The Transcribe page (accessed with the Transcribe tool when editing a page) has two issues: The panel on the right with text fields does not scroll correctly when the on-screen keyboard is displayed. Also, the Save button always assumes that you are editing an existing contact, and does not copy to the pasteboard if the Transcribe tab is chosen. This should be fixed in the next release.

When writing in Zoomed mode there is a Wrist Guard option in the Zoom Tools. In a full iPad screen, this keeps the Close-Up View at a constant size to provide space below on which to rest your wrist without creating any ink. On smaller or narrower screens, such as on iPhones and in Split View on an iPad, turning on this functionality does not actually keep the Close-Up View at a smaller size -- it stays at full size to the bottom of the screen. Support for these smaller screens is new in version 7.0 and this feature was not added to that support yet. (Fixed in 7.0.1.)

The list of settings that pops up when you tap the Select button that is available when you are editing a page in Select mode does not change any settings. When you tap a row, the list is dismissed instead of the row toggling. This is new, incorrect behavior in version 7.0, and will be fixed in a future release. (Fixed in 7.0.1 to work as it used to.)

Some people are finding that Note Taker HD crashes when they use "Open In" in another app to send a PDF file to be annotated when running iOS 9. This is more likely, it appears, when Note Taker HD was not already running. This issue is being investigated and hopefully a fix will be submitted to Apple in the coming days.

If you encounter it, for now, try doing the import when Note Taker HD has been running recently. You can also import the file manually using iTunes File Sharing when the iPad is connected to a personal computer. See the explanation of "The File-Import Folder" in the Help section on "File Sharing".

There have been a few reports of certain docs that crash the app when trying to Output. It seems to be related to Background Images from PDFs, but it is still being investigated. Those crashes did not occur during editing, so no data was lost. (This is not the same as annotating a PDF. It is using the Background Images feature.)

There is currently no certain work-around, other than to make a screen shot of the pages you want to output (press Home and Power at the same time) and output them from the Photos app. Something to try, though, is to change the Output setting of the Background Image to be Image instead of Original PDF. When more is known this entry will be updated.

If you encounter this issue, please let me know by sending an email to the support address. Let me know what type of content was in the doc (background image or not, only ink, shapes, photos, PDF annotation, etc.) and which iPad model and version of iOS you are running. Thanks!

If you use the Output tool to send a one-page PDF result by email, some email readers cannot see the attachment (though the Sent email on the iPad should be OK). This is not specific to Note Taker HD. There seems to be an issue with how the iPad mail app formats the "preview" image it embeds in the email and as well as the attachment. It appears to be related to having "rich text" in the email signature.

The solution here seems to be to delete your email signature for mail and retype it from scratch if you still need it (do not paste in something that might have rich text).

(Starting with version 6.12.1, and improving with 7.0.0 and 7.0.1, this is less likely to happen and these techniques should be less needed. Please contact Support if you are still encountering it.)

Sometimes Note Taker HD crashes halfway through doing Output, usually on the same page each time you try. This suggests that the Apple code that creates PDFs ran into a page that it can't handle. This usually happens when a PDF is being annotated and that original PDF page has some issue when recreated as a new PDF page.

Note Taker HD has functionality to handle these situations. Instead of including the original PDF in the output as PDF drawing "code," it can first render the PDF page as an image and then include that image as the page's background. The result in many cases creates output files that are a little larger and that are a little less sharp, especially when viewed at high magnification, but they should still be quite usable.

There is a doc setting (from the Doc or Page settings) called Doc Default Output as PDF for Annotation Pages. You can set this to "Output an Image..." to override the output setting for ALL pages in a doc. Alternatively, you can leave the default "Output any original PDF..." and just set the Imported PDF Annotation File settings for the one or more pages that cause the crash to have "Output: Image" instead of "Output: Original PDF".

There are a variety of PDF files that cause problems with Note Taker HD (as well as some other apps that use the same code for rendering PDFs). PDF rendering often takes up a lot of memory so this is made worse if the iPad is running low on memory because a lot of apps have been executing. (In general, rebooting sometimes helps with low memory -- you do that by pressing and holding the Power button and then confirming power down. Restart by pressing Power again.)

Because you last were editing that "bad" page before Note Taker HD crashed, the app attempts to restart by opening the last page being edited as it usually does. Unfortunately, this crashes it again.

To get Note Taker HD to start on the List of Pages (where you can use the Delete Page(s) tool to delete the offending page) just use Mail or some other app to "Open In..." another PDF file in Note Taker HD. When Note Taker HD starts and offers to import the file, press Cancel to return to the List of Pages.

Several people have reported Note Taker HD not showing up in the list of apps to "Open In" when they try to send a PDF from another app, such as Mail, to Note Taker HD. Alternatively, sometimes they see an app like Dropbox that used to be available to Open In from Note Taker HD stop showing up in the list. Sometimes this mysteriously starts or stops happening.

First, make sure that you are dealing with ".pdf" files. Note Taker HD does not Open In ".doc" (Microsoft Word), ".docx", ".ppt", etc., files -- only PDF files.

Searching on the web, it seems that this happens for others apps, too, not just Note Taker HD. It is reported that there may be a limit of about 10 apps allowed in that list (which is created by iOS, not our apps, but should be a higher number in newer versions of iOS). Uninstalling unused apps on the list opens up new slots (sometimes even if you reinstall them and they end up being one left off). From my testing, and some user reports, this seems to be the case.

Also, make sure that you look through the whole Open In list -- it's a scrolling list and only shows a few at a time.

The following issues have surfaced during the week since iOS 8 was released:

There are cases where the on-screen keyboard appears with most or all keys hidden. Tapping where the keys should be still works, but they are not visible. To restore the visibility of the keys, rotate the iPad (from horizontal to vertical, for example) and the full keyboard will be redisplayed. (You can then rotate back to the original orientation.) Alternatively, tap where the "other keyboard" button would be (just to the right of the bottom-left switch-to-numeric button) and then back again.

This behavior seems to be most common when the Home button is pressed while the keyboard is displayed, or when switching back and forth to another app. By not leaving the keyboard up when switching you can usually avoid this issue.

This issue seems to be related to the new iOS "Predicitive" typing feature. If you turn that off (iPad Settings, General, Keyboard , Predictive: Off) the issue does not seem to occur. (Fixed in 6.9.)

There are cosmetic issues with some lists displayed in the app, such as the list of settings for the app, the doc, etc. The text appears far to the left without indentation. Also, some of the popup dialog boxes have darker or lighter colors than before. (Fixed in 6.9.)

There may be an issue with certain fonts embedded in PDF files that are annotated and then Output. Those fonts may not be embedded in the new output, so characters that use those fonts may not display correctly. This is an old issue that was addressed by Apple in iOS upgrades in the past. The solution to characters from the original PDF you are annotating not showing up correctly in the output is to set the doc or page's "Output as PDF" setting to "Output an image of any original PDF".

There seems to be a problem with the iPad Air 2 that sometimes crops up with a stylus and much less frequently with a finger (the frequency seems to also vary from one stylus to another). While you are writing a stroke of ink, the part of the line you've written so far disappears and then no ink is put down until you take the stylus off of the screen. This is similar to the behavior when you have a second touch while writing and the app switches to resize mode. User reports say that they have seen related problems in other "ink" apps to varying degrees. Apple has indicated that there have been changes to the screen sensitivity with this new device so it is not surprising that apps that make heavy use of drag-touch may see changes in the way input occurs.

This was fixed in version 6.9. Otherwise, the only work-around is to write the stroke again.

There have been a few reports of Note Taker HD freezing when it starts with a particular screen configuration as it tries to re-open a document for editing. The editing areas are blank, and only a few buttons are shown, with the eraser image over part of a "Cancel" button next to a "Paste" button. Quitting the app does not fix this.

This can be caused when you switch away from the app while it is in the middle of loading and hasn't completed the load and then later switch back or restart it. Stopping in the middle of loading may be more likely in iOS 7 when you see a screen capture of previous execution displayed during reloading after a task switch from an app that used lots of runtime memory (something iOS 7 does when it switches tasks) and on older, slower iPads. The app's saved "last page of doc viewed" value gets saved incorrectly. Subsequent reloads will try to reload that page and freeze.

To restore Note Taker HD to normal operation, use the "Open In Trick" in the following way:

Get Note Taker HD to start on the List of Pages by using Mail or some other app to "Open In..." a PDF file in Note Taker HD. (For example, use "Open In" from the PDF file Mark's Teaching Materials on the Support web site.) When Note Taker HD starts and offers to import the file, press Cancel to return to the List of Pages without importing.

Now that you see the List of Pages, tap once on the entry for the doc that was freezing. DO NOT use the "Open" button to reopen that doc -- that will try to use the invalid page. Instead, double-tap on the preview (opening to that page) or on the thumbnail (opening on the first page of the doc). The doc should open correctly. Use the Done button to return to the list of pages and all should be back to normal.

Contact us at the support email address if this doesn't work.

To avoid this problem in the future until it is fixed in a later release, make sure that you wait at least a few seconds, or at least until the app seems responsive, before switching away from Note Taker HD when it starts displaying a doc. (Turning the iPad off or closing the cover is treated as "switching away" just like pressing the Home button.)

As always, do NOT uninstall the app when you have problems like this. That will erase all of your data. There is usually a way to recover your data and operation without that drastic step. Always contact Support for help in repeated crashing cases.

If you press the "+" or "-" buttons above the sliders in some of the shapes (like the grids) the app crashes. Your most recent edits will not have been saved. (Switching from the app to the Home screen or another app, putting the iPad to sleep, turning from page to page, or going back to the List of Docs display saves the current page.) There is currently no work-around. Do not use them until this is fixed.

Fixed in 6.8.2.

There is an issue with iOS 7 which makes the image capture with the iPad camera not work well in horizontal orientation. The image shown will be rotated incorrectly while taking the photo.

Until this is hopefully fixed in a future release, you can either take the photo with the iPad held in portrait (vertical) orientation and then crop the photo after taking it, or you can use the iPad Photo app to take the photo and add it to the Camera Roll and then add that photo using "Choose From Photos" in Note Taker HD.

Fixed in 6.8.2.

There are reports that while Note Taker HD seems to generally continue to work the same in the iOS 7 GM seed version of the operating system (available right now only to developers) as it has in early versions of iOS, the app's Help system does not. The text spacing is wrong and is therefore unreadable.

A new release that fixes this problem with Help is now available, version 6.8.1. It does not require iOS 7 (or use any iOS 7 code) and should work on other versions of the OS.

In any case, the entire copy of Help is on the app's web site (www.notetakerhd.com) in the Support section.

There is a bug in version 6.8 with Background Images that are images, but not PDF pages. When such pages are Output to PDF, the PDF files are corrupted and cannot be read. This does not affect the actual docs in the app, but only the output. It does not affect normal Annotation Docs.

Until a fixed version is released, you can get output by changing the Background Image to not have an image but rather a PDF page, turn off background images in Output (use the custom or Default Output Setting for "Include Background"), or contact Software Garden support.

You can create a PDF file out of an image using Adobe Acrobat by "combining" the single image file into a PDF. Make sure that the aspect ratio of the result (height divided by width) is the same as the pages you will be using it with. (The default portrait Note Taker HD page is 6500/5000=1.3.)

If this bug affects you, please let us know so we can make sure the fix is complete.

If you create a new page that is the last page of a doc, and then try unstapling that page before returning to the Managing Window, the app may crash.

This happens because the new page information, normally saved when a doc is saved, is not being saved to the master doc information before unstapling (which uses that information). Other situations when creating new pages and doing unstaple before saving may also have this behavior. Docs are saved when you press Done and return to the Managing Window, when you press the iPad Home button, or when the iPad screen turns off manually or automatically.

Even though you may not find the new pages that were last added to the doc listed in the Managing Window, when you reopen that doc for edit, if you go through the pages to the end you should find that the page you tried to unstaple is still part of the doc. (Note Taker HD looks for such "orphan" pages when it opens a doc for edit.) You should be able to then press "Done" to return to the Managing Window, and then you can either unstaple it from there (when viewing the list of pages for the doc) or you can reopen the doc for edit and use the Unstaple Page tool.

This should be fixed in version 6.8 and later.

Fixed in 6.7: When you terminate the app from running through the Multitasking Bar or by resetting the iPad, the Pen Memory setting returns to "Per-Page". Just switching from one app to another, such as by pressing the Home button on the iPad, does not do this. For now, you need to reset it manually when you restart.

Version 6.6 seems to crash when it finds a folder name at top level that starts with "@" (and perhaps some other special characters). Also, you should not have folder names with "+" in them (older versions allowed this).

If you encounter this situation, connect your iPad to iTunes, go to the device's Apps tab, select Note Taker HD in the bottom in the File Sharing section, and rename any folders with names "Folder - @inbox" to "Folder - at Inbox" or anything else without the "@". When you restart Note Taker HD you should be back where you were.

If "were you were" was viewing the contents of one of those "@" folders, you may still continue to get a crash when you start up Note Taker HD. Contact the support email address for
instructions about how to recover from that. DO NOT UNINSTALL the app as that could lead to data loss.

The "+ character is not allowed in Note Taker HD folder names. Unfortunately, older versions did not prevent that. If you did create such folder names, you should contact support for how to recover. The behavior will probably be that you can't get to that folder other than when it is first displayed when you upgraded.

There appears to be a problem with version 6.6 running on iOS 3.2. Please don't run 6.6 on that release of the operating system. If you upgrade to iOS 4 or later it should be OK. If that is a problem, please contact the support email address.

There are a few reports of crashes after upgrading. First you see the "What's New in version 6.6" message, and after you press Done it crashes and you are unable to restart the app.

The cause for the reports we have investigated so far have been the same: The existing folders included ones starting with the "@" character. See the bug report about that for a way to recover without data loss.

Fixed in 6.6: Some of the shapes (mainly lines) can end up distorted when pasted and then repositioned before confirmation. One of the ends of the line goes back to its original position instead of being repositioned.

A work-around in this situation is to undo the distorted paste if you did it, paste and then confirm without repositioning, and then use the normal Select Move by dragging the "hand" in the middle of the selection. If that would move other objects that you don't want to move, you could first paste onto a blank page, reposition there, and then copy it for pasting.

The shapes that may be affected are: Horiz line on grid, Vertical line on grid, Diagonal line on grid, Line on angles, Graphing straight line, Pointer shape, and Scaling Arrow.

Fixed in 6.6: Some people have found that when they select a doc to preview right after they upgrade to version 6.5 the app crashes and then continues to crash every time they try again. This is caused by an obscure interaction between your last activity in Note Taker HD before upgrading and the display of the "What's New" message. Sometimes the app "fixes itself" and stops behaving this way.

If you encounter this behavior, and it hasn't "fixed itself" yet, do the following: Restart the app from the crash, press the "Done" button to get out of the "What's New" message, and then press the iPad Home button. Once you are back to the iPad home screen, double-press the Home button to show the iPad Multitasking Bar at the bottom of the screen. Press and hold on the Note Taker HD icon there (NOT above on the Home screen) and then release. Tap the red "-" to stop Note Taker HD from running. Press Home again to hide the Multitasking Bar. Restart Note Taker HD. It should now skip the "What's New" message and go directly to the Managing Window. The app should now work normally.

This is usually the first time you try using this feature after installing (or upgrading) the app. Sometimes the PDF file opens in the app but doesn't create an annotation page, and sometimes Note Taker HD does not show up in the "Open In..." list.

The "fix" is to reboot your iPad once or twice. (Hold down the Power button for a few seconds, confirm, then restart by pressing Power again.)

This happens when you turn the iPad back on after it has "locked" because you haven't been using it for a few minutes. This is new behavior with iOS 4.2, and affects other apps, too. Apple is aware of it.

To get around this issue, just press the iPad "Home" button to stop Note Taker HD temporarily, and then go back into the app by either pressing the icon on the home page or double-clicking the Home button and tapping the Note Taker HD icon on the multitasking bar. When the app resumes, the VGA should work correctly.

Fixed in 6.5. There is a bug in version 6.0 and 6.0.1 with backup and restore of folders with names that include comma (",") characters. Those backups will probably restore incorrectly, if at all. It is good practice not to use commas nor periods (".") in folder names.

This will be fixed in the next release, which should be able to read those backup files correctly. The bug does not affect "Save To" file, just ones created by "Backup All" and used by "Restore All".

If you encounter this bug on restoring before the 6.5 release comes out, please contact us at Software Garden so we can help you recover your data.

If you rename the folders with commas in their name to not have any commas, and then do a "Backup All", the new backup files should restore correctly.

Fixed in 6.5. In version 6.0.1, doing an "Open In" of an archive file (created with the Backup All tool) does nothing. However, if you use iTunes File Sharing to move that same file into the Note Taker HD main directory, you can use the Restore All command to choose the file directly and restore. This should be fixed in the next release.

This problem only occurs with files created with Backup All tool, not the Save To tool. The saved docs from Save To should work OK with Open In.

Fixed in 6.5. There is a reported case when you are editing a doc (zoomed or unzoomed editing) and access the Pen Preset settings page that recent edits will be lost. Accessing the presets themselves when changing pen attributes is not an issue -- it is using the Set Pen Preset tool in edit or zoomed edit Tools to change the presets that can cause the problem.

You should be able to avoid this issue by only using the Set Pen Preset tool during edit when you have made changes immediately after viewing the Page Settings (by pressing the "gear" button in the upper left) or after exiting edit ("Done") and returning anew to edit without additional edit changes. This ensures that your edits have been saved in the doc data files. You can also avoid it by only accessing the screen to set Pen Presets from the App Settings.

This apparently happens when the app gets a type of memory warning (a common occurrence, especially when annotating PDF files) while doing the Set Preset Pens operation.

Fixed in 6.0.1. There is a bug with the "Search" filter. Right now it is best that you don't use that filter if you have 6.0 until you upgrade to 6.0.1.

The symptom is that if you have used a Search filter there is a good chance that the app will then crash at various later points in the Managing Window. Once this happens it will be hard to use the app. If you have successfully used Search already, but have successfully set the search back to empty (such as by pressing the Reset Filters button), you probably won't encounter the crashes from that particular use.

If you encounter this bug, see "Recovering from the Search Filter bug". The bug is only related to the Search setting and should not affect your other data.

Fixed in 6.0.1. When you are using the 1-doc per row, doc name only listing in the Managing Window, pressing the ">" button selects the first row's doc to show pages, not the doc with the ">". This will be fixed in 6.0.1.

Fixed in 6.0.1. When you are typing into a block of text in Text Mode or other object modes when editing a page, the Page View and the text view you are typing into are not appropriately resized to take into account the keyboard. This used to work in previous versions. The effect is that you can't see the bottom of a long amount of text you are typing without hiding the keyboard. This will be fixed in 6.0.1.

Images that were taken in a portrait orientation, and that have that information in the image's EXIF data, may be imported with the wrong aspect ratio and appear stretched. This includes portrait orientation photos taken with the cameras on the iPad 2.

Most images from the web and elsewhere, including those edited with an image editor, do not have this information, so for many people this is a rare situation.

This should be fixed in version 5.1.

For now, the main work-around is to use landscape (horizontal) orientation for directly used images when possible, or to do minor edits on the images in an image editor and use that image.

This is probably an old issue. When you edit tag names accessed from the page settings (not from other tools that access tags), only the Done button on the keyboard actually changes the name. Other "Done" buttons on the screen, such as in the upper-left corner, do not change the text.

A list of bugs and issues in older version is in Old Support Issues for Note Taker HD.