How to know what row level you're at

OmniOutliner OmniOutliner for Mac
#1

Hi,

Is there a way of knowing what level of rows you’re at?
For example, I see a bunch of rows at the same level, I see needs formatting. But it can be a little tricky knowing what level they’re at.
And would be nice not having to count each and every time.

Thanks,

Max

#2

I don’t believe there is a way to have a numerical indication of an item’s level, or some type of ‘guide’. The firs thing that comes to my mind is is to, even if just temporarily, change the gutter colour, which can make it a bit easier to see how far indented items are.

It sounds to me like you are trying to select a bunch of non-contiguous items that are at a certain level to apply formatting, is that correct? The Styles pane should already auto-create a style entry for each level. For example, I have an outline with 6 levels at the time of this writing. I added an item at level 7 and level 8, and those now appear in the Styles pane:

If you needed to make a change to the formatting of say, all Level 7 items, you should be able to just select that style and make the desired formatting changes. This means you’ll only have to do one round of counting to verify that, indeed, it is the 7th and not 6th or 8th level you want to make changes to. You won’t need to locate every single 7th-level item.
Am I on the right track here with your issue?

#3

@scottisloud Thanks a lot for your very detailed reply! I really appreciate it!
My problem was really that I have a document with 11 levels. And I have made changes to the level 4 to 8 in local places to make it more visual and reader friendly. And then I was looking for a way to identify what level I should be making the change to in order not to mess up the higher or lower levels.
I just thought, I might be missing some little clue somewhere that I wasn’t aware of.

Thanks again!!!

#4

If you have a version that supports AppleScript, a short script will give you the level number of a selected row.

Copy-paste into Script Editor (in Applications > Utilities), select a row in OO, and click triangle ‘run’ button in Script Editor. This can be placed in the OmniOutliner > Services menu and, if wanted, assigned a keyboard shortcut. Post if you do have an OO version that supports AppleScript and would like to set it up in the Services menu (it’s easy).

SG

tell application id “OOut”
return document 1’s selected row 1’s level
end tell

3 Likes
#5

@SGIII Fantastic!! Script is now added to the toolbar. Thank you very much. This was extremely helpful to me :)


#6

Nice! Where do I look to learn how to add scripts to the OO4 Toolbar?

SG

1 Like
#7

I don’t remember where I read how to. But I think I should be able to explain it fairly simple:

  1. In OO click on Help - Open Scripts Folder.
  2. Dump your script in the open folder.
  3. Control click the toolbar and click Customize Toolbar.
  4. Drag the script icon to your toolbar.

Done :)

#8

Thanks. Didn’t think to look in Help.

I’ve revised script for my usage here to:

tell application id "OOut"
	set rLev to document 1's selected row 1's level
	display dialog "Selected row on level " & rLev ¬
		buttons "Ok" with title "OmniOutliner"
end tell
#9

No, it’s not an obvious place for it.

And thank you for the revised script!!