Editing your maps
Keywords: selecting,editing nodes,splitting nodes,copying,undo,reordering,autosave

# Editing your mindmaps

You have many options as you edit your mindmaps.

#### Selecting a node

Select a node by either pointing at it with the mouse or clicking on it, as governed by your user preferences (Edit / Preferences).

#### Editing a node

If you right-click on a node, you'll see a context menu with several choices.

- Edit: Change the text of a node
- Edit a long node: Open a window to edit text.
- New Child Node: Create a new linked node, one level deeper. [Mac users may want to create an alternative to the Insert key. See user.properties page.)
- Cut: Cut the selected node and all of its descendants to the clipboard. Note that because there is no Undo function as of this writing, Cut may be used to delete text, which can then be recovered with Paste. See below.
- Copy: Copy the selected node and all of its descendants to the clipboard.
- Copy Single: Copy only the selected node to the clipboard.
- Paste: Insert the contents of the clipboard as a child of (below) the currently selected node.
- Node: Offers a variety of options for formatting and positioning nodes. See Editing nodes for details.
- Branch: Offers options for importing and exporting branches.
- Edge: Offers options for the style, color and width of edges (the lines connecting nodes)
- Physical style: Presents a variety of choices for preset styles that can combine font, size, color, etc. Styles are defined in the file called patterns.xml. See Customizing FreeMind for details.
- Icons: Offers a choice of decorative icons. When you choose an icon, it is inserted at the start of the node, but after any icons that are already there. You can also insert an icon from the icon toolbar at the left hand side of the window. (You can remove this toolbar by right-clicking on the background of FreeMind.)

#### Selecting multiple nodes

- To select multiple nodes hold control or shift while clicking.
- Control lets you add single nodes to a set of already selected nodes.
- Shift lets you select continuous ranges of nodes or whole subtrees of nodes.

#### Reordering nodes

Move nodes up and down within a group of siblings (same level) by using Ctrl+Up Arrow or Ctrl+Down Arrow.

#### Editing long nodes

When you've opened the window to edit a long node (Alt-Enter), removing the checkmark from "Enter confirms" allows you to key in line breaks with the Enter key; otherwise, use Ctrl-Enter. You can also split a long node into two nodes at the point of the cursor, by using the "Split" button.

Tip: To create a multiline node, insert a new node and press Alt-Enter.

#### Is there no undo in FreeMind?

There is no undo so far (0.7.1). Help against data loss are offered by:

- The autosave feature
- You can install a clipboard manager, which will make all elements cut from FreeMind available in its history. A freeware example of a clipboard manager for Microsoft Windows is Yankee Clipper.

#### Autosave

By default, a backup copy of your map is saved to the home directory every minute. To disable this function, or change the time interval or the save directory, edit the user.properties file in the home directory.