Make notes and lists on any device Always jotting down notes, lists and reminders? Do it across every device and share them with our handy guide to the best note-taking tools
If you can’t find your fridge for all the notes stuck to it, try taking them digitally instead. Mike Plant explains the best ways to write, record and share notes and lists on your PC, tablet and phone
Share a shopping list with family and friends
One of the benefits of using an app to make notes is that you can share them with family members and friends. This is handy if you want to make sure your shopping lists include all the family’s needs (“don’t forget the chocolate biscuits!”) or your party food suits everyone’s dietary requirements, for example.
In Microsoft Onenote, for example, (free with Windows 10 and has free apps for tablets and phones – see www. onenote.com) select the notebook you want to share, click Share (top right), then select ‘This notebook’ from the top dropdown menu (see screenshot below). Next, type the email address of the person you’re sharing with. Choose ‘Can edit’ from the second dropdown menu, then click Share.
You can also share a list with someone who doesn’t have Onenote (though that person won’t be able to edit it). Open the relevant list, click the Share button, select ‘This page’ from the dropdown menu, click Create, then Copy. Now all you have to do is paste the link into an email or text, then send it to your contact.
In Google Keep (free for PC, tablets and phones from www.google.com/keep), move the cursor over the list you want to share, click Collaborator (the second icon from the left at the bottom of the note), type the recipient’s email address into the ‘Person or email to share with’ field, then click Save.
Master Sticky Notes for Windows 10
Reminder tool Sticky Notes (a desktop version of physical Post-it notes) comes with Windows 7, 8.1 and 10. To open a note, click Start, type sticky notes, then press Enter. A square box will open on your desktop – click it, then type your note. To position it elsewhere on your desktop, tap the Windows key+d to minimise all open programs (so you can see your desktop), then click the Sticky Notes icon on the taskbar and drag the note to wherever you want. To add more sticky notes, click an existing one, then click the ‘+’ button at the top left.
Sticky Notes is ideal if you need to jot down a phone number in a hurry, for example, but it also has more to offer. Switch on its Insights mode and it will ask you if you want to set a reminder when you type a note along the lines of ‘12:30 tomorrow – lunch’.
To turn Insights on, click any of your Sticky Notes, the three dots at the top right, then the gear (settings) icon at the bottom left. When the Settings screen opens, switch the ‘Enable insights’ slider on. Now whenever you type a note that contains an element it recognises – an .appointment, an address, a phone number, or a flight number, for example – the text will turn red. Click this red text to see a suggested action. An address will open the Maps app at its location, for example (see screenshot left), and a phone number will let you call the number in Skype.
Cut out and keep any section of a website
Onenote users who like to cut out snippets from newspapers and recipe books, for example, can do something similar online using Onenote’s Web Clipper extension.
Download and install it on your browser (Chrome: www.snipca. com/25126, Firefox: www.snipca.com/
25127, Edge: www.snipca.com/25128), then click the Web Clipper icon in the top right of your browser. Sign in with your Microsoft account, then choose whether to include the entire web page, a section of it (which you define), an article (which only extracts the text), or simply bookmark it in your notes. You can also use the ‘Default location’ dropdown menu to specify which of your Onenote notebooks and sections you want to add the web clip to. Once you’re happy with your selection, click Clip (see screenshot above).
Scan magazine clippings using Google Docs
If you’re running out of space in your filing cabinet but have magazine and newspaper clippings that you don’t want to throw out, consider saving them as a digital version to Google Docs. It extracts the text from the clipping so you can edit and share it.
To get started, take a photo of the clippings you with your phone. Next, using a cable, connect your phone to your PC to transfer the photos. Alternatively, share the photos from the phone directly to Google Drive. On Android phones, open the Photos app, tap the photo, the Share button (the three connected dots at the bottom left), tap any other photos you want to share, then tap ‘Share to Drive’. It’s a similar process oniphones and ipads.
Once you’ve transferred your photos, go to Google Drive ( www.drive.google. com), click the New button (top left), ‘File upload’, click the file(s) you want to upload, then click Open (skip this step if you shared the photos directly to Google Drive). Next, click Recent (on the left), right-click any of the clippings photos, click ‘Open with’, then click Google Docs (see screenshot right). After a few seconds a Google document will open with the original image of your clipping. Scroll down to see the editable text extracted from it.
Google claims this process also works for handwritten notes, but our attempts at using OCR resulted in a jumbled mess of text and random characters. Let us know if your handwriting yields better results.
Make note-taking in meetings much easier
If you keep minutes of meetings at work or at your local social club, there are templates that can make your job easier.
If you use Word, click File then New to open the template section. In the search box type meeting minutes to find all available meetings templates. You can also use these templates in Libreoffice and Openoffice. Go to www.snipca. com/25207, click any of the templates you want to try, then click Download (see screenshot above at top of page). To use it in Libreoffice, right-click the downloaded file, click ‘Open with’, then double-click Libreoffice Writer.
Dictate notes to recreate them as editable text
Google’s note-taking tool Keep has a nifty feature that lets you dictate notes that it then turns into written text. You will need a phone or tablet to do this (it won’t work on your PC).
To use it on an Android device, unlock your device with your PIN code, then say “OK Google” aloud (or tap the microphone icon on the Google search bar). When you see the word ‘Listening’ on your screen, say ‘Take a note with Keep’. Your device will then ask ‘What’s the note?’, at which point you can dictate it. On an iphone or ipad the process is similar but you have to open Keep first, then tap the mic icon at the bottom right.
Once you’ve finished speaking Google Keep will open and you can then check the text and make any edits exactly as you would with any other note.