Notebook Update: Introducing Business Card Scanning, Deep Search, Favoriting, and More

We're pleased to announce our latest Notebook update. This one includes business card scanning, the ability to search for objects and text within images, and new note capabilities, like favoriting, linking, and public sharing. Let's dive on in.

Scan Business Cards

With Notebook you can already capture images and scan documents. We figured you should be able to scan business cards, as well. To do so, open the Photo Card, then toggle to the "Business Card" option. From here you'll be able to scan business cards in 16 different languages, and securely save them to Notebook.

Find Notes Quickly: Search objects and text within images

Some of us think visually, saving and snapping inspiring photos and image. We think that once you save a thought in Notebook, it should always be easy to return to it. Our new deep search capabilities make it possible to do just that. Now you can search for objects and text within images across your notes and notebooks, just like your text-based notes. On mobile, just enter your search terms, then tap the black bar above your keyboard. On the web and Mac, just type your search term, then hit return.

Please note: object and text search will only work for notes that have been added after this update.

Do More with Notes: Favorite, link, and share

Wouldn't it be nice to have a special stack of notes available outside your notebooks? Wouldn't it be cool if you could link one note to another for easy reference? And wouldn't it be convenient if you could share someone a link to one of your notes? You can now do all these things in Notebook.

Favoriting a note will put it into a stack on the home screen, giving you the ability to create a master to-do list, or keep important notes on hand. To favorite a note, you can simply swipe one to the left, then tap the star icon. Linking notes is also simple: just tap the link option while editing a note, then select the note to which you want to link. Lastly, if you have a Notebook account you can quickly share notes through a public link by tapping the share icon.

What's Next?

We quietly opened up early access to Notebook for Windows. You're welcome to request access to that, which will officially be launched really soon. In the mean time, we have more Smart Cards in the works. And finally—I'm sure this will be music to many ears—we have decided to do note tagging. We do not have a release date for that just yet, but it's officially on our road map. We hope you enjoy this update.

Comments

26 Replies to Notebook Update: Introducing Business Card Scanning, Deep Search, Favoriting, and More

  1. I was doing some web clipping to collate information. Unfortunately Zoho's clipping tool while great was not producing good results (the subheadings and images of the articles where non existent or in different places) and I had to resort back to Evernote which clipped the articles with all subheadings correctly. This seemed to have to do with the reader mode which did not convert the site correctly. I also could not easily select the whole website or parts of the website to create an image clipping (again something Evernote can do). But I also have a couple of other questions regarding the business card scanning. 1) is there a way to capture something first and go to Zoho Notebook to change that image to a business card or document later on? 2) is there any way to have a manual shutter button when scanning documents rather than waiting for the autoscanning. The auto scanning can be slow because it is struggling to identify the object especially one trying to capture something from a larger screen such as a power point presentation

    1. Hey Carlo, thanks for your feedback on the web clipper. I'll pass that to the developers so we can address it. As for your questions, you can't change an image to a business card or document. As for the manual shutter button, I'd have to check with the team. Generally speaking, I would say it's best to just take a photo of a presentation rather than attempt to use the document scanning. Thanks again for the feedback.

  2. I am more or less right now starting to use Notebook both on Mac and iPad. One of my most "wished" feature would be the possibility of a) handwriting using Apple Pencil for taking notes and b) transferring such handwritten notes into regular text... Other typical problem: when taking notes for instance during a meeting with completely different themes after having noted in one piece there should be an easy way to transfer such themes into different notebooks....

    1. Hey Wilhelm, Apple Pencil support with Notebook is available for iPad Pro. I'll let the team know about your idea for transferring handwritten notes into text notes -- that would be very cool! As for themes, I'm not sure I'm following. Are you referring to the color of your notes?

  3. This app has been amazing so far! But, I have two issues with it: One, why isn't there a native Windows 10 app? For 2-In-1s and such, an app would be incredibly useful to have. And two, my Android device is a lower performance one, and it was fine when I only had a couple notes, but not that I've imported all of my Evernote notes, it pretty much won't load. It keeps crashing. Is there a way to fix this, or is it just my tablet?

  4. Thank U thank U thank U for putting tagging on your roadmap. I so much want to move to Notebook immediately, but I have done extensive, and I mean extensive tagging in Evernote. Kinda lockked myself into it. But if you are now building in tagging, then hello Notebook, here I come. I hope the tagging has nesting features that I'm used to. Can't wait to see it!

  5. Nomething I missed so far (web app) when saving a weblink as a clip page link to a notecard is that you can not insert a comment whith it, nor that there is no possibility to choose a specific notebook to save to. Thirtly it would also be interesting if one can add a reminder to it. Last but not least I miss the possibility to group notecards and notebooks in the web app (using windows on PC) Nevertheless: ZOHO Notebook (PC and Android) is a great help to me. Congratulations and keep up the good work! Thanks!

    1. Hi Kris, thanks for your feedback. Just so you know, if you need to select a notebook to save to, you can do that from Clean View. But again, thanks for your feedback.

  6. I was excited first.... But after a whie of testing the new release, I wasn't able to find any text in any image, therefore I assume the OCR doesn't work at all

  7. Nice, I was wishing for a way to fave a note. Can't wait for tagging! Is collaboration on your radar as well? I miss it from Keep since I moved my years-worth of notes to Notebook.

      1. Nothing fancy for me, just the ability to add someone to a note and allow them to edit it with me. I used this feature in Keep to have a common shopping list together with my wife.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

The comment language code.
By submitting this form, you agree to the processing of personal data according to our Privacy Policy.

Related Posts