At this time, Google Notebook only lets you print out entire Notebooks, not selected Notes. This can become very frustrating, especially if a Notebook contains a LOT of notes, and you only want to print one of them. So until Google adds a "Print selected notes" function, I have a workaround for this that's a bit of a kludge, but it works. Read on for details…

Open the Notebook that contains the note you want to print.

Next, click the "Actions…" dropdown and select "Print notebook". This will open another window or tab containing a formatted page of the entire Notebook and will open the Print dialog. Printing this, of course, will print the entire notebook and that is what we don't want, so…

Dismiss the Print dialog box by clicking the Cancel button, and navigate to the note you want to print.

Using your mouse, click on the beginning of the note, and hold the mouse button down. Drag the mouse cursor to the end of the note or notes you want to print. Release the mouse button, and you should now have a selected section of text and/or images.

Next, click "File" on your menu bar and select "Print…" from the menu. This opens the Print dialog again. Note: If you are using Internet Explorer, do not just click the print icon on your browser's toolbar–you must open the Print dialog!

Finally, click the "Selection" radio button, and then click the OK button.

Only the text you selected should print!

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Once you have learned to select one or more notes, you can perform several actions. Read on to see what special actions Google Notebook provides…

Once you have selected one or more notes, click the "Actions…" dropdown on the right side of the Google Notes screen. There are currently two actions you can perform on selected notes:

Show note details

This simply displays an additional line under each note title that displays the date that the note was created, and if the note has been changed, it displays the date it was last edited.

Delete selected item

This will delete all selected notes. Google Notebook will prompt you to confirm your deletion just in case.

That's it for the "Actions" at this time. I'll update this if Google adds additional actions.

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Using standard selection methods, you can select multiple notes to Drag & Drop and to perform other "Actions". Holding down the [Ctrl] key will let you select multiple notes. Holding down the [Shift] key will let you select a range of notes. Read on for some examples…

Create Some Test Notes

First off, create a notebook with several notes. They can be Web clippings, or just simple random text. The idea here is to provide a few notes to play with. If your notes are lengthy, consider "collapsing" them–this just makes them easier to work with.

Selecting a single note

When you hover your mouse over a note, you should notice that it gets highlighted in a pale grey background, and on the left edge of the note, a grey selector bar appears. Click on the grey bar, and notice that it gets outlined in blue. This means that the note is "selected". When a note is selected, you can perform various actions on the selected note using the "Actions…" dropdown on the right. Example actions include Drag & Drop, Delete, and Show Details.

Selecting Multiple Notes

Hold down the [Ctrl] key, and click on another note. Now, continue holding down the [Ctrl] key, and click on various notes in no particular order. As you click, notice that each note will highlight and remain highlighted.

Release the [Ctrl] key and the notes you selected will remain highlighted. Clicking on any note's selector bar while the [Ctrl] key is not pressed will un-highlight all other notes and highlight just the note you clicked on.

Selecting A Range Of Notes

First, click on any note's selector bar. The note will highlight. Next, click on any other note's selector bar, and notice that both notes, and all notes listed in between the selected notes, are highlighted. This is a quick way for selecting, for example, all of your notes at once. Because you cannot user the [Ctrl]+[A] to select all, you can just select the first note in the list, scroll to the bottom of the list, hold down the [Shift] key, and select the last note in the list. All notes in between are now selected!

Now that you know how to select single and multiple notes, you can move on to performing various "actions" on the selected notes. More on that in another tip…

Mac users: I don't own or have access to a Mac, so I don't know the key combinations to make selections, but this should be pretty basic for Mac users. If you are a Mac user, contact me with proper selection methods, and I'll update this tip.

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OK, so you have captured a number of notes, but you really don't like how they are organized. Google provides a very simple way to move your notes around letting you organize them as you prefer. Read on for details…

Google lets you Drag & Drop your notes both within and between notebooks. This gives you great flexibility to organize your notes in whatever order that best suits your needs.

Moving Notes Within A Notebook

To move notes within a notebook, you must first be logged into your Google Notebook Web page in a Web Browesr. At this time, this will not work while managing notes from within a browser extension–you must be browsing your Google Notebook page.

Next, hover your mouse over any note (collapsed or expanded) and notice that the left margin of the note turns into a grey selector bar. This helps you visually identify which note is "active". Hover your mouse over this grey area, you should see the mouse pointer change to four arrows indicating that you can drag the note.

Click on the grey area to "grab" the note, and drag it up or down holding the mouse button down. If you have more than one note in your notebook, Google Notes displays a horizontal blue line in the notebook indicating where the note will be placed when dropped. When the note is positioned where you want it, release the mouse button, and the note will be moved to its new location.

If you have Section Headings defined, you can also Drag & Drop Notes from Section to Section, and you can Drag & Drop Sections within a Notebook to reorder them! (Note that a Section Heading must be expanded for you to drop notes into it.)

Moving Notes Between Notebooks

You can also move notes from one notebook to another. Simply follow the steps above to grab the note, but this time, drag it over one of the notebooks listed in the left column. The notebook name will highlight. Dropping the note on the notebook will move it into that notebook and remove it from the current notebook. (Note that at this time, Google Notebook does not have a "copy" function–you can only "move" notes.)

Open the other notebook, and you should see the note you moved into it. If you have multiple notes in the notebook, you can then Drag & Drop the note to your desired position in the notebook as described above.

If you have Section Headings defined, you can also Drag & Drop entire Sections from one Notebook to another!

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Google Notebook provides a nice feature that lets you better organize your notes: Section Headings. These are definable, collapsible, and movable making organizing a snap. Read on for details…

Open any Notebook, and then click the "Actions…" dropdown on the right of the screen. Select the "Add section heading" option. This displays a green Section Heading bar across the Notes pane with a Title field open for you to edit. Enter the name you want to give the Section Heading, and click the OK button. You can create notes within a section, or move notes into or out of a section. Section headings can also be moved within a notebook to reorder them, or moved from one notebook to another. I'll be posting a tip detailing how to move notes and sections.

You can also rename a Section Heading's title. Hover over the Section Heading with your mouse, and you will notice that a "Rename" option appears on the right side. Click on that, and the Section Heading title opens for you to edit.

You can also delete any Section Heading. Again, hover over the Section Heading with your mouse, and notice that a "Delete" option appears on the right. Click on that, and a Dialog box will appear confirming the deletion. Note that deleting a Section Heading will also delete all of the notes contained under that Section Heading. This operation cannot be undone.

One feature I would love added to Google Notebook is more than one level of Section Headings. This would give us the ability to create collapsible outlines. Currently however, we only have one level of Section Heading to work with.

So play around with Section Headings to better organize and categorize your notes!

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This tip is a very simple one: If your notes are lengthy, consider "collapsing" them by clicking the small triangle next to the note's title. This toggles the note "open" (displaying the fill notes contents) and "closed" (just the title and note summary displays.) It makes for a nice, neat, organized view…and Google Notes remembers the settings! It works for Section Headings too!

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When clipping an image from a Web page, you need to understand one important concept: Google will nicely display images that you clip, but Google does not actually store the image files in your Google Notebook. It only stores an HTML link to that image on the Web. Read on to see how to manage this, and why this is important…

Because Google only stores a link to the image on the Web, if the Web site moves or removes the image, it will no longer display in your Google Notebook. Google Notebook will display an outline of the image with a "broken image" icon in the corner as a placeholder. This is simply a side effect of the dynamic nature of the Web.

Unfortunately, there are no specific rules on the Web concerning who keeps what content, and for how long. Some images have been around for years, and will continue to be around for years. But many images come and go frequently. The reality is that any image you see today may or may not be available tomorrow.

While this may seem like a bad thing, there are cases where it could have an interesting positive effect. For example, if a Web site "rotates" images periodically, your Google Notebook will display the most recent image. For example, say you clip a page from a cartoon site that displays a different cartoon each day. As long as the image on the page is named the same, your Google Notebook will dynamically update as the site updates giving you fresh and new content every day.

As a point of note, like all Web content, just don't expect images clipped into Google Notebook to remain there permanently. If you must retain an image permanently, I suggest saving the image locally and then uploading it to a more permanent archive such as Flickr or Google's Picasa Web, or to your own Web site. You could then clip THAT image, and it will remain permanent in your Google Notebook. Just don't get stung by a false sense of permanency when dealing with any Web content.

Note: This only affects images–Web site text is stored locally in your Google Notebook and is fully editable.

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Google Notebook provides an easy and fun way to clip sections of Web page right into your Google Notebook without leaving the page you are browsing. It's the "Google Notebook Internet Explorer Extension" for Internet Explorer, and the "Google Notebook Firefox Extension" for the excellent Firefox browser. Read on to see what the extension does and how to make the most use of it…

When you connect to the Google Notebook site and login, if you have not already installed the browser extension, you will be prompted to do so. Follow the instructions on the screen to download and install it. The installation should be pretty seamless. Once installed, you will probably need to close and restart your Web browser.

I use the Firefox Web browser almost exclusively, so I'll be using its extension as a reference, but the Internet Explorer extension should function almost identically.

The first thing you should notice after restarting your Web browser is a new icon in the Status bar. It's a little blue notebook icon labeled "Open Notebook". Clicking on this opens a small window at the bottom of your browser. It lists all notes in the most recently opened notebook. Here are some basic navigation features:

·    Clicking on the "expand" triangle icon on any of note will expand it for easy viewing.

·    Double-clicking an existing note opens it in the note editor. Like the full-screen version, you can select multiple notes and perform various "Actions" on them.

·    You can also click the "Add note" button to enter your note.

·    Clicking the "expand" icon to the left of the "Add note" button will open a list displaying all of your Notebooks. Clicking on one of these entries will open that notebook.

OK, so now you have the basics, but just how is this any more useful than the full-page version? Well, the first obvious answer is that it is displayable while browsing any Web page. Big deal, right? Well, as the TV commercials say, "But wait, there's more!"

The real power comes while browsing a page. Open up any favorite Web page and right-click on the page. In the context menu, you should see an entry, "Note this (Google Notebook)". Click on this, and the Google Notebook extension will open the notebook window and create a new note for you. The note consists of the words "Empty note" as the title, and a link to the page you are browsing. If you edit that note, you can jot down any notes about that page. This can be very useful for later reference. The handy thing about this is that it automatically maintains the URL of the page you are browsing, so you don't have to mess with copying and pasting. It just works!

There's also another variant that's even more powerful. Ok, so you created a note that points to a Web page, and you entered some textual notes about the page. But what if you want some text and graphics from the page itself in your note? The Google Notes extension lets you clip sections of formatted page content. Navigate to any Web page and highlight any section of it like you were going to copy it. You can include text, links, images, etc. After you highlight a section of the page, right-click the highlighted section. Again, you should see that "Note this (Google Notebook)" entry. Google Notes will create a new note for you with the page URL as above, but this time, it inserts into the note whatever you had highlighted. It's fully editable, so you can add to it, modify it, or whatever you want.

The Google Notebook Extension can add lots of power to your Web surfing experience by enabling you to easily and seamlessly clipping sections of Web pages directly into Google Notebook. The uses are only limited by your imagination!

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