Quick Start

You installed SEO Note. Now you need a file that opens tomorrow without ceremony — not a perfect archive on day one. This guide gets you from launch to a small, usable tree in one sitting.

SEO Note is a free Windows notes manager: tree on the left, editor on the right, everything in one local file. No account. It will not sync to your phone or replace a team wiki. It will keep projects, lists and drafts in a hierarchy you can move with the mouse.

First session map

1 Launch SEO Note

2 Save a new file somewhere obvious

3 Create Inbox / Projects / Reference

4 Dump three real notes

5 Copy the file once (USB or second folder)

Launch the program

After a normal install you can start SEO Note in either of these ways:

• Run C:\Program Files\SEONote\SEO Note.exe
• Use Start → Programs → SEO Note → SEO Note

The main window opens with a tree panel and an editor. If the window feels cramped, drag the edges — standard Windows resizing. Split between tree and editor is adjustable the same way you would expect from a classic desktop app.

Create and save a file

Press Ctrl+N for a new document, then Ctrl+S and pick a path you will remember — Documents, a project folder, or a dedicated Notes directory. Do not leave the first save until “later.” An unnamed file is how people lose a good first hour.

Ctrl+O opens an existing file from disk. Ctrl+Q quits. If you work with more than one SEO Note file, F12 opens the file switcher where available — handy when Work and Personal live in separate files.

Rule: save before you import, paste a long dump, or rearrange a big subtree. Muscle memory for Ctrl+S beats clever recovery.

Grow the tree with three keys

The tree is where structure lives. Articles (notes) hang from it. You do not need the full hotkey sheet yet — three gestures cover most of day one:

• Insert — add a child under the selected note
• Ctrl+Shift+Insert — add a sibling next to the selected note
• F2 — rename the selected note

Rename early. A node still called “New note” is invisible in next week’s search. Titles like “Acme — call notes 20 Aug” age better than “stuff.”

MyNotes.sn
  Inbox
  Projects
    Sample project
      Brief
      Open questions
  Reference
  Archive

Start with those roots. Put today’s mess in Inbox; file under Projects or Reference when you have ten quiet minutes. Archive is for finished branches — drag the whole subtree, do not delete history you might need.

Type, paste, and basic editing

Click a note in the tree to open its article in the editor. Click back on the tree when you want to navigate. SEO Note supports the usual Windows clipboard commands:

• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X / Ctrl+V — copy / cut / paste
• Ctrl+A — select all in the article
• Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y — undo / redo
• Ctrl+F — find in rich text and HTML articles

You can create notes as simple text, rich text, or HTML. Paste from the web into HTML when you care about links and light formatting; use plain text when you want zero chrome; use rich text when you need Word-like formatting or OLE objects from other Windows programs.

Pick a format without overthinking

Plain text

• Fast capture
• Lists and drafts
• Least surprise on export

Rich text / HTML

• Headings, color, alignment
• HTML: pictures and links; Ctrl+R source, Ctrl+W web view
• Rich text: OLE documents where supported

Rich text and HTML notes show toolbars for size, color, style and alignment. In HTML you can drop pictures and make links; switch to source with Ctrl+R and back to web view with Ctrl+W when you need to fix markup. Rich text can hold OLE objects from programs that support that technology — useful for embedded bits, not a reason to turn every note into a compound document.

Date, calendar, and small helpers

• Ctrl+T — date / time panel into the article
• Ctrl+D — calendar panel

Stamp meeting notes as you write. It is cheaper than reconstructing “which Tuesday” from memory.

Import, export, and old outliners

You can create notes from or export to .txt, .rtf/.doc and .html. Whole trees can come in from TreePad 2.7 and KeyNote 1.6.5 if you are migrating. Import into an Archive / import-batch node first; clean titles on the notes you actually reopen. Twenty cleaned notes beat two hundred broken ones.

Bookmark panels let you keep several independent trees in one file — Work vs Personal is the usual split — without juggling multiple documents. Details live on the Main Features and GUI pages.

	Day-one goal	Skip for now
Structure	3–4 root nodes	Deep taxonomy for every hobby
Content	Notes you will open this week	Full 2019 folder dump
Formats	One default you like	OLE experiments on every node
Backup	One copy elsewhere	Elaborate sync scripts

Honest limits

• Desktop Windows first — not a phone-first capture app
• No live multi-user editing, no built-in cloud sync, no AI chat over your vault
• You own backup: copy the data file like any important document
• Import quality depends on the source; expect cleanup after TreePad / KeyNote / bulk HTML

If you need shared boards or phone parity, keep those tools for that job and use SEO Note as the local map of decisions and reference. More on that trade-off: offline notes without the cloud.

Mini FAQ

Where should the file live? Anywhere you already back up. USB-only as the sole copy is fragile; USB as a second copy is smart. See backup notes to USB.

One file or many? Start with one. Split or use bookmark panels when Work and Personal need different rhythms.

What if I mess up the tree? Drag nodes, rename with F2, Archive dead branches. Repair is usually an afternoon, not a migration.

Next steps

1. Launch SEO Note and save a named file
2. Create Inbox, Projects, Reference, Archive
3. Add three real notes with Insert / Ctrl+Shift+Insert and rename with F2
4. Learn the rest of the shortcuts on the Hot keys page
5. Copy the file once to another disk

When you want a quiet local outliner without an account, download SEO Note (or reopen the file you just made) and grow from Inbox outward.

Related: Hot keys · Main Features · How to operate · GUI · Tree outliner guide · Free notes manager · FAQ · About · Download