Keep your lists up to date with the Workflowy online task manager

Before you can start using Workflowy, you will need to create an account. Launch a web browser, type http://workflowy.com into the Address or Location bar at the top and press Enter. When the page loads, tap in your email address and choose and confirm a password before clicking the Sign Up button. In order to use Workflowy, a browser add-on may need to be installed: if prompted to install one, read Step 2; otherwise, skip to Step 3.

Click the button labelled Install Google Chrome Frame and a new browser window will open. Click the Get Google Chrome Frame button and then click Accept and Install; if a User Account Control dialogue box appears, click the Yes button. There will be a delay while the necessary components are downloaded and installed – this process can take several minutes, and it may appear as though nothing is happening for some time. Once the installation is complete, click the Close button and then close the Google browser window to return to the Workflowy page.

You may find it helpful to watch the introductory video on the Workflowy home page, as well as reading through and noting the Commands and Shortcuts list. Close the introductory window by clicking the cross in the circle at the top right of the playback window. To begin creating a list of ideas, project components or tasks click next to a bullet point and type a suitable heading. Press Enter to create a new item in the list, or click the ‘Create new item’ link.

Rather than relying on lots of individual lists to help keep different types of data organised, Workflowy is focused on multiple lists. This is achieved by creating sub-lists that can be expanded and collapsed as required. Click the bullet point to the left of a list heading to zoom in to edit that individual list. As with creating the main list headings, you can now press Enter or click the ‘Create new item link to start adding entries to the list.

Lists can contain as many sub-lists as required, and there is no limit to the number of nested lists that can be created. You could, for instance, create a shopping-reminder entry in the main list, while a sub-list could indicate the shops that need to be visited; further sub-lists could act as shopping lists for individual shops. Return to the main Workflowy home page by clicking the Home link at the top of the screen: incidentally, this ‘breadcrumb trail’ can be used to navigate between the various lists.

If a list includes sub-entries, its bullet point will feature a light-grey border. To expand a list, hover the mouse pointer over its bullet point and click the plus (‘+’) sign that appears to the left. Click the minus (‘-’) sign to collapse a list.

Expanded lists can be easily reordered using drag and drop. Hover the mouse pointer over an entry in a list and a pair of crossed arrows will appear to the far right. Move the mouse pointer over to the this icon and click and hold with the left button. Keeping the button held down, move the list item up or down. Use the guideline that appears to determine the item’s new position, and then release the mouse button to relocate it.

Depending on the type of list, it can sometimes be helpful to add extra information to individual entries. With Workflowy, this is achieved using notes. Hover the mouse pointer over an entry’s bullet point and wait a second for a pop-up menu to appear. Select the Add Note option and type whatever you need to remember before clicking anywhere on the page. The same pop-up menu can be used to tick items off the list by selecting the Complete option.

By default, completed items are struck through (crossed out). While this can be helpful, it can result in a lengthy list. To counter this problem, click the Completed: Visible and Completed: Hidden button at the top to toggle display modes. Lists are automatically (and frequently) saved, but the button to the right of this can be used to force a manual save at any time.

A key benefit of Workflowy is that your lists can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection – just log into your account to see the lists. Of course, there will be times when it will be useful to work with lists in other programs. For this reason, data can be easily exported from Workflowy. Summon the pop-up menu encountered in Step 8 and select the Export option, or scroll to the bottom of the Workflowy page and click the Export All Lists link. Press Ctrl and C to copy the information to the Windows Clipboard and then paste it into the program of your choice.