Notes and Highlights

 

Notes

Notes are free-form comments that reviewers can apply to documents during review. Notes can be applied to the document as a whole, or associated with highlights or redactions applied to specific passages within a document. The content of notes, who wrote the note, and when the note was written are all searchable via the query builder.

Requirements

Required permissions : To view notes, you must be a project admin or have View, Create, or Admin permissions for Notes and Highlights in project settings.  

To write notes, you need Create or Admin permissions for Notes and Highlights.

 A project admin can give access on the Permissions tab in Project Settings. 

 

Review Layout: To apply a note, you must have the Annotations tab included in the review panel. To learn how to edit your layout to add the panel, check out our article on Full Screen Review Window Customization. 

Apply and delete a document-wide note

To apply a note to your document:

1. Select the Annotations tab (or press "n" on your keyboard).
2. Start adding text in the text entry box that reads Add note. You can use the formatting buttons to bold, italicize, underline, or create bulleted or numbered lists. 
   
   

   Tip

   If you type an existing Bates or Control number, it becomes a hyperlinked reference to that document.

3. When you're done typing, click away from the window, or select Save. Your note is applied to the document, published by you, and timestamped for anyone with Notes permissions to view on that document.

Delete a note

To delete a note, click the saved note and select the trash can button. 

Note templates

You can create a template from your note, which lets you apply that note again with just one click. This is particularly useful if you find yourself applying the same note to multiple documents. You can create up to 3 templates.

To create a note template:

1. Select the note you’d like to create your template from.
2. Select the T button.
3. Choose which template slot to save your note to.

To apply a templated note to your document:

1. Select the T button next to the text entry box to add a note.m
2. Choose which note template you’d like to apply to your document.
   

You can overwrite an existing note template. To do so:

1. Write a new note and save it.
2. Select the note.
3. Select the T button and choose which template you want to overwrite.

You cannot delete note templates.

Apply a highlight to a document 

There are two ways to apply highlights to your document: text selection and click-and-drag.

The highlighter tool only works on the PDF/Image version of your documents — you cannot add a highlight from the text or native view . 

To highlight keywords or phrases throughout a document, check out our article about using hit highlights to search within documents.

Highlight via text selection

To highlight your document via text selection:

1. Toggle on the Text Selector in the review window toolbar.
2. Select the text to highlight. A tool bar with several options appears.
   
3. Choose the highlighter button. To change the color of the text selector highlighter, click the arrow next to the highlighter icon.

   Tip

   When you use the text selector to create highlights and then add those highlights to Storybuilder, the highlighted text is viewable and exportable throughout Storybuilder.

You cannot edit/resize highlights made using the text selector.

Highlight via click-and-drag

To apply a highlight to the document using the click-and-drag highlighter tool:

1. Toggle the highlighter tool on by selecting the highlighter button or pressing "h" on your keyboard. To select a different highlight color, click the caret next to the highlighter button and select a color from the dropdown menu. 
   
2. Click and drag over an area of the image view of the document.
3. When you release, a pop-up dialog optionally allows you to leave a note, add the highlight to your Story, change the highlight color, or delete the highlight.
   
4. Click outside of the popup to close it.

To resize  a highlight:

1. Hover over the corner until the double arrow icon appears.
   
   
2. Click and drag the highlight to your desired shape and size. 

Additional highlight information

Here is some additional information about tracking and using highlights:

• When you add a highlight to a document, a highlight indicator is added to the Highlights section of the Annotations panel. The indicator includes the color of the highlight and the page on which the highlight is applied. Select the highlight indicator to jump to pages/area of the document of that highlight.
  
• You can continue adding highlights until you toggle the highlight tool off (either by clicking the icon or pressing "h" again on your keyboard)
• Using the highlight pop-up, you can also add a highlight to Storybuilder as evidence. Select + Add highlight to project Story

Export text highlights

You can export highlighted text on a set of documents using CSV export. This lets you choose to export only specific, highlighted information from a document, rather than the entire document.

Only highlights applied via text selection can be exported. Text underneath click and drag highlights or notes associated with any highlights are not extracted into an export 

To export text highlights:

1. Access a results table with the highlighted text you want to export.
2. Select Export > CSV to open the Export to CSV dialog.
3. Choose  Text Highlights as a Selected field.
4. Give your export a name.
5. Select Export to CSV. You can monitor the progress of your export and download it form the Batches and Exports column of the homepage.

Apply a note to an existing highlight

To add a note to an existing highlight:

1. Select the highlight you wan to add a note to. You cannot be in text selection mode to select a highlight.
2. Select Add a new note and begin typing. Any existing note associated with the highlight will also be visible here. You can also format your note in rich text.
3. When you're done, select Save or click out of the note area. 

Notes panel (Classic mode)

In Classic mode, open the notes panel by to apply a note:

1. Select the notes icon in the toolbar or by press “n” on your keyboard.
   
2. Click into the text entry box. A text editor will open where you can write and format your note in rich text. 
3. When you're done, select Save or click out of the text entry boc. to save your note.

Here is some additional information about apply notes in classic mode:

• You can also view any notes that have been previously applied to the document from the panel.
• You cannot control who sees the notes you apply; anyone who has the ability to view notes will be able to see any and all notes applied to a document.
• To edit a pre-existing note that you’ve applied, select the notes and then select the pencil button in the lower right. To delete a note, click the trashcan button next to the pencil icon. Most users can only delete notes that they applied themselves.
• To apply a note by typing in the coding filter, use the keyboard shortcut, a, or click the input box that says Add note. Then, type the note that you want to apply to the document.  When you’ve finished, hit “enter” on your keyboard.  You will see a notification indicating that your note has been applied and saved.
• Finally, you can add a note directly from the coding panel. Expand the coding panel by clicking the spacebar on your computer, or by clicking the arrow at the bottom center of the screen.  Similar to a binder, you add a note in the coding panel by clicking on the “add a new note” badge.  Then, you can begin to write and edit your note. When you’ve finished, click “add note.” 
• Similarly, you can add a note when updating batches of documents in the context panel.  This makes it easy to add a note to a series of duplicates, email threads, attachment families, and versions. For more on batch updating from the context panel, see this article.

Notes preview (classic mode)
If you have notes previews turned on, you will see a preview for the first note in the bottom of the screen.  Even if you have multiple notes applied to the document, the original, first note will be the one that appears.  To view all notes, click on the sticky note in the preview, which opens the notes panel. When you open the notes panel, the preview closes.  When you move to the next document with a note applied, the notes preview appears again.

You can specify whether you’d like to view notes previews in classic mode. By default, notes preview is turned “on.”  Tooggle this preference to “off”:

1. Open the Annotations panel.
2. Scroll to the bottom.
3. Under Preferences, toggle off Display notes preview
   

Batch apply or remove document-wide notes

If you want to add or remove notes from multiple documents at the same time, you can do this from the batch coding panel of the results table. Learn more about batch adding and removing notes.