Outline documents make it easy to organize your information in a structured format without using a database application or splitting your text into multiple files. An Outline document is composed of two parts: the Headings list (or table of contents) on the left and the Contents editor window on the right. When you select a heading, its content is displayed in the editor window. Open the accompanying Readme.OTL file in NoteTab to see an example of an Outline document.
You can have up to about 5400 headings per Outline document and a heading can contain many megabytes of information. An Outline file can theoretically have a maximum capacity of 2GB.
You can create your own outline documents by choosing the "New Outline" command from the File menu. Unlike standard documents, you must choose a name before it is created. You will also be prompted to enter a name for the first heading. Once you have completed those steps, you are ready to enter content for your first heading.
To create a new heading, just press Shift+Ctrl+A. You will then be prompted to enter the name for the new heading. Note that you do not need to save the content of modified headings as you move through the list – this is automatically taken care of by NoteTab. Shift+Ctrl+R will remove the current topic. If you can't remember these shortcuts, just place the mouse cursor over an empty part of the Headings window and look at the hint in the status bar. You will find more commands and shortcuts listed in the "Documents | Outline Heading" submenu. You can also invoke the shortcut menu from the Headings window.
You can add hyperlinks to other headings. When activated, the content of the linked heading is displayed. Use the "Documents | Outline Heading | Make Heading" menu command (or the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+B) to easily create a new heading based on selected text in your outline document. This command automatically inserts square brackets around the selection, adds the heading to the list, and opens it for input.
The PageUp/PageDown keys let you easily scroll from one heading to the next. If the cursor is at the beginning of the heading's content, pressing PageUp will display the previous heading. Pressing PageDown when the cursor is at the end of the heading's content will display the next heading. If the last heading is already selected, NoteTab will ask you if you want to add a new heading. You can reorder headings by simply dragging them with the mouse to a new position.
Just like any other document, you can have multiple Outline documents open simultaneously. Outline files are very similar to Clipbook libraries and do not contain any control codes other than plain text characters (i.e. no binary characters). As a result, you can easily open them in any text editor or word processor (although you won't benefit from the outline layout), or send them in e-mail messages.