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Not sure why but the software outliners category is really lacking especially if you have a taste for the freeware and portable variety. Every once in awhile I long for the days of Ecco Pro and I start a new search that always turns up no good freeware outliners.

I like to use software outliners because they help me think through new projects and get me started laying out things in detail. I try to use outlining in Microsoft Word but it just doesn’t do it for me. Excel works better as an outliner for me but I’m still left hoping that one day, I’ll come across an outliner that is as good as Ecco Pro was or I remember it being.

If you are in the hunt for an outliner, here’s something you can try to see if it works to your liking. With the following procedure you can use Notepad++, a portable freeware text editor as an outliner.

Notepad++ is a fantastic text editor with syntax highlighting, auto completion, file and ftp management, macros and code folding. It is the code folding feature when used with language set to Python that makes Notepad++ usable as a text outliner. (Indenting and un-indenting lines in Python start and end code blocks.)

To use Notepad++ as an outliner, start typing your hierarchical outline text using at least one space to indent lines, see screenshot. Then set Language to Python to activate code folding.

Don’t forget that Notepad++ is portable. Simply download the zipped version and extract to a location of your choice.

If you have a favorite text outliner, leave me a comment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 10:41 pm and is filed under Portable Software, Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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