RemNote Templates vs. Text Templates

Workflows and Education
#1

What can you do with templates?

Templates are a great way of bringing structure to your notes:

  • layout daily notes: Tasks for the day, journaling, things I learned, …
  • Collect information on things:
    • Author, keywords, … for articles

They can even guide your thought process!

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How to use Templates?

There are different techniques to insert a template into RemNote:

  • builtin templates using tags
  • copy&paste text/markup by hand or using a text expander

A text expander is a program that detects when you type a specific keyword and replaces it with something else. Sometimes this can also be done with a shortcut.
Popular text expanders are:

  • Autohotkey (Windows)
  • autokey (Linux)
  • espanso (cross platform)
  • Keyboard Maestro (paid, Mac)
  • Text Expander (paid, Mac, Windows, Chrome)

Browser extensions might work well with the RemNote web app and are device independent (I have not tested this):

Both approaches - builtin and 3rd party app - have their pros and cons:

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How do you use templates?

  • RemNote templates.
  • Text snippets pasted by a third-party tool.
  • Text snippets pasted by hand.
  • I don’t use templates.

0 voters

  • What is your template insertion workflow?
  • What are your favorite templates?
  • Are you satisfied with the templating experience? If not, what could be improved?

Would that a template manager be a thing?

(Note: Currently one can not click on Rems programatically. So you have to focus it manually again to paste the template. Here is the Feature Request: TODO insert link after I made the post :slight_smile: )

Further reading

5 Likes
Template Formatting
Automatically add templates to Daily Document
Text replacement for faster notes
Templates not showing up
Editor Commands Pt. 1 (Click on Rems with JavaScript)
How do I make it so every time I create a new Daily Document, a to-do list is automaticly added to it?
Easily Discernible List Card Layout
#2

I would argue that the best feature of templates are backlinks for slots and the associated portal that allows to view the same slot’s different contexts and contents. Here’s an example from my more frivolous use.

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Also as a tip, if you ever tag a template to autoadd all slots, you can get to it easily by pinning the automatically add slots powerup to the sidebar.

3 Likes
#3

I think a template manager is necessary. Now I have am tagging all the templates with another tag just so that I can figure out where/what all are my templates.

Also there is this question of should you keep all your templates in one place or keep them in their respective document scope (this is what I do)

1 Like
#4

OMG, I don’t know how to get my template into my daily pages… :confused:

https://forum.remnote.io/uploads/default/original/2X/5/5478053b9b685b84b261ce11aea774cd73df617c.jpeg

I want exactly this in my new page.

Can someone help me? I would copy and paste it every time… but I can’t!?

#5

I believe, having the ability to choose whether we want the slots to be referenced or text would make RemNote Templates more adaptable

1 Like
#6

Navigate to the daily document powerup rem by ctrl+p and typing in Daily Document. It will contain all the individual daily documents inside it.
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Add all the slots (by creating new rem and ctrl+alt+s on them) as you wish directly under it, on the same outliner level as the individual documents. Do note that the slots will be automatically alphabetically sorted.
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Unfortunately, you may only add grandchildren slots (don’t forget to also ctrl+alt+s them) if you also apply ##Automatically Add Template to the Daily Document itself (see Allow templates for templates/inheriting slots from added slots )
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Press alt+d and voila
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Do note the inherent limitations of slots, i.e. that they may only be references (they can have fronts or backs if you separate them with ::, so you may describe them inline), but this gives you an opportunity to add non-slot children to them that will only be seen on hover.

4 Likes
Automatically add templates to Daily Document
How do I see all the information under a Rem
#7

Thank you very much for your help! :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#8

I’ve added some templates to the ‘Automatically Activate Template’ rem. I use specially to review scientific papers, by adding them with ##Meta data for example. However it does not always work. I have different templates within that page and sometimes the other templates also get added, even though they are not nested. Or not all of the children get added.
How would a template manager differ from tagging the Automatically Activate Template on the side bar?

#9

I think there may have been some confusion.
Here’s the existing native functionality: the #Automatically Add Template is powerup rem that must applied to a different rem, the template, as a tag to add the template’s slots automatically when a different rem is tagged with the template. Optionally, you may manually store or portal all your template rem under the native automatically add template powerup rem to have an overview of all templates that are in use (the ones tagged with automatically add template are already collected by the powerup’s backlink portal).

Some potential template manager functionality: save you the manual step of collecting all templates by automatically collecting backlinks to any rem that has been applied as a tag and had one of its slots added. Automatically handle the same rem serving as a slot in multiple templates (rather than having to create references to it under each template and therefore having distinct backlinks for each slot). Allow for granular templates added by transitive tags, i.e. adding a “smaller” tag would add its and its parent’s slots, but not its siblings’.

Extra templates from the same document applying when choosing only one seems like a bug.

#10

Does this still work? I seemingly can’t manually add a rem to my Daily Document anymore.

#11

Made a feature request to return the feature.

#13

Please post all feature requests on the feedback platform. This particular request already exists there.