How can I change the design of the map after I have started the map?

Rooster McNugget

Hi together

I finally found some time to create my first MindMap.😂 Still using the free version. 

After I have created my first map, I would like to know how I can change the design/representation of the map? For example from "Mindmap" to "Project Retrospective".

Greetings

Samuel

Andrew Lapidus

Hi @Rooster McNugget and @Emily - I was about to jump onto this thread to suggest something similar to Emily - you can indeed copy/paste a template into an existing mind map. You'll just need to then click/drag your existing nodes into the map as you see fit.

Is this sort of what you had in mind, @Rooster McNugget ? I also kind of have the feeling I might have totally misunderstood your question 🙈 Please let me know if I'm totally off track.

(Btw - when copy/pasting one mind map into another, be sure to select only the root topic of the mind map, not the entire map!)

Best,

Andrew

Emily

I'll try to help but I'm no techy! 😀 I believe project retrospective is a mind map template, and not a style. I don't think there is a way to change to a different template after you've started a map, but you can always change your map to a different style (mind map, org chart, list) by clicking the "Layout" button on the right. Does that help?

Rooster McNugget

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/1603#Comment_1603

Hi @Emily,

thanks for your answer.

As you said, I first changed the style (mind map, org chart, list). But I like to change the kind of mind map after beginning with a mind map. Because I startet with a idea and now it's a "guideline" and it would be nice if I could change the "mind map" into a "project retrospective".

Emily

I see, so you'd like to go back and restart a map in progress with this template? Unfortunately as far as I know the only way to do this is to just manually edit the center topic of your map and add the nodes from the template to your map. I think this would probably work with copy/paste, but haven't tried myself.

Rooster McNugget

https://community.meister.co/discussion/comment/1615#Comment_1615

@Emily , exactly! Sorry that I wrote it a bit complicated. Sometimes it's not very easy to write in a foreign language an to express yourself properly. 😊

@Andrew Lapidus, thanks for the input copy/paste. I'll try it out.

Best,

Samuel

Olaf Roeb

Hi @Rooster McNugget , @Andrew Lapidus , @Emily ,

I didn't try to copy and paste a whole mindmap before, it seems to be a great solution to not start one big map, but many smaller maps and only join them later in the workflow. Just tried that, but came up with one problem that I cannot solve, maybe there is a solution for that, too:

As your video shows, Andrew, copy and paste does not transport all attributes of the copied subnodes and subbranches, just the three black-backgrounded level1 daughters of the center node. Down from these branches, themes and styles are not like in the original Project-Retrospective but instead inherit the theme of the Chess-Opening Map.

Is there a way to make sure all attributes and styles from the original can be preserved and pasted into the targeted map?

Andrew Lapidus

Hi @Olaf Roeb - this is a great point. I just tested this out and it seems that map topics which have not had their appearance edited (i.e. they are using the map's applied theme.), will be converted to the new theme.

This doesn't seem to be the case for topics which have their appearance "customized" (e.g. the topics with black/orange/green backgrounds in the project retrospective template). These topics were edited to be different than the standard "Cubicle" theme which that template uses.

Long story short (before I get too much into the weeds!), I don't think easily transferring appearances over will be possible until custom themes is released next year. It might be a bit of a headache, but remember you can always edit multiple topics by holding command (macOS) or ALT (Windows) and dragging a window over them.