The outline view shows the outline of the document currently opened in the editor. Selecting an element in the outline focuses the editor to the corresponding text in the document. The collapse and expand buttons collapse/expand the outline tree one level.
The update button can be used to update the outline if automatic parsing is not enabled. This button is disabled when the outline is up to date.
The contents of the outline can be filtered by using the outline view toolbar buttons. Note that hiding an element also hides all the element's children regardless of whether the children would otherwise be visible or not. For example, hiding sections will hide all the subsections which are children of any sections. However, a single subsection without a section parent would remain visible.
Elements availabe in the outline can be configured through the TeXlipse > Editor > Outline preference page.
You can manipulate the elements of the outline by selecting an element and then selecting an operation from the context menu (right-click with the mouse on the element) or from the Edit menu in the menubar. All the operations are text based. This means that deleting an element really removes the text from the document and copying an element actually copies the text contents of the elements to the clipboard. When using paste in the outline the text in the clipboard is inserted after the text of the target element.
These operations are only enabled when the outline is up to date
Elements can also be manipulated by dragging and dropping. Dragging and dropping an element over another element will move the text of the source element after the text of the target element.
Holding down the Ctrl key while dropping will result in a copy operation instead of a move operation. An element cannot be dropped over itself or over its children. As with the copy/paste operations, dragging and dropping is only enabled when the outline is up to date.