Converting tables (spreadsheets) into MindManager Maps

Have you ever been frustrated about adding a table of data to your MindManager map? There it is all nicely arranged. It could be a list of meeting attendees e.g. Ecademy 12th Birthday Party. You can copy and paste it (just the attendee table) on to a map but the result is not what I want. Each row gets concatenated into one topic.


Here is how I process it in Word to produce the map I want. Paste part of this attendee list as unformatted text in to Word or use a simple two column table with a few rows of data.


Then Insert > Table > Convert text to table


Now you have a tabulated set of data. In this case the Name column comes with some excess baggage. Use search and replace to remove the guff. Delete any columns you do not need.

Select the Name column apply Heading 1 style
Select the Organization column apply Heading 2 style

You could have Location as the Heading 2 style or make it a sub-sub-topic with Heading 3 style. I also added Ecademy Meeting in Title style.


Open a new map in MindManager.

Select the table contents in Word and then click the MindManager button in Add-Ins. Hey presto.



Alternatively save the Word document and the import in MindManager. Ecademy meeting becomes the central topic. You can also copy and paste Spreadsheets in to Word and process them similarly.

Do you have a better way?

Writing books with MindManager

It's a very simple process assuming you are going to export the map to Microsoft Word.

The Central Topic is the Title.

The Main Topics are the level one headings.

The Sub Topics are the level two headings and so on.

The Notes are the paragraphs and or tables that appear after the headings. Use a Note on the Central Topic to produce a frontispiece for the book. Notes can contain images and tables. Use tables to create text columns and to align images and text on a page. Unfortunately there are not the image wrapping facilities that you get in Word. Use linked images if the image is still being edited or will be updated. Every time MindManager is opened the image will be updated in the Notes or you can refresh it (right click the image and refresh).

Relationships are cross references uni-directional or bi-directional if you have an arrowhead at both ends.

Many of the other items on a map will appear in the Word document: Icon markers, callout topics, review comments, text markers, task information (appears in a small table).

You can also include the map as a graphic below the title and insert a table of contents. You can control the numbering style and insert header and footer information. Finally you can choose a Word Template to use for the exported document. You might have one template for the printed book - A5 portrait double sided booklet and another for the eBook - A4 landscape 2 pages per sheet. For fiction book you can use the Word Template style to hide all but the chapter heading.

Floating topics do not appear in the exported document, so they can be useful places to write notes to yourself. Use View > Show/Hide to hide them before exporting if you do not want them to appear on the map graphic!

Use filtering to hide topics which are not finished or not required e.g. clauses in a quote before exporting.

This is how I produced my 20 page training manual "An Introduction to MindManager" The map on the cover of the booklet is the map that produces the book.

Only available from Cabre for £7.50

Now for the most important part of this blog. MindManager is a great tool for containing and publishing your book. It's easy to reorganise, to write the parts of the book you have just had the inspiration for and to identify the completeness of sections with the task complete icons. However this is only one part of writing a book. I think you should have a map for many of the following (obviously some are not required for non-fiction):

• Audience - Who is going to read it. What do they want to read. etc.
• Research - The background, your sources, references etc.
• Characters - Create a word and image map(s) which describe your characters and their relationships to other characters and the plot.
• The Plot - What leads to what etc.
  
• Writing process - Your plan for writing the book
• The Publishing Plan - Who will do it. How will it be promoted. etc.
• Finally - Why are you doing it? This could be a financial or philanthropic map!

You may like to suggest some more by adding a comment to this blog. If you have any experience of writing books with MindManager please tell me about them.

If you need any help with using MindManager to produce documents, please contact me.

Preparing Quotations with MindManager

I use MindManager to write my quotations for Cabre's customer's because its easy to assemble new quotes from old ones and a template.

I took one of my quotations as the basis for a new map. To this I added other useful clauses I had in previous quotes and saved it as a template. Each of the topics has a note. This note contains the paragraphs for the clause. For instance the clause Application Workshop contains:

"Duration 3 hours

This session is driven by the participant's requests. It is a master class with some time for participants to explore what they have seen. The intent is to raise awareness of the opportunities MindManager gives its users to allow the participants to make an informed choice of where MindManager can be applied to the greatest affect on their business.

It can cover but is not limited to:"

The topics following this clause are then filtered (hidden) to make them relevant to the client.

To save it as a template in MindManager 7 Pro -
Tools > Map Templates > Select the folder > Add New Map Template > Rename (If necessary) > Close.

Here is my template:



The price for the session is arbitrary not actual!

To use it to create a quote. Open a New Map using this template. Delete the clauses that are not needed for the quote and edit those that remain. Save as new quotation.

I use a MindManager spreadsheet topic to do the adding up and to show the VAT. For more elaborate quotations you can link to an Excel spreadsheet range and include parts of it where required in the quotation.

My original map was already associated with a Word template which adds branding to the header and has a footer with dates, copyright etc. For all quotations, I include the map in the Word export (close it down to a suitable level first) and it becomes the cover sheet. I often have other maps included in the notes. For larger quotations you can also enable the table of contents. The Word template will determine fonts, margins etc.

Check the document in Word, paginate where necessary and then print to PDF prior to emailing to the client. Office 2007 has a free PDF printer but I have used pdfFactory Pro for many years. In pdfFactory Pro you can secure the document against editing.

Of course this process will also work for any documents you have to produce that repeatedly use the same information.