Contextual nodes in Tana

This is a little-known feature of Tana that allows us to nest child nodes under a parent node, which are only displayed in the context in which they are created and no other.

This is an ordinary node with two nested nodes.

Now if we use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Down we will activate the contextual nodes option. It is easy to identify it as the sideline changes shape.

To better understand how this works, let's create child nodes 1 and 2.

And let's open the parent node in a different location.

As we can see, the nodes do not appear because they belonged to the context of the original node. We can see them at the bottom as references.

For this function to be much more powerful and useful, it should allow us to have both normal and contextual nodes at the same time.

To do this, even if the node is expanded, click again to expand it.

And we will see that the sideline again changes shape.

If we create a child node at the top (we can see the division on the sideline) it will be created as a normal node.

To identify this type of node we will see that when collapsed they will have a rhombus shape.

If we expand it once we will see the contextual nodes.

And if we expand it again, we will also see the normal nodes.

And that's it. It may seem a bit complicated as you have to first understand how references work in Tana, but once you know these basic fundamentals, it is a very interesting function.

A variant of this (actually the same concept) that is perhaps easier to understand is the contextual columns of a table view, which we will see in another article.