TreeSheets is advertised as a Free Form Data Organizer and a Hierarchical Spreadsheet but how is that possible?
From the author’s description:
A “hierarchical spreadsheet” that is a great replacement for spreadsheets, mind mappers, outliners, PIMs, text editors and small databases.
Suitable for any kind of data organization, such as todo lists, calendars, project management, brainstorming, organizing ideas, planning, requirements gathering, presentation of information, etc.
It’s like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it’s hierarchical.
It’s like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact.
It’s like an outliner, but in more than one dimension.
It’s like a text editor, but with structure.
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Having used it off and on for several years, it is hard to say what the best use is, because it is so versatile.
At the very least, it is a whiteboard for capturing both high level and detailed notes for any project or set of To Dos you may be working on.
Available for Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems, it works and looks the same on each.
The website for those who want to explore more is http://strlen.com and the author, Wouter Van Oortmerssen, is a programmer with decades of experience.
- It’s like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it’s hierarchical.
- It’s like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact.
- It’s like an outliner, but in more than one dimension.
- It’s like a text editor, but with structure.
Think of TreeSheets as a text map. You fly over your maps at different zoom levels (heights) and see more detailed text. Text or cells can be embedded within other cells to any level desired. Cells can be colored and sized easily. When searching for a word or phrase, all matching cells are colored with Red text as shown below.
Above we have cells which are part of “The basics” and “Grids.” And you can see the first cell under Grids also contains child cells. Below you will see some text which is unreadable.
Click in the tiny text then press Ctrl+PageUp or Ctrl+MouseWheel to zoom into the text.
For cells that show a bold plus mark + next to them, that means there are embedded cells that are folded (hidden). Click in the cell then press F10 so fold or unfold the text in it.
All sorts of layouts can be configured within TreeSheets.
As a test, I imported the New Testament to see how well it handles a lot of text.
If the developer would change the search function to display found cells in a separate window, this type of file would work well. But, currently, searching highlights cells one at a time, which can be a lot of moving around to get to the item you want. Most users will not have this much text in a file. Especially, since you can have multiple files open. There can be files for ToDo, Daily Journal, individual projects, etc.
All in all, it is a very interesting program and its developer uses it daily. He is a well known computer programmer who is mainly involved with the Gaming segment.
You can export data in many ways including PNG graphics format.
As of September 2023, the developer has been doing updates every week. So, perhaps I should ask him about improving the search capabilities.
I hope you will find some uses for TreeSheets.