WorkFlowy now supports OPML import and export

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June 3, 2013

Hooray! Now you can use WorkFlowy interchangeably with all the tools out there that use OPML.

Import: You can paste an OPML document directly into any WorkFlowy item, and it’ll be parsed imported as a big nested list.

Export: Our export dialog now includes an OPML option. To get to the export dialog, you just hover over the bullet point of any item, or if you want to export everything at once, the menu at the top right of the page lets you do so.

For all you serious outlining people, this should be a nice addition. Hope you enjoy it!

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Dave Gorst
Dave Gorst
5 years ago

Slight necropost here! This is slightly confusing in that saviotng to a file will put out HTML prefixed with a BOM whether you’ve selected OPML or not. Not a major thing, but worth noting.

spolsky
spolsky
8 years ago

Does the Pro feature “Backup to Dropbox” use this OPML export? And how do you restore – do you import OPML?

Does a “Backup to Dropbox” round-trip lose the following info:

1. starred views
2. internal-view links (closely related to 1)
3. shares and embeds

I’ve been experimenting with OPML exporting and importing and it’s missing the above. It does appear to be able to correctly round-trip: bold, italic, completed items (make sure “Completed: Visible” is set when you export!), notes, and tabs and enter/return characters in notes. Also Unicode, yay.

James C.
James C.
8 years ago

Hi, I’m having a different issue here: whatever I try, OPML files paste as a simple list, losing all indentation, but showing nested items with a bullet point and expanded items with a down arrow.

I’ve tried several different ways: opening OPML in Omnioutliner, selecting all and dragging or copy-pasting in; dragging the OPML file itself and dropping into Workflowy; opening in other apps to see if copy-paste problem is specific to Omnioutliner. None of these things work.

Any ideas? Is there any way to import OPML *files* (as opposed to pasting text) into Workflowy?

Jesse Patel
Jesse Patel
8 years ago
Reply to  James C.

Unfortunately we don’t have a file import yet. Sorry!

Andreas
Andreas
8 years ago
Reply to  Jesse Patel

then … when do you planto come up with a file import?
Is it already on you roadmap (and where could one take a look into that roadmap)?

quantumgood
9 years ago

No matter what I paste, it always includes the full OPML markup. How can I paste it in and get it to simply list the items?

miketuritzin
miketuritzin
9 years ago
Reply to  quantumgood

Can you show me a sample of the OPML you’re pasting?

solidoxx
9 years ago
Reply to  miketuritzin

I have the same problem. And bulleted lists get messed up by the email.
Pasted the opml below.

quantumgood
9 years ago
Reply to  miketuritzin

I’m solving it by reading the OPML that workflowy exports, and modifying the format I import to match

j-lon
j-lon
9 years ago

OPML import is a huge and very useful feature!

That said, it would be great if you could drag an opml file directly into workflowy and have it parse the outlines out of it. On the Mac, Omni Outliner is probably the third party program that most people use for outlining if they aren’t using MS Word. It stores outlines in its own format, which WF can’t parse, but it can export as OPML. So to add a list from an OO document, I need to export it, open the OPML file in a text editor, copy the OPML text, and the paste the clipboard in WF.

When I did this, it worked, but I wish I didn’t have to open that text editor up, copy the text, and then past it in.

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