Columns & Calendar Views

Introduction

Colonnes has two complementary views: Columns and Calendar.

Use Columns to organize your document as a hierarchy. This is where you plan, split work into subtasks, and work either with several spaces to separate projects or with a single space that contains all your tasks.

Use Calendar to decide what belongs on a specific day. This is where scheduled work becomes easier to execute, review, print, or launch in Stack.

You can show either view on its own, or display both at the same time. When both views are visible, Columns appears above Calendar, so you can drag items directly between your structure and your schedule.

Columns View

Columns uses Miller columns, similar to the column view in macOS Finder.

Selecting a folder opens its children in a column to the right, and this continues recursively. This makes deep hierarchies easier to browse than a classic tree because each level stays readable in its own column. Children of unselected items are not shown.

Spaces in Columns

Spaces are the top-level roots of Columns view. They let one document contain several separate work areas without requiring several files.

The Spaces sidebar is displayed on the left side of Columns. Selecting a space replaces the first column with that space’s root items. From there, navigation works the same way as elsewhere in Columns: select an item to open its children in the next column.

By default, Colonnes includes Home and Trash. Home is the main space for your active work. Trash is a special space for deleted items and recovery workflows.

You can use spaces for broad areas such as Work, Personal, Clients, Admin, or any other separation that should stay inside the same document.

You can move items between spaces, including by drag and drop. For the full drag behavior, see Drag & Drop.

Custom spaces can be managed in Document Settings > Spaces. From there, you can add spaces, rename them, choose an icon and color, reorder them, and archive spaces you do not want to see in the sidebar.

Calendar View

Calendar displays scheduled items in day columns. Each column represents one day, and scheduled items are ordered inside that day.

The Calendar sidebar includes:

• Previous and Next buttons to move the visible days backward or forward
• Day to show or hide the day picker

The day picker lets you jump to another date. Days can also show visual progress, helping you quickly spot days with remaining or completed work.

Each day column has its own menu. From that menu, you can print the day, launch Stack for the day, sort items, or remove finished items.

Folders and templates are not scheduled as calendar items themselves. For how they behave when dropped on Calendar, see Drag & Drop.

Calendar options such as week numbers and whether weeks start on Monday or Sunday are available in Application Settings > Calendar. See Application Configuration for the settings entry point.

Showing One View or Both

The toolbar contains two view buttons: Columns and Calendar. You can enable one view, the other view, or both.

You can also use keyboard shortcuts:

Moves focus between Columns and Calendar. If the target view is hidden, Colonnes makes it visible without hiding the current view.

Cycles through the visible layouts: Columns only, Calendar only, then both views.

The focused view controls selection, keyboard navigation, and Edit Mode. Changing view focus exits Edit Mode first, so text editing does not accidentally continue in the wrong place.

Items in Both Views

An item can belong to Columns and Calendar at the same time. This does not mean there are two copies. It is the same item with both a hierarchical position and a scheduled date.

Because it is the same item, changes stay synchronized. If you edit the text, mark the task as finished, change its color, or update its tags, the item reflects that change wherever it appears.

Colonnes shows a small icon on the left when a leaf item is visible in one view and also exists in the other view:

• In Columns, a small calendar icon means the item is scheduled in Calendar.
• In Calendar, a small columns icon means the item also has a place in Columns.

Click the icon to jump to the same item in the other view. If that view is hidden, Colonnes opens it. If a scheduled item is outside the currently visible Calendar days, Colonnes moves Calendar to the right day before selecting the item.

Placement icons are shown on leaf items. Parent items do not show the cross-view icon, even if they have schedule data, because the left side of a parent item is reserved for hierarchy and progress indicators. Items in Trash also do not show cross-view placement icons.