Google Notebook is one of the most versatile tools for capturing, storing and organizing information. It is very easy to use Google Notebook as well. Add to that its ease of use and the speed at which tasks can be completed, and it is the ideal solution for anyone who gathers and stores information from the internet. In this installment we’ll discuss the yet another way to organize within Google Notebook using the sorting and filtering options.
Inside your Google Notebook account, there is a drop down menu labeled “Sort & Filter”. The main purpose of this feature is to allow you to quickly find saved notes and clips based on different criteria.
To use this feature, first click on one of your notebooks that contains the group of information you would like to search. Then go ahead and click on the “Sort & Filter” dropdown menu and it will show several options, which might vary slightly depending what is contained within your various notebooks. We’ll discuss each of these options, but be aware you might not see all of them every time.
First on the drop down list is an option to sort by date edited. This, naturally, will sort your notes in the order that you worked on them, with the most recent being at the top. This is a great method to use to quickly find a project you worked on recently, without having to scroll through all of your notes.
Next on the list is “sort by label”. This will simply group your notes together based on labels that you assigned to each item. This is a good option to quickly locate a collection of notes all relating to the same topic.
The next option is generally checked by default, and it is called “Show all notes”. Being rather self explanatory, we won’t cover this one in too much detail. It shows all of your notes in that particular notebook.
Fourth on the list is an option to “Show unlabeled notes”. Selecting this option will display all notes that have not had labels applied to them yet. Because labels are such a good way to help locate notes, using this option is a good way to go back and find notes which have not been labeled yet, in order to go back and apply labels at a later time.
Last on the list is an option to “Show notes with labels”. Naturally this is somewhat opposite of the above option, and will show all notes with labels rather than without. But that’s not all there is too it, there is more! Notice as you’re following along and looking at your Google Notebook that there is a little arrow next to this option. By hovering your mouse over this arrow, another menu opens up that shows all of the available labels contained within this particular notebook. This means that not only can you sort by notes that have labels, but you can also sort notes by a specific label. The cool part is that the labels are all on that list. This way, you can choose the one you want to see, versus using the “sort by label” option we talked about earlier, which sorts all labels in order, but still shows them all.
By using the “Sort and Filter” option within Google Notebook, you should now have no trouble searching through all of your notes to quickly locate the information you are after. Think of how many uses this might have for many occupations that require research and for students needing to gather and sort information for a term paper or thesis.