Explain the problem as you see it
Right now it is ~ impossible to effectively share writing done inside Tana outside of it.
Why is this a problem for you?
Whether it's writing academic papers or quarterly reports, eventually my writing needs to leave Tana and will be sent out to others via email, collaborated on in a Google Doc, or turned into a PDF.
Without an effective way of getting my writing out of Tana, it will always create significant friction in my work – or make it even impossible to use Tana as the central hub because the friction is not worth it.
Suggest a solution
I should be able to export any node and its children into a plainly formatted (i.e. no bullet points) text document in different file formats:
- Markdown (especially important for further processing in academic work -> LaTeX)
- MS Word
- Google Doc
Ideally, this would work through and Cmd+K command "Export to..." and then being offered a choice between the different formats.
19 Comments
Yes please from me, too. If I had to prioritise the formats, they would be as they are listed above. Markdown first (and if necessary, only markdown). Word second - for easier interoperability. And finally GDocs.
I want and can easily see TANA being my central hub for all my task management and note taking but without any good form of export this would be very difficult.
This is exacerbated by the fact that right now selecting multiple nodes that don't fit within a page is bugged and basically impossible.
Tana is becoming my central Hub and see using it almost exclusively soon. I do, however need to extract text for other uses (including backups while it's still in alpha). The feature above would be great, though I would also like to be able to exclude any accompanying super tag information that could be included within the selected range, to keep the flow of text cleaner.
We should have something similar to Tana paste but as Tana copy :). I take meeting minutes and need to get the content of my nodes out (not the full database, usually a node and its descendants).
Completely agreed. Just tried this for the first time with regular copy paste and it was wonky. Pasting without format deleted the bullets.
Yes, this is a great idea. I am currently on the waiting list to get access to the app, but this would be a HUGE hurdle for me. I am leaving another app because I can't simply copy information from one app to another without having to reformat the entire document.
The current Markdown export of a node with all its children is a good start, but it's still annoying to remove the indentation and bullet points.
Roam has a great "flat markdown" export that I'd love to see in Tana as well.
Basically, it's the same as what we have, plus this regex added:
It would be great if it also copied images too. Copying the full content to the clipboard already works well for me, but it does not include the images.
It would be good to have different export formats like those implemented in Dynalist.
On average I have five meetings/day. For many meetings I share my screen via Zoom as I take notes in Tana. Often people are curious and impressed by Tana. They also request my notes, which leads to, "Sure, I'll send them to you, but you'll need to forgive the poor formatting." (No, it's not worth my time to improve the formatting.) Ideally there would be a ⌘+K | Export to PDF (with A4 and US-Letter layout options). Then I attach the PDF to email and I'm all set.
Agreed; I am in a training I would have liked to send the notes to my team, but this does not seem to be possible and I'm not sure how it will translate with copy+paste.
CraftDocs (where I am coming from) does this decently.
Tana Publish Pages - https://tana.inc/docs/tana-publish is our latest feature and it is designed for this use case!
Tana Publish is a great feature that I love, but it does not solve this use case.
I need to be able to write in Tana, save a Word or GoogleDoc or Markdown file and then mail this to people so they can (inline) comment on it or so that I can put it into other workflows.
Until every member of my organization (or partners) is using Tana, the ability to track changes in a collaborative document will always be there. Tana Publish does not solve this.
Yep fair enough, changed status back. Definitely the ability to send pages as attachments is useful, but commenting/collaboration etc isn't there yet.
I'm concerned that the request isn't fully understood. This isn't about commenting or collaboration or publishing a link to view Tana. This is about, in old person terms, PRINTING OUR WORK. Yes, I would rather "print to PDF" and then email that pdf file or print that pdf on paper if I want to.
I need to be able to select a node and then request that node and all of its children to be "printed" - including tables,
query results, embeds, images, etc. I need to be able to do it quickly and in one step. Copying in a particular format then opening another program and pasting into it, then saving THAT document as a PDF is more awkward in reality than it even is to write about.
This is now implemented! (The markdown part in the first post as 'Download as ... markdown').
You can read about it in Tana Learn -> Copy/paste in Tana -> Download a subset of nodes. :)
https://tana.inc/docs/copy-paste-in-tana#download-a-subset-of-nodes
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LOL
Sorry about that, it seems our docs system don't auto-create redirects when renaming articles. Here's the updated link:
https://tana.inc/docs/copy-paste-and-export#download-a-subset-of-nodes
It would be great to also have a print option that prints the selected node and its children.