How do OmniOutliner styles work?
Much like the outlines themselves, they have a hierarchy.
If you know CSS, for web design,
it’s a lot like that. But if you don’t, not to worry.
Let’s explain it. At the top of the hierarchy,
the Whole Document can have a style.
This is where you’d set things like the font you want to use everywhere,
and a basic size for your text.
Next in line is the the column styles
so you can style multiple columns.
Then come Row Level styles. These get applied
based on how deep a row is indented.
Maybe your first Level is big and bold, second Level gets an accent color,
and fourth Level is a shade of gray.
You can see the styles change
as you indent and outdent the row.
Below Row Levels in the hierarchy,
you can select individual rows, or just a bit of text
and change the style of that selection.
If you're using the same selection style over and over
create a Named style instead.
Named styles are great for things like highlights and emphasis,
because if you ever want to update the style,
you only have to change the named style once,
and it updates everywhere you’ve used it.
If you’re having trouble figuring out why some text
is getting styled in a certain way, let’s troubleshoot it!
Say you just changed the text color for the Whole Document style,
but the Level 4 Rows are still dark gray.
It’s because the Level 4 style
is overriding the Document style.
The most specific style always wins.
You can see this really clearly in OmniOutliner for Mac,
where the Style Attributes inspector will show you
exactly what styles are acting on the text.
You can click the ‘X’ next to the conflicting Row Level 4 style
to remove it, and let the Document style take over.
Maybe you’ve pasted text from somewhere else,
and it kept the style that you copied with it.
Selection styles are easy to clear out,
with “Clear Style”, both on Mac and iOS.
After you clear these out,
only the Document, Column, and Row Level styles will stick around.
Learn more at the URL above.