The Mind Map structure contains a root in the center, with main branches radiating from it. This structure works especially well in brainstorming sessions, where users can collect ideas related to a central topic, but do not need analyze, organize, or prioritize them.

This tool, also known as a Cause & Effect diagram , or Ishikawa diagramgenerates a series of branches which help users visually organize causal relationships in complex ideas or events.

Business users are often faced with project management and milestone timelines. Fishbone charts are well suited to tracking such schedules. Fishbone charts are well suited to tracking such schedules. They illustrate a series of activities in a time sequence, and how the whole project is impacted by different milestones on the schedule. Each branch can also be detached into detailed recursive activities. Through Fishbone charts, users can quickly capture a glimpse of key activities and their dependencies within a schedule, and take proper measures to accelerate the project.

XMind allows users to easily insert information into a spreadsheet format, and at the same time include multiple topics - complete with individual appearances and structures - within each cell. The XMind Spreadsheet can display a set of complex factors and behaviors in perpendicular rows and columns, thus enabling in-depth comparative analysis for project management and strategic decision-making.

Markers are image icons used to represent attributes on a map, and are widely used in project management, planning, and other organizational activities. XMind provides a wide array of markers, or allows users to add their own images as markers. Once added to a map, a marker can be renamed to express specific meaning.

Rich text notes are used to annotate topics. Users can add information about the topic, insert images for illustration, and format the note text (i.e. font size, color, add hyperlink etc.). Notes can even be viewed and edited in Presentation mode.

External files can be added to XMind maps as floating topics, or attached to a topic as subtopics. These attachments can be renamed, moved, or deleted at any time. Users can also change their attributes such as color, shape, or line patterns, or add additional subtopics or attachments to them.

Attachments can be rapidly dragged and dropped from a user's local folder to a map. Images can be dropped on an existing topic, and will automatically become the topic's image, or can be used to create a new topic. All Attachments travel with XMind files during distribution and sharing. Viewers can open an attachment directly, or save it to their drive as a local file.

Users can use Hyperlinks to link files from websites, local folders, or files such as Excel or PDF documents. Each topic can be given a URL and presented as a hyperlink (multiple URLs cannot be associated with a topic). Hyperlinks can be opened by simply ALT-clicking the topic, or can be modified or canceled at any time.

When a user drags and drops a hyperlink from a web browser to a topic, the hyperlink's URL will be inserted into that topic, or replace an existing URL that is already associated with the topic. As with attachments, hyperlinks can also be dragged and dropped into a map as subtopics of an existing topic, or floating topics. Hyperlink attributes such as description, position, and color can also be altered.

Drilldown enables users to focus in on a specific branch. When a branch is drilled down, it will be displayed as the central branch on the map. Users can modify the details of this branch, then return to the former level with just a simple click.

If users want to hide detailed information from being displayed in higher levels, they can capture it in floating topics. This will supress information when drilling up to full map view, but make it viewable when drilling down to the specific branch. The drilled-down map can be exported, and printed just like a normal map.

A spell checker is automatically invoked as users type text into XMind. Misspelled words are marked with a red underline. Right-clicking on the word will provide a pop-up list of suggested revisions. Users can also add a new word to the dictionary. Additional spell checker options can be found in the Preference dialog box under Edit -> Preferences -> Mind Map -> Spelling.

The Powerful Filter(avaiable in XMind Pro) offers tremendous productivity improvements for large, complex maps. Filtering allows users to make only specific portions of map content visible, based on certain topic attributes such as markers and labels, to facilitate faster information review and understanding.

What makes the filtering functionality of XMind unique is its ability to shadow out topics, but not hide them completely, making the un-filtered topics much brighter and more noticeable. This allows users to highlight key points, without losing the entire map view.

You can also add a legend to the map, which is a floatable box describing all map markers and their specific meaning. Users can drag and drop a legend anywhere within the map, or hide the legend from viewing.

Many professionals use FreeMind or MindManager as their thinking tool. XMind protects prior investments and makes it easy for users to continue working on maps created in FreeMind or MindManager. Users can import files from these two applications into XMind without losing any important data.

XMind is a fully-compatible solution with a wide range of third-party applications. Users can export maps into a variety of formats, such as Html/PNG/GIF/JPEG/BMP.

All XMind users are also enabled for online sharing and collaboration via XMind Share, a new website which allows XMind users to share their mind maps and other visual thinking content in a Web 2.0 style online community.

Mind maps created in XMind are uploaded to the XMind Share website, shared with other users on the site, tagged, and embedded, bookmarked or posted to other sites. XMind Share will be a content sharing community website for mind maps in the spirit of YouTube for videos, Flickr for photos.

XMind Pro's Presentation Mode is an alternative view that allows you to browse with a minimum of distraction. Users can effectively present their mind maps to an audience, focusing in on a particular topic while using the whole screen to capture the full tapestry of ideas related to it.

Keyboard shortcuts and a hovering toolbar help to navigate among topics and collapse/expand branches. The entire map floats and dynamically adjusts to keep the selected topic centered on the screen. The user can also make changes while in presentation mode, including such functionality as add/delete/modify topics, add/delete markers and labels, zoom in/out, filter, and record audio notes.

For every manager, protecting the information is a very important thing. XMind gets many feedbacks from business customers about this. They tell us although XMind has performed great during assisting their work, but they have to worry about the security. Because they are using XMind to do brainstorming, record meeting, plan the work about new idea about corporation future, product design, marketing stratage, and etc.

These XMind files are too important to let them have to think about the ways to protect them. They have to warn themselves of losing these files too.

Now, they can set their mind at rest! With a few simple steps, you can easily set a password to your XMind file. Then this file can not be opened unless you have the password.

With Gantt view in XMind Pro, you can easily manage and adjust project tasks in a single viewer. In this view, all tasks are ordered by priority, from high to low. Drag and move the task bars to change their start and end dates. Information for a particular task that is changed in the Gantt view is synchronously reflected in the TaskInfo view.

The Gantt view's design provides flexibility and convenience for project managers and other users trying to organize a project plan.

XMind Pro is a solution that's fully compatible with a wide range of third-party applications. Users can export maps into a variety of common office tool formats such as MicroSoft Word, PowerPoint, PDF, or RTF.

When exporting a map to a graphical text document format such as Word, PowerPoint, or PDF, the structure of your map will be captured in an outline format XMind with rich text notes as the text of each chapter or section. XMind will also allow you to place an overview picture representing the source map below the title or to break it down into small pieces for each chapter and/or section.

There are two pre-conditions of exporting the map to MS Word and PowerPoint. Your operating system should be Windows, and have installed MS Word and/or PowerPoint.

For users' convenience, XMind Pro also allows you to export your .xmind files into MindManager maps and/or FreeMind Maps.

XMind provides access to several search engines, allowing users to find and retrieve information related to their topics from the Web, and incorporate it into their maps, all from within XMind.

Users can also search images from the Web, and drag and drop them onto a map, either adding them to an existing topic or using the images to create a new topic.

With XMind Share, XMind Pro users can restrict access to their online mind maps and share only with designated contacts. Private sharing makes a lot of sense for project teams who want to share and collaborate on a brainstorming session or task information captured in a mind map.

With Mapshot in XMind Pro, you can take a snapshot of a specific region of a map and save it in an image file format so that it can be quickly shared or pasted into other applications.

In team projects, information from different sources must often be collected and merged together. XMind Pro provides a Map Merge feature that enhances communication and collaboration by allowing users to merge separate maps into a single map.

In XMind Pro, the TaskInfo view is where users can define specific task elements within a map such as start and end dates, priority, and task progress. All of the information in TaskInfo is synchronously reflected in the XMind Pro Gantt View, which shows timelines and tracks milestones for the tasks. Together they provide powerful project management capabilities.

XMind Pro includes hundreds of high-quality images. Users can access these images from the Gallery view, and incorporate them into maps by simply double-clicking on them, or dragging and dropping them onto the desired positions within the map.

A theme is a collection of colors, shapes, line patterns, and other coordinated graphical attributes of a map. XMind provides a variety of professional themes for users to choose from, which can be applied to any map in just one easy step. Themes can be further customized, extracted and saved as a template for future use with other maps.

A style is a group of attributes which can be extracted, saved and repeatedly applied to a map object. Users can play with and extract four different kinds of styles: Topic, Boundary, Relationship, and Map. Once saved, custom styles can then be easily applied to various objects around the map.