Everything You Can Do In iPad Notes

In school and at work, the Notes app on the iPad has gained status as being even better than third-party notes apps. In addition to syncing over iCloud, you can type, write, draw, take pictures, record video, and scan paper. Text can include styles, lists, tables, and checklists. If you write out notes by hand with an Apple Pencil, you can even search for text in your writing.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's take a look at everything you can do in the Notes app for iPad. 
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So the Notes app went from a very simple way to enter text to being a full featured note taking app that a lot of students use to take notes in class and people use for productivity and all sorts of things. It does so much that it's hard to keep track of all the different features it has. Let's take a look at everything it does.
Let's start off simple. You can type, of course. You don't just have to settle for the default font size and look here. You can put your cursor in a line by tapping and then you can tap the button here, with the two letter Aa's, and you can select a text style for the entire line. So you can go with Title, Heading, regular Body text, of Monospaced. You can also style text but you have to select it first. To select text there are several different ways. One is to simply tap some text twice and it will select the word that you've tapped. You can then drag the little ends there to wherever you want. You can also tap and hold on a word and then release and then you get the Select or Select All there. So you can do Select and that selects the word and you can select what you want. 
So you can select an area and then you can make it Bold or Unbold, Italicize, Underline, or Strikethrough. You may notice that there's also indentations there and these are not just for lists. You can indent any line of text. When you select Text you also have some other options such as Lookup, which will lookup that word in the dictionary, but also will come up with other things. You can also speak the selected text, quick, and you can have it spell out the text in voice, q u i c k. You could also use Replace to find another spelling. If you don't have anything in particular selected, you just have the cursor in a line, and you look in the Menu you get Speak Sentence, rather than speak.
Selection also gives you access to Copy and Paste. So you can select something and then copy it. You can see Cut, Copy, and Paste there at the top. But also you have those tools here. Notice also there's Undo and Redo. When you have something selected you could also just drag it using your finger. You can move something to a new location, for instance. 
It's easy to create Lists. All you need to do is start a List. You can do a Dash List, a Numbered List, or a Bullet List. So we'll start with a dash list here. Then we can just type out list items. We can indent them easily like that. You can change the type of list. Select everything here. Change the list type to numbered list. You can see that the numbers work with the indentation as well. Do a bullet list also and you can see the bullet types change with the indentation. If you want to get out of a list you go and hit Return and it will go back on the indentation there. Do it another time and it goes all the way out and now you're typing normally. 
You can also insert Tables. It starts you off with a 2 x 2 table. You can type something in each cell. Instead of return you get a Next key on the keyboard which will automatically go to the next cell. These aren't spreadsheets or anything like that. You can't do functions in them. But you can tap on the top of a column or the left side of a row and do a Cut, Copy, and Paste for rows and columns. You can Add a column. You can Delete a column. You can drag that handle there also to move columns and move rows. When you're working inside of a table you can tap the table button. You've got Copy Table and you can share just the table. You can convert the table to text or delete it.
You can also create Checklists. That's a button here on the right. You tap that and now you are writing out a checklist. The difference in a checklist is that you've got those little circles. Hit Return twice to get out of the checklist. Now I can check each one off. So hitting the Plus button allows me to add media. The first item in the list is Scan Documents. This is more than just taking a photo. It will try to capture the document and correct its proportions so if you're not pointing it straight down at the document it's still going to capture it and look like it was on a flatbed scanner. Then when I get what I want it automatically captures it and all I need to do now is hit the Save button. You can see here now it's an attachment inside of the note. I can tap on it to go into it and zoom in to look at it. I have Tools here so I can crop it. I can filter it. I can rotate it if it's the wrong orientation. I can directly Share that scan as well. I can also hit that Plus button at the bottom left to add more pages to it. If there were more pages I would see a list of them at the bottom. I only see the 1 there right now.
I can also use the Plus button there to take photos or videos instead of just using the camera normally. Or I can go to the Photo Library and grab a photo that I already have. Now with a regular photo you can tap it and go into it. You have Markup tools so I can actually draw on it. When I'm done with that I hit Done. I tap and hold a photo or a scan, in addition to Cut, Copy, Delete, and Share I get small images. That will basically reduce it so it's smaller in the note overall. Of course the entire image is still there. It just doesn't take up so much space.
So the last item here is to add a Sketch. This gives you a nice canvas and you can use your finger or an Apple pencil to draw. You have all these different tools here. Then you can hit Done and it inserts that in an image. Now if you're using an Apple pencil most of the time you're going to be in the mode where you're actually writing with the Apple pencil. That's different than drawing a sketch. So you use the little pencil icon at the bottom right. Now notice I don't go into a separate mode. I'm still seeing everything as normal. I'm just able to use my Apple Pencil to write something. You've still got tools here. You can change from a pen to a marker to a pencil. You have an eraser. You can do a selection. You can change colors. You can bring up just about any color in there. You have Undo and Redo there at the bottom left.
Now it's hard just writing there in blank space. But if you tap the Action button there at the top one of the options you've got is Lines and Grids. You can change it so you can use a set of lines to make it easier to write. So Notes doesn't convert your writing to text. But it kind of does because although you can't see the text there it actually knows what you wrote because you can search for it. So if we search on the left sidebar for a word that we've handwritten it actually brings up that note.
So what else can we do? We've got a bunch of tools here under the Actions button. We can search within a note. We can lock a particular note and it will ask for a password. We can create a PDF from a note or send it to the printer. On the left sidebar here you have the ability to swipe left or right. If I swipe to the right you can see I can pin a note and that will stick it to the top so it won't just be sorted in the order of most recent. If I swipe the other way you can see I can lock a note and I can file it away and delete it there.
So, of course, your notes are going to sync with iCloud so you find them on your other devices and your Mac. But you can also Share and then save it out as a file. So you can Save to Files and it will save it out to iCloud drive. So then, of course, there's also the ability to collaborate with Notes. You can share a note with somebody else. You both can add to it. You both can edit it. It turns out students have really been taking to Notes recently especially with the latest iPad models and the Apple pencil. As a matter of fact a lot of them are just using it as a substitute for paper. They're just writing notes out knowing they can search through them. They don't have to go and mess with the keyboard.
So if you haven't looked at Notes for awhile or you've been using another note taking app you may want to give Notes another look.

Comments: 9 Responses to “Everything You Can Do In iPad Notes”

TheTrainRev

6 years ago

Thanks for that, Gary! How do I enter split screen w notes and a document I am reading? Blessings

Gary Rosenzweig

TheTrainRev: I have a video on using Split Screen on the iPad here: https://macmost.com/using-more-than-two-apps-simultaneously-on-your-ipad.html

Seth R

Thanks Gary, a concise yet comprehensive look at Notes which is evolving into a super useful app.

Ramon

Great app and great video. I use it all the time to save lists of movies, misc notes, online articles, things to do, plan trips, etc. All with pics, links, notes, etc. And iPhone and Mac will sync between them so there’s only one list. I could use apps like Informant to actually put ToDos on a time schedule but it is not as flexible to store stuff.

Terry Haddow

Thanks Gary. I have tried to replace Evernote with this app. I just hope apple continue to work on it and give it some love in the next update.

Another excellent and informative video Gary. Thank you once again. I wish Apple would add Notes to Apple Watch, it would be so useful for shopping lists and to-do's etc. Hopefully they will at some point. Best wishes, Al

Karl

Gary, is there anyway to rearrange the order of notes?

Karl: The notes are sorted by most recently modified. You can pin a note to the top though. You can also organize them into folders.

Comments Closed.

Everything You Can Do In iPad Notes

Comments: 9 Responses to “Everything You Can Do In iPad Notes”

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