Outline Converter

Obsidian plugin transforming your bullet point outlines into continuous text with intelligent header detection and flexible customization options.

Installation

1. Open Settings → Community plugins
2. Disable Restricted mode if needed
3. Click Browse and search for "Outline Converter"
4. Click Install, then Enable

Usage

Works on the current selection or the entire active note. Choose one of two commands:

Auto-header Converter

Turns outlines into continuous text with heading promotion: items with children become headers; items without children become prose.

Example (defaults: headings start at H2, siblings separated by line breaks)

• Input

  - Project
  	- Goals
  		- Ship v1
  	- Tasks
  		- Write docs
  		- Publish release
  

• Output

  ## Project
  
  ### Goals
  Ship v1
  
  ### Tasks
  Write docs
  Publish release
  

Custom Converter

Control text transformation at each indentation level (1–5). For each level, add text before/after the content or ignore the content entirely.

Example (default settings: level1 before=\n\n## , after=''; level2 before=\n\n### , after=\n\n; level3 before='', after= )

• Input

  - Features
  	- Auto-header
  		- Turn children into headers automatically.
  	- Custom converter
  		- Customize text per indentation level.
  - Usage
  	- Select text or whole note
  		- Works on selection or full note.
  	- Run command
  		- Trigger from the command palette or a hotkey.
  

• Output

  ## Features
  
  ### Auto-header
  Turn children into headers automatically.
  
  ### Custom converter
  Customize text per indentation level.
  
  ## Usage
  
  ### Select text or whole note
  Works on selection or full note.
  
  ### Run command
  Trigger from the command palette or a hotkey.
  

[!note] Lines starting with // (with or without space) have their content ignored, but before/after text is still applied.

Replacement (Find & Replace)

Apply up to 5 find-and-replace operations with regex support. Replacements are processed sequentially.

Handy preset example:

Purpose	Regex	Find	Replace
Collapse 3+ blank lines to 2	✅	\n{3,}	\n\n
Trim trailing spaces	✅	[ \t]+$	(empty)
Normalize double spaces in prose	✅	{2,}	(single space)
Remove spaces before punctuation	✅	\s+([.,!?])	$1

[!important]

• You can write placeholders in settings: \n (newline), \r (carriage return), \t (tab), and \\ (backslash).
• If you want to match the literal text \n in regex mode, write \\n. In non-regex mode, just write \n to search the literal backslash+n string.

Section Insertion

Insert content from other sections in the active file using [[#SectionName]]. Works with both [[#Section]] and ![[#Section]] formats. Useful when you keep prose outside the outline and want to pull it into the converted text.

Example:

• Current note

  # Tasks
  Today: write docs and publish the release.
  
  # Outline
  - Project
  	- Tasks
  		- [[#Tasks]]
  

• Output

  ## Project
  
  ### Tasks
  Today: write docs and publish the release.
  

Export Methods

Method	Description
Copy to clipboard	Copies the result to your clipboard
Append to cursor	Inserts text at your current cursor position
Append to bottom	Adds text to the end of the active note
Replace section	Replaces a specific section (creates it if missing)

Additional Commands

Fold Commands

Quickly fold all items at a specific indentation level (1-5) using the command palette.

Swap Lines Commands

Move lines up or down. Integrates with Outliner plugin when available for enhanced outline manipulation.