The most powerful timeline maker just got better. With the new Vertical Timeline, new Theme Management tools, the new Timescale and Chart menus, enhanced charting options and new support for MS Project, Timeline Maker Pro v4.5 continues to demonstrate why it is the best and most complete timeline software used by investigators, business professionals and researchers in over 80 countries.
This upgrade addresses the most popular enhancements requested by our customers, plus a host of new features that make Timeline Maker Pro even more powerful and easy to use for everyone.
The all new Vertical Timeline is a top-down chart showing the sequence of event flags from oldest to newest. This compact chart makes it easy to communicate the order in which things have occurred in the past (i.e. an investigation) or in the future (i.e. production steps). Like all the other charts in Timeline Maker Pro, the Vertical Timeline is created with a single click and includes all the same theme and customization capabilities. Plus you have enhanced control over the placement and size of your flag events. For example, you can click and drag a flag event from one side of the chart to the other. You can also use the new timescale "click and stretch" feature to extend (or shorten) the length of your chart.
The all new SHARE menu option makes it easier than ever to share your timelines with others. Timeline Maker Pro v4.5 gives you many choices on how to best share your timeline chart, including via email, as a PDF document, as an image, or sending to PowerPoint as well as publishing to HTML. Best of all, these options can be found on one easy to use menu.
This powerful option allows you to send your timeline chart directly to PowerPoint with one-click. You have a choice between sending a Chart Image (i.e. graphic) or an Interactive Timeline with all the scrolling, zoom, pop-up info, and step-through options available in Timeline Maker Pro’s built-in presentation mode. Timeline Maker will automatically start PowerPoint (if not already running) and insert your timeline on a new slide.
Color coding groups of like events and managing your chart legend has never been easier. With the new Category Colors button you can select from any theme color, standard color or the color palette. With one click all events for that category will assign this new color and your chart legend will be updated automatically. Even better, these category colors will be saved with your custom theme so you can reuse on other timeline charts, a feature requested by many users of Timeline Maker Pro.
Preview and apply any theme to your charts with only one click. These new controls let you easily see what any chart would look like with any theme. Don’t like it, then simply click 'Undo' and you are back to where you started. In addition you can now easily manage your theme list, add new themes from our new on-line Theme Library, create your own themes with the new Theme Creation Wizard and easily share your custom themes with your colleagues.
Have you created a particularly attractive timeline chart and want to save the style elements such as fonts, colors, borders, shapes etc. in your own custom theme? The new Theme Creation Wizard lets you easily select the style elements for each chart type (Bar, Flag and Gantt), assign a meaningful name, and add your new custom theme to the Theme List in Timeline Maker Pro.
Timeline Maker Pro comes with a selection of popular themes, but if you want more, go online to review thumbnail images of all the themes Timeline Maker has to offer. Browse the library to find a theme you like then simply download the theme file, double-click, and the new Theme will automatically be installed and added to your Theme List in Timeline Maker Pro. New themes will be added to the library monthly so check back regularly to see what’s new. Click here to view the Theme Library now www.timelinemaker.com/themes.
The Import Wizard in Timeline Maker Pro now supports the seamless import of MS Project files (*.mpp). This was a very popular request from our community of project planners. No longer do they need to export their MS Project data to a CSV and then re-import into Timeline Maker Pro. It can all be done in one easy step. MS Project data is automatically mapped to the appropriate column in Timeline Maker Pro, where the user also has the ability to re-map or select only certain columns to be imported.
Easily manage your timescales now that all the timescale options are in one easy to find place. With the new timescale options, you now have all the tools to create the best timescale to suit the data on your timeline chart, whether it be in years, quarters, months, weeks, days, minutes or seconds, calendar dates or numeric units (i.e. week 1, week 2 etc.).
The powerful new Auto-Arrange by ID option for Bar and Gantt charts is facilitated by assigning a unique identifier (ID) to the events in your timeline; an essential alternative to the usual sequence by start-date. By adding this special ID column in your Timeline Data (access via the right-click menu on Timeline Data column header) this new sort feature will automatically be made available in the Auto-Arrange options for both the Bar and Gantt chart. You can think of it as a line number or sequence number that gives you complete control over the order in which events are displayed on your timeline chart. Notice the order of tasks in the bar chart shown here in this example.
Just like you are used to with MS Office applications, a new zoom slider bar and selector tool are located in the lower right hand corner of your Timeline Maker Pro screen, giving quick access with an “always available” easy viewing tool for every timeline chart you make.
The Flag chart now has a new set of connector styles with an easier to use drop down selector on the Chart menu. This collection offers more modern alternatives to the traditional arrow head style.
For single date events/tasks on both the Bar and Gantt chart an expanded set of symbol shapes are now available on the Format menu. This has been a popular enhancement request since we first introduced milestone symbols in Timeline Maker Pro version 3.
This new feature allows the user to see when the printed page boundaries are exceeded based on the page layout options defined for each timeline chart. By default these blue-dashed “page break” lines are not displayed, however, the can be turned on anytime in the Chart menu. These lines are for reference only and are not included in the printed or published chart. Most importantly they do serve to let you know exactly how many printed pages your timeline chart will use before you commit to printing it on paper.
This convenient start-up screen shows all the commonly used options for creating a new timeline (data entry or import), or opening an existing timeline, including example timelines and the most recently used file. For power users, this new screen can be turned off.
Read the full list of version 4 updates here: Timeline Maker Pro v4 - Release Notes.
All licensed users of Timeline Maker will receive an email containing an upgrade code and a link to purchase. Your upgrade code qualifies you for an upgrade to your existing user license of Timeline Maker Pro v4 for a special discount price. When you complete the purchase of your upgrade you will receive a new serial number to use with your user license which is specific to Timeline Maker Pro v4.
If you are a licensed user of Timeline Maker but did not receive an email to upgrade, please contact support@timelinemaker.com
“I manage the IT organization and a lot of our work is project driven so I leverage the tool to allow people to visualize all the projects that may be going on at once. Everyone who has seen me use the tool talks about how it is a nice application.”
Ingra C.
IT Manager, Texas Instruments