Outline: Knowledge Organizer App Reviews

The client is prone to random crashes, tables dont paste well from external sources (e.g. websites or the command line), it completely lacks support for equations, and the "code" text style doesnt work. These problems are showstoppers for me: my notes are comprised almost entirely of equations and code, or tabularized results of my code. To its credit, Outline looks good, is fast, and is an improvement over Onenote in the way you organize tabs and sections. Dropbox sync is a nice addition as well. If you arent using it for code or math, its still a good notetaking app, but in its current state I dont believe it is worth its price.

Version 3.6.2 Upate **** Update - OneDrive syncing issue resolved - thanks Outline Support ***** The visual designs, layout and colours on the this app and the iPad version are superior to OneNote and designed for the Mac. While the functionality is still not on par with OneNote, the important features are largely there. Version 3.0, through to 3.4 have added signficant features to prior versions (e.g. spell check, printing) and fixed many of the annoying bugs and have improved stability. I strongly prefer the OneNote/Outline style of notes to that of Evernote - however Evernote is also a great app and has some advantages such as web smoother clipping. I use Outline for taking and organizing business notes and combine it with the odd handwritten note from a Livescribe smartpen. The smartpen workflow is clunky but works. Many of the bugs and key missing features that caused me to rate 3-star in prior versions have been addressed (thanks very much guys). I find it quite stable now and and does not corrupt my Onenote files on Onedrive. I have not used the other sync services but Customer Support suggests they work even better than Onedrive. Great new features: - Backup very nicely done - however, restoring backed up notebooks a bit clunky - Print to Onenote - works extremely well using OS X extensions and looks great. As a next step, I would however prefer if the images (e.g. from Safari) were not set automatically to background. Or even better, make it an option. You can also use Shift-CMD-4 or Shift-CTRL-CMD-4 to capture part of a screen/window and past into your notebooks. - Note printing - Finally! Enough said. - Notebook editing - cutting, pasting, moving pages is a lot easier now. No more crashing when inserting text. - drop down menus cleaned up and consistent with OS X (e.g accessible with ctrl-click) - Table of contents is a useful addition A few suggestions (list is getting shorter): - Coping / moving sections, tabs etc is very limited and not well thought through. This makes managing multiple, large notebooks very challenging. - Spell check very frustrating to use - when I correct spelling that has been incorrectly changed it should not continue to be changed again and again and again. Please copy how this is done in standard word processing apps (e.g. MS Word) since it works well and is what users are used to. - should be able to change the order of open notebooks by dragging - better Livescribe+ integration (not just via OneDrive) if possible I have found the developer is very receptive to input from the user community and has incorporated almost all of my suggestions over the last few releases. Tech support is also fast to get back to you.

非常に美麗なインターフェースだが、日本語がタイプできない！ 4000円もしたのに全く使えない。 Looks very nice but... This application isn’t compatible with in-line typing of Japanese letters… Completely useless for Japanese users.

Its description says "**Keyboard Shortcuts** Use default Mac shortcuts and gestures to navigate and optimize note-taking process. “ So, I bought this because I expected I can use general Mac shortcuts with this app. But it wasn’t. totally wasted money!

As an avid user of OneNote in Windows and with Mac version of it only able to store its documents in OneDrive, Outline is a great software to have. The more versatile GUI is a bliss. However, not being able to use files located in a network mapped directory is missing and the ability to manage OneNote files in a network mapped directory should be added as soon as possible.

As noted in the description part, you CANNOT create a notebook with this software (so far). You can only open imported notebooks from somewhere else. Unless you are using this soft on iPad or using MS OneNote there is no point to bother investing into it. Otherwise, it is completely useless. But you are welcome to join my lonely camp of money waisters. Anxiously waiting for "edit-ON" version update and hopefully without charge...

Just stopped syncing two days ago without any sign of failure.

It would be an excellent application if it could import directly from your account OneNote. While you can only use it on the Mac before downloading documents to SkyDrive or where they are saved documents created with the official application microsoft and then drag them into the app to use them. No syncing, no cloud services. Hopefully in future versions, even given the cost.

Hi all I’ve been using Microsoft OneNote for a semi professional use and I must say that now, with this product, it is available for Mac the perfect product. It works perfectly, it syncronize without any problems between mac and ipad…. great. Waiting for the iphone app!

All the big problems that affected release 2.0 have been fixed. Version 2.1 is very stable, very fast and extremely useful. It’s fully compatible with OneNote, also when shared on SkyDrive/OneDrive. One of the best note-taking apps. The only missing feature is the ability to create tables (but it handles them properly if created in OneNote).

NO SUPPORT. I read another review that support was not answered. I would easily give this APP 4-5 stars for the APP but without ANY support replies, it’s useless. Buy it if you want to take chances. You may be able to work it without any problem, but if you have any, don’t expect any help. (This wasn’t a case of one missed email, none of my emails received any response.)

Some things about the app seem weird to me First thing is when you start the app, the window does not come to the front, it is hiding behind all the other windows for other apps. I have sat there waiting for some sign that the app has loaded and nothing happens. Then you realise that it has loaded and you have to click on the icon in the task bar to cause the window to come to the front. It seems weird to me that there is no file menu. The “Open Notebook” is under the application menu. There is a fairly prominant “Register” button. It seems you have to “Register” the app to “ get the most from your purchase”. Personally I dont want to have to register my purchases with anyone. I already paid you the money for the application. Another thing is that synching is done through One Drive. This seems weird because I use a Mac and while I have iCloud and Dropbox, I definitely do not have OneDrive. The other thing that worries me is that there does not seem to be a way to export all the data. There is only a way to export the current page as a PDF. This doesnt seem that great because I consider PDF files more read only then say a html file, an XML file or a plain text file. Its annoying that I had to buy the app, download and install it to find all this out.

I had high praise for this application when it first came out. The most recent updates have made it unusable. Now that One Note is avaialble for the Mac, I find myself using it more and more. Outline does not have most of what I need. It had so much promise. What a pity. Some examples of problems: 1. constantly crashes 2. Constantly freezes 3. No easy way to open it. You have to click on the icon on the dock to even see your notebooks. Most of time, it freezes at that time. 4. No recent notebooks 5. No insert date and time Sorry.

I cannot even use the program. When I contacted the company, they informed me that the next version would fix the issues. The issue being that I cannot even create a notebook to start using the program. Although I will wait a few more months, if this does not get resolved in about three months I will be requesting reimbursement from Apple.

the app crashed everytime I tried to open it. Even after restarting my Mac it continued to crash repeatedly. Do not buy.

Great app so far but I still find myself frustrated at times with some of the bugs. Switching between pages within the sections can be annoying. But this app has promise. Hopefully I’ll be using this for a while. Adding iCloud Drive support would be a plus … especially beacuse it’s a mac application.

This app is no differnet then keeping notes in Pages, the think I loved about Microsoft OneNote is the ability to use inking. Let me know when this is available for Outline and maybe I will change my views of this program

I generally love this app. It has revolutioned my life in various ways because I use several computers and an iphone, and everything I do with work, personal projects and collaborations is all synced together seamlessly and automatically.

The best aspect of Outline is that it’s basically OneNote with the ability to save notebooks locally instead of to OneDrive. The worst aspect is its horrible instability: 3.2 still crashes on me both unpredictably and predictably. (Try hovering over the “Add Table” option under the plus sign on the toolbar.) I just hope it gets better soon.

This program has so much potential . . . When it works. I experience multiple crashes every time I use it. Each crash I generate reports with details of the crash but no signs of life from the developer. While I have not lost any stored data, some new data I entered in does not hold and I have to re-enter it all over again. Unfortunately those new ideas you were entering while you were on that creative roll are gone. I really didn’t want to post this review because the program can be very helpful with productivity. At the same time I am very frustrated with the developers inability or lack of desire to solve these problems in a reasonable amount of time. I will continue to use this app but will also continue to search for an alternative. My advice to those considering the program is not to purchase it just yet. Wait for the developers to make it functional. Then and only then, would I recommend buying it.