Rocketbook Letter Flip Notebook
Tester: Sherry Leibold, Graphic Design, Marketing, eStore Tech
Letter Size: 8.5 in x 11 in / 32 pages
Executive Size: 6 in x 8.8 in / 36 pages
Colours: Black, Grey, Navy and White
Decoration: Logo (up to 3 colours)
The Rocketbook Letter Flip Notebook, featuring a top-turn binding, is designed for every classroom, office, and personal mission. Each page is equipped with lines on the front and a dot-grid on the back. Write smoothly with a Pilot Frixion pen/marker/highlighter, then magically wipe clean with a supplied microfiber damp cloth to reuse again and again! Use the Rocketbook app to blast your notes, plans, lists, and big ideas to your favorite cloud service for proper organization. Then, erase and reuse your Flip for your next adventure!
In this increasingly virtual, eco-friendly work world I was excited to try the Rocketbook Letterflip Notebook. I am a list maker, a note taker and a doodler so I love my notepads. My artistic side loves putting pen to paper and I have a whole stack of notes to show for it. The idea that I could organize these notes virtually and make things easier to find in future, as well as helping the environment and reducing the amount of paper I use was very appealing.
First step was downloading their app. Very easy to sign up. For reference, I have a Samsung S20 phone and the cloud storage I make use of mostly is Dropbox, and sometimes Google Drive.
Second step I did was to set up my DESTINATIONS: where the pages you scan will go, and how they are organized. You can create up to 7 different destinations. There are SYMBOLS to represent each that allows syncing between the app and the notepad. I created a “Rocketbook” folder in Dropbox and made folders within those to categorize and organize my “destinations”. Folder names like “To Do Lists,” “Misc,” and “Ideas and Inspiration”. I also have one destination set to just email the notes to me. The inside front cover of the Rocketbook Notebook has these symbols and a spot to write down the destination beside them for easy reference.
Further settings within each destination let you choose which file type you want produced – a jpeg or a pdf. For PDFs you can group multiple scanned images into one pdf by setting “Bundle Scans” to ON. There is a manual approval process where you have to verify that yes you want to send what you just scanned to your destination but you can change this to auto-send. Choose your resolution (file size), force the camera to focus before taking picture, and shake to scan.
So I took the notebook to a zoom meeting and came out with about 3 pages of scribbled notes.
TIP #1: Like any marker, it will smudge if you brush against it right away. Give it a few seconds to dry. Luckily there is a handy “eraser” on the end of the pen!
I went to the app and scanned it in. I have my app set to shake the phone to start scanning and you just have to make sure you see all 4 edges of the paper and it will then take the picture. I actually forgot to cross out the symbol/destinations these notes were going to but it lets you manually choose the destination after you take the scan. You can even send it to more than 1 destination!
The next scan I did I made sure to put an X on the diamond symbol and it worked as it should, automatically sending the file to the intended folder in Dropbox.
TIP #2: Do not write too near the bottom of the page. The scan focuses between the top of the page to just above the QR code symbol in the footer. Keep notes above the QR code or some of your text may be cut off.
My ##SMART TITLES## and SMART LIST. I did cross off a destination, but if the app recognizes a list it will add it to the app on the phone instead.
Ready to start scan!
As soon as all four sides of the page can be seen it will start the scanning.
It recognized a list. I did the checkboxes but if you did dashes or something else it did recognize these and asked if this was a Smart List, like the screen below.
And the final result!
Not too bad, just a few minor spelling fixes and this will be good to go.
You can use Handwriting Recognition (OCR) to transcribe and search your notes, English language only. This area of the app is where you can opt to turn on some features: in the Handwriting Recognition Settings turn on Smart Titles, Smart Search and Smart Lists.
Transcribing Your Notes Into Text
NOTE: This feature only works if your destination is set to email, OneNote, or Google Drive.
In the app I set my email to be one destination that allows OCR TRANSCRIPTION – simply turn it to ON. Then there are 2 options, attach or embed. Attach will send you a copy of the image as a pdf AND a “.txt” file that contains the transcription. Embed sends you the pdf and puts the transcription text into the body of the email. I tried both neat printing and cursive and it successfully transcribed a simple paragraph with only a few errors. Always proofread! Images (including graphs) are not transcribed.
TIP #3: To successfully get notes transcribed I had to remember to contain my messy note taking style and write in paragraphs, maybe some point form notes underneath. Do not write in 2 columns as it seems to read the whole length of the page left to right and I ended up having a lot of sorting to do with the transcription.
Naming Your Scans
If you turn on SMART TITLES it allows you to easily custom name the scan file.
As the default, the name of the files can be set in the app settings under File Naming Template and can consist of any variation of the following: “RB” for Rocketbook, the page, year, month, day, time. Giving you a long but informative name. You can manually change this name after it scans and before you hit done/send.
Smart Titles automates this using your handwritten notes. Simply put the title text with two hashtag symbols before and two after. For example: ##Review## To really test this I added a file name in hashtags to an existing note page and randomly put it in the middle where there was some blank space. I rescanned and it picked out the name and titled the pdf correctly. Awesome.
File History
The app keeps a history of your scans. The SMART SEARCH feature of Rocketbook lets you search through the history of past scans that were done with Handwriting Recognition turned on. You can search all those files by keyword(s).
Turn Your To-Do List into Text
The app has a SMART LIST area. There is a default “My Smart List” but you can add other categories of lists and title it how you like. When you scan a file that has point form or a list-looking type of text it will ask you if it is a smart list. If yes, you can choose to put it somewhere in your app as text. Again, proofreading is always recommended. Once it is a digital list you can add to it and mark items off as done in the list. To guarantee it’s interpreted as a list you can add an empty checkbox at the start of each list point.
TIP #4: No worries if you happen to have notes written for a long time on the page. They wipe off well when you wet the handy erasing cloth.
