Chapter 5. Using Highlights, Bookmarks, and Annotations

Take a look at one of your favorite books, and you can likely find notes in the margins and perhaps dog-eared pages. Jotting down notes about passages that impact you or marking pages you want to come back to visit later is how you make books a personalized possession. Fortunately, you don’t have to forgo these things when it comes to ebooks, because your NOOK Color lets you easily highlight passages and add bookmarks and notes to pages.

Using Highlights, Notes, and Bookmarks on Your NOOK Color

When you think of highlighting something in a book, you typically think of using a yellow highlighter marker to draw attention to portions of the text. Highlighting on your NOOK Color is similar to that...but with a highlighter that has multiple colors all in one.

A note in an ebook is simply a highlighted area with a message attached. Therefore, the steps necessary to add, view, edit, and delete notes are the same as the steps for using highlights.

Adding a Highlight or a Note

To highlight text or add a note in an ebook, follow these steps:

1. Press and hold a word. The word appears in a bubble, and that is your signal to raise your finger. The word is highlighted and the Text Selection toolbar appears.

2. If you want to highlight only that word, move to step 3. If you want to highlight a block of text, notice the highlighted word is bounded by two blue bars. Press, hold, and drag one of the blue bars to the location you want to end the highlight (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Highlight the text you want to add a note to.

3. Tap Highlight to just add a highlight. Tap Note if you want to add a note. If you chose the former, the text is highlighted. If you chose the latter, the Edit Note screen appears (see Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2 Enter your note.

4. Type your note and tap Post.

5. The highlight is added and a Note icon appears next in the margin (see Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3 Your note is added.

Viewing, Editing, and Deleting Highlights and Notes

The simplest way to edit a note is to tap the highlighted text. A pop-up menu appears (see Figure 5.4), giving you several options:

• View Note: Tap this to view the note. This appears only if a note is attached to that highlight. After you are in the note, you can tap Edit to edit the note.

• Edit Note: Tap this to edit the text of the note. This appears only if a note is attached to that highlight.

• Add Note: Tap this to add a note to highlighted text. An Add Note screen appears. Type in your note and tap Post. This appears only if no note is attached to that highlight.

• Remove Note: Tap this to remove the note. The highlight will remain. This appears only if a note is attached to that highlight.

• Remove Highlight: Tap this to delete both the note and highlight.

• Change Color: Tap the color you want to change the color of the highlight for that particular one. You can use all three colors for highlights in the same ebook.

Figure 5.4 Your options after you have added a highlight and note.

To navigate or jump to notes throughout an ebook, from the Reading Tools toolbar (tap the screen), tap Content. Then tap Notes & Highlights. You see a listing of the notes in the ebook (scroll if you need to see more), as shown in Figure 5.5. You see the text that was highlighted, the page number of the note, and the date and time it was last edited. Tap the particular note you want to jump to. The contents screen disappears, and you are taken to the page with the highlight or note you tapped.

Figure 5.5 Jump to a specific note.

A couple of other notes about this screen’s contents. Two other options exist: Clear All and Notes & Highlights On/Off. If you tap Clear All, you delete all notes and highlights in the ebook. If you turn Notes & Highlights to Off, you turn off the visibility of the highlights, though the Note icon stays in the margin. You can turn Notes & Highlights back to On to have the highlights reappear.

Using Bookmarks

Bookmarks enable you to easily return to a particular page. Unlike notes, bookmarks do not have any text associated with them. Bookmarks work in all your ebooks, magazines, and newspapers. Bookmarks are not supported in subscription content.

For ebooks and newspapers (and magazines that read like newspapers), to add a bookmark on the page you’re reading, tap the reading screen, and then tap the icon that looks like a bookmark in the top right corner. It drops down a bit and changes to blue. Tap it again to remove the bookmark. Alternatively, you can tap the upper-right corner of the screen to place a bookmark or tap the bookmark to remove it.

For magazines, to add a bookmark on the page you’re reading, you must be in portrait view. Tap the reading screen and then tap the + icon in the top-right corner (see Figure 5.6). It folds down. (Think of flipping the corner of a page in a book.) Tap it again to remove the bookmark. You cannot add bookmarks or remove individual bookmarks in landscape view.

Figure 5.6 Bookmarks in magazines.

To return to a bookmark, from the Reading Tools toolbar, tap Content and then tap Bookmarks. A list of pages containing bookmarks appears (see Figure 5.7). Tap the bookmark you want to go to; your NOOK Color immediately takes you to that page.

Figure 5.7 Jump to a specific bookmark.

To remove a bookmark, tap Clear All to remove all bookmarks in that ebook, magazine, or newspaper.