Make the most of Notes in OS X Mountain Lion

When you are using your Mac, whether for work or for fun, you will come across information that you need to remember. It may be a recipe that you see on a website, some information in an email, a file and so on. The Notes app is a place where you can store all this information and it is perfect for collecting and storing a wide range of different things you want to remember.

The Notes app lives in Mountain Lion’s Dock and it enables you to create notes and store them in folders, which is great for projects you are working on, but they can also be opened in their own window. You don’t need to stick Post-It notes on your Mac or desk when you can pin digital notes to your Desktop – they won’t fade or get lost! Notes are synced with iCloud, too, so you can create notes on the Mac and read them on the iPhone or iPad and vice versa. Let’s dive in and find out more.

1: Add your accounts

Click System Preferences>Mail, Contacts and Calendars. iCloud includes Notes, but so does Gmail and other accounts. Select each one and tick Notes.

2: Create a note

Click Notes in the Dock and then click the ‘+’ icon in the bottom-left to create a new note. Start typing. The first line is the note title.

3: Make a list

Notes intelligently formats the text that you enter and if you start a line with an asterisk (*), it magically turns into a bullet point. Handy for making lists.

4: Bullets, dashes, numbers

There are other types of list and starting a line with a dash (–) creates one automatically. The list types are in the Format menu, including numbered lists.

5: Change the font

There are excellent text formatting functions for notes and in the Format>Font menu is the option to show the Fonts window. Select some text and pick a font.

6: Insert an image

Right-click on a note and there are options to insert an image. It can be imported from a camera or scanner, or you can grab a screenshot.

7: Share your notes

There are two icons at the bottom of a note and the first deletes it. The second is for sharing notes; click it and select Email or Message. Here’s an email.

8: Create folders

Click View>Show Folders List and a panel slides out from the left. Right-click in it and you can create folders for storing different notes.

9: Floating notes

A note can be torn off and pinned to the Desktop by double-clicking its title in the list. Select Window>Float on Top to keep it on top of other windows.

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