TreePad – for every kind of note

If you are a computer person – I don’t mean a hacker, even in the good sense of that moniker – but if you use your computer for text – notes, lists, any written information you want to keep track of, without writing it out by hand – then what software do you use to make, organize, and manage those notes?

In days gone by, I used MS Outlook notes – not my favorite solution. I’ve also used a full-blown word processor – my personal choice has been WordPerfect, even back to DOS – excellent for formatting. Before Windows, I used text processors – on my DOS machine – and on my TRS-80, before that.

Then I discovered TreePad. For what I do, TreePad is the best solution I’ve found – powerful and flexible.

On the TreePad web site, the software is referred to as “an award-winning Personal Information Manager, Organizer, Database, and WordProcessor.”

The TreePad software does not come with a Windows help file. It comes with a “manual,” which is itself a TreePad file, using all of TreePad’s features for organizing, displaying, indexing, and linking information.

I use TreePad to manage text – notes, lists, journals (many), plans, writing projects, problem solving. For these, TreePad is truly spectacular.

I have fifteen file icons on the Quick Launch part of my task bar – which runs down the right side of my screen (I use the small icons, and my task bar is three icons wide). With these, I can instantly open any of my most frequently used TreePad files. Two of these, my Journal file and my Planning & Problem Solving file, are always open, during the day.

The main body of the TreePad window is divided into two panes, left and right, like the Windows Explorer file manager.

In Windows Explorer, when you’re looking at the contents of a disk drive, the left pane shows a hierarchical structure of folders. The right pane shows the files contained within whichever folder has the focus in the left pane – that is to say, whichever folder in the left pane is highlighted.

In TreePad, the left pane shows an expandable and collapsible, hierarchical tree structure that is visually and functionally similar to the left pane in Windows Explorer. TreePad calls each item (or line) in the tree structure a “node.”

In TreePad, the right pane shows the contents of the node that has the focus in the left pane. TreePad calls the contents of a node an “article.”

The contents of each article is created and modified using a built-in, full-featured word processor. You have the full array of fonts and font attributes, and of formatting options.

When you create a node in TreePad, you can give it a name. You can also choose an icon, to be displayed beside the node name in the tree, from a set of about 150 icons that installs with the product.

When you create a new TreePad file, it opens with one node. This is called the “root” node. You can’t delete the root note, but you can change it’s name, it’s icon, and the contents of it’s article. Any additional nodes you create are below and to the right of the root node.

In case my comparing TreePad to Windows Explorer has created confusion, let me explain something. In Windows Explorer, what you see in the left pane is multiple folders (each folder is actually a peculiar type of file), and what you see in the right pane is zero or more files. In TreePad, everything you see in the left pane, and in the right pane, is contained within one TreePad file.

I have used TreePad since before I upgraded to a Windows XP machine. I selected the Business Edition, probably because it is the “lowest” version that has a spell check dictionary, as the comparison chart shows.

If you are truly a “computer person,” I expect I’ve given enough information here so that you can begin to appreciate the phenomenal power of this product – to create, structure, organize, and manage enormous varieties and quantities of information – in simple and flexible structures – or in however complex a structure you need.

In a future post (article), I’ll explain more about the simple way I use TreePad, and about some of it’s peculiarities.