How to Organize Notes in Google Keep Notes

crop anonymous black woman writing in notebook

When all (or most) of your notes are in Google Keep, how can you organize them to match your needs? Otherwise how will you be able to find them.

Default Organisation

Before I start talking about alternatives, let’s talk about the default option.

Technically it’s date order.

Well, it’s the date that you created the new note or last edited it.

Each time you add a new note, it appears in the ‘top left corner’ of Google Keep, moving all of the others “down/along one space”.

Organize Google Keep - Default is Date Order
Default is Created Date Order

As you can guess, Note A was the last note, until I created Note B.

Where they appear on the screen, will slightly adjust, depending on the size of the note (inc any images).

Open and editing a note, will also it’s move it into the first position.

Manually Arrange Them

This is not the most practical of options, especially as you get more and more notes, but it is an option.

Simply put – you can click and drag individual notes.

Note: I tried selecting more than one note, when it was dragged, only one was moved.

As you’ve probably guessed – click, hold and drag the message around the screen into a new position.

Note: While I’m doing most of this stuff on my Windows computer, it’s almost exactly the same on any mobile device (Apple or Android).

Pin Your Top Notes

For those notes that you use a lot, or that to keep at the top of the list, you can pin them.

They will appear in a section at the top of your notes, called Pinned.

The rest of your notes appear underneath, in a section called ‘Others’.

Pin notes to the top to help Organise Google Keep Notes
Pinned and Others section in Google Notes (Zoom decreased to show both sections)

As you hover over any note, a ‘pin’ icon appears in the top right corner of the note.

Click on the pin to move it to the pinned section.

To unpin a note, hover over the note and click the pin icon a second time.

While it’s a simple option, how to organize notes in Google Keep, it’s one that you need to be careful of. Simply because adding too many notes into this section can just move the ‘mess’ to a different part of the screen.

Colour-Coding

Another easy option to help organise your notes, it’s not one of my favourites.

Why? Because I can’t normally remember what I assigned to each colour.

You can say “blue = X”, red = “Y”, but unless I have it written down, I’m not going to remember that in a few weeks time.

I suppose you could pin a note to help you remember, but that feels a little too sensible šŸ˜‚.

While it is colour coding, it’s actually the background options.

Hover over or select the note, and click the paint palette icon.

Use Background Options to organize Google Notes
Click the paint palette icon for background options.

From the list choose a solid colour, or an image.

Note: The images, as you hover over them, give you a name, which you could use as part of your notes organisation.

Not only will your notes be more interesting to look at (overall), but with a glance you can see related notes using the same background colour.

Labels Rule!

With Google Keep, when you’re talking about organisation for your notes, it’s setup primarily to use Labels.

Labels were mentioned in the previous post (Google Keep Notes Features that you want to use), but let’s look into it in a bit more detail.

Note: There is a bit of a difference between computers and mobile devices with labels – something to be aware of. šŸ˜Š

How to organize notes in Google Keep with labels.
Add a label to your notes for organisation

As you might remember from the Google Notes Features (see link above šŸ˜‰), on a computer, labels can be found in the ellipses (3 dots) ‘More’ options.

Creating a new label adds it into the ‘label list’ so that you can use/reuse it across multiple notes.

Creating a New Label

Just in case you don’t fancy going to the other post (not sure why not, but still); here’s a recap of how to create a new label.

In a New Note

Click on Take a Note, to create a new blank note.

Click on the Ellipses (more), and select Add label.

Type in the name for your new label – under Enter label name.

Organise Google Keep Notes by Creating Labels
Create a new label to organise Google Keep notes.

Then click Create <Label Name>.

The new label is added to your list, and a tick shows that it’s been applied to the current note.

In an Existing Note

Of course, as you create more notes, you might find yourself needing to edit or create new labels.

Click on the note that you need to add a label to, it will be opened.

As before, click on the Ellipses button, and select Add Label.

The same option as above is displayed.

Create your new label as above.

Adding a Label

You’ve got your labels created, and applied to one note. But what about the rest?

The point of labels is to help organise and find your notes.

A note can be assigned more that one label, in fact it appears that you can have up to 50 notes. Although I have a feeling that that is the max number of labels you can create, rather than the number that you can assign to a single note šŸ˜….

Click to open an existing note.

Note: You don’t have to open a note, when you hover over one, you’ll be able to see the Ellipses button displayed at the bottom.

As normal, click on the Ellipses to open the More Options.

If the note doesn’t already have a label – click Add Label.

If labels have been added, you’ll see Change Labels.

The label titles appear at the bottom of the list, tick the one or ones you want to assign.

As you select the label it is added to your note.

When you’re done, click away from the list to continue editing, or from the note to close it.

Lightbulb - Tip

Useful Tip

To add an existing label to a note, you can do it from within the note.

Type # (hash), a list of your label names is displayed. Select the one that you want to use.

Remember you can repeat this process to add more labels.

Removing a Label

You can of course also change your mind, and remove a label from a note.

Follow the same steps, as if you’re adding a label.

However, when you see the list, click on the label (that’s ticked) to deselect it (i.e. remove the tick).

Labels in the Menu

All of your labels are added to the main menu, on the left side of the screen.

This gives you quick access – with a single click or tap – to all of the notes that have the specific label applied.

To return to all notes – click Notes at the top of the main menu.

Searching

When you click into Search, labels have their own line, with a button for each saved (label) title.

(How many times can I write ‘label’ in a sentence? šŸ¤£)

Click on the button to display all of the matching notes.

Note: It’s basically the same option as clicking on the label name from the main menu.

Next Steps

Now you know how to organize notes in Google Keep, so that you can find them when you want to.

No excuse now šŸ˜.

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