but here is the list of the new stuff in this second beta release of Writing Outliner Word Add-in – the all-on-one writing tool for writers.
And I’ll be working on the rest, please don’t hesitate to give me more feedbacks through:
Download the new release (BETA 2) here.
Manual or automatic project backup
You write/edit Word documents a lot, you have to backup your documents frequently.
Word document backup with Writing Outliner has become easy now, it allows you backup your whole Writing Outliner project anytime as you wish, or simple let Writing Outliner takes care of it for you – automatically backup the modified writing project upon closing. See the screenshots below:
Quick Word document import, a great time-saver!
Quickly (with two clicks) import currently opened Word document to a specified Writing Outliner project.
It’s very easy, just click the ‘Import Current Document’ link in the Welcome pane and then select the target project you want to import to. Once it’s done, you open the target project and you’ll find the imported Words documents under the newly introduced INBOX folder. Screenshots:
Other improvements
- Move a document up or down in the Project Manager Outliner with keyboard <Ctrl + Up/Down>;
- Added the ‘address bar‘ to the embedded File Explorer tab, so that when doing document importing or exporting you can quickly navigate to a folder;
- Now ignorable notification messages are shown with the small notification window that appears at the lower right part of your screen, so that your workflow will not be interrupted (Like what Outlook, MSN/Live Messenger do).
Bugfixes:
- Project notes are missing after re-opening the project several times;
- In a rare case the document synopsis, tags or notes sub-pane in the Document Properties Pane (only the UI itself, not your data) will disappear until you reopened Microsoft Word.
- Temporary Word documents that are used internally by Writing Outlinier Add-in are no longer be added to Word’s ‘Recent Document List’, so you’ll not be seeing strange document names like 1AE63565B5E04ACB8674659621A9AA89.docx;
- Avoid moving the special ‘Compiled Output’ document node with drag and drop.
Download the new release (BETA 2) here.
Enjoy the new beta release!
Let’s start the BETA test of Writing Outliner Word Add-in!
Posted in: Book writing software, Version History by Edwin on March 15, 2010
Hi Folks,
Finally, I can start the beta test of Writing Outliner Word Add-in today!
What you can do with this version?
- Project-centric writing, keep all files together;
- Use the Project Manager Outliner to outline book-length documents, each outline item is associated with a Word document.
- Tabbed document editing – edit multiple Word document at the same time;
- Instant, Google-alike full text search, find any documents in the project, you can search by text, title, status, label, tags, notes, synopsis, or match all these fields!
- Document tagging and search by document tags, for example, search by “tag:MyTagA or tag:MyTagB“
- Attach icons (status and label) to documents and search by the icons, for example, you can specify the status icon of certain documents as “Needs Review”, and when you want to see only those documents, all you need to do is to input “status:needs review” in the search box.
- Import existing documents (supports doc, docx, RTF, text, wri, all file formats that supported by MS Word).
- Embedded File Explorer tab for viewing and importing files in your harddisk, or exporting files from a Writing Outliner project to disk.
- Drafts compilation and branch compilation, the Drafts folder or a specific document branch will be merged for output.
- And so on…
You can see some screenshots in my previous blog post.
And I hope you think this is a good start!
Download and feedback
Please download the beta version here.
Please report bugs, make suggestions and post comments in the beta test online forum.
Thank you!
Update 1
I have just uploaded a new version which solves the following two problems:
- Error message is displayed when opening the sample project: “Wrong Project Property: Modified (Last Modified Time)”;
- The error report technical information does not contain the most important info for locating the source of the problem.
Sorry for the problem, please download it again!
Update 2
If you couldn’t download the software with the above link, please DO let me know, and try this download link.
Writing Outliner Word addin will not get in your way when you don’t need it
Posted in: Word addin by Edwin on March 10, 2010
Just now I received an email from someone, he concerned once Writing Outliner Word add-in is installed, will it get in his way when he is not working on documents that need Writing Outliner Word addin.
His original question:
Your outliner looks very promising, but I’m wondering if after installation Word will always start with it or is it possible to have the options for a clean startup and a startup with the outliner? I’m new to Word addins.
The answeris: No, Writing Outliner will not get in your way when you don’t need it.
Look the screenshot below, it only shows a small vertical strip on the left of your Microsoft Word main window.
Why this UI design instead of using a Ribbon item (or a toolbar/menu item in pre-2007 versions of Microsoft Word)?
Because you can recall it with just one-click!
Don’t like my idea? Tell me please, my mind is always open, you know, I’m not a writer and I am trying to write an all-in-one writing tool for writers, so my mind needs to be wide open to get ideas from you 😉
Turning Word into an outliner software, more new screenshots!
Posted in: Book writing software, Outliner Software by Edwin on March 8, 2010
Hi Folks,
I’m finalizing the preparation for the beta test of Writing Outliner Word addin, just now, I have setup a forum for discussion of the beta test process, it will be ready before the 15th of this month, there are some other things to do before that though. In the mean time, please have a look at the new screenshots of this Word addin.
Using Microsoft Word™ as an outliner software
The main screenshot of Window 2003 with a Writing Outliner project opened, doesn’t it look a outliner software 😉
Search your word documents like Google!
Yes! The search function in Writing Outliner is almost as powerful as Google 😉 With it you can instantly find any Word documents. An example search string (search documents that contains phrase ‘New York tims’ and doesn’t contain ‘dontIncludeThisWord’ and have two tags: mytag1 and mytag2 ):
“New York Tims” tag:mytag1 OR tag:mytag2 -dontIncludeThisWord
Browsing Disk Files Inside Word
One of the important idea behind Writing Outliner for Word is: Do all things related to writing in Word with tabs without even leaving Word. And this embedded File Explorer is an example, with it you can easily drag and drop files to import them into the project, or the other way around, drag documents from a Writing Outliner project to export it to the disk. And your can smoothly view your research files on the disk without switching to other windows! The embedded File Explorer is full featured like Windows Explorer!
Easily word document tagging
The document tagging function is very usable, I learnt a lot UI design ideas from Gmail, Actually, I’m a lazy man, I hate unwanted mouse clicks 😉
The blank-project wizard tab
Stay turned, the beta testing starts soon!