Now for something completely different: MindManager importing tricks 2

In my last post I explained how to import tables of tasks and other relatively simple information from Word and Excel using Outlook and converting them into MindManager (MM) maps. There are times however when this approach isn’t appropriate, for example if you have non-task-related data with multiple fields, for example a conference attendance list or product catalogue.

You could of course consider using Outlook, at least to import contact-related data, but there is probably a greater risk of messing up your existing Outlook contact information than there is of “temporary” task data interfering with your Outlook tasks.

So, how do you do this without Outlook? First, consider the following hypothetical workshop attendance list:

 

Name	Organisation	Position	Phone
Ethyl Cameron	Acme Pty Ltd	Director	XXXX AABB
Thomas Merkel	Acme Pty Ltd	Manager	XXXX AACC
Jane Obama	Acme Pty Ltd	Manager	XXXX AADD
Andrew Gillard	Zenith Pty Ltd	CEO	YYYY GGFF
Sarah Sarkozy	Zenith Pty Ltd	Group Manager	YYYY GGHH

 

 

 

 

 

If you have a table like this in Excel you will need to import to Word. Once there (or if it is already in Word) you can easily import it into MM but you have to do a few things first, otherwise it will just be a mess with all the data concatenated into a single topic per row.

It was Andrew Wilcox who first described the underlying “trick” to get around this, which is to apply Word’s inbuilt heading styles to each column, say heading 1 style to the first column, heading 2 to the second column and so on, so the table would look like the following (it’s helpful to turn off Word’s heading numbering):

 

Name	Organisation	Position	Phone
Ethyl Cameron	Acme Pty Ltd	Director	XXXX AABB
Thomas Merkel	Acme Pty Ltd	Manager	XXXX AACC
Jane Obama	Acme Pty Ltd	Manager	XXXX AADD
Andrew Gillard	Zenith Pty Ltd	CEO	YYYY GGFF
Sarah Sarkozy	Zenith Pty Ltd	Group Manager	YYYY GGHH

 

 

 

 

 

The table can then be imported by highlighting all the required rows (without the header row) then pressing the MindManager button to import to MM.  The data in any column which does not have a heading style (such as the phone numbers) will be treated as topic notes, so the above ends up looking like this as a MM map:

MindManager example map 1

 

This is fine for a simple table, but what happens when you want to import data to create a more hierarchical map with multiple levels, for example the previous attendance list sorted by organisation?  The first step is to take this list (either created in Word or imported from Excel) and place the organisation column first, grouping the employees by organisation name using Word’s sort function. Then apply Word’s heading styles as previously described so the table looks like this:

 

Organisation	Name	Position	Phone
Acme Pty Ltd	Ethyl Cameron	Director	XXXX AABB
Acme Pty Ltd	Thomas Merkel	Manager	XXXX AACC
Acme Pty Ltd	Jane Obama	Manager	XXXX AADD
Zenith Pty Ltd	Andrew Gillard	CEO	YYYY GGFF
Zenith Pty Ltd	Sarah Sarkozy	Group Manager	YYYY GGHH

 

 

 

 

The next step is to leave the first name of each organisation but replace each of the repeat names for the same organisation with a simple carriage return/line feed (it’s always handy in Word to make these visible) in the cells below.  This should leave only one occurrence of each organisation name, which should appear in the first row relating to that organisation’s employees.

Then you have to do something a little obscure – retain the Word heading 1 style for the organisation names but highlight the subsequent carriage returns in the table cells under each organisation name in this column and reformat them with Word’s default normal style.

The name and position columns should be formatted as before. Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to import information into MM topic notes using this method, so in this example the phone number column has been given the same level three formatting as the position data:

Organisation	Name	Position	Phone
Acme Pty Ltd	Ethyl Cameron	Director	XXXX AABB
¶	Thomas Merkel	Manager	XXXX AACC
¶	Jane Obama	Manager	XXXX AADD
Zenith Pty Ltd	Andrew Gillard	CEO	YYYY GGFF
¶	Sarah Sarkozy	Manager	YYYY GGHH

 

Proceeding as before to export the table to MindManager, the following map is produced:

MindManager example map 2

 

 

This shows the attendees grouped by their organisation. Of course you could use the same trick to group them by position, or to produce a map of a catalogue grouped by product type, shelf location, etc.

In my next post I will discuss using Word to import task-related data especially when it is grouped under headings. Unfortunately this is a lot more complex to achieve.

 

Now for something completely different: MindManager importing tricks 1

As well as writing about social media and small non-profit and public sector organisations generally, one thing I always intended to do through this blog was to write the occasional article about mind mapping software and in particular MindManager (MM).

In fact I have written about mindmapping software before because of its particular usefulness to small organisations, but I thought I’d write something this time for the nerds this time especially those who are reasonably proficient users of MindManager which is the leading PC-based mindmapping software available on the market at the moment.

This exercise was prompted by an innocent query on an MM forum about creating maps from Excel files. While it is possible to link to an Excel spreadsheet, Mindjet (the publishers of MindManager) have so far refused to provide a facility to directly convert an Excel file into a mindmap (or vice versa).

While a number of third-party solutions exist for exporting to Excel, there are few that provide for importing spreadsheets in this manner. This shortcoming also affects other areas; while MM does have extensive capabilities for importing from and exporting to Outlook and Word, it doesn’t work that well with tables generally.

Now I don’t pretend to be an MM expert but I have used it for a few years and the following is the result of my experimentation with MM, Excel, Word and Outlook. I’d welcome any feedback if somebody has come up with simpler approaches.

OK, so you have a table of information that you want to turn into a MM mindmap. How best to approach this depends primarily on two things; the nature of the data (for example, whether it’s a straight-forward list of task-related information or a multi-levelled table of data) and the format of the table (mainly whether it’s in Word or Excel).

As a general rule of thumb, the easiest approach is to use Outlook as your intermediary. This applies especially to task information; all recent versions of MM are designed to handle import and export of Outlook items, albeit in different ways.

For example, you may have developed a table of actions in either Word or Excel which will look something like this (I’m using European/UK/Australian dd/mm/yyyy date format, but you can use others, so long as they are consistent with those available in Outlook):

Task	Start Date	Due Date	Notes
Task A	10/03/2011	13/03/2011	Comments on task A
Task B	14/03/2011	17/03/2011
Task C	17/03/2011	20/03/2011	Comments on task C

If the table is in Word, the best approach is to strip out all text apart from what is in the table, convert the table to text using tabs as breaks between fields and save the file in txt format (tabs are a safer bet than commas as your comments or other fields may have commas in them). This can then be imported into Outlook.

If the table is in Excel, you can export it directly into Outlook. However, you must do two things first; highlight and name the table range and then, if you are using Excel 2007 or 2010, save the file in 2003 format (unbelievably, Outlook 2007 or 2010 can’t import Excel files later than 2003).

Irrespective of which format you start with, you then need to go to File Open/Import in Outlook, select the option to import from another program or file and choose tab separated or Excel 97-2003 formats as appropriate. Choose the file to import and then the task folder in Outlook as the destination; you will then be asked to confirm the mapping of the imported table’s fields to those in Outlook.

Once imported into Outlook, it is an easy matter to highlight the tasks and export them to MindManager. You can then decide whether or not you want to retain the link between the tasks in MM and their counterparts in Outlook. A number of other fields can also be mapped and imported, including resource, priority, percentage complete, etc.

It’s important to note that MM and in particular version 9 has a very specific approach to the relationship between start date, due date and duration, which will be explored in more detail in a future post. In summary, however, if you have any two of the following, start date, due date and duration, MM will calculate the missing item.  Further, MM will base its calcuations on working days as identified in MM’s Task Info Options. If a due date falls on a non-working day, MM willl push it onto the next working day.

While the approach outlined above is an obvious choice for task-related material, it can also be used to import other sorts of tables, even those without date fields. In both cases, however, this approach is only suitable with a relatively simple table where the tasks can be imported as topics at the same level and the fields can be related to those in Outlook. In future posts I will look at importing more complex tables, as well as importing tables when you don’t want or are unable to use Outlook.