Organizing Notes

Organizing Notes

Associate Notes with Records

In Zoho CRM, you can associate notes to the records by specifying the required details. You can create notes only if you have the Create permission for Notes.

To create notes

  1. Click the [Module] tab.
  2. In the [Module] Home page, select the record.
  3. In the [Module] Details page, the existing note details, if any, are displayed.
  4. Enter the note content in the text box. Optionally, add a note title. 

    You can use Rich text formatting. The available format options for Rich text are: Bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, text and background colors, bullet points, numbering, links, indentation, subscript, superscript, emojis.
  5. Click the Attach File link if you want to upload files to the note.

    You can attach up to 5 files in a note and the total size of the files should not exceed 20 MB.
  6. Click Save.
Notes
Note
  • Every note that you associate with a record will be counted as one more record in Zoho CRM. So it will contribute towards the total number of records.
    For example, you have a total of 1000 records in your account and every record has a note associated with it - then the total number of records in your account will be 2000.
  • The maximum character limit for note content is 65,535 characters. This count includes the content entered and the HTML tags generated by rich text formatting. 
  • For integrations and APIs, the tags will be included. For Advanced Analytics and Zoho Projects, plain content will be sent.
Additional details on Rich Text Notes:
  1. During import or while using APIs, users can add content for rich text notes using tags, which will be transformed into formatted data.
  2. When data is imported or entered into CRM through APIs, there are limitations on the tags and styles that can be used in rich text notes. Users are not allowed to apply formatting such as changing the font size to be small or large. However, they will still have the ability to use attribute values, such as different icons for bulleted lists, that are not supported in the user interface.

    Check the table below for the complete list of allowed tags and the attributes allowed for the tags respectively.
    Allowed tags
    		 Allowed attributes
    b — Bold
    —
    i — Italic 
    —
    u — Underline 
    —
    a — Link 
    href, target, style
    sub — Subscript
    style
    sup — Superscript
    style
    ul — Unordered list
    style
    ol — Ordered list 
    style
    li — List
    style
    span
    style
    div 
    style
    p — Paragraph
    style
    small — Small 
    —
    br — Line break
    —
    del — strikethrough
    —
    strong
    —

    Following are the permissible style values:
    font-style font-weight
    text-decoration
    color
    background-color
    list-style-type
    padding-inline-start
    		 margin-inline-start
    padding-left
    list-style-position
    display
    —

  3. And, there when importing or sending data through APIs, certain reserved characters need to be changed to the equivalent form so that the system gets the data properly.
    1. If an open tag like '<' is closed correctly, the formatting will be applied without any issues. However, if it is not closed properly, the system will remove it and it will not be recognized as a 'lesser than' symbol when importing.
    2. If the user wants to indicate a value such as 65 < 75 in the rich text field, they should replace the symbol '<' with '&lt ;', which represents this reserved character.

Import Notes

There may be occasions when you would like to acquire Notes from external sources or other CRM applications. In Zoho CRM you can easily import notes from external sources.

Notes
Note
  • Before importing the notes, you should have already imported the Accounts and Contacts related to the notes.

To import notes

  1. Click Setup > Data Administration > Migrate Data from other CRM.
  2. In the Data Migration Wizard page, select Import Notes from the drop-down list.
  3. Click Next.
  4. In the
    Migrate Notes page, drop-down, do the following:
    • Browse and select the file to be imported.
      Note, that only CSV files can be imported.
    • Select the Character Encoding from the list.
    • Select the Date and Time format used in the import field. Any other date and time format used in the import file will be ignored.
      The format that you specify here will be used for the Date fields and a combination of the values for Date & Time fields.
    • Select the Send Notification Email check box, to receive a notification mail about the import.
    • Click Next.
  5. In the Map Fields section, map the fields to the field names that you had mentioned in the CSV file.
    The field names that you had mentioned in the CSV file will be available in the drop down lists.
  6. Click Next to import records.
    When the migration is complete an email is sent to the user (administrator) who imported the records.
Notes
Note
  • The file size should not exceed 50 MB.
  • In the CSV file, the details in the first row will be treated as the field names.
  • By default, under Advanced Options, the Date and Time values selected are yyyy-mm-dd and hh:mm:ss format respectively. You can change the format but make sure that the selected format is used in the import file. In case of any differences, the default format will be used.

Export Notes

This feature allows you to export the notes from Zoho CRM in CSV format. 

To export notes

  1. Click Setup > Data Administration > Export Data.
  2. In the Export Data page, select Export Notes from the drop-down list.
  3. Click Export.
  4. In the dialog box, select Save File, and then click OK.
    The records will be exported and saved in .CSV format in your local disk.

When notes are exported via Reports: 
You can export notes in three formats: Excel, CSV, and PDF. For Excel and CSV, the data is exported as HTML content, while PDF exports retain full rich text formatting.

When notes are exported through Reports, you also have the option to export rich text notes as plain text. This option is available for Excel and CSV exports, while PDF exports will continue to show rich text formatting.



NotesNote: When exporting format is Excel or CSV, the note content is converted into HTML if plain text is not selected. For example, Bold will be exported as <b>Bold</b>.

Delete Notes

Occasionally, you may need to remove the unnecessary notes from Zoho CRM for a better user experience. You may consider removing notes that are not useful for future reference.

To delete notes

  1. Click the [Module]tab.
  2. In the [Module]Home page, select the record.
  3. In the [Module] Details page, under Notes section, click the relevant Del link.
  4. In the Confirmation dialog box, click OK to delete the note permanently.
Notes
Note
  • You can delete notes only if you have the Delete permission for Notes.
  • The deleted notes are temporarily stored in Zoho CRM's Recycle Bin.
  • If you delete the notes from the Recycle Bin, you cannot restore them.

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