Derek Cater’s workflow of writing archaeological technical reports

Posted in: Novel Writing Software by Edwin on July 19, 2010

User Derek Cater shared with us his workflow of writing archaeological technical reports with Writing Outliner, it’s worth reading if you want to write technical reports in Microsoft Word, because as Derek said, without an outliner,

it was too time consuming to scroll up and down the document in MS Word, which was a continual necessity.

Derek also mentioned the problem with other outliner software is that other outliner software  usually lack advanced formatting features that Microsoft Word has (and of which Writing Outliner can take advantage):

it left a lot of formatting to be done at the end. Both of these problems are solved by Writing Outliner. Writing Outliner also puts all of MS Word’s writing and formatting tools at my disposal, which is a big bonus.

So to conclude, if you often write long Word documents, give Writing Outliner Word Add-in a try and you pain will go away.

You can now vote on new features for Writing Outliner – introduced UserVoice

Posted in: Novel Writing Software by Edwin on

I have just integrated UserVoice voting system with the Writing Outliner website, and I have “migrated” some existing suggestions from the existing Writing Outliner forum, please vote now to influence the future development of Writing Outliner – the MS Word add-on for professional and creative writers who need to write long texts (novels, technical manuals, research papers, etc)  in Microsoft Word.

Click here to vote on new features for Writing Outliner now!

If you have followed the development of Writing Outliner  – you should have noticed that during the development of this writing software I,  the developer, have been listening to feedbacks from you nice people -like what Wojciech – a fan of Writing Outliner  said in an email to me:

I’d like to let you know that I have just made use of you promotion and bought both Writing Outliner and MindVisualiser licenses. Although I was rather ‘silent’ last months, I followed the forum and your announcements with still growing satisfaction and respect – I have never seen such a successful software development from the scratch and fruitful interaction between testers/fans and the developer. My sincere congratulations! Good job Edwin!!

Sorry not being modest by showing off this email, but what I want is to show you that I really listen to you users and I ask for your help to vote on the feature suggestions made in the past few months with this new voting system.

New Features section illustrated with screenshots

Posted in: Novel Writing Software by Edwin on July 17, 2010

I have just completed the ‘Features‘ section of the website which describes the major features of Writing Outliner – the novel writing software as a Word add-in, contents include:

1. Outliners – the left Project Manager Outliner and the Multi-column Outliner.
2. Document full-text search.
3. Tabbed document editing.
4. Document icons (status and label).
5. Document tagging
6. Document synopsis and notes
7. Revision control.
8. Integrated file explorer.
9. Project compilation (merging all documents in a project into a single document for output).

All these features (still growing) that are added to Microsoft Word by Writing Outliner Add-on makes MS Word into a perfect software tool for writing novels.

Writing Outliner Beta 4 (Update 1)

Posted in: Book writing software, Version History by Edwin on July 2, 2010

Hi folks,

I’ve just uploaded a new beta version of Writing Outliner – 0.9.9.492 Beta 4 (Update 1).

This version includes the following bugfixes and enhancements:

• Enhancements of document compilation (merging separate documents into a single one):
  • Compilation error under Vista Enterprise + Word 2007.
  • Style handling problem reported by forum member MuppetGate in this forum post (happens only when ‘Include titles’ option is not selected).
  • Now the ‘compiled output’ will not be opened in the current document tab, but instead, open in a new tab (and one tab only). This is more convenient as it will not change your current document selection.
  • Shows an icon on the ‘compiled output’ document tab so that it can be identified easily.

• Occasional error (something like ‘Access violation’) that happens when closing Microsoft Word.
• Shows a balloon hint window to tip the user that he/she can restore  the Writing Project Manager pane when it’s is minimized. Some users reported they lost Writing Outliner, I guess this might be the reason 😉

Download address of this beta 4 (update 1) of Writing Outliner Word add-in. Note there is an alternative download link at the bottom of the download page.