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Using Folders

Folders are hierarchical containers that organize your project's content at any depth. Opening a folder provides a focused snapshot of its contents — like a scoped view of the Organizer. But in Atlas, organization isn't limited to folders alone.

All Documents Can Have Children

A key concept in Atlas: any document type can contain children — not just folders. A research article can hold its source PDFs as children. A location description can nest the images and web pages you collected about that place. This means your hierarchy can reflect how you think about your content, using documents as outlines rather than just containers.

Creating Folders

Create a new folder from the Organizer using the + button, the context menu, or Cmd+Shift+N. New folders appear in the Organizer, where you can nest them inside other folders to any depth.

The Folder Outline View

When you open a folder, the Folder Outline View provides a focused look at that folder's contents with several display options:

  • Synopsis toggle — Show or hide document synopses inline beneath each title
  • Tags toggle — Show or hide tags assigned to each document
  • Children counts — See how many items each subfolder contains
  • Media previews — Thumbnail previews for media documents in the list

Reordering

Drag documents within the Folder Outline View to reorder them. Placement is position-aware — drop above or below an item to reorder, or drop directly on top of a folder to nest it inside. You can also drag between the Outline View and the Organizer to move documents across your project structure.

Organizational Patterns

There's no single right way to organize a project. Here are some common approaches:

  • Novel or long-form writing — A folder per chapter, with research documents and character notes nested inside each
  • Research project — Top-level folders for Sources, Notes, and Drafts, with subfolders by topic
  • Worldbuilding or reference bible — Folders for Characters, Locations, Lore, and Timeline, each containing documents and collected media
  • Stage-based workflow — Group work by progress (In Progress, Review, Final) using folders, and use tags to categorize across them

Most projects benefit from starting simple and adding structure as they grow — you can always drag documents into new folders later.

Tip

Combine folders with tags for even more flexibility. Folders define physical structure; tags add cross-cutting categories that span the hierarchy.

Folders and Exporting

Folders play an important role in exporting. When you export a folder, all its contents are included — making folders a natural way to group documents for bulk export. Each folder also saves its own export settings independently, so you can configure different formats or options for different parts of your project without reconfiguring each time. See Exporting Your Work for details on folder export options.

See Also