Using your planner in GoodNotes

GoodNotes is where most digital planners end up, and there’s a good reason for that. It leaves a PDF’s hyperlinks alone. Your tabs, month links, and breadcrumbs were built into the file, and GoodNotes hands them back to you working.

This assumes you already have the planner file and a copy of GoodNotes. If the file is still sitting in your Etsy purchases, start with Bought a planner on Etsy? and come back.

Import the planner, don’t open it

This is the one that trips people up, so it’s worth being blunt about. Tapping the PDF in Files opens a preview, and a preview ignores links. You want the planner inside GoodNotes, as a document of its own.

From Documents, use + New → Import, then pick the planner PDF. GoodNotes opens it as soon as it finishes.

GoodnotesImport Digital PlannerShow 4 steps, 4 screenshots

  1. Launch Goodnotes, go to “Documents” and click the “+ New” button.

    The Goodnotes Documents screen with no documents on it, and the blue “+ New” button at the top right.

  2. In the context menu that appears, click the “Import” button.

    The New menu open, with Notebook, Text Doc and Whiteboard across the top, Import and Quick Record beneath them, then QuickNote, Scan Documents, Study Set, Image, Take Photo and Folder.

  3. Navigate to where you’ve saved your planner files and select the version you want to use. Then click the “Open” button.

    The Files picker open on a folder of planner files, each row showing a page preview, its name and its size. One row is selected and the Open button sits at the top right.

  4. Once imported, Goodnotes will automatically open the planner.

    The imported planner open at its dashboard page, listing Finances, Productivity, Fitness, Nutrition, Health and Wellness and Lifestyle as columns of tappable rows.

If your planner came in more than one size or orientation, import only the one you plan to use. Bringing in all four just makes a crowded shelf.

Turn on Read Only before you start tapping

GoodNotes assumes you want to write, which is usually right and briefly wrong. The first time you tap a month tab with a pen selected, you’ll draw a small mark on the page instead of jumping anywhere.

Switch to Read Only while you’re getting your bearings, and back to editing when you’re ready to write. It’s a small habit that saves a lot of undoing, and almost nobody mentions it.

Add your cover

Most planners ship with cover art as a separate file, which sounds like an oversight and isn’t — it’s what lets you choose. Covers go in as a page before page one.

Open Content, select the first page, then use the caret below it → Add Page Before → Import, and choose the cover you want.

GoodnotesAdding a cover to your plannerShow 6 steps, 6 screenshots

  1. With your planner open, click the “Content” icon in the menu bar.

    The planner’s dashboard page open in GoodNotes, with the Content icon highlighted at the left-hand end of the toolbar above it.

  2. Select the first page, if not already selected and then click the downward facing caret icon below it.

    The Pages panel open down the left of the planner, showing page thumbnails in two columns. The first page is selected with a blue border and a small downward caret sits beneath it.

  3. In the resulting page action menu, click the “Add Page Before” menu item.

    The page action menu open over the Pages panel, listing Add Page Before, Add Page After, Copy, Duplicate, Rotate, Move to, Add Page to Outline, Export, Open in New Window and Move to Trash.

  4. In the “Add Page” menu, click the “Import” menu item.

    The Add Page panel, with a row of recent templates across the top and a list beneath it reading More from Templates, Image, Scan Documents, Take Photo and Import.

  5. Navigate to where you’ve saved your cover files and select the one you want to use. Then click the “Open” button.

    The iPad Files picker open over the planner, listing cover files by name and size with a small preview against each. One row is selected and the Open button sits at the top right.

  6. Once imported, your planner will now have a cover added.

    The Pages panel after the import: the first thumbnail is now a patterned cover, and the planner’s own dashboard page has moved into second place behind it.

Swapping covers later is the same handful of taps, so nothing is locked in.

Getting around

A well-built planner is navigated, not scrolled. Ours has three ways through it and they’re worth learning in about a minute:

  • The dashboard — the home page, with a button for every section
  • The tab bar — on every page, so the calendar and your custom sections are always one tap away
  • Breadcrumbs — under each page heading, exactly like a website’s, for stepping back up

Tap a week number in the year calendar and you land on that week. Tap January in the breadcrumb and you’re back at the month. Nothing needs scrolling, and once your thumb learns the tab bar you mostly stop thinking about it.

Stickers go in the Elements panel

GoodNotes has a real sticker library built in, which is the nicest thing about using stickers there. It’s the Elements icon, in editing mode.

Use Add Collection → Import from… and choose a sticker collection file, and the whole set arrives as one named collection you can drag from. Individual PNGs work the same way — make a collection, give it a name, import the sticker into it.

GoodnotesUsing stickersShow 17 steps, 17 screenshots

Using a collection of stickers

  1. With your planner open in “Editing mode”, click the “Element” / sticker icon.

    A blank planner page open for editing, with the app’s toolbar across the top and the month navigation bar beneath it.

  2. Having clicked the “Element” icon, in the “Elements” panel click the “Add Collection” button.

    The Elements panel open over the page, reading “No Recent Elements”, with three small round buttons along its bottom edge.

  3. Having clicked the “Add Collection” button, the “New Collection” modal panel opens. In the modal, click the “Import from…” button.

    The New Collection panel, still empty, with an untitled Title field at the top and Add Photos and “Import from…” buttons along the bottom. “Import from…” is outlined.

  4. Navigate to the location at which you’ve downloaded your planner sticker collection and click the collection to be added.

    The Files picker open on a folder of sticker collection files, each row showing a document icon, its name and its size.

  5. The collection you clicked will then populate the “New Collection” modal panel, with the same title as the collection file. Click the “Create” button.

    The New Collection panel filled with a grid of brush-stroke stickers in black and red, each carrying a small remove badge, with the Create button at the top right.

  6. Once created, the collection will be the currently selected collection in the “Elements” panel.

    The Elements panel showing the new collection: a scrolling grid of black brush-stroke stickers under the collection’s name, with an Edit link beside it.

  7. Click and drag a sticker to your planner page.

    A sticker held part-way out of the panel and over the blank page, shown as a small white tile under the pointer.

  8. Once on the page, the sticker can be moved, resized, rotated.

    A black brush-stroke sticker sitting on the page inside a selection box, with corner handles, a rotation handle beneath it and a small row of edit buttons.

Using individual stickers

  1. With your planner open in “Editing mode”, click the “Element” / sticker icon.

    A blank planner page open for editing, with the app’s toolbar across the top and the month navigation bar beneath it.

  2. Having clicked the “Element” icon, in the “Elements” panel click the “Add Collection” button.

    The Elements panel open over the page, reading “No Recent Elements”, with three small round buttons along its bottom edge.

  3. In the “New Collection” modal give your collection a title.

    The New Collection panel with a collection name typed into its Title field and the body below still empty.

  4. Click the “Import from…” button.

    The same New Collection panel, with the “Import from…” button at the bottom right outlined and ready to press.

  5. Navigate to the location at which you’ve downloaded your planner stickers and click the sticker to be added.

    The Files picker open on a folder of individual sticker files, each row showing a small orange brush stroke beside its name and size.

  6. The sticker you clicked will then populate the “New Collection” modal panel. Click the “Create” button.

    The New Collection panel holding a single sticker — an orange brush-drawn ring — with the Create button outlined at the top right.

  7. Once created, the new collection will now have your imported sticker in the “Elements” panel.

    The Elements panel showing the new collection with its one orange ring sticker in it, open over the planner’s Listening List page.

  8. Click and drag a sticker to your planner page.

    The orange ring sticker held over the page mid-drag, with a small green plus badge at its corner.

  9. Once on the page, the sticker can be moved, resized, rotated.

    The orange ring sticker sitting on the page inside a selection box, with corner handles, a rotation handle below it and a row of edit buttons above.

Once a sticker is on the page it moves, resizes, and rotates like any other element.

Making it yours

Two things worth knowing, because they’re what turn a fixed PDF into something that fits your year.

Duplicating a page. Content → select the page → caret → Duplicate. Handy when one weekly spread isn’t enough, or when a project wants five copies of the same layout.

Copying a page somewhere else. More → Copy Page, then navigate to where you want it and use Add Page → Before/After → Paste Page. This is how note templates end up in a custom section, and it’s the trick behind most of the setups you’ve seen on Pinterest.

Pages also rearrange by tap-and-hold-and-drag in the Content sidebar, and delete via Move to Trash.

Check three things, in this order. Are you in a preview instead of GoodNotes? Are you in Read Only, or holding a pen? And did you import the planner rather than open it in place? One of those three is nearly always the answer.

If all three check out and the tabs are still dead, the file itself may have been rebuilt on import by another app before it got here. Re-import the original download and it should come right.

Where to go next