A comparison of document export formats in mind mapping software
by Chuck Frey, Mind Mapping Software Blog
Exporting mind maps to documents is a common task that many people need to do with mind mapping software. According to the results of my most recent survey, it’s also an ongoing source of frustration, because many users don’t care for the default formatting that their mind mapping software imposes on the exported document, and aren’t sure how to adjust it to better suit their needs.
So I thought I’d take a closer look at each of the major mind mapping programs and the capabilities they offer. I’ll also compare the pros and cons of each developer’s approach to export customization, and what this implies in terms of how much reformatting you’ll need to do in Word.
MindManager 9
MindManager 9 utilizes a tabbed dialog box to give you a great deal of control over the way in which your mind map is converted into a Word document. General settings are shown at right. As you can see, you can control: How your topics and sub-topics are numbered How deep within your mind map sub- topics should be numbered Whether or not topics should be indented in the style of a hierarchical outline (“I, A, 1, a” or “1, 1.1, 1.1.1,” for example) Document Export Comparison Page 2
Which task data, if any, should be exported Which other map attributes, such as icons, notes, callouts and other topic embellishments should be exported
MindManager also enables you to export an overview map, which appears at the beginning of your document, and to create a table of contents.
The second tab gives you a deeper level of control over how your map’s topics and sub-topics will be converted to headings or paragraph text when they are exported to Word. Each topic level has a drop- down box containing every text format you can imagine. The number of options is almost overwhelming. The most common complaint about MindManager’s Word export, however, is that it forces you to reformat a lot of text in Word. You can get around this by using the “plain text” option in the drop-down lists.
I also like the fact that the default setting is for notes to have no formatting applied. This means they should be exported as paragraph text, which is perfect for my needs. Finally, the developers at Mindjet thoughtfully included a default button at the bottom of this tabbed dialog box. So if you mess something up, you can always return to the “factory” settings.
The final tab is devoted to a number of advanced settings, such as how topic relationships and hyperlinks are handled (the default is to insert “see also” in the text), whether or not hyperlinks will be included in the exported document, how attachments are handled (what sort of prefix will be included in the exported document to reference it) and how any embedded graphics will be treated during export. Document Export Comparison Page 3
Finally, you can specify page headers and footers during the export process – nice!
I exported a Linkedin Tips mind map to Word using the program’s default settings. The screen capture at right is representative of how the document is formatted. For some reason, the map title was formatted on its own page; perhaps this is by design, so it can be used as a fancy title page; it would be nice to decide during the exporting process whether or not I wanted MindManager 9 to do this. It’s a minor complaint, however. One other suggestion for the developer: Not everyone has the latest version of Microsoft Word, which saves documents in a .docx format. It would be nice if users had the option of exporting the map as a .doc file that would be compatible with older versions of Word.
MindGenius 4
In MindGenius 4, clicking on the “Export to Microsoft Word” command immediately takes you to a Windows “Save as” window, and you’re prompted for a file name. It’s only after you do so that the “Save as Word” dialog box (right) pops up. The “general options” tab gives you control over: Which Word template to use; most users will default to the normal.dot template used by default for creating any new documents within Word. The other option is to maintain the fonts that MindGenius used in the mind map. Whether or not notes will be maintained in their formatted state (if you have formatted any notes text as bold, underlined, italic, etc.) or converted to plain text. How images will be handled during export. I found this to be somewhat confusing. “Insert a single image” during export sounds confusing. The other option in the drop-down list is Document Export Comparison Page 4
“split at level 1.” It’s not intuitively obvious what this means. And why would I want to place each image on its own page?
Fortunately, the export dialog box contains a “help” button, so you can learn more about what each of these options means.
The second tab of the “Save as Word” dialog box gives you a precise level of control over which elements of your mind map are exported to the Word document. One interesting option is to “export current view” or “entire map.” MindGenius gives you the option to focus in on a specific branch of your map, which is very useful for fully developing it without any distractions. You can use this as the basis of your document export – which could be very useful if you only want to export part of your mind map to a document. I tried this, and it worked great!
“Export current view,” if checked, means that MindGenius will not include any branches that are hidden from view – in other words: Any branches that are collapsed will not be exported Any branches hidden when you “focus in” on a branch will not be exported Only topics that appear when you apply a filter to your mind map will be exported
This enables you to be very selective – even downright creative – in selectively exporting parts of your mind maps to Word. For example, you could assign one type of icon to mean “export this.” You’d add it to the branches you want to be exported, and then filter the contents of your map based upon that icon, so that MindGenius would only display those branches that contain it. You would then perform the export to Word with the “export current view” radio button checked. Viola! Precise control over the content of your map to be exported.
You can also “omit branches without notes” or “omit branches without sub-branches.” I’m not quite sure why you would want to do this.
Document Export Comparison Page 5
The image at right displays an export of the full MindGenius 4 “welcome” map as a Word document. Note how it automatically places an image of the map at the top of the document, and how it treats the image in the main topic and the floating image (the MindGenius 4 name and logo). It appears to be a very clean export.
What’s missing is control over the formats used for each level of your map. For example, first level topics like “getting started” are formatted Cambria, 14 point bold. You can’t control that from within MindGenius, which is a shortcoming. Ideally, you ought to be able to set options when performing the export that will get you as close to a finished document as possible. Otherwise, if you’re working with a complex mind map, you may be spending a lot of time adjusting formatting in Word.
NovaMind 5
NovaMind 5’s Word export option is as simple as it gets: Select the “Export as MS Word” command from the program’s “file” menu and select the folder where you want the resulting .docx file to be placed. An example of the program’s output is pictured at right. I checked the program’s options to see if it enables you to adjust any export settings there – it doesn’t. I couldn’t find any documentation on the NovaMind website that gets into the specifics of exporting to Word.
I was a bit surprised that this program doesn’t give you more control over exporting t Word. Some developers prefer to let Word do the heavy lifting of text reformatting, and it looks like NovaMind falls into that camp. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. Because the program converts topics and sub-topics to standard heading styles in Word (heading 1, heading Document Export Comparison Page 6
2, etc.), all you need to do is access Word’s “modify styles” menu and change the font, size, color and other properties of those styles to meet your needs. Word will then apply them to all instances of text that is formatted with that heading style. iMindMap 5
iMindMap has fully embraced the Microsoft Office 2010 style of toolbar, with a cascading File menu like the one seen at right. When you click on “export,” the program displays 10 different formats for sharing your work, including “PDF and document.” A new user may find this a bit confusing at first, because a PDF is a document type. Perhaps “PDF and Word document” would be more accurate and descriptive.
The next step in the export process is to choose a template; iMindMap 5 provides three of them. They vary only in the colors applied to the title and headings – for example, the “ice” template formats them in different shades of blue. A template preview to the right of the template selector gives you visual feedback on how your exported document will look.
Below the template options are 5 check boxes, which enable you to further customize your exported document with mind map images, a table of contents, Document Export Comparison Page 7 the central idea image and more. A “customize” button to the right of the check boxes, when clicked, displays the dialog box pictured at the bottom of the previous page. It lets you control the headings that iMindMap will use when exporting the text contents of your mind map. Finally, at the bottom of this “customize template” dialog box, three more check boxes enable you to include page numbering and heading numbering in your document, as well as indent headings.
The exported document has some very curious formatting, which looks like it will take a lot of work to correct: All of the text is rendered in a light blue For some unexplained reason, iMindMap has inserted numbers at the beginning of each line, in addition to the hierarchical numbering of topics (1.1, 1.1.2, etc.). Between each topic and subtopic, there were blank lines that are also numbered. Where did these come from? Why are they here? Beneath “1.4.2 Subtopic 1” there should be nested a sub-topic called “sub-subtopic.” It’s missing from this export, and I don’t know why. A note that I added to one of the topics is also missing in the exported document.
On the plus side, the topics are formatted in standard Word text styles, such as Heading 1 and Heading 2. This should make them easy to change by customizing Word’s text styles.
XMind
To export to Microsoft Word, you must own the Pro version of XMind; this functionality isn’t supported in the free version of the program. Fortunately, XMind Pro only costs only $49 per year.
When you export a mind map in XMind, a dialog box pops up listing numerous formats, including two for Document Export Comparison Page 8
Microsoft Word: Word 2007-2010 and Word 97-2003. It’s nice to see that this program accommodates older versions of Microsoft’s ubiquitous document creation software. Each selection opens to a separate export dialog box, with slightly different options.
Pictured at the bottom of the previous page is the Export Word 2007-2010 dialog box. As you can see, the program enables you to use checkboxes to tell it which properties of your mind map to export. As you make these selections, a preview on the right side of the window shows you what your exported file will look like – nice! You also get to decide if XMind should place an image of your mind map at the top of the document. This seems to be a popular feature, since it has shown up in at least 3 major mind mapping programs.
The output in Word is fairly clean. The map title becomes a Title format in Word. First-level topics become Heading 1. In my test map, the second level topics all contained hypertext links. For some reason, XMind embedded the link in the sub- topic name and formatted it in a unique character style, rather than Heading 2. I was expecting it to render the topic name as Heading 2, and then place the link on a separate line beneath it. I created another sub-topic at the same level without a hypertext link (see “NEW TOPIC – NO LINK” in the screen capture, above right). This topic was correctly formatted as a Heading 2. A little more consistency in formatting would be nice, but it’s a minor complaint.
I also created a random text note, with various types of formatting applied to different sets of words, to see how they would export. As you can see, everything exported just fine, with one minor exception: The last 4 words were colored red in my note; for some reason they exported as blue. Again, a minor complaint. At least it exports much of the text formatting intact.
FreeMind
FreeMind exports to the Open Office Writer document format, but not to Microsoft Word. So its export capabilities are not covered in this report.
Document Export Comparison Page 9
Visual Mind
Visual Mind 11 strikes a nice middle ground when it comes to exporting mind maps to Word – not so many options that it would become confusing, yet not too few so that it lacks control over the output of map content.
For starters, in the general tab of the “Export to Microsoft Word” dialog box, you can export the entire mind map, or just the selected sub-tree. Next, the program allows you to create not only one overall screen shot of the entire mind map, but also images of each branch and its sub-branches, down to the level you specify. Finally, you can specify if branches should be numbered or not during the export process. A screen shot in the lower right corner of the dialog box gives you a helpful preview of what your document will look like if you select each option.
Next, the “general” tab gives you control over which elements of your mind map get exported, including symbols, hyperlinks, e-mail addresses, links to files and folders and even phone numbers. A final checkbox lets you decide if you want to export any icons or symbols to your Word document.
The exported Word document (see screen shot at right) contains your map’s topics and sub-topics, each formatted in a specific text style, but all flush left – no indented, hierarchical outline here. Curiously, a check of each bit of text reveals that your map’s exported contents are not formatted in standard Word text styles, such as Heading 1 and Document Export Comparison Page 10
Heading 2. This would make it much harder to reformat a document outputted from Visual Mind, because you would have to reformat each individual block of text, rather than simply adjusting Word’s text styles. I consider this to be a major shortcoming.
ConceptDraw MINDMAP 6
Compared to other programs in its price range, ConceptDraw MINDMAP doesn’t give you much control over exporting your maps to Word. In this sense, it’s very similar to NovaMind.
When you export a mind map to Microsoft Word in ConceptDraw MINDMAP 6, the program gives you only a few options, in the form of check boxes: Include hyperlinks Include notes Use numeration (in other words, are topics numbered?)
The program produces a Rich Text Format (RTF) format that opens in Word without any fonts or formatting – only an indented outline. This is actually a plus, because it doesn’t contain any extraneous formatting that would need to be deleted or modified. Also, the RTF format, although it’s not commonly used today, does give the output file greater compatibility with older versions of Word (compared to several other mind mapping programs, which only export to the Word 2007 .docx format).
Notes and hypertext links appear at the same level as their parents, but on a separate line. Images, icons or symbols are not exported to this format.
Document Export Comparison Page 11
MindView 4
Matchware, the developer of MindView 4, appears to have given a lot of thought to the ways in which its customers use the program. That’s because it offers two options for exporting your mind maps to Word: A “Quick Word Export” that uses the program’s default settings or the last settings used to export a mind map, and an “Advanced Word Export” that gives you access to more options. That means a new user can easily perform a basic export to Word, without getting bogged down in a lot of options, while an experienced user can exert a high level of control over the way in which his or her exported map content appears in Word. This is smart design, in my opinion
What’s more, because the basic export keeps track of the last set of export settings used, you could easily create a customized set of export settings using the advanced toolset, and then invoke it on all of the maps you export in the future using the basic tool. Nice!
Using the basic export setting creates an attractive Word document (above right) with a map image and table of contents on page 1. That’s followed by a neatly arranged outline of topics and subtopics (right), with notes and hypertext links beneath the topics to which they belong. As expected, MindView does a good job of converting topics and subtopics to standard Word heading styles, which makes it easier to reformat them in Word. Document Export Comparison Page 12
Clicking on the “Advanced Word Export” option displays a three-tabbed dialog box that gives you extensive options for customizing your exported map data. The first tab (right) enables you to select from one of 16 document templates, which range in style from business- like to whimsical. The last one, cryptically named “MLA,” is completely devoid of any special text formatting – ideal if you want to have complete control over how your document will appear in Word.
The second tab (right) gives you access to general map export settings, such as whether or not to include a map image and table of contents in your document, the number of levels of your mind map you want to export (ideal if you just want to give someone a high- level overview of your plans), and 11 checkboxes for selecting which map embellishments you want to be exported (including text notes, images, comments, task data and icons).
The third tab (right) lets you control which attached objects should be exported – document links, hypertext links, Flash files, sounds and videos. Since these items cannot be embedded in a Word document, the developers of MindView wisely give you the option to link to them. In addition, pictures may be embedded in the Word document or hyperlinked. I’m not sure where hyperlinked images would be an advantage – perhaps if you were using Word to generate web pages, but who does that? Finally, MindView gives Document Export Comparison Page 13 you the option of naming exported objects.
An example of a mind map exported using some of the customized advanced settings appears at right. As you can see, the top-level topics are attractively formatted. Because I selected the options for displaying task data, each topic and subtopic now has data fields containing the number zero. It would be nice if MindView only inserted task data for those topics that have it, rather than inserting meaningless data for those that don’t.
PersonalBrain 6 Pro
PersonalBrain 6 Pro doesn’t offer an option for exporting to Microsoft Word. The documentation does say, however, that you can select topics in your brain, copy them to the Windows clipboard, and then paste them into another application such as Word or Excel. During the copy process, PersonalBrain automatically saves them in a hierarchical outline, so they paste in this format as well.
Conclusion
Mind mapping software developers appear to have taken two different approaches to exporting maps to Microsoft Word: Several of the programs (MindManager and MindView) give you a wealth of options for customizing the resulting document. In other words, they do the “heavy lifting.” Other developers, on the other hand, have decided to take a minimalist approach, creating a basic, clean document with topics and sub-topics in Word heading styles that can Document Export Comparison Page 14 easily be modified in Word, rather than building an overly complex export tool into their mind mapping software.
Several programs really stood out during my research for this report:
Selective export of map content: I love the high level of control that MindGenius gives you – not over document formatting, but more importantly, over which topics of your map get exported. Not all of the information in your mind maps is meant to be shared. Some of it is background information, and other parts of it may be proprietary. Why export everything in a complex mind map, only to invest time deleting the sections you don’t need – and, worse yet, have someone tap into the document review settings of Word to see what your document looked like before you trimmed it down? Selective exporting of map content is an important feature in my opinion. Only MindGenius offers it. Basic and advanced export settings: Matchware gets kudos for including basic and advanced export tools in its MindView software. This enables the program to do a better job of meeting the needs of newbies and experienced users. If you always use the same export settings, it can also be a time-saver.
Mapping topic levels to Word text styles: I also like the advanced export settings of MindManager, which give you the option of specifying what text styles each level of your mind map will be exported to. So what? If all you’re using is Word’s standard styles like Heading 1, Heading 2, etc., it’s not a big deal. But if you have created your own text styles to give your corporate documents a certain look and feel, it would be very valuable to be able to map the topic styles in your MindManager maps over to the custom styles you use most often in Word.
Questions?
Please contact Chuck Frey at [email protected].
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Published 7/25/11