Described is a mechanism for importing data into an outline aware application if the data does not include outline structure, and for creating outline structure in the data based on indicia of visual structure that may be present in the data. In one aspect, data is selected for import into the outline application. The data is devoid of outline structure, such as relative level information or parent/child relationship information. However, the data includes indicia of visual structure, such as markup attributes or tab characters. The outline application (or some related component) transforms the selected data into outline structured data based on the indicia of visual structure.