Notebooks, folders and finding things

Notes has three levels. A notebook is the big container and the thing you share with other people. Inside it are folders, and folders can sit inside other folders. Notes live in folders, or loose at the top of the notebook.

The notebook matters most, because that is where sharing and permissions are decided. A good rule is one notebook per audience: one for yourself, one per team you share with. Folders are for your own tidiness and can be reshuffled at any time.

Creating a notebook

You need a notebook before you can write anything. If you press New Note without one, Hitaji asks you to create a notebook first.

The form asks for a Name, an optional Description, a colour and an icon, and a type. The colour and icon are worth setting — the sidebar is far easier to read at a glance when notebooks look different from one another.

The three types are Personal, Shared and Organisation. Personal is just yours. Shared is yours but built to invite people into. Organisation belongs to your organisation rather than to you, and only appears if you belong to one and have permission.

A limit worth knowing before you start

Personal and Shared notebooks count against a cap on your plan. Organisation notebooks do not count at all. Once you go past your allowance, the extra notebooks become locked — the oldest ones you created stay free permanently, so the notebooks you have relied on longest keep working.

So resist making a notebook per project. Make a few broad notebooks and use folders inside them.

Where new notes land

A new note files itself into whatever folder you are currently looking at, so open the right folder before pressing New Note. If it ends up in the wrong place, the note dropdown has Move to folder, which also offers Unfiled (notebook root) for notes you want at the top level.

Finding things again

The sidebar always shows All Notes, Favorites, Shared Notes and Trash, however you have organised your own notebooks. Those four are your safety net when you cannot remember where you put something.

The content area then offers several ways of looking at the same notes: Grid, Timeline, Search, Media, Calendar and Activity. Timeline and Calendar are for when you remember roughly when you wrote something. Media pulls out the images, audio and video across your notes, which is usually the fastest way back to a photographed whiteboard or a recorded meeting.