Hello everyone! Another tasty update for you. 🧁
We’ve focused this update on improving exporting and copy/pasting, with a few other little fixes sprinkled on top.
Let’s dive in to the update.
Export properly formatted text
Workflowy now plays nicely when exporting and pasting into other text editors like Google Docs or MS Word. Headers and paragraphs maintain their formatting, bullets adopt standard bullet list styling and spacing.
New: Long-form writing support. We’ve heard your feedback on exporting long-form text in Workflowy. While the new(ish) header and paragraph styles are handy, the exported text still behaves like a list when pasted into another app.
So, we’ve removed indenting and bullets for headers and paragraphs in exported text. Bullet lists stay nested as usual, and headers and paragraphs within a bullet list keep their format and indentation.
This highly contrived scenario shows it better than words ever could:
This text uses a combination of headers, paragraphs, and bullets.
Exporting the text will remove the indenting and bullets for headers and paragraphs. Bullet lists stay the same.
Please give it a try and let us know if it makes sense (or not).
Export in Markdown
If you, like our developers, believe in The Only True Format, we have good news for you too: there’s now a Markdown option, right there in the Export window. We apply the same formatting rules described above.
Since there are ~seven billion variations of The Only True Format, it might (will) not play nice with all Markdown editors. If you encounter any issues, let us know which editor you’re trying to copy to and provide a sample of Markdown you’re trying to copy.
An example of some formatted text in Workflowy
And the markdown output preserves the text styles and links.
Export usability improvements
While we were at it, we made several other improvements to copying and exporting:
- New: “Export” button in the multi-select menu (that appears when you select multiple bullets). Click it to export all selected items at once.
- New: “Export” keyboard shortcut for those who prefer keyboard. Press Shift+Alt+E (Mac: Shift+Command+E) to export all currently selected bullets.
- New: “Export” Slash command for those who prefer commands over shortcuts. Type “/export” to export the bullet you’re focused on.
- Fix: “Download” button in the Export window now actually downloads on Android and iOS too!
Other fixes & improvements
- New: Now you can reorder board columns with the standard shortcuts that reorder bullets Alt+Shift+Up|Down (Ctrl+Shift+Up|Down)
- Fix: No more weird characters like ' in the URL title when you share a link from a browser to Workflowy on Android.
Let us know what you think about the changes, this update, or anything you think we should know.
Until next time, keep on keeping on.
You need to control the memory used on the phone version, whether it is iOS or android, processes that use too much memory will be killed by the system. I have been unable to access my data on my phone for ONE year, and have to register a small account and share a small part of the data to it and use it on my phone. You can imagine how troublesome this is.
I’m really happy to see the Markdown export capability implemented! I also enjoy how the Markdown download export saves it as an’md’ file. It would be nice to be able to define the export file name structure in a settings menu, as the current file name ends with “[date]..md”. It would also be wonderful to include photographs or files put to a zip file for export. As an alternative.
pumpkin panic
An option to export Workflowy links to its own database as wiki links would be really respectful to the user.
I’m excited about the ability to export to markdown
Is there a bug in the example given in this post? The word “often” has strikethrough formatting in vtuber markdown export example (about halfway down the second image with black background).
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I don’t know if this is possible, but… I write a daily newsletter in Workflowy. I export it to both a Markdown-based newsletter site (Buttondown) and Facebook. I would love to be able to write it with the Markdown links, but then export it for Facebook with the Markdown codes removed.
Guys, I was enthusiastic about this as I import/export collections I research from time to time… But can the headlines be also exported for the OPML format. I do a lot of study, research, database searches… and from time to time I manually import 100.000 nodes… Would be great to have all the h1,h2, etc. exported… Thanks…
For other useful simple features suggestions, would like a is or has:link to search all links in the system, and maybe a search text in links 🙂
I do need this as well… possibility to full format export in OPML format… please… h1,h2,paragraphs… etc 🙂 #workflowy #rocks
Hey… While importing the maximum of 10.000 nodes is really fast > I do have opml’s with 30-50.000 nodes, that I have to “break down into pieces” manually in order to import… Will it be possible to at least get that limit to 50k ? 🙂 and maybe add a progress of some sort “BAR” ? while importing, even if it takes 1-2 minutes… Thanks!
Hey, could you upload some examples of some OPML files with h1, h2 etc styling please? Also, what apps are you using to import your OPML?
Hi Phil.
I export and import from workflowy to workflowy only… So it should be easy ??? to get the h1,h2,h3 – RIGHT ?
These are temporary databases that I update, maintain, export and import back to workflowy (OPML format); no need to keep in workflowy such big “nodes” to clog the system…
#BTW : an “ARCHIVE/ZIP” feature would be great – let me explain : export a node in OPML file/format and automatically upload back in workflowy; when needed and a un-archive, unzip or something button will import the content of that file…
COOL RIGHT ?
#wut-wut ? 🙂
Excited to see the Markdown export feature added! Also like that the download export for Markdown saves it as a ‘md’ file. Would be neat to specify the export file name structure in a settings menu as the current file name makes it end with
"[date]..md". Including images or files added in a zip file for export would be great too. As a separate option.I couldn’t survive without Workflowy. Brilliant, thank you!
This is a simply fantastic update. You guys are the freaking greatest.
This is great! Cool updates lately
This is by far the most important feature. Previously lacking this feature stopped me from using Workflowy as much as I wanted to. I had to use it in combination with other apps, because I couldn’t afford the time to go through and delete extra line breaks every time I transferred text to and from workflowy.
The 2nd most annoying feature I hope that gets fixed soon is the SEARCH feature:
In other apps, search replies with links to all the instances… BUT WORKFLOWY replies with all the contexts in which the instances are… so you have to search THROUGH the search results! Please fix this next. Thank You
Hey Khaiim, is there an app you feel does search particularly well that shows this in action?
Great to see Markdown export!
I played around with it briefly and my initial thoughts are: Wouldn’t it potentially be nicer to export the page title (a la focused / zoomed in bullet point) as the Markdown level 1 heading and then the Workflowy “Heading 1” as level 2 and the Workflowy “Heading 2” as level 3? (And I hope I explained this in an understandable way. 😉 )
Cool! Pasting formatted text into OneNote and Word looks and works great now! Thank you!
Yeah, I love markdown export.
There seems to be a bug with backlinks in Markdown export. If I export a collapsed item that has backlinks, the “n Backlinks” child item is exported as an empty item (just “- “). It works if the item was expanded once before exporting (even if it’s collapsed during export).
Great update! things that matter (not like the last update 🙂
👏 👏 👏 Gracias por estas mejoras. A seguir así 🚀
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