Sticky Notes is a new groovy little application included with Windows 7.  When I first tried Sticky Notes I wasn’t that impressed, however after running Windows 7 for several months I now find myself using the new app daily.  I guess you could say I’m “stuck” on Sticky Notes (sorry… I wouldn’t help myself).

What is Sticky Notes?  Essentially it’s just like using real sticky notes minus the whole killing the trees thing.  The most appealing feature of Sticky Notes however is the convenience factor.  You can create a new sticky note, close the application and then reopen it later exactly like you left it.  No need to save and no hassle for coming up with file names.  It’s like clipboard meets notepad. A match made in heav.. err Seven, Windows 7 that is.

 

A few features to look at:

• Change the color of your notes to help you organize them (right-click any note to bring up the color options menu)
• Stack notes to conserve space.
• Resize notes by dragging corners or edges.
• Scrollbar is included on the right side for extra long notes, or copy/paste jobs. (Remember… These are “notes” not books
• FREE!!  Sticky Notes are included with all version of Windows 7.  Very Groovy!

Let’s look at a few not so obvious features.

 

How to change Sticky Note font.

Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of options here, this is what we are left with.

Size, bold, italic, underlined, strikethrough, and lists.  There is no menu to adjust these properties, so you’ll have to use Hotkeys.

Note: You will need to first Select the Text in your sticky note to use the Hotkeys Listed below:

• Ctrl + b   Makes text bold
• Ctrl + i   Makes text italic
• Ctrl + u  Makes text underlined
• Ctrl + t   Make strikethrough text
• Ctrl + shift +  >  Makes text larger
• Ctrl + shift +  <  Makes text smaller
• Ctrl + shift + L  To create lists or bullets, hit this key combination repeatedly to change between list types.

Another cool feature, is say you are a really busy person and you have A LOT of sticky notes.

This can make a pretty big mess because you can’t minimize individual notes, if you don’t want to fill up your entire desktop you’ll have to stack them.  This causes a problem though, managing a huge pile of sticky notes is still a mess whether its on the computer screen or on your desk.  So here is the solution. 
 

How to list your sticky notes and easily access or view all of them as a list.

 

1. Right-Click any open area on your Desktop, and Select New then Shortcut.  A Create Shortcut window will appear, in the empty white box Type or Paste the following address:

search-ms:displayname=Search%20Results%20in%20Sticky%20Notes%20(Windows%20Sticky%20Notes)&crumb=&crumb=location:C%3A%5CUsers%5CYourUSERNAME%5CSearches%5CSticky%20Notes%20(Windows%20Sticky%20Notes).searchconnector-ms

 

2. Click Next and on the next window enter a name for your shortcut, I like to just keep it simple and Type in Sticky Notes.

3.  Now Right-Click the Shortcut you just created and Select Properties.  Under the Shortcut Key you can put whatever shortcut you like, I chose to do Ctrl + Shift + S.

Now here is the end result window that will appear when you click on the shortcut or when you hit your Shortcut Key (Ctrl + Shift + S).  Optionally you can change to a detailed view if you wish to see the date and time each note was written.  If you’re like me you don’t like having clutter on your desktop, so you can always move your Sticky Notes shortcut to a folder anywhere on your computer.

If for some reason you wanted to backup your sticky notes and send them to a friend, you can do so by browsing to:
 
C:\Users\YourUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Sticky Notes 
 
Then make a copy of StickyNote.snt

 

That’s all folks, this is about as in-depth as we can go with this simple program.  I hope you enjoyed this how-to article regarding Windows 7 Sticky Note.  If you have any comments or questions drop a note below or in our groovy Community Forum

Tags: hotkeys, how-to, keyboard-shortcuts, Microsoft, Windows 7