Outliner program for printing basic reports with automatic numbering

Posted by Andrew Mckay
Jun 19, 2011 at 05:28 AM

Everyone has their own requirements which will determine the most suitable outliner/PIM for them.

I recently came across The Guide and seems to suit my needs very well but I do not want to jump 100% until I have tried a few of the many options available.

I run various housing projects with several Municipalities and every month I need to present a basic report on the progress. I want to be able to generate a basic report with the parents and child node as the headings and the notes which will give more info and which can be entered as text or a copy and pasted from word/excel/emails/.

In between the meetings as new things happen I can simply update my notes or add new headings so when the report is needed I simply make a few basic updates,print preview, print and am ready to go.

The basic key features I need to have

Print preview feature, this is important.
I want the headings and sub headings to be automatically numbered for me.
The notes ( from the 2nd pane )come in neatly below the numbered headings
Ability to export as text.
Able to choose parents/nodes/child nodes and just print those selected

So far I have tried a few and I am finding the Guide produces the best basic reports especially the automatic numbering which has impressed me with its simplicity and neatness. My main concern is the Guide project seems to have gone very quiet and I am not sure if it is being actively developed

Others I am trying at the moment include

TreeDBnotes. Seems to have a lot of options but I am battling to produce simple numbering when printing.

Todolist. Very active community and has ability to export to different formats ( csv,text,freemind,gnattprojects,html)

Others I have downloaded and have only looked at briefly Smereka,EssentialPIM and wikidpad

As mentioned above I am impressed with the Guide but the lack of development worries me and I have that nagging feeling that there could be something better out there. ( Is this the CRIMP that I first came across here ??? )

Any advise on what other options I could look at to produce basic reports with automatic numbering would be appreciated.I am looking at buying if it meets my needs so I do not want to limit myself to freeware.

regards

Andrew