My iPhone has many wonderful features, including syncing — a quick, painless process that insures selected files (calendar entries, music, videos, and emails) on my Mac are mirrored on my iPhone. Thanks to syncing, any changes I make to these files on my Mac are reflected on my iPhone, and vice versa.
Most modern PDAs, many smartphones, and even iPods will also synch plain text notes, including notes kept in Outlook, One Note, Yojimbo, SoHo Notes, DevonThink, and other similar programs. I love this feature, because I use it to carry electronic copies of confirmation numbers, itineraries, flight schedules, and other critical info whenever I travel. Unfortunately, while the iPhone has a Notes application, there’s currently no way to synch iPhone Notes with any other note-taking application.
I know, I know. I could type my notes directly into the Notes app … but for someone like me — lazy, with big thumbs — this process is slow and tedious. I could type my notes into Stikkits or TaDa Lists — but because these services are web-based, my information wouldn’t be available to me whenever my iPhone was outside of WiFi or EDGE network coverage.
And then it occurred to me: hey … the iPhone syncs with my calendar. Hmmm. Don’t calendar entries include a plain text notes field?
Why, of course they do! Mac iCal calendar entries accommodate copious text notes. And, to my delight, I discovered today that those notes are carried over to the iPhone whenever I sync. (I know. I’m delighted pretty easily. That happens after you turn forty; suddenly, the small things — like being able to get out of bed or walking without panting — delight you.)
I’ve used the trick already, dozens of times:
– For hotel reservations, I created a calendar entry on check-in day and filled the notes with confirmation numbers and hotel contact info.
– For flight reservations, I created a calendar appointment based on my flight time and filled the notes with flight information.
This afternoon, it finally occurred to me to create an iCal calendar called — you guessed it — Notes. If I have important text notes not associated with a particular calendar date or time, I just:
– create an entry in today’s calendar
– give it a name that reflects the note’s content
– fill the event’s Notes field with the information I want to preserve
and I’m good to go.
It’s not a perfect solution — but for now, it’s functional … and free. And, best of all, thanks to the syncing process, the notes embedded in calendar entries like these are available to me whether I’m connected to the Internet or not.
UPDATE: Prefer Google Calendars to iCal calendars? No worries. Download Spanning Sync! Spanning Sync supports true two-way synching of Google and iCal calendars. Changes you make on your computer or on Google’s (much better) online calendar are automagically kept in sync. This way, you get the best of both worlds — an online calendar you can access from anywhere (with a great interface, to boot), plus an offline calendar containing all the same information.
Another way of storing your notes is creating an address book entry with the note name as the first name and something like ZZZ Note as the last name. Note itself goes to the notes area. This way all of the notes are sorted together at the bottom and whenever new features like notes.app or cut/paste functionality on iPhone is delivered this may get effortlessly transferred over.
That’s a great workaround! Some of the web based iPhone Notes applications have added offline use capabilities, so you might be interested in checking out a review of iPhone Notes application options: http://immotion.net/blog/post/iPhone-Notes—Application-Review-Part-II.aspx
What about PC users? I store over 150 notes containing logons, passwords, account numbers, etc…is there any better way than making all those addresses? Any third party support out there?
If you have that kind of personal info in your Outlook Notes — like I did for years before I started using a smartphone and carrying that info along with me — you might want to look int a security application. I use SplashID which also has an iPhone app. The sync between PC and iPhone is via WiFi. Great app and now I have all that info (same as you) in a secure app on the iPhone as well as my PC.