What Do Y'all Use for Notes

[c.k. lester]

I'm wanting to find a good app to manage all the notes I have. Something a little more advanced than, say, Google Keep. Or, if there's a way to utilize it in MLO, that would be great.

These aren't tasks--they are bits of knowledge or data I need to keep to reference at some point in the future (or now!).

Any referrals or ideas? Thank you!

[Christoph Zwerschke]

I'm using Obsidian for my notes. You can link back and forth via custom
URLs (with mlo: and obsidian: schemes). And copy&paste between the two
works nicely because both support Markdown.

-- Christoph

[Stéph]

I'm using Microsoft OneNote at work. It's really powerful. Just a few of the features:

• Couple it with OneDrive and you can share notebooks with anyone with an O365 account, for collaborative note-taking.
• Any notebook, section header, page or paragraph can be linked from anywhere - just right-click and copy the link, to paste it into another application. That way you can link to your notebook from an MLO task.  
• Tag notes, including custom tags (though no customisation of tags in the iOS version).
• Highlight recent edits. 
• Recent edits by someone else in a shared notebook get highlighted and marked wit their initials.
• Create summary pages of tagged items, linked back to the original item in your notes.
• Synch with an iPad or iPhone and take your notes on the road with you.  
• Drag and drop from we web browser and the material is pasted with a link back to the source.
• Outlining support - You can create subparagraphs by indenting them (or use Alt+Shift+<right arrow>), then double-click the box next to the parent paragraph to expand and collapse your outline. You can also create sub-pages or subsections, but only down to one outline level.
• Supports heading levels, like in Word, so it's easy to use for drafting up text which will eventually got into a document.
• Import meeting information from an Outlook appointment, then write your notes below. You can tag actions arising from the meeting, with checkboxes for when they get done - All this makes it much quicker and more powerful for taking minutes than using a Word template, for example.
• More Outlook support: You can flag items as Outlook tasks and a linked task will appear in your copy of Outlook (and in Microsoft ToDo, if you use that). I haven't tried to see if the Outlook task can then be made to synch with MLO - Unfortunately our company IT security stops me from synching Outlook tasks with MLO. 

Stéphane

[M. Leigh Bender]

Evernote!

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Respectfully,

Leigh

[Chuck Waterfield]

If one of the things you love about MLO is the outline structure, then you really should try WorkFlowy. It will hold just about anything, has a great tagging system, instantaneous searching, you can actually mark things complete and archive them, and it has mobile apps so your information syncs across all your devices. The developers are extremely competent, always adding new features, and the app is rock solid, I’ve never lost a single line of text in 10 years.

Chuck Waterfield 

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[c.k. lester]

Interesting! I just found Obsidian yesterday (as well as Dynalist after looking at Workflowy). It looks like Obsidian and/or Dynalist might just do the trick!

[c.k. lester]

Ha! I actually had Workflowy in the past and booted it back up. On researching it, I found a (seemingly better) competitor, Dynalist.

But, yeah, one of those should work for what I want right now.

Thanks!

[Richard Emes]

An Outlook task created in OneNote will sync fine with MLO. It appears in the MLO inbox and can then be processed from there. Once marked complete in MLO, it syncs with Outlook and then with OneNote where it flags the item as complete.

Works well in my experience. 

[Mark Levison]

C.K. - I have been searching for a solution to this problem for years.

For the past two years I've been trying to build a Zettelkasten - which I was inspired to do after reading How to Take Smart Notes - https://www.nateliason.com/blog/smart-notes is a good summary - also: https://mentalpivot.com/zettelkasten-101-a-reading-list-for-beginners/

I've tried

- Evernote - doesn't visualize relationships between notes at all

- OneNote - the folder system just doesn't work with by brain

- Mutliple Zettelkasten tools that worked with Markdown files (I can't remember most of their names)

- Maintaining my own archive system using Markdown and links between notes. 

Recently I've settled on TheBrain: https://www.thebrain.com/ - Zettelkasten purists don't love it. But its working very well for me.

Good luck and beware the rabbit hole I just offered you

- Mark

[c.k. lester]

Curse you! But off I go! :D

I saw that book mentioned on YouTube when I was researching Obsidian
and Dynalist. I think Obsidian, especially, is all about that
Zettelkasten... which I don't know what that is yet. :D

Thanks again!

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[Christoph Zwerschke]

On 06.03.2021 02:11, c.k. lester wrote:
> I saw that book mentioned on YouTube when I was researching Obsidian
> and Dynalist. I think Obsidian, especially, is all about that
> Zettelkasten... which I don't know what that is yet. :D

Obsidian is very flexible, it can be used as a Zettelkasten, but it's
not specially designed for it. Similar to how MLO can be used to
implement GTD, but was not specially designed for that purpose only.

If you enjoy the Zettelkasten method, Zettlr may be even more
appropriate. Both follow the approach that your notes stay on your local
computer and are under your control and can be edited with any text or
Markdown editor. On the other end are tools where your notes are in the
cloud in a proprietary format, like Roam. I don't like becoming too much
dependent on the cloud, a particular service provider and network
access. And putting your private notes in the cloud always raises data
privacy concerns. That's why I don't use Evernote any more - in the
latest version they removed the possibility of having local notebooks,
among other degredations. When tools become "mainstream", make profit
and new managers are hired, they often get worse because they want to
appeal to the masses and create maximum revenue, and being useful to us
power users is of little concern.

You should ask first whether you want a cloud based service or files
under local control, whether you need mobile aps and sync, and which
kind of sync (against a central server, or via your LAN with the desktop
as server - MLO offers both, or using a separate cloud service like
Dropbox), whether end-to-end encryption is important for you or not.
There are many note-taking apps, but asking these questions first will
reduce the awailable choices significantly.

Also, narrow down which category of tools best fits your needs:

- Outliner (strictly hierarchical trees)
- Graph-based with backlinks (more free linking)
- Personal Wiki (similar, old style)
- Zettelkasten (special method)
- Spaced Repetition (for learning stuff)
- Journaling tools (daily notes, chronological ordering)
- Bibliographic database (archiving articles from the Web)

Personally, I found that outliners (like OneNote) are too strict to map
my real life and knowledge where everything is connected with everything
else and things don't fall into single categories, but multiple, and
categories and interests are always changing. I want to be able to
categorize more freely and to sometimes just jot down daily notes (the
chronological entry of notes was what I liked most about Evernote).
Currently I settled with Obsidian because it allows free linking, but is
also flexible enough to also support journaling and hierarchical
indexes. You can still create a hierarchy of knowledge like in an
outliner by storing your notes in a hierarchical folder tree and/or
adding Markdown index pages pointing to other nodes. But you are not
forced to put everything in a single outline.

-- Christoph

[c.k. lester]

Great help and lots to think about, Christopher! I appreciate your input. 

I'm probably going to give Obsidian a try. I've got a few videos queued up on YouTube to begin my journey. 😁

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[Stéph]

Interesting thread, this. I hadn't heard of Zettelkasten, but I think I may be doing something similar in the way I organise my notes into categories and sub-categories. In fact, I use the same categories and subcategories as my MLO outline (maybe because I used to store all my notes in MLO, in a folder under the the relevant branch of my outline - I still do that with non-work notes). So, that structure is:

For tasks:   Area of Life --> Role --> Project --> sub-project

For notes:   Area of Life --> Role --> Topic --> sub-topic

I should have mentioned, before starting to use OneNote at work, I've also played with using GoodNotes and iThoughts for capturing notes on my iPad. I still use iThoughts because I love the mindmap structure for grouping, arranging and summarising my knowledge. 

In iThoughts on the iPad, my notes are captured in mind maps, with an indexing mind map for the first two levels in the above structure. 

In OneNote, my outline is captured in Notebook --> Section --> Subsection --> page --> subpage. Notes for small projects start as a single page, might expand to become a section with multiple pages, or as they get larger they might end up with a whole, collaborative notebook assigned to them. As they expand and move, I maintain a list of my projects in my default notebook, with links to the appropriate page, section or notebook. It's made less manually intensive by setting up and applying tags - generally a tag to for a project, with a checkbox for when the project is complete - OneNote can search and create summary lists of any tags, so I can easily create an index to the notes for any of my projects. 

I also copy useful, reusable information from my project notebooks into a "reference library" notebook, with sections for topics and subsections for sub-topics.

Regarding Christoph's point about not wanting to lock notes in a proprietary format - I'm OK with using the above tools, because they've all got options for exporting my notes to non-proprietary formats such as OPML, HTML, pdf, etc.

Hmm, all that sounds complicated on re-reading it, but it's very simple and straightforward in my mind - probably because I stick to a rigid set of areas of life, roles and main topics in both my task outline and my notes outline.

[westpo...@yahoo.com]

Mindmanager Mindjet.

If I didn't have that I'd use OneNote.

Take Care,

Michael Emerald, CFA

Performance Business Design
Owner, Business Strategy Consultant

Performance Business Design:
NEW: http://www.PerformanceBusinessDesign.com/consultants
OLD: http://www.PerformanceBusinessDesign.com

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Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/michael.emerald

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[mlopio]

"Any notebook, section header, page or paragraph can be linked from anywhere - just right-click and copy the link, to paste it into another application. That way you can link to your notebook from an MLO task."

This looks like the perfect tool for my needs and when pasting the Onenote link into e.g. MS Word it works as described, but pasting a link into MLO creates a link to my notebook at Onedrive instead of my local Onenote App. How can I change that behavior (using a Windows 10 PC)?

Thanks in advance

Sipio

[mlopio]

Ok, just found the solution. I had to change the default version of OneNote on my computer as described here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/change-the-default-version-of-onenote-on-your-computer-f261140c-5ce8-4cf4-ad0b-c9e1cb953831

Very happy with the result as setting links in MLO for OneNote Windows 10 App finally works as expected :-)

[mlopio]

After trying and trying I found a (not perfect) solution for my problem: When pasting the OneNote (Windows 10 App) link into MLO it creates both a link and some additional text. After deleting the link and adding "file:" in front of the remaining text it turns into a new link. After clicking this new link the linked section, page or paragraph opens in OneNote. But it´s not the OneNote Windoes 10 App that opens but the "classic" OneNote 2016 program. So how can I force the link to open it´s target in the Windows 10 App instead of the OneNote 2016 program?

mlopio schrieb am Samstag, 6. März 2021 um 22:58:26 UTC+1:

[pottster]

Great summary Christoph. I'd add a category of tool for capturing web content for research, reference, read later etc - and for this category I think Evernote is still a strong frontrunner. I've settled on Obsidian too - for note taking where I'm creating, commenting on, or linking, notes. The Obsidian graphing  capabilitites are creating a whole new area of visualising ideas and thoughts and how they connect. It will be interesting to see where it leads.

[Stéph]

Hello Sipio,

When I paste the OneNote link into MLO, it comes in two parts. The first part, starting with "https://organisation-my.sharepoint.com/" (where "organisation" is my company's name), is a link to the OneNote Office 35 online/web version. The second part, starting with "onenote:https://organisation-my.sharepoint.com/" doesn't work as a link in MLO until I prefix it with "file:" - Once I've done that it's activated as a link and it takes me to the OneNote 2016 desktop version. 

My preference is to use the OneNote 2016 desktop version because, as with all Microsoft apps, the desktop version is more fully-featured than the O365 online version. So, I haven't tried using either link from an iPad or other mobile device, to see if it works.

Does any of that help you to get to where you want to be?

Regards,

Stéphane

[mlopio]

It took me some time to figure it out but now it works as expected. Thank you Stéphane for pointing me the direction. That improves my workflow a lot!

[Eduard Kurganskyi]

Amplenote. This is an attempt to combine the world of tasks (Computer Score Priority) and notes (tags and backlinks).

вівторок, 9 березня 2021 р. о 16:50:31 UTC+2 mlopio пише:

[json...@gmail.com]

I use MLO for notes, which may include large amounts of text, and active URL links. 

For me, a task in MLO is not really a task unless I give it a due date. 

When I "add a task" I consider it to be an idea or thought, which can have notes and a context. 

MLO will automatically give it a created date, which I find to be useful; What was I thinking about on that day and time?

[Laurence Glazier]

I'm using Evernote for notes

[Luc Poitras]

First of all: wow, wow and wow. You have made my day Mark with this sharing of yours of Zettelkasten. Been looking at this “thing” for the past hour or so. Great stuff!!!

And while in my Zettelkasten google searching, I dropped on this, and am thinking it could be of interest to you. 

https://link.medium.com/MfH51JgXBfb

For your info, I just discovered AirTable about 3 weeks ago, and it is being litteraly a game/life changer for me.

And in the next few days, I will implement this Zettelkasten metho. into my Airtable base.

Have a good one

Luc

Ottawa Canada

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[Luc Poitras]

C.K. Here’s the message I sent to Mark this morning...

First of all: wow, wow and wow. You have made my day Mark with this sharing of yours of Zettelkasten. Been looking at this “thing” for the past hour or so. Great stuff!!!

And while in my Zettelkasten google searching, I dropped on this, and am thinking it could be of interest to you. 

https://link.medium.com/MfH51JgXBfb

For your info, I just discovered AirTable about 3 weeks ago, and it is being litteraly a game/life changer for me.

And in the next few days, I will implement this Zettelkasten metho. into my Airtable base.

Have a good one

Luc

Ottawa Canada

[Craig Lindholm]

Mostly I use Evernote, but I also made a "Reference" folder in MLO and store stuff in there

[mv1...@gmail.com]

MLO fits most of my needs. I simply wish there was a way to quickly open the note field into it's own window. As is, you have to compromise between task list width or task properties width and height and even with such compromises the result is far from perfect.

It is logical to think that possibly this field was implement to handle small comments on the task but it makes so much sense to keep your notes right into the task, or project that the use of that field would gain at being upgraded.

[Dwight]

Hi, I have all the organization I need in MLO, I just need somewhere to keep some notes, with stuff like embedded pics or pdfs, and tagging. It has to run on Windows and Android. I don't want it to map my mind, organize my life, manage my calendar, tasks, or emails. Just keep some notes, and let me tag them. I have used Evernote with a lot of satisfaction but I am starting to dislike it, because it is continually taking some simple thing that works well, enhancing it into something way beyond my needs, and then making it part of some extra-cost plan. I suspect that OneNote would try to pressure me to adopt OneDrive, Outlook, MSOffice, etc, all of which I don't want.  Also, I do not want to pay a monthly subscription, it's just a note-taker, I will pay a fair purchase price and then leave me alone. Amplenote looks nice but it wants a monthly contribution. Obsidian is all text, it looks like stuffing a bunch or photos, screenshots, drawings and pdf's into it would be too difficult. Maybe I should use Google Keeps, but my opinion is that any Google product that does not come to dominate its category gets abandoned.  [throws hands in the air] It took me about a year after learning about GTD to get my productivity back, I spent that year trying all sorts of stuff that worked for somebody else, finding the parts that work for me and getting rid of the rest. It would probably take two years to absorb ketteltasken, I am slower now.

suggestions welcome

-Dwight

[Heinz]

@mv1...   

"...wish there was a way to quickly open the note field into it's own window. "

+1 

Quite often I am make notes while working on a task and the preferred place for my notes is of course the MLO note field.

If "work on a task" happens to be on my PC it would be convenient to have a separate note window that I can position in parallel to my work application 

Sometimes I use the Windows sticky notes app in a parallel window, but have to remember to copy my notes back to MLO after I finish.

[Rafael Costacurta]

Hello Richard,

Could explain better how this integration between a tasks created in onenote (or outlook) and MLO? how this happens?

[Richard Emes]

Sure, - In OneNote I place the cursor in the row I want to convert to a task. I then click the 'Outlook Tasks' icon in the top menu bar. This then converts this row into a task in Outlook (it takes a minute or so)

I then have MLO setup to synchronise every 30 minutes with Outlook (or I can initiate a manual sync if I want the Outlook task to move to MLO instantly).

To sync with Outlook, set this up with the menus in MLO -> Synchronisation - Configure - Outlook. I have a two way sync setup every 30 minutes. It's a basic sync, I don't worry about categories etc as all I want is for the task to appear in my MLO inbox. I can then move around etc within my MLO outline as needed. 

When the MLO task is marked complete, it will sync with Outlook (every 30 mins as above) , automatically then complete the task in Outlook which then update OneNOte to mark that row with the ✅ icon to indicate completion.

This process works even though I've moved the task around in MLO, it uses the MLO task ID, not the location of the task in your outline.

Hope that helps, please let me know if you have any questions. 

Thanks,

Richard 

[Rafael F. Costacurta]

Hi Richards, thanks for the response.

I wasn't finding the creat outlook taks in onenote because I was using the Onenote for windows 10 :-/ That, apparently, is a striped down version of the app.... Microsoft things...

Very cool you solution, I'll take a look

R.

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[Steve Truesdale]

So I finally got around to giving this a try between Obsidian and MLO - and I am having difficulties.

When I paste a local MLO link into Obisidian - and click on it - windows does not know which app to use to open the link - is there a step I need to do to register MLO to handle mlo: links?

When I paste an obsidian link into MLO - it is not clickable.  when I try prepending a \\ it turns into a link but says the path was not found when I click on it.

What am  I missing??

On Friday, March 5, 2021 at 2:57:21 AM UTC-5 Christoph wrote:

On 04.03.2021 23:20, c.k. lester wrote:
> I'm wanting to find a good app to manage all the notes I have. Something
> a little more advanced than, say, Google Keep. Or, if there's a way to
> utilize it in MLO, that would be great.
>
> These aren't tasks--they are bits of knowledge or data I need to keep to
> reference at some point in the future (or now!).
>
> Any referrals or ideas? Thank you!