MindManager 2017 “sneak peeks” summarised: what we now know about the new version

Posted on 30 September, 2016 by Alex

Following on from the MindManager for Windows 2017 preview which I discussed in a recent post, Mindjet has just completed a series of five sneak peeks looking at some of the key features of the new version. These demonstrate a strong emphasis on extending Mindjet’s capabilities in relation to presentation, integration with other software and project management, but they also raise some tantalising questions about how far these new features actually will go. Here are the key links:

MindManager 2017 newtimeline feature. Source: Mindjet

MindManager 2017 new timeline feature. Source: Mindjet

I won’t go over the material in these sneak peeks in detail but I thought I’d provide a quick summary and offer some observations.

Continue reading →

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Update: Good news on Google searching in MindManager

Posted on 20 September, 2016 by Alex

In my last post I described some work-arounds to cope with the recent and sudden demise of MindManager’s Google search map part, due to changes in the Google search API. The map part allowed users to undertake Google searches within MindManager (MM) and was particularly useful for researchers.

In light of Mindjet’s announcement that a replacement would not be available for at least another year I was trying to identify some alternative approaches – though none of the ones I suggested were as straightforward or effective as the original map part. Not being a programmer I also assumed that designing an add-in to replace it would be very complex.

Happily I was wrong. Nigel Goult from Olympic Limited took up the challenge and has created an add-in which effectively replicates the map part and adds some extra features. This is available in two flavours – as a stand-alone add-in called Google Search Plus and as part of the latest 2.3 version of MAP for MindManager – a handy collection of nearly 50 tools you can use with MM. Continue reading →

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Web searching in MindManager without the Google search map part

Posted on 14 August, 2016 by Alex

Why was the Google map search part so useful…

For those of us who use MindManager (MM) for research purposes, the sudden demise of the program’s Google map search part has left a serious gap. It was also one of MM’s more under-recognised features so it probably needs a little explanation.

The part was a modest but very useful tool for seeking out and storing relevant web-based material within a mindmap. With the map part, users could create and save simple Google searches which could be saved in the map and run at any time. The results generated, including live links, also appeared in the map; they were regenerated whenever the search was run, but could also be saved permanently.

Google map search part example

Example of a search with the now defunct Google map search part

Continue reading →

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Mindjet releases preview of MindManager 2017

Posted on 20 July, 2016 by Alex

The following is a copy of post that I recently made on the MindManager Forum regarding the features of the next version of MindManager 2017, to be released later this year.

Mindjet have just released a “preview” of MindManager 2017 due to be released in September this year which highlights the following features (my comments in brackets):

  • HTML5 export of interactive maps which can be opened in most browsers (presumably an expanded and updated version of the current very basic web export facility);
MM17 1

Example screen shot of MindManager 2017 (source: Mindjet)

  • Export map content to “over 700 leading cloud apps” like Slack, Box, OneNote, Google Docs, and Gmail through Zapier (as I understood that this is already available through MindManager Enterprise, I assume this means this facility is being extended to the standard version. I assume this will address the current lack of OneNote integration which a number of users have been seeking);
  • The ability to transfer Gmail items and send content and status updates into maps as topics using Zapier (fortunately, it appears from the screenshots that MM can still communicate directly with Outlook);
  • New horizontal and vertical timeline templates which can be filtered (this is a feature which users have called for several years and which is increasingly available on competing products);

Continue reading →

Posted in Mind Mapping | Tagged , | 3 Comments

The Ins and Outs of MindManager Word Importing – Part C: Task Lists

Posted on 21 April, 2016 by Alex

This is the third in a series about importing Word documents into MindManager (MM), relying in part on the program’s ability to recognise its own Word formatting to recognise specialised fields. In the first part I covered how to import paragraph-based documents while using the heading structure to generate the topic hierarchy of the resulting mind map, while in part B I discussed table and spreadsheet importing from Word and Excel. In this part I’m applying on some of the techniques to import a more specialised table type – task lists. Continue reading →

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The Ins and Outs of MindManager Word Importing – Part B: tables

Posted on 12 April, 2016 by Alex

This is the second in a series about importing Word documents into MindManager (MM). In the first part I looked at the options for importing paragraph-based documents and retaining the heading structure in the topic hierarchy of the resulting mind map. In this part I’ll discuss how to import various types of tables from Word and also Excel.

This is something I first looked at in a post five years ago which in turn drew on the work of Andrew Wilcox who discovered that just as in a document structured with paragraphs, a Word table to which Word heading styles have been applied will develop an appropriate topic hierarchy when imported to MM – though there are some catches. In a more recent post I also looked at the use of Excel pivot tables to assist in the importing process.

In this post I’ll try to bring together and update these different approaches and also introduce some other ideas – including a surprisingly simple one which makes table importing a lot easier. Continue reading →

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The ins and outs of MindManager Word importing – part A: standard Word documents

Posted on 21 March, 2016 by Alex

Background

In my last post I discussed in detail a process I have developed to import a task list from Word into MindManager (MM). This process uses a unique feature of MM – when it sends a document the other way to Word, it applies its own versions of the Word’s formatting style as found in the Word template the user nominates for the export process. These include the equivalent of Word heading styles, but also some quite specialised ones as well.

One response I received commented that the post was hard to follow because I spent a lot of time explaining the background context on top of describing a fairly complex process. It was suggested that I perhaps could write another post, or series of posts, concentrating on and clarifying the steps involved.

Around the same time I responded to a question on the MM forum on how to import Word documents with hyperlinks appearing in the topics. This isn’t possible, but documents can be imported so that standalone hyperlinks display correctly in MM – ie, as hyperlink icons next to the topics by again using MM’s Word style formatting. I indicated that I would write the process up in more detail on this blog.

I’ve decided to combine these ideas into a series of three or four posts on using MM Word styles to assist in importing a range of Word documents. In this first post I’ll deal with importing “conventional” Word documents, in the second I’ll cover importing Word tables (updating some older articles I wrote coving this) and in last one or two I’ll revisit my recent post on the more complex task of importing task lists. Continue reading →

Posted in Import, Mind Mapping, Software | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Sending tasks from Word to MindManager (with a little help from Excel)

Posted on 23 February, 2016 by Alex

Update: I have published an updated and simplified method for importing task lists from Word which does not rely on splitting the table into rows as described in the post below. This is Part C of a series of articles on importing from Word and should be read in conjunction with Part B which covers importing non-task tables. Part A looks at the importing of standard non-table text from Word.

1. Introduction

Recently I posted a series of three articles that discussed how to use MindManager’s Gantt table to export a user-friendly to-do list with task data from MindManager to either Excel or Word, noting that despite its numerous export options the program lacked a facility to produce such a simple list easily (yes, exporting to Excel does produce a list but if you have a multi-layered map the tasks will spread across several columns which is difficult to read and time-consuming to turn into something more user-friendly).

The opposite – importing a task list complete with this task information created in either these programs direct into MindManager (MM) – is even more difficult. While MM will happily import a Word document with the appropriate heading structure or (albeit a bit more grudgingly) a table, in both cases it either ignores the task information or imports it rather uselessly as sub-topics or topic notes. Continue reading →

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Freestyle – how to deal with MindManager styles in documents exported to Word

Posted on 14 January, 2016 by Alex

Welcome to the first Sociamind post of 2016.

Recently I described my technique for using MindManager (MM) to write blog posts which involved exporting a map to Word and then importing from there to WordPress. I extolled the virtues of using WordX, the Word export add-in from Olympic Limited, to complete the MM to Word export process rather than MM’s built-in export facility, mainly because of the former’s much greater flexibility in selecting what to export and at what heading level, and the fact that it retains the Word template styles and style names.

In the article I commented that as I mainly use WordX I had not tried the standard MM Word export for this purpose though I believed that it should work, with the caveat that the process could be complicated by MindManager adding its own version of the Word heading styles. Subsequently in responding to a query on the Mindjet forum I’ve checked out whether a document created in Word using the standard MM export can be imported successfully into WordPress, only to discover that while it is imported it loses its Word heading structure. This is because WordPress doesn’t recognise the Word heading styles which MM introduces. Continue reading →

Posted in Export, Mind Mapping, Research and Writing | Tagged , | 5 Comments

What happened in Sociamind in 2015?

Posted on 27 December, 2015 by Alex

I would like to thank everyone who visited the Sociamind page in 2015, especially those who made comments or provided other feedback. In this final post for 2015 and with only five days of the year left to go I thought I would provide a brief snapshot of what has been by far the busiest for the Sociamind blog since it commenced. I’ve also added an index of all the 2015 Sociamind posts in alphabetical order.

The direction that Sociamind will take in 2016 is still evolving. It will continue to include posts exploring some of the lesser-explored features of MindManager and the more esoteric ways in which the program can be used, but it may also return to some of the broader policy issues which were addressed in earlier years in this blog. In the meantime, all the best for 2016.

2015 statistics

Not counting this article there have been 12 posts on Sociamind which received 3,524 views from 2,239 visits so far this year. The three most viewed items posted in 2015 (apart from the Home Page) have been:

  1. Using MindManager dashboard maps with Outlook: part 1
  2. Creating collapsible and expandable “many-to-one” relationships in MindManager mindmaps
  3. Using MindManager dashboard maps with Outlook: part 4

However the single most popular post since this blog was created in 2009  is a surprising one that was added back in September 2010 – Is this the (Western) World’s oldest mind map? This post took a brief look at an image of a mind map, or probably more accurately an information map, contained in a bible produced in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria which was commissioned as a gift for the Pope in 692. I’ll have to be honest and say I have no idea why this post has proved so popular in 2015!

All the best for 2016.

Index of posts added in 2015

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