Need better ways to organize and navigate large notebooks? Create outlines (also known as table of contents) with collapsible multi-level structure to jump directly to any section without scrolling.

Outlines act as a table of contents, helping you quickly navigate, organize, collapse, and restructure long documents for better focus and clarity.

You can import a PDF with an outline, create one yourself, or have Goodnotes AI generate it for you.

View the document outline

1. Open a notebook or a Text Document.

2. Open the Sidebar and then the Outline tab.

   

   Outline tab of a notebook

   

   Outline tab of a Text Document

Create an outline manually

For a notebook:

While on a notebook page:

1. Open the More menu.

   

2. Choose Add Page to Outline, enter a title for your outline item, and confirm.

   

3. Go to another page and repeat steps 1 & 2 to add more outline items.

<aside> 💡

• You can also open the Pages tab in the Sidebar, tap the down-arrow under a page thumbnail and choose Add Page to Outline. Repeat for other page thumbnails as needed.

  

• The same page can be added to multiple outline items, allowing you to organize the same content by different criteria (e.g., by week and by team) within a single document. </aside>

For a Text Document:

In a Text Document, you can create an outline by structuring your document with heading tags (H1, H2, H3). Select a heading type in your document, and it’ll automatically appear in the Outline tab.

(Apple only) Generate an outline automatically

<aside> ℹ️

This feature isn't available for Text Documents, which use heading tags to create their outlines.

</aside>

1. Open the Sidebar > the Outlines tab > Generate Outline.

   

2. Adjust the action for all pages or a page range, then choose the Send icon to confirm.

   

3. Review the generated outline. Expand or collapse items using the right-arrow or down-arrow icons. If it looks good, choose Insert in Sidebar.