349 Utilize the new note feature

- [Instructor] After you've been using a program for a couple years, five years, 10 years, 15 years, you start to notice that there are a few commands and tools that you have never used. And why are they even there? Oh, that's a tool that I want to talk about today because I keep running into newer users who think that's what you're supposed to use. If you want to add a note, like a comment to a Word document, notes to InDesign files, they go the Type menu, they go to note, and the first thing is Notes Mode, Command or CTRL + F8, and they think that's what they're supposed to use, but no, you don't need to use Notes Mode.

It's the weirdest command ever, and it can mess you up because if you're inside a note, it does things that you're not expecting. The better thing to do is to use New Note. Just use New Note, and if you want, add a keyboard shortcut. Go to Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts, make sure that you're on a set that's not the default, you can always click New Set, and then find it under the Type menu, we're looking for the Ns for notes.

New Note, here we go, and on my Mac I'm going to use CTRL + N, 'cause my CTRL key is not the same as the Windows CTRL key is sort of like an extra key, and I'll click Assign. So now if I'm inside some text, and I want to add a non-printing note because my colleague is gonna be looking at this file, will need to read it, I can just press CTRL + N, and my cursor is blinking inside the note and I can say, every day, seriously? Please check, because I'm replying to we see evidence of this every day.

That's really easy to make a note. Same thing if you are inside the story editor. If I click here and press Command or CTRL + Y to edit in the story editor, you can see this is a very busy little story that's been shared quite a bit. We have track changes turned on, we have various notes, such as this one. I can just click here and press CTRL + N and add a new note again. Or I can use the command to add a new note. If I click somewhere that doesn't have a note, and click this little guy, there's a new note, it works both in the story editor and in the layout mode, right? Why do we need a Notes mode? We don't really.

Same thing for the Note Tool. If I click inside the text, there is a little guy here called the Note Tool. No reason to use it. If you select it, you get a big honking cursor and you're not quite sure where that note's gonna go. Maybe if I want it before the word men, do I click here, do I click here, or what do I do? So I'll just click and is it doing anything? There, it finally, it added a note. It's the same as saying New Note, except that the tool remains active.

So after I write my note, if I click somewhere else, okay let's let me double-click this word, oops it added a note. I suppose the Note Tool could be useful if you want to add like one note after the other, but I've never had to do that, and it's kinda weird, I just, you know superfluous tools and commands, they bug me. I was curious about is there a reason to use Notes mode? Why is it there? Why does it have a keyboard shortcut assigned to it? So I did a search, as you can see, for Notes mode in the help file, and I ended up on this page, how to add editorial notes in InDesign.

Scroll down a little bit to Use Notes mode and what it does is, once you're inside of a note, you can go into Notes mode, press that keyboard shortcut, and it will split a note for example. So you're supposed to do all these things first, then you choose Notes mode. Maybe that's why it aggravates me. I always think, well let me go into Notes mode first, and then I'm going to do some stuff with notes. But no, you're supposed to prep the selection or the cursor location first, and then choose Notes mode. I think it's just so confusing.

I'm sorry, my brain is too small to keep that in my head, and I don't see the reason for it. If I want to be able to select some text and convert it to a note, I usually just right-click and choose Convert to Note from the contextual menu. Or, I could come to the notes panel if it's open, and choose Convert to Note from the panel menu. Or I can go to the Type menu, go to the Notes menu, and choose Convert to Note there, right? Why do I need Notes mode to do that? I can take an existing note and split it.

I can do all sorts of that kind of stuff with all of those ways, rather than having to do the Notes Tool or Notes mode. There you go. I think what I've just shown you by creating a keyboard shortcut for New Note and using the right-click menu to do things with notes, is a much more common sense and streamlined way to manage all the notes in your stories.