Workflowy Basics

Workflowy is a versatile note-taking and organizational tool designed to help users manage their tasks, notes, and projects efficiently.

Notes

Tasks

Projects

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Note Taking

Capture all your important information in a single place

Infinitely deep notes

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Bullets can stand for single items, documents, folders or even team spaces.

Indenting bullets is how we group items together and create structure. All indented items become children of the top, or parent, bullet. You can indent items as many levels down as you want.

Place your cursor on a line that is under another line
Hit [Tab] on your keyboard to indent and nest it

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Zoom into your notes and focus on just one part

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Clicking a bullet, zooms you into it and displays any indented items. This is how we view items as documents, by zooming into them.

If a bullet has no indented items, you’ll see an empty page with the title of the bullet you clicked on.

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Always know exactly where you are in your notes

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Click on the breadcrumbs in the menu bar when you’re zoomed-in to zoom out to any level.

Indenting bullets is how we group items together and create structure. All indented items become children of the top, or parent, bullet. You can indent items as many levels down as you want.

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View only what’s relevant right now

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Bullets with indented items have an arrow on the left side. Clicking this arrow lets you hide or display the indented content.

This is an easy way to quickly hide or show indented content.

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Instantly reorganize your information

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You can drag bullets around to re-organize them.

When you drag a bullet that has indented items, all those items will move together as one unit. You can also drag items to indent or unindent them.

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Task management

Organize your tasks and always stay on top of things

Turn anything into a task instantly

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Any item can be turned into a to-do item. This turns the bullet into a checkbox that can easily be searched for.

Open the bullet menu for the item
Select 'Bullets' from the options to display the type menu
Select 'To-do' from the options

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Add files and images to keep everything in one place

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Drag and drop any file or image into your Workflowy to upload it.

Images will display automatically, files will show the filename and have a download button.

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Easily group and find tasks with tags

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Once you’ve tagged at least two items, you can click on a tag to filter your workspace for only tagged items. You can click the tag again to stop filtering.

You can add multiple tags to any item, and you can also filter using multiple tags. Simply click a second tag once you’re already filtering.

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Bookmark tasks to keep them handy

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Starring items lets you quickly access them from the left-sidebar.

Zoom into the item you want to star
Click on the star icon in the menu bar
The item will now be available in the left-hand sidebar

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Highlight or color items

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You can highlight or change the color of any item.

Select the text you want to highlight or color
The format widget will pop up
Click on the down arrow next to the colored 'A' icon
Choose the text or highlight color

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Add context to tasks with notes

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Notes let you add smaller text under any item. Multi-line notes will automatically collapse.

Open the bullet menu for an item
Select 'Add note' from the options
Type your note

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Find anything with global search

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Advanced search functions let you find anything in your account. The search function will only work within the level you’re zoomed into - if you want to search your entire accout, zoom out to the root level first.

Click the magnifying glass icon in the menu bar or simply hit the [Esc] key
Type the text or tag you’re looking for

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Stay on top of hundreds of tasks

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The left-hand sidebar lets you navigate your entire account. You can also use the sidebar to drag and drop items into it to move them.

Click the hamburger menu icon in the top-left of the menu bar
Use the arrows to expand indented items and explore items
Click an item to navigate to it - or -
Drag and drop an item into the sidebar to move it to that location

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Share tasks with anyone, no account required

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You can share anything in your Workflowy with other people. They don’t even need to have a Workflowy account to view them.

Open the bullet menu of the item you want to share
Select 'Share' from the options
Choose to share using either the secret link or via email invite.
Choose the permissions you want the share to have

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Project organization

Turn the most complex projects into child’s play

Handle anything thrown your way with slash commands

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The slash command lets you perform common functions using only your keyboard.

Put your cursor on the line where you want to perform the action
Type '/' to bring up the slash menu
Type the command or use your arrow keys to choose an option
Hit [Enter] on your keyboard to perform the function

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Infinite kanban boards to the rescue

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Any list can be turned into a kanban-style board. Boards can also be infinitely nested, just like lists.

Open the bullet menu for the parent item that holds the content
Select 'Bullets' from the options
Select 'Board' from the dropdown

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Create one-click templates of frequently used documents

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Turn any outline into a template by adding '#template'. Then just click the template button to create a new copy.
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Note: You need to enable the 'templates' feature toggle in the settings panel

Nest everything you want to be part of your template under a single bullet
Type '#template' at the end of the item
Click the template button to create ane copy of your template

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Always stay up to date with live copies of documents

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Live copies of items in Workflowy are called 'Mirrors'. Whenever you make a change to a mirror, all other mirrors will automatically update. You can have as many mirrors of an item as you want.

Zoom into the location you want to place the mirror
Type '(('to bring up the mirror widget
Type the name of the item you want to mirror and choose it using the arrow keys and press [Enter]

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Track all your references with backlinks

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Backlinks are internal links. Backlinks let you link to different parts of your account. When you create a backlink, a reference section will appear at the bottom of the linked items.

Zoom into the location you want to place the backlink
Type '[[' to bring up the backlink widget
Type the name of the item you want to link to and choose it using the arrow keys and press [Enter]

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Effortlessly switch from project to project and stay in flow

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The jump-to menu lets you navigate to any item in your account without taking you hands off the keyboard. Starred items will show up in the jump-to menu first.

Type [CMD/Ctrl] + [K] to bring up the jump-to menu
Type the name of the item you want to navigate to
Hit [Enter] to navigate to that item

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Keep track of important dates

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Date tags let you filter items using natural language. You can use date tags to filter using queries like 'today', 'this week', 'next tuesday' and so on - all items with date tags that match the query will be filtered.

Start typing in a date using the M/D/YY format or by using natural language like 'tomorrow' and the date widget widget will pop up
Hit [Tab] if the suggested date is correct

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Workflowy Basics

Note Taking

Task management

Project organization

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