The Notes tool allows you to record your thoughts as you study, organize those thoughts into custom notebooks, and then recall what you’ve learned with faceted searching. With this fully cross-platform database, you can access your notes on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, or the web. View your notes as a searchable list, use faceted browsing to filter the list so only the notes you want to see are displayed, or limit results to those addressing a particular book of the Bible.
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Skip ahead to:
Searching for Notes and Highlights
Adding a Note to a Notebook from the New Note button
Adding a Note to a Notebook from the context menu
Filter Resources by Notes or Highlights
Delete a Note, Notebook, or Highlight
Undelete a Note, Notebook, or Highlight
Open the Notes tool
You can open the Notes tool from the Tools menu, by creating a new note using the Selection or Context menus, or by clicking the link below:
From the Tools menu
Click Tools and select Notes, or click Tools and begin entering notes in the Tools search box. Click Notes to open the tool.
From the Selection menu
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Select a word or range of text in any resource to display the Selection Menu.
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Click the Add a note button
to open the Notes Tool and create a new note anchored to the selected text.
From the Context menu
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Select a word or range of text in any resource.
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Right-click your selection, select from the options on the left side (such as Selection, Reference, etc.), then click Add a note on the right side. The Notes tool opens in a new panel if not already open.
Create Notes and Highlights
In addition to the two methods of creating new notes explained above, you can also create both notes and highlights using the Notes tool. Highlights call out a section of text, and notes contain content that you’ve written. With text selected in a resource in one panel and the Notes tool open in another panel, click the dropdown arrow beside New note and select New note on selected text. (Clicking New note creates a note that is not anchored to your selection.)
A new pane appears in the Notes tool where you can type the content of your note. Verbum automatically assigns the note’s first line to the title. The formatting toolbar allows you to format your note in a variety of ways. Learn more about this toolbar below.
Note: When a notebook is selected in the Notes tool, new notes are automatically assigned to it. If a notebook is not selected, any new notes are not assigned to a notebook.
Create a note in a Notebook
Notebooks (previously Notes documents in earlier Verbum versions) are collections of notes you create. Learn more about creating Notebooks below.
To create a note within a notebook:
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Select the notebook in the Notes tool.
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Create the note using the New note button in the Notes tool.
Note: You can also create a new note within a specific notebook through the Context Menu. Right-click your selection to open the Context Menu, expand the Add a note section, and select the Notebook you want to add your new note to.
Shortcuts
With your text selected, use the following keyboard shortcuts to quickly add or remove annotations:
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N – Creates a new note and opens the Notes Tool.
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H – Applies the last used highlighting style (You can also use Ctrl+K for Windows or Cmd+K for macOS).
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R – Removes annotations.
Add an Image to a Note
Adding media to notes is currently available in Verbum 10 Starter and higher. Learn more.
- Click the Insert media icon
.
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Select an image from one of the tabs—Your Media, Faithlife Stock, or Unsplash.
OR
In the Your Media tab, click Upload.
Verbum opens a dialog box from your operating system. Select an image from a location on your computer and click OK.
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Click Insert.
Verbum inserts the image into your note.
Note: Alternatively, you can also drag an image from your hard drive and drop it into a note. This will upload the image to Your Media and insert it into the body of the note.
Organize notes and highlights
Metadata
Verbum automatically assigns metadata to a note. This includes:
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Biblical book (if the note is anchored to a biblical passage)
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Resource (the note is anchored to, e.g. the ESV)
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Data type
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Date created
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Date modified
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Author
Use the filter view in the navigation panel to search for notes by their metadata. To assign or move an existing note to a specific notebook:
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Open the note.
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Click the Notebook
icon, or click and drag the note to the desired notebook.
Note: A note assigned to a notebook displays the notebook title in the note editor panel.
Tags
You can also assign tags to your notes. Browse your tags by scrolling down to the Tags section of the Notes filter view, or use the filter find box to quickly limit the displayed notes to those that match a specific tag.
Anchor Notes and Highlights
Anchoring a note or highlight connects it to one or more locations in a resource. Verbum provides two options to anchor your note to the Selection or to the Reference.
For example, anchoring your note to the selected text of John 15:8 only attaches the note to the open Bible translation.
While anchoring your note to the reference, John 15:8, makes that note accessible in every translation in your Library (if you have the Notes and highlights visual filter enabled).
Access a note’s panel menu to show full anchor text or add an anchor.
You can also click +Add Anchor within the note itself to attach the note to a particular Reference or selected text.
Navigating the Notes Tool
The Notes tool is made up of a toolbar, a collapsible navigation menu, a search results panel, and a note editor panel.
Toolbar
The panel toolbar features a search box and a New note button. When you’re interacting with a resource in another open panel, the arrow next to New note displays options to create a New note, New note on selected text, or Highlight selected text.
To browse saved notes, click the Navigation menu icon to open the navigation menu.
Navigation Menu
The navigation menu shows two tabs: Filters and Notebooks
. Use the Filters tab to view all notes grouped by: Type, Resource, Bible Book, Data Type, Notebook, Anchor, Modified, and Created.
Use the Notebooks tab to create new notebooks or access existing notebooks along with their associated notes.
Click the panel menu icon for each notebook to Rename, Delete, or Share it.
Searching For Notes and Highlights
Search results panel
The search results panel lists all of the notes and highlights matching the search specified.
Or it matches the filter criteria selected in the navigation menu.
Note editor
Each note features its own toolbar offering options for adjusting the note icon and color, assigning a highlight style, and applying a specific Palette.
Below the note’s toolbar, a full set of rich text controls are available to customize the note text. You can enter and edit notes in the text entry field. Although there are no icons for cut/copy/paste, you can do so using standard keyboard shortcuts, or by right-clicking in the note’s text field.
Tag Notes
You can assign tags to the note by clicking in the Add tags… field at the bottom of the panel. Begin typing and select from suggested options or finish typing your entry. Press Tab or Enter to complete the tag entry.
You can find tagged notes using the filters in the faceted browser of your Notes panel.
Sorting your notes
You can sort your notes based on a range of different criteria. To do so, click the Sort dropdown and select the desired sorting method.
Note: Available sorting options depend on what filters you have active. For example, in order to sort your notes by reference, you must have a biblical book filter selected or have specified the Reference filter Bible.
Hovering over a greyed-out sorting option shows a tooltip displaying the required filter.
Notebooks
Notebooks are groups of notes gathered together based on highlighting style, palette, topic, or other feature. It’s possible to have notes that are not connected to a notebook, just as it’s possible for notebooks to be empty.
Create a new notebook by selecting the notebook view in the navigation menu
Then click the plus icon .
Enter a unique name for your notebook and press Enter.
You can now select the Notebook by clicking it in the faceted browser
This results in the Notes selection panel being empty as there are not currently any Notes in that Notebook.
Adding a Note to a Notebook from the New note button
Create a new note from the New note button
This new note will be added to the notebook as indicated by the Notebook selection box at the top of the panel.
Adding a Note to a Notebook from the context menu
You can right-click a portion of text and add a note from the context menu. If you just click Add a note
Then the note will be created outside of any notebook.
But if you open the Add a note dropdown you can select from the five most recently used notebooks. If you select New Notebook,
this will add the note into that notebook.
If you select a different notebook,
then the note will be placed into that notebook and a new instance of the Notes Tool will be opened with that notebook selected, and showing the new note.
This makes it very easy to switch between notebooks.
Moving Notes to Notebooks
To assign an existing note (or group of notes) to a notebook, clear all Notebook filters and scroll down to the target notebook in the Notes Tool.
Click one of the notes you want to move and then add any others by holding Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (macOS) while clicking, or by holding Shift while clicking to select a contiguous set of notes.
Select the notebook from the dropdown in the panel
When you have selected the target notebook, click Apply Changes.
Alternatively, you can drag the note(s) to the target notebook
Visual filters
All your notes and highlights (can be displayed within your resources by toggling the Visual filters display on. Learn more about Visual filters.
Click the Visual filters icon .
Check the box for Notes and Highlights to display all your available Notes, or expand the menu and select the notebook(s) you want to display.
Corresponding Notes and Highlights
When reading a Bible or other resource with multiple versions, you can turn on Notes and Highlights (Corresponding).
When toggled on, this option displays Notes and Highlights regardless of which version you added them to. As you can see in the example below, Highlights applied in both the ESV and NIV are shown in NRSV, irrespective of which version the highlights were originally applied in.
Filter Resources by Notes or Highlights
You can set any resource to display only those places where you’ve taken a note or made a highlight. (This feature works similarly to the Passage list Visual filter.)
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Open the resource you want to view.
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Toggle the Navigation sidebar by clicking the Navigation icon
.
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Click the Notes icon
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Select filters from the faceted menu
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You can further control display options from the dropdown to affect how much surrounding context is shown
Delete a Note, Notebook, or Highlight
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To delete a note or highlight: Select the note, notebook, or highlight.
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Click the panel menu icon
and select Delete this note.
Undelete a Note, Notebook, or Highlight
You can click Trash at the bottom of the Notes menu to display notes, highlights, and notebooks that have been deleted.
Clicking any deleted item displays options to Permanently delete or Undelete the selected item at the bottom of the panel.
Print Your Notes and Notebooks
You can print individual notes (along with the anchor text) or entire notebooks.
To print a single note, select the note you want, and click the Notes Tool panel menu icon followed by Print/Export.
To print an entire notebook, make sure you don't have any notes selected then open the relevant notebook and click the Notes Tool panel menu icon followed by Print/Export without selecting any of the notes within it.