Switching
Import any outliner into SpacebarX with OPML
OPML is the one format almost every outliner speaks, which is exactly why it is small. It moves five things — text, notes, checkboxes, checked state and hierarchy — and it moves them reliably from any tool that writes it. This page is about those five, and about the five it leaves at the door.
- How long it takes
- A minute or two per file, once you have the file. Getting the export out of your current tool is usually the longer half.
- What SpacebarX can import
- OPML, its own JSON, a full-profile backup, and pasted text. There is no Markdown import.
- What OPML carries
- Text, notes, checkboxes, checked state and hierarchy. Five fields, and no sixth.
- What it costs
- Nothing, in both directions. Import and export are free and uncapped — export is never gated.
What OPML actually is
OPML — Outline Processor Markup Language — is a plain XML format built for one job: handing a nested outline from one program to another. It has been around since the earliest outliner software, which is why so much of it still speaks the language. Each item is a node with children, so nesting and sibling order survive a trip between two apps that store data in completely different ways.
It is deliberately small. There is no styling, no attachment, no slot for whatever your current tool does that nothing else does — and that smallness is the reason it works everywhere. SpacebarX reads the dialect Dynalist and Workflowy write, where an item's note travels as _note and a checkbox as checkbox and complete. Files from those two tools land with all five fields intact. Files from a converter or a plugin depend on whether it writes the same attributes, which is worth checking on one file rather than fifty.
One consequence is worth stating up front: OPML is a migration format, not a backup format. If you are moving between two SpacebarX installs, use the full-profile backup JSON instead — it keeps everything the table below marks as dropped.
How the import works
Find the export in the tool you are leaving
Workflowy and Dynalist both offer OPML from their built-in export menus, with nothing to install. Elsewhere, look for a generic Export in the item menu, the document menu or settings — OPML is usually one of several formats offered there rather than a separate feature.
Save the file, and note what it covers
Some tools export your whole account as one file; others export a single document or list, so you end up with several. Neither is better, but knowing which you have decides whether the next step happens once or fifteen times. Name the files after the documents while you still remember which is which.
Import it into SpacebarX
Open Import & Export in the app menu, choose Import OPML and select the file. A new document appears with every level of nesting and the order of siblings preserved — a project five levels deep arrives five levels deep, not flattened.
Check one document you know by heart
Look for a note that should be in the note field, an item that should still be ticked, and something that had a date — the first two should be there and the third will not be. Finding that out on a document you recognise is much cheaper than finding it out later on one you do not.
Repeat, then organise on this side
Each file lands as its own document, so the folder structure is something you build here.
⌘⇧Mmoves items between documents and⌘Kjumps between them.No OPML export? Paste instead
SpacebarX also imports text straight from the clipboard: tab-indented lines become nesting,
1.becomes a numbered list and- [ ]becomes a real checkbox. For a tool with no OPML export at all — or for a list too short to be worth a file — this is the whole migration.
What transfers, and what doesn't
The canonical list, and the one the tool-specific guides cite rather than restate. It is a property of the file format, so it is the same in both directions — these are also the fields an OPML export out of SpacebarX will not carry.
| Criterion | After import |
|---|---|
| Item text | TransfersThe words of every item, verbatim. Tags, dates and URLs you typed into a line are text, so they cross as text. |
| Notes | TransfersA note attached to an item lands in SpacebarX’s own note field rather than being appended to the item. |
| Checkboxes | TransfersA checklist arrives as a checklist. ⌘⇧C adds a checkbox to anything that arrived without one. |
| Checked state | TransfersCompleted stays completed. ⌘Enter checks items off from here, and advances a recurring one. |
| Hierarchy | TransfersEvery level of nesting and the order of siblings within each level. This is the thing OPML exists to do. |
| Due dates | Not carriedThere is no date field in the format. A date held as a date is dropped; a date sitting in the words is text, and survives. |
| Mirrors | Not carriedOPML cannot express “this item is the same item as that one”, so anything shared arrives as separate copies with matching text. |
| Styling and colour | Not carriedBold, italic, highlight and colour are dropped. The words underneath them are not. |
| Numbered-list flag | Not carriedNumbering is a display setting. The list arrives as an ordinary list and you re-apply it if it mattered. |
| Collapsed state | Not carriedEverything arrives expanded, however it was folded. ⌘⇧. collapses all, ⌘⇧, expands all, ⌘. toggles one. |
OPML is not a backup. It is very good at the job it was designed for — moving an outline between two programs that agree on almost nothing — and it is the wrong tool for keeping a copy of your work, because a round trip through it silently discards the bottom five rows of that table. If what you want is a copy that survives everything, export the full-profile backup JSON instead: it keeps the dates, the mirrors, the formatting and the collapsed state, along with your settings, keymap and saved templates. Use OPML to arrive and to leave; use the backup to keep.
Once you're in
Five rows came across and five did not. Putting the second five back, in the order that repays the effort fastest.
Dates, first. They are the only dropped field that can cause you to miss something.
⌘⇧Dinserts today's date on the focused item;⌘⇧Ythen opens Today, which gathers everything dated into overdue, today, tomorrow, the next seven days and later, and rolls it forward without asking.Mirrors, second.
⌘⇧Lcopies the focused item as a mirror and⌘⇧Vpastes it wherever it also belongs — one item, two places, edited from either. Free on every plan.Then the cosmetic three, at your leisure. Fold the tree back down with
⌘⇧., re-apply emphasis with⌘B,⌘Iand⌘⇧H, and re-number any list where the numbers carried meaning.Export a full-profile backup when it looks right. That is the point at which this list stops being something you will ever have to do again — the backup format keeps all ten rows, so the next move is lossless.
Questions
Can SpacebarX import Markdown files?
1. lists and - [ ] checkboxes works, and for a single note it works well. For a vault or a graph of them, see the Obsidian and Logseq guides, both of which have to route through a conversion step.My outliner has no “Export to OPML” button. Now what?
Will my whole account import at once, or one document at a time?
Import one OPML file and see what arrives.
Five fields cross, five do not, and this page told you which before you clicked. Free, and no card.