Notes

Notes are where you write things down and keep them with the records they belong to — a meeting you have just come out of, a plan, a list of open points, the background on a customer.

A note is not one long text box. It is a page built out of blocks, and every block has a type: a paragraph, a heading, a bullet or numbered list item, a to-do with a checkbox, a quote, an image, a file, a table, a chart, or a card pointing at a person, a project, a mail, a task or another note. Notes show up as coloured cards on the notes board.

Open your notes from Notes in the menu.

The notes board

Every note you have written, as coloured cards with a small preview of what is inside — the headings, the bullets and the to-dos, with images, tables and linked records as little chips. It is the way in: create a note here, or find one you wrote earlier.

How to use it

1. Click New note in the bar at the top of the screen. A note called New note is saved straight away and opens with the cursor in its first block, so you can start typing immediately. Its properties open in the panel on the right.
2. To reopen a note, click its card. The board is replaced by the note itself.
3. Type into the search field above the board to filter by keyword.
4. Open the Status menu to switch between Active and Archive notes, or tick both.

Good to know: Active is ticked when you arrive, so archived notes stay out of the way until you ask for them. If the board looks emptier than you expect, that filter is the first thing to check.

Related features

Note colours, Saving a note, Where notes attach

Blocks

Each piece of a note stands on its own, which is what lets you reorder or remove any of them without touching the rest. Getting comfortable with blocks is most of what there is to learn about notes.

How to use it

1. Press Enter at the end of a block to add the next one. You can also click the + at the right-hand end of a block row to slip a block in underneath, or Add block at the bottom of the note to append one at the end.
2. To decide what a block is, type a slash at the very start of an empty block. A list appears: Text, Heading, To-do, Bulleted list, Numbered list, Quote, Image, Document, Table, Person, Project, Email, Task, Note and Chart. Keep typing to narrow it down, then choose with the arrow keys and Enter, or by clicking.
3. To move a block, drag the grip handle on its left onto the block you want it to sit at. Holding Alt and pressing the up or down arrow does the same without letting go of the keyboard — the cursor stays in the block.
4. To remove a block, click the × at the right-hand end of its row. You can also press Escape to select the block you are in, extend the selection with Shift and the arrow keys, and press Delete.

Good to know: deleting the last remaining block leaves an empty text block behind rather than an empty page, so there is always somewhere to type.

Related features

Formatting text, Mentions and record cards, Images and files, Tables, Charts in a note

Formatting text

The usual writing tools inside a block, without hunting for a toolbar: a small bar floats over whatever you select.

How to use it

1. Select some text. The format bar appears above it with text size and headings, a link button, bold, italic, underline, code, strikethrough, a text colour and a highlight colour.
2. Cmd/Ctrl+B, Cmd/Ctrl+I and Cmd/Ctrl+U do bold, italic and underline straight from the keyboard.
3. To turn a phrase into a link, select it and press Cmd/Ctrl+K, or click the link button in the format bar, and type the address. Clicking the text later opens that address.

Related features

Blocks, Mentions and record cards

Mentions and record cards

Notes point at the rest of the system, so what you write stays connected to the people and work it is about.

How to use it

1. To name a record inside a sentence, type an at sign followed by part of the name. The list that appears has tabs for contacts, projects, tasks, notes, campaigns and mails — switch tab with the left and right arrow keys, choose with the up and down arrows and Enter.
2. The name is inserted as a highlighted mention. Clicking it later opens that record.
3. To give a record a line of its own instead, type a slash at the start of an empty block and choose Person, Project, Email, Task or Note, then search for the record in the field that appears and pick it. The block turns into a card you can click to open.

Good to know: a Task card also shows that task's current status in a dropdown — and changing it there changes the task itself, without leaving the note.

Related features

Blocks, Where notes attach

Images and files

Pictures and documents live in the note itself rather than somewhere alongside it.

How to use it

1. Type a slash at the start of an empty block, choose Image, and click the placeholder to pick a file. Pasting an image with Cmd/Ctrl+V while you are writing works too — it lands in a block of its own directly below the one you were in.
2. Hover the picture and a small toolbar appears on it: the sizes S, M and L, left, centre and right alignment, a custom width and height, replace, copy and remove.
3. A caption field sits under the image if you want to label it.
4. For a document, choose Document from the same slash list and pick the file. The note then shows a file card with a coloured file-type badge, the name and the size; clicking the card opens the file.

Related features

Blocks, Tables

Tables

A block that holds rows and columns, with the top row as the header.

How to use it

1. Type a slash at the start of an empty block and choose Table, then type into the cells.
2. Use the buttons under the table to add a row or a column, and the small × buttons at its edges to take one out.
3. A cell does not have to be plain text: the + inside a cell offers an image, or a card for a person, a mail, a task, a project, a note, a file or a chart.

Good to know: because cells take record cards, a table can be a small overview — a list of people with their status next to them — rather than just text.

Related features

Blocks, Images and files, Mentions and record cards

Charts in a note

A note can carry a figure drawn from your own data, so a summary does not have to be a pasted screenshot that is out of date the next week.

How to use it

1. Type a slash at the start of an empty block and choose Chart.
2. Fill in what to show — a count, sum, average, minimum or maximum over contacts, companies, activities, projects or campaigns — and what to split it by.
3. Add filter rows under Only include records where… to narrow it down, pick the chart type (Bars, Donut, Line or Table) and, if you want one, a title.
4. Click Insert. The chart is drawn in the note from the current data. If the question returns nothing to draw, the builder says so and stays open so you can change it.
5. Hover a finished chart and three small buttons appear at its top right: one reopens the builder with every choice still set, one re-runs the chart now, and one clears it. Drag the handle at the bottom right to resize it, or double-click that handle to go back to the default size.

Good to know: the note keeps the question, not just the picture. Reopen the note later and the chart is redrawn with current numbers, and you can change it instead of building it again.

Related features

Blocks, Tables

Note colours

Each note carries one of six colours, shown as a dot on its card.

How to use it

1. With the note open, click the round colour dot beside its title in the properties panel on the right.
2. Pick one of the six colours. It is saved straight away and the note's card on the board takes that colour.

Good to know: until you pick one, a colour is chosen for you — so a board full of notes is never all one shade.

Related features

The notes board

Saving a note

A note looks after itself, so you can write without thinking about it.

How to use it

1. Nothing, usually: a note is saved the moment it is created, and again about five seconds after you stop typing. A short confirmation appears each time.
2. To be sure, click the save icon in the bar above the note.
3. Leaving a note that still has unsaved changes asks whether to Save, Discard or stay.

Related features

The notes board

Where notes attach

A note rarely stands alone. It can belong to a contact, be filed under a project, and be linked to a task or an appointment — and from any of those you can open it again without going back to the board.

How to use it

1. On a contact: open the contact and choose Add note, from its plus menu of actions or from the Notes section of its overview. The note is created for that contact and opens with the cursor in the first block; leaving it saves it, and it is listed under the contact's Notes.
2. On a project: with the note open, use Add project in its properties panel and pick the project. The note then turns up with the project's other activities.
3. On a task or appointment: open the task and click Link note in its panel. Then either pick an existing note from the list, or click Add note, give it a title, write it and save. The note shows as a card on the task, and the task shows on the note.
4. Click a note card on a task or a mail, or a note in the search results, and the note opens in a window on top of the page — with its title, its blocks and the activities it is linked to. Save stores your changes; closing the window leaves everything as it was.

Related features

Mentions and record cards, The notes board, A contact's history, The project feed, Creating tasks