One of the forgotten aspects of Apple’s Mail application is the Notes feature.  You will find that even though this is a small part of Apple Mail, it really can do a lot.  I will also show you how you can integrate the Notes functionality with Gmail, iPhone and iPad.

Before I get started more into this article, first I want to talk about why this could be handy.  Well, I tend to use the Notes application for shopping lists, to jot down ideas for articles to write on Maciverse, to dos, and sometimes even notes in meetings.  Anything you think you can use a notepad for, you could use Notes for.  Let me show you how this all works.

Lets say you want to create a note and you jot down a shopping list and you want to be able to access it on your iPhone or you are jotting down some questions to ask during your business meeting that you have later.  If you open Apple Mail then hit the “Reminder” tab on the left.  You will then see a tab for Notes and To Do’s. If you click on the tab for Notes you will see two separate folders, one that says “On My Mac” and the other that says “Gmail”.  Let me explain these.  Notes that you put into the “On my Mac” folder can be synced with your iPhone or iPad.  Notes that are put in the “Gmail” folder can be synced with your Gmail account.

If I want to write a note that I want to make sure goes onto my iPhone or iPad, I would want to make sure I have the “On my Mac” folder open and then I would click on the “Note” icon to start a new note.

From here you can start writing your note.  If you want to have a title for your note, put it on the first line and then skip a line or two then start your actual note.  When you are done writing your note, just click on the “Done” button.

Now, if you want to get the note to your iPad or iPhone, you will want to sync the devices to your computer.  You will want to make sure in iTunes that the “Sync Notes” option is checked.  To do this, connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer then click on the info tab.  Scroll down and you will see the option to sync notes.

Once your device is synced, you should then be able to open up your Notes app on your iPad or iPhone and the note should now appear here. Unfortunately, there is no way to wirelessly sync your notes yet.  If this is something you want to do, I suggest you go and get Simplenote.  I have done a review on it here.  The same will work if you want to get your notes from your iPad or iPhone.  When you create a note on either device and you sync it to iTunes, the note will now be in Apple Mail.

Your other option with Notes is to have them synced with Gmail.  The way you do this is that you click on the “Gmail” folder within the Notes folder on Apple Mail. Then you will want to click on the “Note” button to create a note.

Now when you open up Gmail, you will see a label that is marked Notes.  If you click on it, you will then see the note that you just wrote in Apple Mail.  The nice thing about this is that this will sync over the air.  The negative thing is that I cannot edit notes in Gmail and have it sync back.  But if I do delete the note in Gmail, it will be deleted from Apple Mail.  I don’t see a huge need for this aspect of Notes.  One of the only ways I could see how making notes for Gmail that would be helpful would be if that you need to work at two different computers, like a home and a work computer and you want to access a note at work and you don’t have an iPhone or iPad.  Then I could see this being useful.  But I prefer the previous method of being able to sync notes between Apple Mail and my iPad or iPhone, even if I have to manually sync.

So there you have it.  There are other applications out there that do note taking a lot better than this.  But the perk about this is that it is simple, it is free, and it utilizes Apple Mail.  I like that I can do more than one thing from one application.  So what do you think?  Do you use notes?  If so, how do you use them?