WhizFolders, a Writer's Outliner Software
Supports Windows 10 / 8 / 7 / XP

Finish all your writing projects faster. Write and outline text in a powerful, hierarchical list.

Have you only tried Outlining in a Word Processor or Editor? Do you find it too complicated? If so, you have come to the right place. WhizFolders gives you a new and simpler way to build an outline for all your writing, whether fiction or non-fiction.

A List is the "Easiest interface" for outlining your text in pieces or notes.

You can do mutli-selects and moves easily in a List as compared to an Editor or a Word Processor. See next section on how you will be using this list.
WhizFolders Outliner and Note Taking Software

 

You won't find this powerful list metaphor in a word processor or text editor. Here is how you use the Hierarchical List in all the stages of your writing.

Outlining list in WhizFolders

Adding your notes and outlining them as parent and child notes is very easy in a List.

You will get started in minutes! Once you get the hang of it, you will never go back to a regular editor or word processor. As a writer, here are the basic steps on how you outline in WhizFolders:
  1. Add your ideas and thoughts as items in a Hierarchical List as shown in the left pane of the picture.
  2. Add the text content of each item in the right pane.
  3. Refine your outline by rearranging the items by drag and drop or by using the move toolbar.
  4. Repeat the above steps till you are happy.
  5. Print the final merged draft anytime. Or, you can even export it as RTF and edit further in Microsoft Word to give those final finishing touches.

Research and organization is the first stage of all writing.

Thoughts come to you in a disjointed, fragmented manner. You add them to a tree list in WhizFolders, one short note at a time, putting each note in its proper place in the hierarchy. This helps you think and write better by following separate train of thoughts in their individual hierarchy.

In the second stage, you write, revise, rearrange and discard the text till you are happy.

For this stage too, a List is the most powerful metaphor. Because you can move multiple items by drag and drop. You can discard items or move them to an unused last section of the list. A "Hoisting" feature is also available that lets you concentrate on a part of the outline.

Finding notes is equally crucial. There are many different ways of finding notes in WhizFolders. You can use links, text or boolean search, keyword tags, icons, color and more to highlight the notes that need attention. For example, you can mark "unfinished" notes in a different color or icon. As another example, you can assign the same tag to the notes that describe a character to refer to them when neeeded.

Third stage is the presentation stage where you might want to print a quick draft for review.

For this purpose, you can merge, print and export all or only a group of notes to make a draft. Your word processor and other presentation tools take over from that point onwards and not before.

Creative writing is nothing but a repetition of the above stages.

What you want is a tool that helps you quickly go from one stage to another. A tool can only boost your creativity. It can not "replace" the creativity by a magic formula. Yet, early writers keep buying expensive software in the hope that some magical software will write for them.

Once you talk of a List, it also becomes a powerful Organizing Tool. Hence, WhizFolders doubles up for use as a powerful Note Organizer that helps in thinking and planning.

WhizFolders is a List-based tool allowing you to write short notes in a list, classifying and keeping each piece of note separately as you go.

Hierarchical Notes in WhizFolders
  • Add your ideas and thoughts as notes in a Hierarchical List as shown in the left pane of the picture.
  • Add the rich text content of each note in the right pane.
  • This helps in many ways. You keep the related notes and ideas together, and that helps you get a better hold on your subject matter whether you are planning or learning.
  • You can move around the pieces later to change their order as your ideas change (as they often do).
  • What is more, you can bunch up any number of notes to export a full document any time. Save your effort in brainstorming new ideas and plans. Use WhizFolders for all your note taking.

How does this Hierachical List help you think, write and learn better?

  • If you are working on a difficult or new concept, you quickly break it down into multiple notes in a hierarchy.
  • Move the notes around or insert more notes to aid in your thinking.
  • If you are a writer, you will understand this process as "outlining." This helps you plan your book in pieces.
  • When you are done, you can print or export everything together to make that first draft, ready for your word processor for advanced formatting.
  • This makes WhizFolders a first-class Research Tool with free format notes.

Using the outlining list for study and learning

When you are making notes in order to learn a new subject, the list helps there too.

Making Study Notes in WhizFolders For example, please see the screenshot above where I was studying ASP.NET, a development framework, from a book.
  • I made notes only for the things I didn't know and in the order that I understood them better.
  • I broke the difficult concepts into many notes and child notes as necessary. This helped me classify them better.
  • I made my own Tips and Tricks branch as I read along.
  • This study session was even faster because the book I was studying was an eBook, and I saved time by copying and pasting pictures of the sample source code instead of typing it.

In study and learning, the "reviewing" phase is equally important.

  • I often review these notes and mark important notes by colors and icons.
  • I insert hyperlinks that allowed me to go from one related note to another when reviewing.
  • I assign my own keyword tags to notes in order to find them by keywords later.
  • Finally, I often print all the notes together with an automatic Table of Contents, made up from the list.

Major distinguishing features of WhizFolders

I'm not going to list the usual features that you find in many two-pane organizers and outliners. Instead, I'm going to show you unique features that you may not find in other programs. Note that what I call "outline items" in these features are actually the note titles or headings that you see in the left pane above. What you are outlining in WhizFolders are these note titles by arranging them in a hierarchy. The actual note content appears in the right pane when you select a note title.

Word-wrapped outline items

You don't have to horizontally scroll the outlining list to see complete items. Each item is word-wrapped.

Highlighting an outline item

You can highlight specific outline items by changing their highlight color or by changing the icons.

Hoisting and hiding

You can hoist part of an outline to concentrate on it. Other parts of the outline are hidden from you to avoid distraction.

View combined outline

WhizFolders is primarily a two-pane outliner. But at times, you want to view the complete outline along with note contents, indented. Deluxe edition supports this feature.

Pictures, tables and OLE objects

You can insert pictures, tables and OLE objects, such as Excel Spreadsheets. What's the use? You can keep usage notes about the spreadsheet in the same note.

Inituitive copy/pastes

Copy, paste works just the way you would want it to work. If you copy some outline items and paste them in the same or another outline, the child items are automatically pasted. If you paste them in an external application like Microsoft Word, a merged copy is pasted.

Print a draft from full or partial outline

Just select complete or partial outline in the list and do a print or export to get a merged draft that you can use in your word processor for those final finishing touches. Acopy, paste operation can also merge the selected outline items, with or without headings.

Web clippings

When you paste information from a web site, the location is automatically pasted for reference. This is a great way to quickly collect information from the Internet and later research it by using the links pasted with them.

Connect notes with links

You can insert links that allow you to jump from note to related notes. Helps tremendously when reviewing and brainstorming the notes.

Bookmarks for files and web

You can insert links going to external files, folders and web sites. So you can use WhizFolders as a launchpad or bookmark manager with the added feature of keeping helpful notes about those links.

To Do List or Task List

You can turn your outline into a simple, free format To Do List by showing Checkmarks on each item. See the presentation for an example.

Automatic paste (Watch Clipboard)

An outline note item is automatically pasted when you do a copy clipboard in another application. There is no need to switch back and forth between the other application and WhizFolders.

Logical search with AND, OR

You can find one or more notes easly by doing a boolean search for words with AND, OR, NEAR.

Tags or Keywords

Assign Tags (Keywords) to outline items and find them easily. Tags are used to assign relevant terms not present in the actual text of an item.

Precise drag and drop

When dragging items in the outline from one position to another, precise drop marks appear to guide you as to where the dragged items will be dropped. You can drag and drop multiple items and even complete branches of items. See the presentation for a small video on this feature.

Word compatible RTF export

You can export the merged outline in Word compatible RTF or outline format. This helps give fine finishing touches to your final draft in Word.

Audit Database

You can recover old or accidentally deleted notes from a "changed notes" database.

Why not download a Trial and try out all the features for 30 days?

We offer full support during the trial so you can send questions by email and get a response quickly.

Or, you can buy the software risk-free with our no-questions-asked return policy.