10 Tips For Using Notes More Effectively

It is easy to keep creating notes until you have so many that the Notes app is a mess and ceases to be useful. Here are some tips for using notes more efficiently and effectively.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are some tips for using the Notes App more effectively. 
So I often hear from people having trouble organizing the Notes App. Dealing with having lots of different notes, trying to figure out how to more efficiently use Notes to get things done. So here are some tips for doing just that. Some of these tips you may like and be able to incorporate into how you work with Notes. Where others may not fit as well. Notes is a very open app so how each person uses Notes will vary greatly. But here are some tips that I fine help me and may help you as well.
Often when you want to record some information in a note you don't want to take the time to create a new note right then. So you can just have a note that you keep adding to. I call it a draft note or something like that where you just keep adding new things to it and then only later on break them off into their own note or take an action and just remove them from this.
You also may find that this happens inside of a regular note. So you create a note and you start putting information into it and then you find that maybe some information in there would be better off in its own note. So don't be afraid to do just that. Take information in a note and cut it from that note and create a new one and put that information in there creating two separate notes. If the notes are still related you can then Link note-to-note. An easy way to do that is just use the Greater Than symbol twice and then you can choose from a list here. So I'll choose that second note. So now when I'm on this note here I can easily jump to that other note and I can also have a link back to the first note if I want. So I can have things in separate notes but easily navigate between them.
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Now I assume you're using the List View not Gallery View. In List View you're going to see your notes grouped together by how old they are. But if you have some important notes you may want to pin them to the top. So all I need to do for that is select the note, go to File, and Pin Note. But you can also Control Click, right click, or two-finger click on a trackpad and choose Pin Note there. Then you'll have this pinned section at the top. But be careful not to have too many notes in Pin. At some point it just looses its usefulness if you have too many notes pinned up here. I try to keep two or three notes pinned. You may want to have a few more but I can definitely see there being a problem if you have more than ten notes pinned to the top. Remember it is really easy to pin and then unpin a note. So, it's okay to pin a note that you know you'll be using a lot today or this week but then normally have it unpinned when you're not using it so much.
Folders are another thing I see overused a lot. You can create new folders and then move some of your notes into these folders to organize them. But then things get messy again once you have too many folders. I talk to people that have hundreds of folders and at that point they kind of start to loose their value. I also try to keep the number of folders to ten or less. If you find you have tons of folders you may want to switch to using Tags. So, for instance, here you can see the lectures I have all tagged with Lecture here and I can easily go to Tags. You can have lots of those. Just view one tag and see all the notes with that tag in them. So I have my most important categories as Folders but then beyond that have lots of different tags that I use and just put all of these notes into some general folder or archive folder.
Now let's talk about individual notes. When putting information into a note it's usually important to come up with your own kind of shorthand. You don't need to write full complete sentences and paragraphs and fill the note up. In general you want to have as fewer in the note as possible. Just enough to remind you of some information or allow you to see information in a quick manner that you can easily review. Remember you can use things like Bolding words or Italics or Highlighting. All sorts of different formatting here for making the note easier for you to see. Think of a note like this. A note is just for you. Optimize it for just you. Make it is easy to add information and review the information in it. But if a note is meant to be viewed by somebody else, then consider it shouldn't be a note at all, but a document created in Pages or Word or whatever. Notes are just for you. Documents are meant to be seen by other people.
Now the main reason that the Notes App gets crowded and messy is because you've got too many notes in it. You want to Archive notes. If you don't need a note anymore you can select it and you can Archive it in many different ways. You can simply go to File, and then Export as PDF. This will create a PDF version of the note. This is ideal for when you don't ever want to change the note again. So, for instance, this is a college lecture here. When I'm done with the course I certainly don't even want to accidentally want to go back in and change my class notes. I just want to Archive it and have it permanently stored somewhere. But if you think you may still want to work with it in the future then another option is to go to File, and then Open in Pages. This will take the note, open it as a Pages document, and then you can Save it and put it somewhere. It has already got the name of the note there but you can give it a different one and you can organize as you like. But you can always go back in and open it up again as a Pages document where it is fully editable. But, of course, you can also just select All, Command A and Copy and then Paste this into, say, a TextEdit. Either plain text or Rich Text document and save it that way. You have an editable document that is smaller than a Pages document. The important thing, of course, is once you Archive something you Delete it from your Notes to make your Notes Library here easier to handle
Another thing you may want to do is look at notes that are basically just scans or photos. A lot of times we scan something into the Notes App, say on our iPhone, and we end up with a note like this that's just one PDF document. You can save this out of Notes pretty easily. In fact if you just click up here at the top and drag it can export as a PDF. You can also click here and then choose Open Attachment and then it opens up in Preview and you can Save it to wherever you want. Then once you've got this out and stored somewhere proper, maybe in the Documents folders, you can then get rid of this note.
So what you may want to do is set aside a time every week to go through your notes. This is when you would archive notes you no longer need, maybe export some PDF's from different notes and then maybe get rid of the note if you don't need it. But also in that Draft Note go through it and see if there is something you just don't need anymore. Maybe something else needs to be Copied and Pasted into its own note and expanded on. Maybe set yourself with goals during that weekly Notes review to actually have an empty Draft Note ready for new information. Also during that time don't forget to look at the titles of notes. Sometimes they are not exactly what you want for the long run. You just gave it a quick title to get going and make your weekly review a chance to rename the notes properly.
You can also use tags for more than just categorizing notes. You can have special tags for things like, say, Review to indicate that for this note you want to review it at the end of the week. Maybe mark something to Delete showing that at the end of the week you probably want to delete this note. It is easy to actually go through here then and see all of your notes that are tagged with Delete or Review or Archive or even just Rename indicating that you want to come up with a better name for the note. You can use a tag like this or possibly create a folder if you don't already have too many to hold notes that you want to Archive or Delete in the future but you just don't have time to do it right now. Then when you do have time you can go into that folder or look at that tag and take care of those notes. Having a Delete Tag or To Be Deleted Folder can be this extra step where you can indicate that you do want to delete this note but you just want to checkout one more time later on to make sure there's nothing in it you need before you actually it.
Here's one last tip. This one doesn't actually have to do with organizing or anything but is just a useful technique. When you want to use Notes but you don't have enough room on the screen for your Notes App and for what it is you're reading or writing. So how do you keep both kind of on the screen at the same time. Well you can pop out an individual note, just double click it here, then under Window select Keep on Top. Now if I go to Safari window back here no matter what I do here the Notes Window stays on top. I can move it around and resize it as I like and put it somewhere else but it will always stay on top of other windows allowing me to easily take notes and then I can just Close it and it goes back to the regular Notes window which doesn't stay on top.
So I hope you found some of these suggestions useful. If you've got a tip for others to help them use Notes more effectively leave it in the Comments below.

Comments: 17 Responses to “10 Tips For Using Notes More Effectively”

Tracy

2 weeks ago

Hello Gary. Thanks for these great tips! I would like to sort a list of entries alphabetically in Notes but don’t see that functionality. Does that exist? I know it can be done with cut/paste but that would be cumbersome with a long list.

Jim Terrinoni

Quite motivating to at least weekly clean my Notes app.

Gary Rosenzweig

Tracy: You could always copy and paste into Numbers, sort, and then copy and paste back. Or into any app that does sorting of text or lists or tables.

Jackie Bruno

That is very interesting the way you can keep the note on top. Can you do this with a pages document? It would be very useful if I could keep a pages document on top of a web page, another pages document or a numbers document. I sometimes use split screen to transfer information so I can see both documents at the same time. Thank you!

Jackie: no. Use Notes for that and then copy and paste later.

Roy

1 week ago

Thank you Gary, great tutorial. I use Notes a lot and this information will help me clean up my "mess".

NewGaryFan01

Those backlinks are game changers! Connecting ideas together has been invaluable to me whenever I'm taking extensive project notes, and being able to have quick access to notes, even ones stuck within folders, is gonna be next level. Thanks for the great tips!

Jeff

I always learn from each of your videos. Pinning a Note to the top of the list and Keeping a Note on Top when taking notes are really helpful features. Thanks!

Richard

Very informative. I love Notes and this will help to tidy them up.

Eric

I found another use for iOS Notes today. For loyalty cards, etc that cannot be added to the Wallet I have used the Scan Documents to add both front and backs of the cards into a single note. This note is now locked and pinned and provides easy access to the cards.

Bruce

Great info. I don't know why Apple can't fix the problems with creating a table in notes. If you are fast typist, letters are typed in odd orders from time to time. And there's no way to adjust the column width. For me, I just can't rely on Notes for creating a table, but for text it works well.

Kim

That was great! I will be cleaning up my act. My question: Is there a way to time-stamp the note, other than putting the date in as text?

Kim: Notes already shows a date for the last time a note was modified. If you want something different, you'd need to add that yourself inside the note, yes.

Graeme

I use notes to create a shopping list. If you list all the items you normally purchase and tick them. When you compile your shopping list for a visit to the supermarket you go through and untick what you need to purchase and it will place them at the top. As you put them in your trolley you tick them and they will move to the bottom leaving the remaining items to be purchased at the top unticked

Ken Nellis

7 days ago

Another way to manage a plethora of folders is to nest them.

John Perry

5 days ago

Best note on Notes ever! I will permanently pin it to the top of my Notes.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

10 Tips For Using Notes More Effectively

Comments: 17 Responses to “10 Tips For Using Notes More Effectively”

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