We hope you've been enjoying Notebook for Web, Smart Cards, and all the other cool stuff that was included in Notebook's 4.0 release. Today we're happy to announce that you can now set reminders for individual note cards, sort your notes, and more. These additions are available in the latest version of Notebook, across devices.
Reminders: Set it, forget it, remember it
Sometimes after taking a note you need to be reminded about it. Now Notebook can do just that. To set a reminder, simply open a note, tap the three dot icon at the bottom right, and select "Set a Reminder." We can remind you through push notifications and through email. Just make sure you go into Notebook Settings, then to Reminders, and allow email reminders.
Note Sorting: Find notes in the first place you look
Finding and organizing notes just got easier. You can now sort notes by title (alphabetically), or by date modified and date created. You can even organize your notes by dragging and dropping them into a particular order. To sort your notes, simply go to Settings and tap "Sort By."
Please note: all sort settings will be saved and synced across devices, except for custom sorting. Custom sorting will be device specific.
Titles for Note Card Groups
This is a minor change but a handy one. You can now add titles to your note card groups. To add a title to a group of notes, expand your group and then type a title.
Notebook for Mac: Improved Menu Bar App
In addition to the above cross-platform updates, we've improved the Notebook menu bar app on Mac. Now you can take notes using the menu bar app even if the Notebook Mac app is closed. It's pretty neat.
What's Next?
Right now our biggest priority is improving upon our already top-notch note-taking experience. We want your notes syncing and loading faster. And we want to make it as easy as possible for you to find and review your notes. Of course, we also have a number of cool things we're working on, including more Smart Cards. As always, we'd love to hear from you. Feel free to send your feedback.
Any plans to make notebook compatible with markdown? - its kind of a deal breaker for me. Hope you do because I really like your product.
Hey Rory, Yes, we have plans to improvise and add features to our editor. Markdown feature is the one requested by many of our customers. This will be added in one of our future update. We’ll get you notified once it is live. You can keep following our blogs and forums for current updates.
Loving this app. Would be so very useful to be able to nest one notebook within another or to group notebooks together - can we have that feature next please?
Hi, Grouping notebooks is not possible but we’ve a feature to group your note cards which will solve your use case. Just pinch-in two notes or select the notes and tap ‘Group’ option. You can have multiple groups within a Notebook.
Thanks a lot for all the features that Notebook has. The reminder setting option is great for each note. I wanted to know if it would also be possible to set multiple reminders for the same card. for example in a to do list I may want to set reminder for each item in the list separately. If that is possible, I think that had be great feature as we can do everything in a single card instead of setting up reminders in different cards. Thanks again :)
Hey Sid, Option to set multiple reminders for a note is not possible now but we have this feature in our road map. We might add this feature in one of our future update. We’ll get you notified once this feature is live.
I'm considering switching to Notebook but I cannot find any way to sort the notes and this is an important feature to me. Your article says go to Settings & 'Sort By' but there is no 'Sort by' under Settings. I'm using the web all here: https://notebook.zoho.eu/app
Hi Richard, We’re happy that you’re switching to our Notebook app. In web app, please click on the ‘Sort’ icon shown at the top left to change your sort settings. The steps, to set Sorting in settings, are for other platforms. If you have any other queries, reach us at support@zohonotebook.com.
I love Notebook! But also want tags and the ability to have headings. I use notes as documents for so many good reasons. I just want a little font sizing love.
Hey Amber, thanks for the feedback. Tags are on the way and we're hearing more and more requests for headings. I'll let the team know. =]
Hello, If I understand it correctly, Zoho Notebook doesn't have features to add heading styles (heading 1, 2, etc) and custom tags, does it?
Hi there, no these features are not available. But we are working on tags. =]
Hi-Where is the Local file backed up to?
Hey Kit, when you save locally files are backed up to the device. For iOS for example, your files would be stored in the Files app.
Hi, I am new to Zoho notebook. I want to import emails from office 2016 as attachments to my notes. I attach emails to notes but I cannot preview and open them from notes. Can you please let me know how this is possible? Thanks in advance Petros
Hey Petros, this issue is a bit out of my depth. Can you please send us an email at support@zohonotebook.com?
Hello! I was thinking a cool and useful sorting feature would be to see your note cards sorted into the groups within the notebooks, as it is in the ios version.
Hey Madison, thanks for your feedback.
Taylor, I'm testing out Zoho Notebook (ZN). I have the Windows beta and the Notebook clipper. A "Clean Vue" (CV) capture of the following site does not include any of the images:https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-western-wrong-african-hemba-sculpture I tested similar captures with Evernote and Nimbus and they included the photos. Since I've used ZN to capture articles with images this struck me as odd so I tried another article on the same site. This time ZN did include the photos:https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-erika-rothenberg-ad-exec-turned-talents-subversive-art I'm not sure what this means but I thought your team might be interested. Wayne
Thanks for the feedback Wayne, we'll look into this.
Taylor, I'm just beginning to explore Zoho Notebook (ZN). I am using the beta Windows version and the Chrome Clipper. I have used Evernote (EN) for years (Premium version). So far I am very impressed with the design of ZN. It is certainly more visually attractive than EN. It doesn't have quite the same depth of functionality at this point though it's fairly close and it's just about all that I need. The infrastructure is definitely there to be a viable EN alternate. Some comments. Please allow for user error: 1. The "Clip Page Link" (CPL) (bookmark) capture doesn't provide for choosing a notebook as far as I can tell. The other options (e.g., "Clean View") (CV) do allow the choice so it should be the same for all options. Having to manually move CPLs would get old very quickly. Along these lines it should be possible to create a notebook in the process of capture (CPLs, CVs, etc.). Having to capture an item to a default notebook and then move it manually later is very inefficient. 2. I can appreciate that your team wants to keep a clean, simple look and would prefer to avoid subfolders (subnotebooks?) and tags. If so I think ZN probably needs to have as robust and flexible a search function as possible. I don't normally use search in EN (I use notebooks/subnotebooks/tags extensively) so I'm not a good source of ideas but one possibility is to allow for saved searches. Changing to a search based paradigm would be a big shift for me but I'm willing to do it if search can be made truly effective. Also, I haven't found a means for searching within a note. If that is not included it should be given that some notes are quite long. Searching within notes is something that I use in EN routinely. 3. Since there are no subfolders or tags I recommend that you include a "line view" format option. I know this is at odds with the card concept, but cards take up a lot of screen space. Sometimes a person simply wants to scroll through the entries in a notebook for ideas and cards make that much less efficient. 4. It appears that the article link in the CV captures is not working. Also, the "Take Screenshot" (TS) option doesn't capture the article source link as far as I can tell. The CPLs sometimes show a blue screen and link symbol and sometimes not. Definitely keep the blue screen/link to flag CPLs. There is an app called Favornote that allows for capturing multiple bookmarks (CPLs) within a single EN note. That's very handy for research purposes and something ZN may want to consider. 5. I don't see an export option. It would be nice to have a local backup. It's not a deal breaker for me but some EN/Power Users will probably be uncomfortable without that option. There's also the possibility that users will want to migrate to another app at some point so the issue is certain to arise. 6. I almost always use the simplified capture in EN and other, similar programs (e.g., OneNote). I have discovered, however, that some sites (particularly programming articles) contain insets (object?) that are not always captured. "Full Article" (FA) capture options usually solve that issue. I typically use OneNote for that purpose. Given how complicated web pages are becoming ZN probably should take a look at including a FA option. Hope these help. Let me know if you have any questions or corrections.
Hey Wayne, thank you so much for your detailed feedback. This is really great! In my most recent post I mentioned that we will be doing tags, so those are on the way. I will pass your feedback to the team.
I had high hopes for Notebook as an Evernote replacement. Unfortunately, since all I use EN for is web clippings which are sorted into notebooks and tagged, Notebook is a no go. I don't understand your characterization of tags as "a can of worms". They work perfectly in EN and other apps I use. My hundreds of notes imported from EN are an unruly mess without tags. I suppose I could create lots of notebooks to sort the notes into, but many notes would fit into more than one notebook, thus the need for tags. OneNote is good for sorting, but its webclipper is inadequate. I'm open to suggestions. Anyone?
Thanks for your feedback. In my most recent post I announced that we are going to be doing tags. They're on the way.
It would be great to sort notes by numbers
Hi Daniele, thanks for the feedback. Not sure what you mean by this, can you elaborate?
I'm very, very dissapointed. I downloaded the Notebook and was pretty excited with the organizing functionality, exactly the feature I was missing from Google keep (besides that, I was pretty comfortable with Keep, but I'm really organized and the color code didn't work for me). So, I start migrating my notes and after like four images it stopped adding images notes, why? If I try to open it it says "sorry, we can't download your note card". I tried from the web clipper as a photo, text, manually and nothing works, they just don't appear! So, first day today... but if it doesn't work in these days I'm going to uninstall. I'm very dissapointed, I thought it could be a nice replacement for keep, but without a nice web clipping (it shows the liink, but not the title) and the no-images thing it's just not useful for me.
Hey Lorena sorry to hear this. And sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We've noted your feedback; if you have any other problems please let us know at support@zohonotebook.com
Well, they kind of fixed it. I'm pleased now, not happy yet, but I think you are doing it well. I'm missing the OCR feature, but I'm doing it well with your app. The reminders works again and I think it's pretty slow and maybe that's why I have so many issues with images, but sometimes with some time they work. Keep up the good work! I will be very attentive to the tag function, but the "grouping" feature is amazing and I'm using it as a replacement for now. For now, I'm pleased with Zoho Notebook. Thanks for the reply!
Great, I'm glad things are improving!
Hi, I downloaded ZOHO notebook for my iPAD and wrote a few posts there while I was traveling. I am trying to find it on zoho.com to edit and upload but I can't seem to find where it's located? How can I find what I've put on zoho notebook IPAD on zoho.com PC?
Hey Catherine, you can access the Notebook web app at notebook.zoho.com. If you have a Zoho account, your data will be there once you access the web app.
Hi, I am with those requesting: - sharing with another user - chance to paste in a card board an image in the clipboard (e.g. previously captured screenshot)
Hey Massimo, thanks for the suggestions.
I read a comment on another post that you're reluctant to implement tags because you feel they can get messy. I would like to know your suggested alternative or note-organizing methodology, and/or if you've since revised this view. I'd like to switch from Evernote, but am hesitant due to lack of tags. Also, I believe that it's important for you to meet or exceed the functionality of Evernote Web Clipper (for Chrome).
Hi Steve, great question. We are working on some ways to improve note organization. We're still reluctant to do tags. Plenty of apps do this but to us it still feels a bit like a can of worms, so no update there, I'm afraid. I agree with you that we need a really strong web clipper. What do you use Evernote's web clipper? What's missing for you from Notebook's?
I am as curious as Steve as to what your plan is for organizating your bookmarks without tags. I saw your articles on the Notebook 4.0 update. It looks promising with Smart Cards (intelligent content formatting) especially with the ability to link the cards. I also liked seeing that the notes can be organized by title (alphabetically), date modified, or date created. I am still not sure if I want to invest a lot of time in something only to find that I still need tags. Browser folders are not enough and your cards are a lot like folders. For example, I am in six different community groups and I have been researching how to revitalize/improve them. I have links on social marketing, target audiences, web design, web host reviews, club activities, finding guest speakers, domain names, collaborative task managers, online host reviews, clip art, how revitalize/increase membership, automated updates, YouTube branding, storing club documents online, content planning, web traffic, collaborative email, member questionnaires, color palettes, readable icons, web traffic, SEO/analytics, bookmark managers, browser keywords, photography, gem & mineral, libraries, etc. It took more time then I can image to even find the right search keywords just to get the right articles. Clubs gets dance clubs. Non-profits rarely show stuff related to hobbyist. Organizations and groups is too general. Combining all those keywords finally started getting the articles I wanted. Now that I have these bookmark I do not want lose them among the hundreds I have in my browsers spread across an IPhone, IPod, Android tablet, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. I gave up on social bookmarking when Springpad shutdown (at the time Diigo and Evernote didn't have a good webclipper for the IPod 4). Again I am hunting for a way to organize the overload of information. It has left me so frustrated that I created an Excel file to organize all the research just for a bookmark manager. I also added Alexa traffic numbers in hopes of avoiding another service shut down. I used Furl (2003-09), Trailfire (2006-12), and Springpad (2008-14). The fact your business model doesn't rely on advertising and your global rank of 399 really caught my attention. One of the top features I need is organization and a good webclipper (which you have). So I was very surprised Zoho Notebooks doesn't support tagging especially since Zoho CRM does. I really like what I see but is there anyway to find out what you plan on using instead of tags.https://www.zoho.com/crm/help/tagging.html "Tags are unique identifiers that can be associated to your CRM records to search, sort, categorize, filter, and segment records in a more efficient way. It is usually like adding keywords or any additional information to any record in CRM. For example, there may be few Leads in your CRM account that requires high priority. You can tag those Leads as Important, so that you can easily filter them from the other Leads in your CRM account."
Hi Shannon, thanks for the detailed write-up. In my most recent post I announced that we'll be doing tagging. We don't have a release date for it but it's something we're working on.
Looks pretty but frankly useless to a workgroup without sharing. My company recently went with zoho one to a large degree because of apparent integration. Is sharing currently in development?
Hi Lawrence, thanks for the question. You're right, Notebook has many strengths but team collaboration is not one of them. We've sought to make Notebook a really good app for individuals and consumers first. So sharing is on the roadmap, we're just prioritizing a few things ahead of it. A big reason for us taking this approach is that Zoho already offers several team collaboration tools, including online document management in Zoho Docs, and an online word processor in Zoho Writer. With these tools you can share documents inside and outside your organization, and collaborate in the same doc in real-time. Notebook is actually already integrated with Docs: any document you add to Notebook will automatically get added to a folder in Docs, reducing the need to jump around through different Zoho apps. Ultimately, we're trying to cover all the bases, but unfortunately it just takes time. Sorry for the long response! Just wanted to address this because you raised an excellent point.
Any eta for notebook sharing? Example, a recipes notebook that my family shares and all users can add to, edit, etc.
Hey Sean, we have a few things we want to do before we get into sharing. So no ETA on that, I'm afraid. I will pass your feedback to the team though. Thanks!
I love it. It's beautiful, inviting, friendly to look at. Kills Evernote and OneNote. But. Notebook is not ready. Strangely enough most of the reasons why it's not ready seem so obvious to me ("how could they miss this???") - Why sorting through settings? And then, all over the program? For instance, in most notebooks I want to see the most recent added note. But I do want to keep my Notebooks overview alphabetically. OBVIOUS. Arranging them also by date does not make any sense. - I definitely want to be able to open at least two notes at the time, in separate windows. OBVIOUS, no examples required I should think, don't make me go there. - So much intelligent possibilities to take notes, really fantastic... but letting us use some headers, or at least let us play freely with text sizes is impossible... REALLY GUYS? While I'm practicing patience and think of all kinds of work-arounds for the issues above, now and then I encounter old imported Evernotes with absolutely NO content in them, so there also things went wrong. Good thing I didn't throw away my EN account there. Adding new items with the Web Clipper for Safari als impossible: it does not work, keeps asking me to log in. Issue is known to the developers for more than a year now. Still no solution... COME ON GUYS. >>> (count to 10, breath...) >>> I believe Notebook is 'sympathetic' and 'ethic' and 'zen'. I believe in those values and I sense them using Notebook. They make me happy and confident. Until, in those rare productive moments... in times of stress and time-pressure it gets frustrating not being able to do obvious and simple handlings and this reminds me again and again that it's nice to look at and fun to play with but that Notebook - sorry people - is still just a toy. At those times the temptation to go back to my "ugly (and expensive) ex" hurts my heart because I WANT TO BELIEVE in ZOHO NOTEBOOK. Please, I'm not asking for attachments, for slide-shows or co-working or markdown (don't you dare...); keep it simple and friendly, but make it handy. Take a step back and see what you've missed. You walked over a beautiful path heading for a butterfly-filled horizon but completely ignored the nice little hopping rabbits and beautiful flowers at your feet. For a nice working Zoho Notebook, I even want to pay, since now lacking obvious handlings forces me to keep on paying EN for using ugliness. Wim Strictly Enthousiast
Hey Wim, thanks for your very detailed feedback. I'll pass these to the team and hopefully we can keep improving!
I disagree with Wim. I want to keep my notebooks ordered by "most recently opened". Better to add options for how to order the notebooks perhaps.
How can I make my ‘Default’ Notebook show up first in line of all other created Notebooks?
Hey Casper, you can drag your default notebook to where you want it. But there's no setting that makes it appear there by default. Hope this helps!
Hi, Zoho NOTEBOOK working so great! Please add a to-do list functionality to the Zoho Notebook. And also let us to turn off the Note Location map. Thank you
I like Notebook, however, I don't have a Mac book, so I can't take notes if I have no Internet connection. Is there any agenda in Windows app development? Thanks
I'm very tempted by a switch to Notebook, but as you I'm also looking for an alternative Win10 app to fully replace Evernote. Hope it will happen soon.
Hi Eddie, thanks for using Notebook. We have plans for a Windows app but don't have any release date at this time.
Hi Taylor, thanks for the prompt response. Except few alternatives like Evernote and Onenote, only Notebook provides so many functions as I need. For me, The only cons are lack of offline support in Windows, and the lack of recurring reminders.
Hey Eddie, thanks for sharing your feedback. I'm not sure if we're working on recurring reminders, but I'll check with the team. We want to keep making Notebook stronger and stronger. =]
two days do not sync !!
Linux Client
I’d love to see a simple way to insert an image into a text card. Maybe there’s one I haven’t figured out, but so far I’m simply pasting the images in. I’d love to see the titles able to be longer but then perhaps take more than 1 line so the entire title shows when the note isn’t open, if that makes sense. And, as I’ve said before, I really want a way to do more manual backups, exporting all notes or one notebook at a time into text, PDF, html, whatever, something that will keep images and text together in 1 file preferably. I pretty much love everything about this app so far, just always want a little tweaking.
Hey Cheryl, thanks for the feedback. One way you can add an image to a Text Card is tapping the camera icon when you're editing the card. That'll bring up your camera and the photos stored on your device. But maybe you're talking about adding images to text cards that are already in Notebook? In that case you're right, we don't have anything for that. I'll talk to the team about this, as well as the title length. We'll see what we can do. We are working on exporting still; I know that's something a few other people have asked about as well. Really glad you like Notebook. We'll keep making it better!
I would like to be able to filter all unchecked items in all of the checklists.
Hey Joan, thanks for the suggestion. We'll look into this.
I think it would be perfect if we could just create tables. Is there any chance it's planned?
Good question. We have plans to do it but have some other stuff we want to do first. So yes, totally in the plans.
Love this app. Would truly appreciate a way to export an entire notebook. I'll take html or even just plain txt for now. Currently exporting one note at a time is very time consuming. I like to make backups - and backing up a whole notebook would be great! Thank you for your hard work and the improvements that have already been made.
Thanks for the feedback. Exporting is on the road map. We'll try to get that out relatively soon. =]
I'm starting to use audio notes more and more, but find it very cumbersome to export them, as many require post-editing (trimming, cutting, removing background noise, etc..). It would be great to be able to select one or more audio notes, select an "export" command, and choose a destination.
I don't use the desktop/web app all that often, but when I do I'm frustrated about only seeing notes as square cards - the note titles are cut off and I can't easily identify the notes at a glance. Would it be possible to add a normal one-column "list" view? It's also easier to figure out the sorting that way.
Would really like to be able to group related notebooks in notebook folders.
Hey there, thanks for the feedback.
Realized after leaving this comment that there's no way to do tags, you should probably work on tags first since without those this isn't a remotely viable replacement to Evernote unfortunately.
No problem, again, thanks for the feedback. We're looking at ways to improve organizing notes. Tags can get messy so we've been a bit reluctant to do that. We'll see what we can do to make Notebook a better Evernote alternative.
Hey, can't wait for more improvement towards the app, it's the first note-taking app that felt right to me. On a side note, having more "notebook" experience would be awesome, something like OneNote did.
I know you have had this comment a million times but SHARING is a must. I love the app but have to switch to Evernote for work and for planning trips with people because of the lack of sharing. Preferably sharing a Notebook and allow others to edit, but even just sharing my notebook for others to see would be a start.
Hey David, thanks for your feedback. I'm sorry you're forced to go between Notebook and Evernote; that definitely sounds annoying. We have sharing on our long term roadmap. We just have some things we need to do first, which will make Notebook a lot better over the long run than if we did sharing now. I know this isn't the news you're hoping for, but please know, sharing is on our radar.
I know it must be getting old, but could you give us an update on the windows app, please?
Hey Brandon, I'm happy to update you. We are working on a Windows app but we don't know when it will be ready. We're taking our time to make sure that we keep the same high standards we've set with our other apps; we don't want to rush out a disappointment. We hope the Notebook web app will suffice for now.
Very nice. Thank you. Custom sorting doesn't seem to work (Firefox on W7). Some kind of text styles (at least one type of header) would be nice to have. Keep up the good work.
Hi Thierry, I'll have the team check on these things. Thanks for the feedback.
1. Please provide us with the option of font colour, font size, undo and sentence highlighter within the notes page. Its critical while writing notes and is a dealbreaker for a large number of users. 2. Provide us with the option to hide lower option ribbon which people hardly uses while writing. It's unnecessarily reducing the effective page size and cluttering the UI
Hi Shivam, we'll see what we can do. Thanks for the feedback.
The sorting is nice, but I use notebooks to organize my notes, and on mobile I have to scroll all the time to edit notes I'm currently working on. It would be great if the notebooks also inherited the note-sorting setting. That way if I edit a note in notebook X, then notebook X should be listed first in the list. Does that make sense?
Hey Seb, Yes, totally makes sense. I'll pass your feedback to the team.
Hi Taylor, Unfortunately still no changes on this, and after several updates, the sorting at the notebook level is still broken. I even opened a support ticket and haven't heard back. Again, it's quite cumbersome to have to scroll through my notebooks whenever using the mobile app, because my most commonly and recently used notebooks are stuck on the bottom of the list. Either provide a separate setting for notebook sorting, or make the notebook sorting follow the note sorting (within a notebook). Let me know if this isn't clear. I'm not getting any follow-up from support... Thanks, Seb