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|  Managing Notes Using an Outline
In NoteBook, you can also store information in outlines made up of “cells.” Outlines are great for managing lists, and especially hierarchical lists, like a to do list made up of sub tasks. You create an outline by adding and arranging “cells.” A cell contains a note you’ve typed, some text you’ve pasted, or even files or images you’ve imported. Cells are similar to text notes except being members of an outline they cannot be placed at any location on a page.
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New pages are empty, except for their name. Press Return to create the first cell in the page’s outline, then begin typing to fill the cell with text. Press Return to end editing, and again to add another cell. When you’re not editing text, the Delete key removes any cells you’ve selected.
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| These two cells are “siblings” — they have the same amount of indentation within the outline.
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| Quickly Adding Cells using List Mode
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If you’re typing a list of items, you’ll want to add a new cell each time you finish with the current one. Choosing Outline → List Mode causes the Return key to end editing of the current cell and add a new cell for your next list item. See the Keyboard pane of NoteBook preferences to make List Mode your default state.
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| Indenting and Unindenting Cells
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Press the Tab key to indent the selected cell, and Shift-Tab to unindent it. You can also indent cells using commands in the Outline menu. You can’t indent the first cell on a page because there’s no cell above it to become its parent.
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| When you indent a cell, the cell above becomes its “parent.” The indented cell becomes a “child” of the cell above it. Cells with children have a triangle cell control.
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The blue bullet or triangle at the cell’s left side is its “cell control.” Click and drag the cell control to move a cell.
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| When you move a cell, its children move with it.
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| You can also move cells using commands in the Outline menu. TIP: You can move a cell to another page by dragging it onto the other page’s tab. Copy a cell to another page by Option-dragging it to the tab.
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| Hiding or Showing Child Cells
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Clicking a cell’s triangle to hides or shows its children. A cell with hidden children has a right-pointing triangle.
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| A cell is “collapsed” if its children are hidden, and “expanded” if they’re visible.
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| You can also expand and collapse cells using commands in the Outline → Expand and Collapse menu.
TIPS: Option-Right Arrow expands the currently-selected cell and selects its first child. Option-Left Arrow collapses the currently-selected cell’s parent and selects the parent. Option-click a triangle to expand a cell and all of its descendants.
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| Reducing a Cell to a Single Line of Text (aka Folded Editing)
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To hide all but the first line of text in a cell, select the cell and choose Outline → Show Full Cell Text.
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Cells with hidden text end in an ellipsis. Clicking in the cell exposes all of its text. The cell reverts to its first line when you end editing.
The Escape key is the keyboard shortcut for hiding and showing full text.
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| Working with a Portion of an Outline
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Use Outline → Hoist to work with just a portion of a large outline. Hoisting hides all cells except the selected cell and its descendants. When you hoist, ellipses appear at the top and bottom of the page, to indicate that some of the page’s cells are not visible.
You can hoist multiple times within the same page. Outline → Unhoist undoes the most-recent hoist, and Outline → Unhoist All restores all cells to view. By The Way: Why did we name this command “hoist?” We didn’t — it’s a term coined back when outlining applications were first written.
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| Assigning Fonts to Different Levels in an Outline
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Use the Font Inspector (Window → Inspector) to apply a font to each level in the outline. With the Font Inspector you can set the page’s default note font, and configure the page to auto-format its cells. Auto-formatting forces cells at different levels in the outline to always use the same fonts.
TIP: If you just want to revert a cell back to the page’s default font, select it and choose Format → Font → Plain. Choosing the Plain font setting also removes ruler settings such as sub- or super-scripting.
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To prefix cells with bullets, Roman numerals or other characters, select the cells you want to number and choose a numbering style from the Outline → Numbering menu. Choose Outline → Numbering → Customize... to customize the numbering style, font and other options.
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You can use the Sort pane in the Actions Inspector to sort a page’s cells. Choose Window → Inspector to reveal the Inspector, click the Actions button, and finally the Sort tab within the Actions pane. Start creating your own sort, or click the popup menu control to choose a favorite sort.
The Sort pane can sort using multiple criteria, such as by due date and then text. Drag the six sort criteria to rearrange the sort order.
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If you have a list you want to remain sorted as you make changes, you can set the parent cell to auto-sort its children. Select the parent cell and then choose a sort from the Outline → Auto-sort menu. By default, auto-sorting only applies to a cell’s children but you can set a cell to auto-sort all of its descendants. NoteBook adds an Auto-sorting Sticker to cells that are configured to auto-sort their children - click and hold the Sticker to view or change its settings.
You can also auto-sort all of the top-level cells on a page: deselect all cells, then choose a favorite sort from the Outline → Auto-sort menu.
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