Frequently Asked Questions

Notespark is a website that lets users create notes and share them. There is also an iPhone application that allows users to access those notes on their iPhone. You can learn more here.

How do I create a new note?

Web: As soon as you enter the website, you will already be in “New note” mode. You can recognize this by the relatively empty yellow box, the words “(new note)”, and the flashing cursor. If you are not in new note mode, you can create a new note by clicking on “new note” in the bottom of the white list of notes on the left.

iPhone: Create a new note by clicking on the “compose” icon which is the rightmost icon in the toolbar. You can create a new note from virtually every screen in the application.

How many notes can I create?

You may create as many notes as you like, as long as you are using them to store text notes for your own personal use. If you try any monkey business, such as storing gigabytes and gigabytes of information in these notes, we will ask you to stop.

How do I edit a note once I’ve made it?

Web: The easiest way to edit a note is to click on its text. In certain rare cases, this can be tricky. For example, if your entire note consists of a single URL, we will auto-link the entire text, which makes it impossible to enter edit mode by clicking. For this reason, and because the “click to edit” feature is hard to find, we have also provided an edit link above the note and a button (the pencil icon) at the bottom right of the note.

iPhone: To edit a note, either tap its text or press and hold in order to bring up the magnifying glass.

How do I delete a note?

Web: To throw away a note, select the note and click the “Trash” link above the note or the corresponding icon at the bottom of the note. To permanently delete notes in the trash can, click on the trash tab at the top of the screen and choose “Empty Trash” at the bottom of the white list of notes on the left.

iPhone: To throw away a note, either select the note and click on the trash icon at the bottom of the screen, or go to any list where the note appears and choose the “Edit” button at the top of the screen. From there, delete the note using the standard iPhone gestures. To permanently delete notes in the trash can, navigate to the Trash section and choose “Empty Trash”.

If I empty the trash, can I ever get that note back again?

The short answer is “no”, but If there is an emergency situation, you can contact support [at] notespark.com and we can try to recover your note for you.

What is a tag?

Tags allow you to add labels to help you organize your notes. Each note can be assigned as many tags as you like, separated by spaces. For example, a note might be tagged as “work todo important”. Later, when you want to find that note, you can find it in the “work” list, the “todo” list, and the “important” list.

How do I add and remove tags?

Web: To add tags to a new note, type them into the field at the top right of the note. Multiple tags should be separated by spaces. To add or remove tags to an existing note, click on the “Tag” link above the note or the corresponding icon at the bottom of the note.

You can use an underscore to represent a space in a tag (e.g., “to_do”). It will show up as a space on the phone

iPhone: To add or remove tags from a note, click on the “action” icon on the toolbar and select “Tag note”.

How do I see all the notes for a given tag?

Web: If you are already viewing a note, you can click on any of its tags to view all the notes you have that have that tag. Otherwise, you can click on the “Tags” tab at the top of the screen and choose a tag.

iPhone: To view all the notes for a given tag, navigate back to the top level screen and select “Tags”.

How do I rename a tag?

There is no need to explicitly rename a tag. For any given note, you can change the tags as described above. Once there are no notes for a given tag, that tag will disappear. Currently, there is no way to mass rename a tag.

What is a star, and how do I use it?

Use stars to mark notes that are urgent. The total number of starred notes will show up as a badge next to your Notespark icon to remind you to look at your starred notes.

Web: To set or clear a star, either click on one of the stars that appears on the left side of the white list of notes on the left, or click on the star icon at the bottom of a given note.

iPhone: To set or clear a star, select the note, tap on the “action” icon on the toolbar, and select “Star note” or “Unstar note”.

Once a note has been starred, it will show up in the “Starred” section.

What is sharing?

When you share a note with another user, that user will see your note on the Notespark website and on their copy of the Notespark application on their iPhone. Any changes you make to the note from here on out will also be seen by the other user.

Users are automatically notified by email when a note is first shared with them. iPhone and iPod Touch users are also notified via push notifications.

Users are notified of further changes only through push. Emails are not sent.

How do I share a note?

Web: To share a note, select the note and click on the “share” link above the note or the corresponding icon at the bottom of the note. If you add an email address instead of a username, that person will receive an invite email for Notespark.

iPhone: To share a note, select the note, click on the “action” icon on the toolbar, and select “Share note”.

How do I stop sharing a note?

To stop sharing a note with someone, just edit the shared users following the above steps.

For iPhone users, the note will be removed the next time the shared user syncs.

What happens when I delete a shared note?

When you “delete” a note that someone else has shared with you, you are just getting rid of your copy. It’s more like “unsharing” than deleting, and it’s perfectly safe.

Help! I shared a note with someone and they messed up my note!

Well, you’re kind of on your own. In case of a dire emergency, contact support [at] notespark.com and we can try to recover your information for you.

I invited someone to share a note, but I used the wrong email address. What do I do?

Easy. Just edit the shared users following the above steps and remove the incorrect email address and add the correct email address or username.

Someone shared a note with me, but I lost my invite email. What do I do?

Just create an account with the same email address that your friend used to share the note with you. The note should automatically show up when you log in.

Can I tag or star a note that belongs to someone else?

Yes. Tagging a note that belongs to someone else doesn’t change the tags that the other person sees. That way, you can organize your notes how you like and your friend can organize his or her notes how he or she likes.

I’m sharing a note with someone in a different timezone. What time is displayed?

We make every attempt to show times in your own timezone. Thus, if someone edits a note at 9PM East coast time but you live on the West coast, we will show the time to you as 6PM .

While we have not localized Notespark to other languages, we do make a small concession for dates. Dates on the iPhone will automatically show up in the local format, and on the website, you have the option of choosing mm/dd/yy format or dd/mm/yy format.

How do I find out a friend’s Notespark username so I can share a note?

If you don’t know a friend’s Notespark username, just type in your friend’s email address when sharing. Notespark will automatically look up his or her username for you.

If your friend doesn’t have an account yet, an invite will be sent.

I’m being annoyed by another user. What should I do?

We don’t tolerate spam, harrassment, or any other unwanted contact. Please contact us at abuse [at] notespark.com if you are having such a problem.

How does synchronization work?

Your iPhone keeps its own copy of all your notes, and synchronizes with the website when it can.

Any edits you have made on the website since the last synchronization will be sent to your phone, and and edits you have made on your phone since the last synchronization will be sent to the website.

How often does autosync occur?

Notespark synchronizes when the iPhone application is launched, and every time you edit a note. It may also sync if push notifications are received while it is running.

This is usually a quick process, but if your data connection is slow, you can turn off autosync in the settings.

What is a conflict?

Occasionally, two people will make edits to the same words in same note at the same time. When this happens, Notespark can’t figure out what to do without your help and a conflict screen is displayed.

Web: When you are on the website, a conflict must be resolved immediately. Usually, it is easiest to just throw away any of your words that conflict with other edits and then manually edit the note from that point. Of course, if you would like to keep your words, you may do that as well.

iPhone: Conflicts can be more common on the phone than on the website, especially when you make a lot of changes before syncing. For this reason, Notespark allows you to wait and resolve your conflicts later if you like. However, you must resolve a conflict before editing a particular note.

What happens if synchronization goes haywire?

We have done a lot of testing and we don’t think this can actually happen, but just in case it does, you can reset your iPhone application on the settings screen. When you do this, enter the same username and password you used before, and everything should be back to normal.

Oh... and please email us at bugs [at] notespark.com if you ever run into something like this.

What are push notifications?

Push notifications are a new feature of iPhone OS 3.0 that allows the Notespark server to contact your phone for any urgent messages or updates.

These notifications can occur even when Notespark is not running on your phone.

When do push notifications occur?

Push notifications happen in two cases:

When you star a note, the badge number is updated automatically.
When someone shares a note with you, or when someone other than you makes an edit to a shared note, an alert box will be displayed.

How do I turn push notifications off?

To turn off push notifications,

Go to the iPhone home screen
Choose Settings → Notifications → Notespark.

How do I insert links in my notes, and how can I use them?

As you add notes to Notespark, your iPhone will auto-detect certain patterns it finds in your notes and convert them to links:

Anything that looks like a URL → launches Safari
Anything that looks like an email address → sends an email
Anything that looks like a phone number → starts a phone call
Anything that looks like a street address → shows a map

To see the links in your note, you will need to tap the “View Links” button at the top of the note.

To see more options, such as adding a phone number to your contacts or sending a text message instead of making a phone call, just press and hold the link.

Web version: On the web, only URL links and email links are supported.

Why don’t the links in Notespark work the same way as the built-in Notes application?

We like the way that the links in Apple’s built-in notes application work, but, as far as we can tell, the iPhone SDK does not allow third-party application developers to use the same behavior.

Apple only lets us show links for documents that are locked. We could lock notes by default and force people to tap an “Edit Note” button before editing, but we felt that this would be a big headache.

There might be a sneaky back door to the iPhone SDK that would allow us to do the same thing that Apple does, but in general, we don’t like to do that kind of thing.

How do I import my notes from Palm Desktop, Outlook, or Toodledo?

1) Export your notes in CSV format (or Tab and Return format for the Mac version of Palm Desktop).

2) Log into your Notespark web account and click the "Import/Export" link above the yellow note display area.

3) Select your note file in the "File to Import" area and click "Next Step"

4) The importer should recognize the source of the file you're importing and prompt you for appropriate options.

How do I export my notes from Palm Desktop, Outlook, or Toodledo for importing into Notespark?

From Palm Desktop, open your memos and use the "File > Export" menu item, then select "Tab and Return" format (Mac) or "CSV" format (Windows).

From Outlook, use the menu option "File > Import and Export", then select "Export to a File" and "Comma Separate Values (Windows)"

From Toodledo, click the "Export Notes" link at the bottom of the Notebook page, then the "Download CSV file" link under CSV Notebook Export

Can I import notes from other applications?

Very likely, if you can export them in .CSV format. Our importer is fairly flexible with CSV, but you can export notes from Notespark if you want to see approximately what that format should look like.

What if my notes don’t import properly?

If you encounter a problem with importing from one of our officially supported formats, drop us a line at bugs [at] notespark.com. We'll be happy to help.

We'll probably want a copy of the file you were trying to import, and a precise description of what didn't import correctly.

I lost my activation email. What do I do?

Just try to log in with the username you used before. You will receive instructions on how to ask for a new activation email.

How do I change my username, password, or email address?

The only way to change your username is to delete your account and to create a new one. To change other account settings, you must log into the website and click on the “Account” link at the top right of the screen.

I’ve changed my username/password. How do I get my iPhone app to work?

Simply reset your iPhone application by choosing “Reset All” from the Setting screen. You will then be able to enter a new username and password the next time you synchronize.

Will you ever sell my email address

Of course not. All of this is outlined in our privacy policy.

How do I back up my notes?

The notes from your iPhone are automatically backed up in two ways. Every time you sync to the Notespark website, your notes are duplicated there. Also, every time you sync your phone to your computer, all of your phone data is backed up.

Who owns the IP rights to my notes?

Your data is yours. Notespark does not assert any intellectual property rights over your notes.

Is Notespark secure?

Notespark is about as secure as your average web-based application. We do our best to protect against all the well known methods of web attack, and as of version 1.2, we now transmit all note information over https.

We still caution against using Notespark to store highly sensitive data such as passwords, social security numbers, or bank account information. Storing highly sensitive information in Notespark is a violation of our terms of service.

How does Notespark use https, and why?

HTTPS is a method of communication that allows web browsers and web servers to transfer information to each other in a safe and secure way.

Notespark has always used https for username and password information. As of version 1.2, Notespark now transmits all note data using https. On the website, you will notice that all web pages with personal information are transmitted via https once you log in.

On the iPhone, you will need to upgrade to the 1.2 version of Notespark. Once you do, all communication with the server will be protected by https.

Can I add password protection to specific notes?

At present, no. This is one of our most popular feature requests.

What are the system requirements?

The Notespark website is designed to work on Firefox 2/3, Safari 3/4 and IE 6 and above. JavaScript and cookies are required.

The newest version of the Notespark iPhone application requires iPhone OS 3.0.

Will the Notespark service always be free?

We are currently running Notespark as a free service. If this model ever changes, owners of the iPhone / iPod Touch version of Notespark will automatically receive a lifetime subscription to the Notespark website and sync service.

Will upgrades to the iPhone application be free?

We will not charge for minor upgrades and enhancements. Major upgrades may involve a small upgrade fee (though we have no current plans for any upgrade charges).

Hey! I have a great idea for a feature!

Great! Head on over to the “feature ideas” group on the public forums.

I still have questions. What now?

While we do have an email address, the best place to ask questions is our forums.

Start by doing a search, because your question may have already been asked before. And if that fails, your question (and our answer) might be helpful for the next person who comes along.