In this series I’m exploring some of the new features as well as a few improvements to older ones in the recently-released MindManager 2018. In the first part I looked at improvements to a recently-introduced feature, Map Roll-ups, as well as the revival of a feature which was last seen as an add-in for MM 2012 – Conditional Formatting. This time I’ll examine changes to MM’s filtering facility and the completely new Priority and Schedule Views.
Filtering and SmartFade
It’s a long time since there’s been any major change to the filtering facility in MM, so the introduction of SmartFade is a pleasant surprise.
However, I’m still getting used to how SmartFade works. In MM2018 there is a new Filter – Fade icon on the Status Bar and a similar Fade button on the Filter tab on in the View ribbon. These show only task-related filtering, like the “Show” button (more on that in a moment). Furthermore, use either of these options and you will most likely fade out the topics you are filtering for. This may be your aim but I suspect that most people want to do the opposite – to fade out all the topics other than the ones they are filtering for.
To do this consistently you have to delve into the MM Options dialogue box. Click on Filter and you will see there is a new option – “fade non-matching topics”. Tick the box and when you attempt to use SmartFade in future the unwanted topics should fade (rather than vice versa) and will always fade rather than disappear. Continue reading
