Microsoft Word Outlines

Posted by Hugh
Jun 20, 2009 at 11:52 AM

Gary

You’re probably aware of this from previous threads, and anyway it may be no help if you’re limited to Windows - but Scrivener on the Mac will probably do 75 to 85 per cent or more of what you want. As an outliner it lacks features that specialist applications have, and you’d probably want to export its output to a word processor for final polishing - but in Scrivener you can segregate your research from your writing as you want, add notes in meta-data panes, write in full-screen and select which parts or levels of your structure you want to include in the final product.

Additional advantages over Word are its saving and back-up routines. I started searching for alternatives to Word when I began to experience instability in its handling of long-form writing, and lost work. It didn’t seem to be designed for books. That was several years ago; the problems may have been corrected in the latest versions, but it would still be a concern for me if I had to use Word to try to write long articles or books now.