Mental Note offers many ways to export notes. To begin, open the note you want to export.

Tap the middle toolbar button (it looks like a note page) – this brings up the “note toolbar”. Now tap the leftmost toolbar button – this starts the export.

Choose a format

The export options that appear are the most frequently used export options that you have used. In order to see all possible export options, tap “Export as…”.

The format options will appear (e.g. PDF, text, etc). The options that appear are based on the contents of the note, for example, if there are only images in the note then the Text option won’t be presented.

Audio options

If there are audio recordings in the note, two additional options will appear: “Audio only” and “Zip”. Selecting “Audio only” will allow you to export an individual recording. If you have many lengthy audio recordings in one note, and you’d like to export those all together, use the “Zip” option.

Using the PDF option will also try to export any audio recordings in the note. For example, if you export PDF to Email, a PDF version of the note will be attached to the email, and each audio recording will be attached to the email as a separate audio file.

Note Format

The Note format is a special Mental Note format, readable only by Mental Note. If you send this format to a friend who has Mental Note, that person can add the note directly to their own set of notes.

Choose a destination

The destination options will appear once you’ve selected a format, (e.g. Email, Dropbox, Other app, etc). The options that appear are based on what you have configured in settings. For example, if you don’t have an email account configured, you won’t see the Email option.

Dropbox

If you select the Dropbox option, the data will be uploaded to your Dropbox account. Currently, you need to remain in the app until the file has been uploaded. Once it uploads, a link (URL) to the uploaded file will be placed into your copy-paste clipboard. How could you use this? Let’s say you want to share a large audio recording with a colleague. Let’s say the recording is so large it can’t be sent over email. Select to export “Audio only” to “Dropbox” and choose the individual recording. Allow the upload to complete. Now switch to the Mail app and Paste into the email. The link that appears will allow the uploaded file to be accessed by whomever you send the email to.

Other app

This option allows another app on your device to receive the data you are trying to export. The other app has to be able to accept the format you are trying to export. One example is if you want to send to a cloud storage solution such as Box or Google Drive. Another example is if you want to keep a PDF version of a note in your iBooks app.

File folder

If you select the File folder option, the data will be exported to a folder on your device’s file system. Use iTunes file sharing to extract the data. This is useful when you have really large files to export, and you don’t want to wait for them to be sent over the network; or if you don’t want to send the files over the network. More about this here.

Some examples

Here are just a few of the possibilities of exporting from Mental Note. In each example, open the note you want to export, and tap the middle toolbar button, then the leftmost toolbar button.

• Share a number of audio recordings that are too large to be sent by email:

Select “PDF” to “Dropbox”, wait for the upload to complete, open Mail app, and Paste. The email recipient will be able to access the PDF and audio recordings by tapping the link.

Or another possibility:

Select “Zip” to “Other app”, select your favourite cloud storage solution app (e.g. Box, Google Drive) and upload to a shared folder.

• Store the user guide note in iBooks:

Select “PDF” to “Other app”, select iBooks.

• Collaborate on a note with a colleague:

Select “Note” to “Email”. Your colleague should open the email attachment in their version of Mental Note.

• Collaborate on a large note with a colleague:

Select “Note” to “Other app”, select your shared cloud storage app, and upload to a shared folder. Once the file reaches the shared folder, your colleague should open the file in their version of Mental Note.

Controlling export document size

Sometimes you just want to simply send your data by email, but the file size is just too large. Usually this means there are lots of images in the note, or lots of audio recordings with long durations.

If there are many pictures in the note, there is a way to adjust the size of photos in the exported PDF. Tap the gear icon at the bottom of the list of notes. This opens the Mental Note settings screen. Scroll down to the “Export” options, and tap “Image Size”, and set that to “Small”.

If you often use audio in your notes, and you find that the size of audio recordings are making your emails too large to send, there is also a setting to reduce the size of audio: scroll to the very bottom of the settings screen, under “Audio” tap “Recording Quality”, and set that to “Low”.

Controlling the format and destination options

There are many options available to export your notes. Fortunately you do not have to always go through the “Export as…” steps each time you want to export. As you use the various export options, your most frequently used options will appear as soon as you tap the export button. “Export as…” will always be there if you need an option you haven’t used in a while, but some people may find that the “Export as…” options have options they know they will never use. In that case there is a way to customize what you see on both the “Select format” and “Select destination” screens.

From Mental Note settings, scroll down to the “Share Options, Formats, and Destinations”. Turn off any options you don’t want to see. Turning off an option here will also hide the option if it has made its way onto your most frequently used screen.

Duplicate and Copy note link

These options, if enabled, are always pinned to the top of the export menu. Tap “Duplicate” to make a copy of the currently opened note. For more on “Copy note link” see here, also did you know you can tap on any of the more obscure sounding setting options in Mental Note settings to get more information about what the option does?

We are always available to answer your questions or comments – send us a note at support@zymbiotic.com, or leave us a comment below.