V2.1.54 supports multi file formats – and full-text searchable!

Posted in: Version History by Edwin on February 8, 2023 | No Comments

You can now import any format of files to your writing project, including Adobe pdf, plain text, images (png, jpg, gif, svg, Photoshop ps, and so on), RTF, and so on. These kinds of files usually serve as research/reference materials.

Built-in sophisticated viewer/editor for pdf files, plain text files and image files.

For other kinds of file, you can open it with the associated external programs, and Writing Outliner will auto save it back to the project database if you edit it.

The pdf files and plain text files are also full-text searchable (in addition to the previous full-text search of Word documents).

More:

Significantly simplified/restructured the internal structure of the software, which makes Writing Outliner much easier to maintain and extend.

A bunch of other small enhancements, bugfixes and optimizations.

Writing Outliner version 2.0.53

Posted in: Version History by Edwin on December 17, 2022 | No Comments

What’s new

Import and split a large Word document into Writing Outliner, Writing Outliner can recognize the outline levels in the source Word document and split them accordingly. In other words, the outline in the source Word document will become outline nodes in the target Writing Outliner project.

Screenshots:

Other enhancements: several small stabilizations.

Writing Outliner for Word v2.0.52

Posted in: Version History by Edwin on December 15, 2022 | No Comments

What’s new in 2.0.52

This version addressed a long-standing document content loss issue which happens as following:

• You added a new document and edited the content.
• You then moved the document to another branch.
• You close and reopened the project, found that the new document content’s lost and has moved back to its original branch.

Converting from a folder to a document might cause similar issue too, and that also has been fixed. I’m sorry for the inconveniences caused. I’ll keep stabilizing and polishing Writing Outliner.

Other enhancements and fixes:

• Enhanced: In previous versions the document’s cursor/text selection position information are saved only if you also have edited the document content. Now it’ll always be saved even if you have just browsed the document.
• Fixed: After converting a node between folder and document, the middle pane didn’t reflex the change until you select another node and switch back.
• Fixed: An issue introduced in yesteray’s release :Copy and paste a new document then close the project, an error message would pop up.
• Fixed: Not a big issue, but in rare cases when closing the project an error message might appear causing the failure of updating the “recently used projects” list.

Writing Outliner version 2.0.51.1629

Posted in: Version History by Edwin on December 13, 2022 | No Comments

What’s new

• Massively simplified the internal structure of the software, resulted in a cleaner, more stable and flexible base for future development.
• Enhancements:
  • The document is instantly searchable after you manually saved it (in previous versions you’d have to switch to another document before you can search in it).
  • Upgraded the project database system to the latest SQLite.
  • Project loading is faster thanks for more optimized project database operations.
  • Several small user interface enhancements.
  • ‘Copy Project File To…’ menu caption has been changed to ‘Backup Project File…’ so that it’s easier to understand by the users.
• Issues fixed:
  • When the Word window has no document currently open, pressing [Ctrl + Shift + PgUp/PgDn] (for quickly jumping to previous/next document in a Writing Outliner project) will cause error message popping up.
  • Ensure the latest version of the Writing Outliner manual is opened every time you click the Open the Manual button.
  • Changed the keyboard shortcuts for toggling the left/right panes, the old ones no longer work (possibly due to conflicting with new versions of Word).
  • In a situation error message might pop up when Writing Outliner is updating the word/character counts in realtime.

WritingOutliner v2.0.47

Posted in: Version History by Edwin on November 6, 2022 | No Comments

• Installer: Prevent from running the installer program again when there is already an instance running.

• Added a standalone assistant tool called “WritingOutliner Word Add-in Manager”, which allows you to disable WritingOutliner without uninstalling it, or if Word somehow disabled WritingOutliner, you can use this tool to re-enable WritingOutliner.

WritingOutliner 2.0 Released!

Posted in: Version History by Edwin on October 25, 2022 | 7 Comments

After the development of the software was stalled for about 2 years since 2020, I overturned my previous decision. WritingOutiner is special mostly in that it’s built on top of Word, and it has potential.

That being said, the development of WritingOutliner has been restarted and will be continued – it won’t be stopped again any more.

I’ve got a lot of enhancement ideas sleeping in my mailbox sent from people all over the world over the years, and I’ve got my own ideas. Stay tuned.

What’s new

• User interface:
  • Reworked, automatic font size for high DPI monitors – no more small font issue on large screens, nor needing you to manually adjust the user interface scale for large screens (Note, if you have a very large monitor and still experience any font size issue, just send me the screenshots and I’ll fix it).
• Corkboard:
  • Index card: in addition to the status name that’s already displayed as stamp text on the card background, now the label name is also displayed in the footer of the card.
  • Arabic and other non-English characters can now be correctly displayed on the cards.
• Writing goal management:
  • See live word/character count in the metadata pane as you are writing.
  • Instant, non-disturb notification of the achievement of target word/character count.

• More user interface enhancements:
  • Larger, clearer status and label icons.
  • Non-disturb notification after a project document compilation (combination).
  • Small speed optimization of project document compilation (combination).
• Fixed a lot of blatant issues which has been introduced when upgrading for Win 10 and upgrading the development tool of WritingOutliner in year 2020.
• A bunch of small enhancements that are too trivial to list here.

The development of WritingOutliner has been restarted!

Posted in: Novel Writing Software, Version History by Edwin on October 12, 2022 | No Comments

The development of WritingOutliner has been restarted!

If you ask me why:

• WritingOutliner is so unique in that it’s built on top of Word.
• Many users still prefer it over the others.
• It feels so bad and nervous to abandon it, really.

The enhancement is already currently in progress, many issues have been fixed. In the meantime if you have any comments, suggestions or issue reports, feel free to send an email to edwin.yip@WritingOutliner.com

Color index cards, high resolution screen support, and other corkboard usability improvements

Posted in: Book writing software, Version History by Edwin on March 27, 2020 | 23 Comments

I’m excited to announce that WritingOutliner version 1.9.39 has been just released.

Among a bunch of other improvements, two of the major new features are:

• Color index cards for the corkboard
• Full support for high resolution screens such as 4K monitors. See the video below.

WritingOutliner has been updated to support the newst Word 365, Word 2019, Word 2016, and so on!

Posted in: Book writing software, Version History by Edwin on January 20, 2020 | 5 Comments

Update 1: Now both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Word are supported! In other words, WritingOutliner supports all Word versions/editions now!

Great news! WritingOutliner now supports all the new Word 2019, Word 365, Word 2016, Word 2013, and so on!

You can now download and order the new version. It’s real, see a screenshot (WritingOutliner inside the newest Word 365):

Previously I’ve announced the new DocxManager product, and later after I communicated with a lot of WritingOutliner customers, I came to the conclusion that these two software are quite different in some aspects. So from now on they’ll be developed in parallel.

That being said, from now on WritingOutliner as an Word add-in will be continued to be developed, enhanced and stabilized. While DocxManager will be focused on the “document manager” and “website builder” part, WritingOutliner’s goal will be remained as turning Word into a perfect outliner and writer’s tool!

The new WritingOutliner’s has gone through significant development but the details are not included in this post, just a note – WritingOutliner currently supports only the 32bit version of Word which is installed by default, so I guess most people use 32bit version of Word. And 64bit Word support is coming – actually the development’s done, but it still needs more testing so it’s not released yet.

If you are an existing customer, you should have received your upgrade coupon.

Upgrading to the latest version of SQLite engine for WritingOutliner

Posted in: Academic Writing, Version History by Edwin on February 5, 2015 | No Comments

You might already know that the underlying storage for the documents in a WritingOutliner project is the small, fast and reliable SQLite database system, it’s the database engine chosen by all big companies for their products, including but not limited to Google (for Chrome Browser and Android), Apple (for Apple Mail, Safari and iPhone), and so on.

And from my previous post you might already know that I’m working on a new version of WritingOutliner that will support 64bit version of MS Word (these including Word 2010, Word 2013 and Office 365), and this really involves a lot of work. But this is only a portion of the tasks – I’m also switching to another component for SQLite that will allow me to take advantage of the latest version of this database system…

Stay tuned!

In case you did know, WritingOutliner is an add-on that turns MS Word into an outliner software and make it perfect for writing professional documents like academic documents, dissertations, novels, technical documents, and so on.