[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by Usable Thought

Hmm, you seem bent on telling me I did not experience a problem worth mentioning. I disagree. I hope that is okay with you.

No, I wasn't trying to tell you anything of the sort. You certainly did experience a problem, and you mentioned it. What would be the point of trying to convince you otherwise?

Personally, I like OmniOutliner & use it often - but that does not prevent me from (a) getting frustrated at a defect in the design, and (b) pointing it out.

Since it is unlikely a defect this minor can or will be remedied, adding a line or two to the documentation might be a simple way to ease those users who do in fact encounter this glitch, and turn to the help file to see if it's something they're doing wrong.

Well, it's a matter of opinion as to whether or not it is a defect in the design. No data was lost, the program didn't end unexpectedly, and it didn't behave in a fashion other than that intended by its creators. It sounds like what you want it to be is a spreadsheet instead of an outliner which happens to include some features also found in spreadsheets. I agree that there would be no harm in including a sentence in the documentation that clarifies that you cannot delete the outline column.

Did you want to delete the outline column because you had put what might normally go there in a different column and no longer wanted the outline column? I don't know what your final product was intended to be, but if you eliminate the "Topic" heading and adjust the width of the outline column to its narrowest, you essentially hide the outline column from view. However, if you've already populated the outline column in multiple rows, this won't work so well, and removing the text would be less convenient unless you use something like this Applescript:

tell application "OmniOutliner Professional" -- use "OmniOutliner" if you have that 
	tell front document
		try
			set rowCount to count of rows
			repeat with i from 1 to rowCount
				set text of cell 2 of row i to ""
			end repeat
		on error errormessage number errornumber
			display dialog errormessage buttons {"OK"} default button 1
		end try
	end tell
end tell