Not here to start a flame war. I just wonder what people’s experiences have been using Timeline with Ulysses?
I have been using Scrivener with Timeline and am impressed by how well they work together.
But recently, having come to grief with Scrivener <-> Dropbox synchronisation issues on Mac and iOS, I’m getting the itch to try Timeline with Ulysses.
Any Ulysses-specific hints or tips?
Hi @MarkB,
I’m a Ulysses and Timeline user and I absolutely love the way the two work together. The sync works flawlessly. The only issue I have is that when syncing information from Aeon Timeline through to Ulysses as a note, the notes don’t appear in the order they appear in Aeon. Instead, they revert to an alphabetical order. I find this annoying, but it is down to the devs at Ulysses. I know that @matt (and myself) have called upon the devs to implement some form of sorting of notes in Ulysses (actually, I’d prefer some kind of metadata system, a little like Scrivener has). But so far sortable notes are not a thing in Ulysses. If you can put up with that I can’t see any other issues with the way Ulysses works with Aeon.
If you can’t put up with the above issue, there is a workaround. Create a ‘template’ in Ulysses (a sheet you can duplicate and copy into your draft area) and prepopulate it with a list of notes you want to sync, in the correct order, all blank other than the title of the note: Summary: Story Arc: etc. Then place this in the draft where you want it to be in Ulysses. When you sync between Aeon and Ulysses, Aeon will add the detail of the note you have synced to the blank notes in your sheet. The downside with this is you build the narrative in Ulysses first and then sync back to Ulysses. Which can be a bit of a pain.
Projects in Ulysses work flawlessly and maintain their own pool of keywords which helps with syncing lots of characters and locations into keywords from Aeon.
I’d highly recommend going down the Ulysses and Aeon route. And psst, I don’t blame you re your switch from Scrivener. It is an awesome piece of software, but the syncing with Dropbox is annoying and I really don’t rate the iPhone or iPad versions of that software. I have been using Ulysses since 2011 and I have never once returned to Scrivener (I am also not trying to start a flame war!).
Hope the above helps.
Hi Andrew
Thank you for taking the time to write your extremely helpful reply, and for the great tip about the notes in Ulysses.
While using Scrivener, I have tended to write notes in it, because I find the Aeon notes field just a little small and would love to see that increased in size.
You’ve encouraged me to pick up Ulysses again. I do like the recent project feature and the ability to archive things once they’re completed.
Definitely helps, especially coming from someone with such Ulysses experience 
Thanks again
Mark
You’re very welcome Mark. I’m glad I’ve inspired you to give Ulysses and Aeon Timeline a go. It really is a very good integration. Especially as Ulysses currently lacks a detailed outliner like Scrivener has. Let me know if you have any further questions about using the two together. Happy planning and writing.
Andrew