How I Use Notability and Google Drive Together

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share how I use Notability for short-term notes along with Google Drive for longer term storage.

I use three different note taking applications: Evernote, Notability, and Google Drive.  This may seem confusing, but I have rules about how I use each service.

• Evernote - this is my main note taking app.  It is where I store things to remember, book summaries, recipes, and all of my YouTube scripts.  If I'm going to type a note, it's usually going to be in Evernote.
• Notability - is what I use for handwritten notes.  So, that means diagrams, forms that need to be filled out, music notation, mind maps, and handwritten notes for training, classes, and clients.
• Google Drive - is where I keep all of my spreadsheets and presentations.  I think best in spreadsheet format, so that's where I plan most of my projects.  I also use Google Drive for notes or documents where formatting is important since Evernote has pretty simplified formatting controls.  This may be for a document that I need to print out, papers I need to submit, or anything where I need to use hierarchy or outline functions.  The other thing I like to keep in Google Drive are PDFs.  My reasoning is that with Evernote, PDFs are stored as an attachment within a note, whereas in Google Drive, the PDF is the whole document.  I generally prefer the search functions in Google Drive, the single click to bring up the PDF, as well as the ability to scroll through multiple PDFs in a single folder or search just by pushing the arrow keys.  I can't do this in either Notability or Evernote.

I have additional videos on how I use Notability and Evernote together and my whole system of paperless note taking using these 3 apps, but in this video, I want to talk about how I use Notability and Google Drive together.

I like to use Notability for short-term handwritten notes.  So that means notes that I'm currently using and referring to.   So, for me, these are notes that I use regularly for my part-time job, current client notes, packing list templates, frequently used forms, and ongoing notes for ideas that I'm still working on.  If the note is not current anymore, I don't like to keep it in Notability. Instead, I like to export it as a PDF to Google Drive.  That way I can search for it using Google's great search capabilities and it doesn't clutter up my Notability app.

Let me show you how this works for one note and for multiple notes.  If I just want to send a single note to Google Drive, I hit the share button up here, select the note, hit the Share button again, and choose Google Drive.  Now, under folder, I need to navigate to the Google Drive folder that I want to store it in and then hit Export.  This interface does not allow you to create new folders in Google Drive, so make sure you have the folders ready to go before beginning your export.  Exporting multiple files is the same process, but after hitting the Share button, you can select multiple files, or hit Select All to export the entire contents of the folder, then hit the Share button again, Google Drive and navigate to the folder that you want to file to go to.  I use this to export entire folders of client notes for clients who have ended therapy.  Then to clean up Notability, hit edit, select your files, and delete for single or multiple files.  If you want to delete an entire folder - or what Notability calls Subjects -- swipe left on the Subject name and hit Delete.  This serves to delete the folder and all of its contents.   By cleaning up Notability every several months I make my older notes more accessible on more devices and keep Notability clean and dedicated to only notes that are current or in progress. 

And that's it!  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!