Tags vs. Notebooks - What's the difference?

I didn't really use the notes features before the "new experience" redesign that they're implementing on lds.org, so maybe it made more sense before, but right now when I highlight a verse of scripture, I can add a note (straightforward) and also add a tag and/or put the note in a notebook. Since I can have multiple tags attached to any note, and I can add a note to multiple notebooks, what is the practical difference between the two? I do know that when you're on lds.org/notes you can only create a new note when you're in a notebook, but it seems like there has to be more of a difference between them than that?

Conceptually I would envision notes only being able to belong in one notebook but have multiple tags on each note. But obviously that isn't the case since notes can reside in as many notebooks as you want. So I'm trying to figure out how to think of notebooks and tags to make sense of them, if that makes sense.

Notebooks are just a different organizational structure. I really wish they had the option to turn notes from a particular notebook on or off, as maybe they are grouped according to certain purposes.

For example, maybe I'm giving a talk in Sacrament Meeting next month. I might make a new notebook of highlights and notes for preparing that talk. Or maybe I want notes for a particular calling, etc. It's just a way go group things together in a way that may or may not be helpful to you. Conceivably, you could just use tags for such purposes, too, if you didn't have notebooks.

If you've used Evernote, you'll see they have a concept of notebooks and tags within the notebook. Some people may choose to put everything in one notebook, but others may want multiple notebooks.
If you're used OneNote, you might consider a new notebook to be an entirely different file. Or possibly you'd consider it to be a different tab within your notebook. OneNote doesn't have a tags concept.

Right, I think I'm confused because notebooks aren't exclusive: I can assign a single note to 5 different notebooks if I want, so each notebook isn't comparable to a separate file. And I can assign 5 different tags to the same note as well. So it feels like you could turn every "tag" into a "notebook" of the same name and vice versa, and nothing about your organization would change except where you'd find them in the app (the tag area or the notebook area). Does that make sense? It feels like they're just two different names for tags. I understand how they work, but I don't see any conceptual difference between them. I guess there just isn't any and it's more about whether people are more comfortable with the idea of notebooks or tags.

I forgot about being able to assign things to more than one notebook. That is a useful feature (although the current "classic" UI makes that cumbersome, so I don't use it).

I have maybe 2 or 3 notebooks I use regularly for personal grouping reasons. I find it's helpful to look at what I put in each, including the tags I have in each, to try to see if the Lord is telling me something I need to know over time. The user interfaces to the notebooks has had problems, which has made that a difficult task, but sometimes I found value in it. Unfortunately, in the new interface, they're missing an important feature of letting you see which tags you have by notebook and their count. I hope it appears in the new interface. I submitted Feedback.

"n the new interface, they're missing an important feature of letting you see which tags you have by notebook and their count. I hope it appears in the new interface."

Yeah, I think I saw something about that in another post in this forum. That type of thing would make a meaningful conceptual difference to me: you could think of each notebook as containing a certain number of specific tags. I've only just started to use the organization features very recently (post- the new interface), so I never saw this feature. I also hope they re-implement it.

Thanks.

Here are a few other differences:
– Stand-alone notes (not associated with highlighted content) can be added to notebooks, but not to tags.
– iOS Gospel Library doesn't allow you to assign an annotation to multiple notebooks (though it does display them correctly if done on a different platform).
– The annotations inside a notebook can be moved around. Annotations in a tag can't be manually reordered.

I think of tags as topics (creating your own topical index), and notebooks as places to organize your thoughts (such as for a talk or lesson). Notebooks are also good for gathering favorite quotes that aren't necessarily in the library, or keeping a journal.

Yes, the creation of standalone notes only in Notebooks is the only difference I spotted. (Though I did notice that you can assign a tag to the note and remove the note from a notebook, thus leaving you with a standalone tagged note not associated with highlighted content; of course, that's very timely to do so no one would in practice, but kinda weird that it's possible.

Interesting that the iOS app only allows assignment of notes to a single notebook. That is the functionality I would expect.

How do you move annotations around in a notebook? I don't seem to be able to do that in either my Android app or the lds.org/notes (new) interface. That would be handy.

Thanks!

austindanielsmith wrote:How do you move annotations around in a notebook? I don't seem to be able to do that in either my Android app or the lds.org/notes (new) interface. That would be handy.

I don't see a way to do that on LDS.org, but on Android, you can long-press a note, then drag it up or down in the notebook. On iOS, to move a note, you can drag the notes up or down using the handles on the right after tapping Edit.

Ah, that does it. Very helpful, thanks!

I have been using the notes/notebook feature for many years but I organized my notes differently from many of you. I created notebooks for each gospel topic that was meaningful for me (e.g, repentance, worth of souls, etc.). I used the tags to identify the source (general conference, scriptures, Teachings of the Prophets, etc.). I did all of this from my desktop using the Safari browser. Of course, many of the notes I have captured from these sources are relevant to multiple topics and in earlier versions of the notes tool I could edit notes and assign them to multiple notebooks. Over the past couple of years while this tool has been updated I seem to have lost the ability to do so. Earlier in this forum I saw where austindanielsmith mentioned that he can assign notes to multiple notebooks. Maybe I just haven't figured out how to do that. Any tips would be greatly appreciated! I feel like I have lost much of the value of a resource I have carefully developed over years.

stevenbaxter wrote:I have been using the notes/notebook feature for many years but I organized my notes differently from many of you. I created notebooks for each gospel topic that was meaningful for me (e.g, repentance, worth of souls, etc.). I used the tags to identify the source (general conference, scriptures, Teachings of the Prophets, etc.). I did all of this from my desktop using the Safari browser. Of course, many of the notes I have captured from these sources are relevant to multiple topics and in earlier versions of the notes tool I could edit notes and assign them to multiple notebooks. Over the past couple of years while this tool has been updated I seem to have lost the ability to do so. Earlier in this forum I saw where austindanielsmith mentioned that he can assign notes to multiple notebooks. Maybe I just haven't figured out how to do that. Any tips would be greatly appreciated! I feel like I have lost much of the value of a resource I have carefully developed over years.

You can add an annotation to multiple notebooks using the latest version of the online study tools.
1. Find the annotation at Notes.LDS.org. If you created or edited it recently, it should be near the top of the "All" tab (first tab in the left column).
2. Click the annotation to open it on the right.
3. Find the "Add to notebook" field at the top of the annotation.
4. Type the name of each notebook you want to add it to (choose them one at a time).

You can also add an annotation to multiple notebooks in Gospel Library for Android – but not in Gospel Library for iOS. I'm not sure about Gospel Library for Windows.

Since the feature is inconsistent between platforms, it's not entirely future-proof, but for now it should continue to work.

Thanks for the help. I can see what I was doing wrong. I was clicking on it, expecting it to open a drop-down box but instead I was getting the text insertion symbol. It never occurred to me to type a character, which then opens that drop-down box. Silly me. Thanks!