Review: Mindjet Mind Manager Pro 7 office software

Improve planning and revision with a more visual approach

Many people find mind mapping helpful for study and planning, and Mind Manager does for mind mapping what Word did for written documents.

Its greatest strength is the integration with Microsoft Office so mind maps can be quickly converted into traditional formats.

The new Mind Manager uses the 'ribbon' toolbar of Office 2007, so the icons are clearer but it leaves less space for the maps. It is possible to hide the toolbar easily, though.

Basic navigation is the same: press Enter for a new topic, Insert for a sub topic and the arrow keys to move around. Topics can be marked with a boundary and markers applied to topics and sub topics, so if you want to see all topics with a green flag, a filter for that tag will hide all the others.

The end product most people will want is a Word document, and exporting to Word is easy, and changes made to a Word document can be sent back to the original mindmap. Snippets of Excel documents can also be included into maps and there is closer integration into Outlook for using topics as tasks. Another very useful touch is that the undo command shows exactly what it is undoing.

The starting view gives the greatest control over how a map is organised and is a good way of taking notes, while essay and document planning is best done in Brainstorm mode. There are several steps, the first being to just enter different ideas in no particular order. Next, topics are decided on, and finally the ideas are connected to them. It's a great way to bring order to ideas and something that is hard to do in Word.

There are plenty of ways to keep maps manageable onscreen and a button for balancing them to make the best use of available space. Mind Manager can be used for presentations, making it an interesting alternative to Powerpoint. There is even a timer to ensure the presentation doesn't overrun.

There are some drawbacks to mind maps, for instance they use a lot more screen space than a Word document. There are some tricks to alleviate this such as collapsing topics, and options to adjust the layout and zoom, but using Mindmanager on a small screen will end up frustrating.

The program is quite expensive, and for your first experiments with mind mapping the open source Freemind program might be better. If you have decided to use mind maps and have Microsoft Office, though, Mind Manager is well worth the cost. Students can buy Mind Manager 7 Pro for just £50 for Windows and £30 for Mac (contact M-Urge, 01202 258 825, for this deal).

Mindmapping can turn into a distraction but Mind Manager includes the right features to make it a genuinely useful tool. Anyone with a visual approach to life, who struggles when faced with a blank Word document, should try it.