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Outlining software recommendations?

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superboyac:
Hi everyone, I know this topic is discussed in several places here, but this is something a little more specific.  I'm looking for a software that can handle outlines VERY easily.  Currently, I rely on InfoQube for this, but (and I hate to say this) it is way too unpolished as far as the interface goes for me to rely on it without spending hours upon hours fixing my information in the database simply because i don't understand exactly how everything is happening.  So, until it gets cleaned up, I need an alternative.  I'll describe as clearly as I can what it is I need:

NOT a notetaker
I am not looking for something to take notes.  So I'm not looking for something with a notepad like pane where I can type paragraphs and a lot of text content.  I am simply looking for outlining capabilities which I will explain below.  For notetaking I already have several excellent options: evernote, cintanotes, Onenote.

PURE outline features
This is where IQ is klunky as far as the UI.  I need to be able to easily move items in an outline around.  So in a hierarchy, items can be moved up/down and in/out of parents (tabbing in or out is also the term used, basically, moving things under parent items or back out of them; also, going right/left).  I hope that is clear.  The other outline feature I need is SORTING.  I need the sorting to be stable and flexible.  So, if I manually sort items in a hierarchy in my own way, it needs to stay that way.  In IQ, there are a million ways to sort and they get very unstable.  if you accidentally click on something, it might resort everything alphabetically or numerically, and ruin your custom sort.  And you can't go back easily.  This is partly due to a lack of a good undo function, and also due to purely interface issues where it's too easy to screw things up and too hard to fix screwed up things.

So that's my wish.  I am very skeptical of finding anything, to be honest.  InfoQube was a lifesaver when it came out because it really did things in a way no other programs could do it.  I have tried very hard to rely on it, but I literally have spent more than twice as many hours fixing things in the program than I have actually trying to use the program to do work.  And it's not because I don't get it or anything.  It's because it's too klunky.  But it is remarkable in what it can do, so that's why I'm skeptical anything would do it better.

You know, Excel would be perfect for this if it had the ability to outline.  If you could create parents and children relationships in Excel nicely, it would be perfect.  But you can't.  yes, I know Excel has an outlining feature, but it's pretty useless.

Any suggestions?

superboyac:
This one seems promising, called Sain Outliner:
http://www.sainsoftware.com/

I'm going to give it a shot.

[edit]
Ah.  Forget it.  It's too simple.  I need something that can create a lot of custom columns.

40hz:
Somewhat outdated list of a few dozen can be found here. 

Might be a place to start. :)

superboyac:
Somewhat outdated list of a few dozen can be found here. 

Might be a place to start. :)
-40hz (January 22, 2011, 05:45 PM)
--- End quote ---
I've actually been going through that list for the past hour!  I'm not really finding anything there.  Unfortunately, the words "outliner" "notetaker" "information management" "organizer" are all synonyms for this type of software.  So most of those things are just notetakers with a tree hierarchy.  And I've been through the whole notetaking thing in the uber-long thread here from years ago.

I have a gut feeling your Outline 4D software might offer some hope.  After thinking about it more, I really think I'm looking for something like this:
Excel, with the ability to EASILY indent rows in and out, to create parent/child relationships.  If Excel was able to do that, i think it would be just about perfect.  Unfortunately, even though Excel has an indent feature and a grouping feature, it doesn't do what you think it does.  It's very weird.  I literally just want to use the cells and functions just like I normally would in Excel, but I want to be able to move rows in and out, up and down, and the items need to be visually indented to indicate the parent/child relationships.  It needs to be very "visible".  I need to "see" that a child belongs to a parent.

Renegade:
Have you looked into mind-mapping software? That might do what you want, although it is a bit of a different paradigm.

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