Since ideas can be so fleeting and precious, it's important to capture them as quickly as possible. With your iPad, you can jot down ideas, notes, or entire letters and reports.
The iPad comes with a Notes app that mimics a yellow notepad, so you can type ideas for an upcoming project, a daily to-do list, or a rough draft of a report you need to write later. Once you've written some notes on your iPad, you can email them to yourself (or someone else).
Depending on how you hold your iPad (portrait or landscape mode), the Notes app displays either a single yellow notepad (portrait mode) or a yellow notepad on the right with a list of all your notes displayed on the left (landscape mode), as shown in Figure 23-1.
To type a note, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. If you haven't created any notes yet, you'll just see a blank yellow notepad screen.
Tap the position on the notepad where you want to place the cursor. A magnifying glass appears, letting you precisely place the cursor by sliding your finger on the screen. (If you haven't created any notes yet, just tap the notepad to place the cursor.) The virtual keyboard appears at the bottom of the screen.
Type some text. Notice that the first few words you type also appear in the Notes window, as shown in Figure 23-2. (If you are holding the iPad in portrait mode, you'll need to tap the Notes button in the upper-left corner to see the Notes window, as shown in Figure 23-3.) When you're done typing, you can tap the key in the bottom-right corner to hide the virtual keyboard.
Note
To make your notes easier to find, consider typing a short, descriptive heading as the first line of text in each note. This descriptive heading will appear in the Notes window to help you identify the contents of each note, as shown in Figure 23-4.
The Notes app lets you store text on a single page, where each page represents another note.
To create new notes, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Tap the plus sign that appears in the upper-right corner of the screen. A new blank page appears with the virtual keyboard at the bottom of the screen so you can start typing your new note.
Over time, you may wind up with dozens of notes. Since you may have created each note at a different time, there won't be any logical order to the way your notes are organized. To find a note, you can scroll through notes one at a time, jump to a specific note using the Notes window, or search for text that appears in specific notes.
To see all three methods of searching notes, make sure you have created a handful of notes, and then follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Tab the Previous or Next arrow icon at the bottom of the note, as shown in Figure 23-5. (If an arrow is dimmed, that means you're viewing either the first or last note.) Another note appears with the animation of a real page flipping.
Tap a note that appears in the Notes window. (If you're holding your iPad in portrait mode, you'll need to tap the Notes button in the upper-left corner of the screen to see the Notes window, as shown earlier in Figure 23-3.)
Tap the Search field at the top of the Notes window. The virtual keyboard appears at the bottom of the screen.
Type a word or phrase that you know appears in one of your notes. The Notes window lists only those notes that contain that word or phrase.
Tap Clear (it looks like an X inside a gray circle at the far right of the Search field) to display all your notes in the Notes window again.
After you've written a note, you may want to send it to yourself or to someone else. To transfer a note from your iPad, you can email it by following these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Find a note that you want to send using any of the methods explained in the previous section.
Tap the Action icon (it looks like a square with a curved arrow pointing to the right) at the bottom of the note. A menu appears listing your choices, such as Email and Print. (If you have a wireless printer, you can tap Print to print your note directly from your iPad.)
Tap Email. An email message and the virtual keyboard appear on the screen.
Tap the To text field, and type an email address. (If you tap the plus sign at the far right of the To text field, you can pick a name stored in your Contacts app.)
Tap the Subject text field, and type a subject for your message.
Tap the message text field where the text from your note appears, and type new text or modify the existing text.
Tap Send.
After you've created a few notes, you may find that you no longer need some of them. To delete a note, follow these steps:
From the Home screen, tap Notes. The Notes screen appears.
Find a note that you want to delete using any of the methods explained in “Navigating Through Your Notes” on page 200.
Tap the Trash icon at the bottom of the note. A red Delete Note button appears, as shown in Figure 23-6.
Warning
Make sure you really want to delete a note, because you can't retrieve it later.
Tap Delete Note (or tap anywhere on the screen to make the Delete Note button disappear). If you tap the Delete Note button, your currently displayed note disappears.
One of the simplest and most productive tools is to write down your goals for each day. Most people write their to-do list of goals on a piece of paper, but you can write them in the Notes app so you can constantly review them while you're using your iPad.
Another handy use for the Notes app is to write drafts of email messages. By using the Notes app, you can store your draft and modify it over time. When you're done writing, just email this note, and all your text automatically appears in the message text field of your email. As long as you have your iPad with you, you'll always have a way to jot down notes at any time, anywhere.