The simple answer is "No, they are independent".

However, just like two iPads, you can send copies of one or more docs from one device to another and continue editing on the second device. You will now have two independent copies that may be independently edited.

To do this, you use the "Save To" tool to save one or more docs in a folder to a single "pages.xxx.nthd" file for sharing.

To get the ".nthd" file from one device to another, especially if they are running with the same Apple ID, you can use the "Open In" target from "Save To" and save it to the iOS/iPadOS Files app ("Save to Files" in the Open In popup). If the destination you choose in the Files app is in the iCloud Drive, you can easily retrieve it on your other device.

Alternatively, if the other device is nearby, even if it is not using the same Apple ID, you can choose AirDrop instead of the Files app and have the ".nthd" file you are sending open directly into Note Taker HD on the second device. When the second device asks for permission to receive the file, choose Note Taker HD and then when the app opens select the folder in which to copy the docs.

It is always good practice to have backup copies of your data on another computer in case your iPad is lost or has problems. A step-by-step guide to backing up Note Taker HD data is in: Backing Up Note Taker HD.

Some people who are switching from an older iPad to a new one have asked for explicit instructions about how to manually copy the Note Taker HD data from their old iPad to a new one. Some have found that the other means they've tried, such as using iCloud, haven't worked for them. You'll find those explicit instructions on the "Copying Data From One Machine to Another for Note Taker HD" page.

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".

As described in the Help about Optional Fields, the {filename} Optional Field is the file name of the file that is being annotated and may only be used in the Annotation Doc Name App Setting. This Optional Field refers to the actual file that is being made the background to be annotated before the annotation file is created. Through stapling, multiple files could have been used for backgrounds to annotate in one doc.

During Output you can have more than one doc output at a time, so the Optional Field you probably are looking for is {firstpagename}.

Since you probably used {filename} to set the doc name (or {filename-noextension}), the name of the doc (accessed with {firstpagename}) seems to be what most people are looking for.

When you enter text in Output Settings you should see a list of allowed Optional Fields below the input area.

Only empty folders may be deleted. Use the "Delete" tool when viewing the contents of a folder of docs to delete docs. After pressing it, a "checked box" button will appear under the list of docs which you can use to select all of them. Remember that deleting of docs cannot be undone.

Now use the "Folders" button in the upper-left of the screen to view the list of folders. Press the pencil "edit" button above the list of folders to display an editable list of folders on the right. Use the red delete buttons there to delete folders.

iOS 5 introduced the 4- and 5-finger "multitasking gestures" that switch from one app to another, among other things. Sometimes a resting wrist or palm (supposedly protected by a wrist guard) gets interpreted as a few "fingers" and invokes these gestures. An app, apparently, cannot turn them off itself. However, you can go into the main iPad Settings app, and in the General section, turn "Multitasking Gestures" to "OFF".

Right now Note Taker HD only has basic "plain text in a box" support for text. You can add a block of text to a page by going into Text Mode, and then either double-tap on the page or drag from the Text Editing Box in the upper-right. You can then tap in the Text Editing Box (not on the page itself) to bring up the normal iOS text menu and select Paste. You can drag the handles to make the block of text wider to fit more text if necessary.

See the "Text on a Page" help page for more information.

Note that only plain text is currently stored and displayed by the app, though you can change the font and color of the entire block.

Note Taker HD does not automatically flow text from one page to another. If you are adding more text than can fit on one page you will need to have a separate text area on each page. For example, you can paste all of the text into a block of text on one page, then duplicate that page (along with its block of text). On the second page select the block of text and, in the Text Editing Box in the upper-right, delete the part of the text that fits on the first page. Repeat as necessary.

Note Taker HD does indeed have support for an external display.

First, if you are using an AppleTV device for displaying wirelessly with a 2nd or 3rd generation iPad, you need to turn on AirPlay to that device in the iPad Multitasking Bar. (Double-press the Home button on the iPad, swipe left-to-right, tap the up-pointing AirPlay icon.)

By default, the app only echos during doc editing, and then only shows a part of the page that you specify. This is called "echoing". Using the External Video Settings app setting, you can disable echoing and switch to the normal full-screen "mirroring" that you see in most other apps that don't explicitly support external displays.

See the "VGA / Digital AV / AirPlay Echoing" help page for more information.

It has been reported, and I hear from users, that sometimes when iTunes restores apps and data after an upgrade to iOS 5 that the restore will fail before all apps and data are copied back to the iPad. I have heard reports from people that doing the restore again, until it doesn't fail, sometimes fixes the situation (but I don't know anything for sure about that situation). In any case, DO NOT download a new copy of Note Taker HD from the App Store and install it trying to recover from such failures unless you have a backup of the Note Taker HD data that is outside of iTunes (e.g., one you made with the Backup All tool and copied elsewhere on your personal computer). New copies of the app will start with no user data and when synced to iTunes may wipe out any previous data in iTunes, which is probably not what you want.

It is best, before upgrading to iOS 5, to do a Backup All of Note Taker HD, and use iTunes file sharing to copy that file to somewhere safe on your personal computer. Then you can at least get to that if things don't work out. Also, if you have problems later, at least you'll have that backup as a fallback.

Information about Backup and File Sharing is in the help, both in the app and on this web site. As with most anything involving computers, doing backups and keeping them in various places is usually good practice.

The App Settings only let you specify a few things for the New Doc Initial Settings. Sometimes you want to have different ink settings, or some some initial text areas or time stamps, or other customization. In that case, create a doc and modify it to be exactly how you'd like to start, and then move or copy that doc into the Templates folder. Give it an appropriate name. This name will now show up in the list when you press the "+" button to create new docs in the Managing Window. If you select it, the new doc will be created as a duplicate of that template doc.

When you are viewing the list of folders you can display the docs in any folder by pressing the ">" button next to the folder in the list. Alternatively, you can double-tap on the folder name. Either of these should "dive into" the folder and display its contents.

Likewise, when viewing the list of docs in a folder, if you tap on the ">" button on the right of a selected doc you will be brought to a list of the pages in that doc. Alternatively, you can press and hold for 1/2 second on a doc's thumbnail and then release to view the list of pages.

You use the "Folders" and "Docs" buttons in the upper-left of the screen above the list to go back "up" from pages to docs and docs to folders.

In version 6.0, double-tapping on the preview of a page in the Managing Window opens editing on that page. Double-tapping on the thumbnail opens on the thumbnail's page (the doc's first page when viewing a list of docs, the particular page when viewing a list of pages).

To open for edit on the last page edited for that doc, press the "Open" button at the top of the Managing Window.

In version 6 the Auto-Advance button has been replaced by the Zoom Tools button. This button brings up a list of tools which include one to toggle the Auto-Advance on and off (it's the first tool in the list). NOTE: The tool tells you what selecting it will do, not the current state. "Turn Auto-Advance OFF" means that it is currently on and that selecting that tool will turn it off.

As an added bonus, you can now configure the two small buttons next to the Close-up View to have any of several buttons instead of the default Detail Area sizing buttons. One of those options is an Auto-Advance toggle (that shows the current state like the old button), but there is also a second pen chooser, eraser, redo, and more. You configure the buttons on the Apps Settings.

When you use the "Backup All" tool a file is created that is in the main "Documents" directory of the app. This directory (which Apple calls a folder and Windows calls a directory, but we'll call it a "directory" to distinguish it from Note Taker HD folders) is accessible through iTunes as explained in the File Sharing help topic. All iPad apps have a Documents directory, though not all choose to make them accessible through iTunes.

To save backup files out of the app you need to make a copy and move it elsewhere out of the app, such as by using iTunes as explained in that help topic or by using Open In when the backup is first created. If you uninstall the app you will be deleting all files including backups that are in the Documents directory. Do not uninstall unless you truly want to erase all of your data permanently. The backup (and save) files are not automatically stored in a place outside of the app.

Are you using the "Email as Image" editing tool (which does not include the background) or the "Output" tools on the List of Pages (which can include the background)? The Output tools are available from the Tools button as well as by pressing and holding on a page's thumbnail. The "Email as Image" tool makes a JPEG as output while the others produce PDFs files.

Also, make sure that the Output Setting for "Include Background" is set to "YES". You can set the default for this in the App Settings.

There are two parts to this: Background Images and Template Pages. Let's look at them separately.

*** Background Images

A background image is a single PDF page from a PDF file, or an image like a JPEG photo file, that can be displayed as the background of any sheet of any page. It is like the lined backgrounds in that respect and it is chosen from a list. The one image or single PDF page is shared by all sheets that have it as a background. So, if you assign background image "Time Sheet" to three sheets of any pages, if you change the image or PDF page associated with that background (using the Background Image List's "Change" button) all three sheets will look different when you turn to them. This is good and bad -- it saves memory by having only one copy and lets you update lots of pages at once, but it means that you could inadvertently change the look of many pages by mistake. Also, if you have multiple pages in the PDF file you need one background image for each.

Annotation pages have a copy of the entire PDF file associated with it. If you create two annotation pages from the same PDF file, you will have made two separate copies of the original PDF file.

To create a background image, you must get the file (PDF or JPEG) into the File-Import folder. You can do this by using iTunes and adding the file to the File Sharing for Note Taker HD, or you can do "Open In..." of that file from some other app (like Mail) and then indicate that you want the file to be added to the File-Import folder by pushing the "Add to Folder" button.

Once the file is in the File-Import folder, you can then go to the Background Images (from the App Tools) and then create a new background image, give it a name, and then "change" it to have that file, or single page of a multi-page PDF, as the "image" for that background.

Let us say that you used "Open In..." with a file was named "day-planner.pdf". After pressing the "Add to Folder" button, the app will now indicate "Copied File" and switch to displaying the Background Image List.

Once in the Background Image List, press "Add New Item" and you'll see "(Unnamed background)" added to the list. Tap the text field in the upper right (above the word "width") and type the name you want for the background image (e.g., "Day Planner") and then press the Done button ON THE KEYBOARD (this is important).

Now, press the Change button. Select the "day-planner.pdf" file from the list of the contents of the File-Import folder on the left. Make sure the page you want as the background is selected and showing (a background can only be from one page of even a multi-page PDF file). (There is a list of page numbers.) Press the "Save" button. Leave the "Output as PDF: YES" and the "See PDF" as they were by default. Press the Done button in the upper left to return to the List of Pages.

You then can set the background of any sheet of any page to have that background, just like you would with narrow vs. wide lines.

For example, create a default blank page. Use the Page Settings (the Gear in the upper right) to set the "Background" setting. Select, continuing with the example, "Day Planner" in the second set of backgrounds listed. Press Done to get out of the Page Settings. Set up anything else you want about the page, such as the size of the Detail Area, the pen color and width, etc. Give the page a name (like "Day Planner Template") and then press the Done in the upper left to get back to the List of Pages.

That's a lot to do. Also, you really might not want to do this. Instead, you might just have a single or multi-page PDF file that you want to use as the background of a single or multi-sheet page and not use that mechanism. You can make an "annotation page" that has its own copy of the PDF file associated with it and has each sheet associated with different pages of that PDF file. You create an annotation page by either doing an "Open In..." of the PDF file and pushing the button on the window that comes up that creates the annotation page. Alternatively, you can put the PDF file in the File-Import folder and then use the "+" and "Annotate PDF File" on the List of Pages to bring up the contents of the File-Import folder and select a PDF file to be annotated. You can use the same file any number of times -- it will be copied for each use.

*** Background Images vs. Annotation Pages

If your goal is to have a background page (e.g., the Day Planner page) and each day create a new, blank one to use, I think it's better in this case to use a background image rather than repeatedly making an annotation page. If you want to update the background with something totally different, just make a new Background Image with a different name, leaving the old ones alone.

*** Template Pages

Now, once you have a page that looks the way you want, instead of creating it each time, you can have a "template page" that is duplicated to make the new page.

A template page is just like any other page, except that it is also in the template page list. This list is shown when you press the "+". That's easier than finding the page in the List of Pages and then calling up the Duplicate command, but it is the same.

To get to the list of template pages in version 6.0, go to the Templates folder. The "doc order" of the docs there is the order on the "+" list, #1 being first, #2 second, etc. (Not the "modified" order.) You can copy docs into the Templates folder using the "To Folder" tool.

In version 5.1, in the List of Pages, press the Tools button. Select "Template Pages." It will say "Reorder Template Pages" at the top. Press the "Select Pages" button at the bottom. Find, for example, your "Day Planner Template" page in the list and tap it to select it. The box next to it should be checked. Tap "Reorder" to make sure it's now in the list. (You can reorder the list at that point if you have more than one template page.) Tap outside of the popover to dismiss the Template Page list.

Tap the "+" button in the upper right. The "Day Planner Template" should now be in the list of pages you can create. Tap it each time you want a new page.

People are constantly requesting features such as these. They are all, almost without exception, useful features that many of us would like. They have been going on a "wish list" and slowly but surely I'm trying to implement a lot of them. It is going to take a long time to do them all, but I hope you are happy with each new feature as it's added.

New releases take a lot of time. As long-time user know, I try to do a thorough job with each new feature. Many of the features logically go together and need to all be implemented at once, which makes the time between releases take even longer. However, I am working hard to improve the app. If you look at the upgrade history in the "What's New" help topic you'll see some of the continuing evolution it's made so far.

I'm sorry that I can't be more specific and give exact dates. I've learned over my 40+ years of programming that you can't (and shouldn't) really promise anything you don't already have coded.

Some people have reported having the app stop being able to send files to other apps. On close examination, we found out that they had set the Filename for Output to be the page name, not the default. They had also set the page name to have the date and time (producing names like "Created 04/05/11"). This gave them a name with illegal characters for a filename, like "/". Using a different filename or page name (such as one with the "{now-filename}" Optional Field) fixed the problem. In version 6.6, characters like "/" are now replaced with a "-" character.

You can delete files in the File-Import folder list by swiping across the row and then pressing the "Delete" button that shows up. Most uses of the files here cause the file to be copied elsewhere in the system for use, so in many cases you can "clean things up" without affecting your existing pages.

The video about new features in 4.5 shows a custom Email Subject setting that is tailored to Evernote. The value is:

{firstpagename} @Notes {firstpagetags#}

This means: Use the name of the first page in the pages being output as the name of the Evernote page, put it in the "Notes" notebook, and tag it with the tags of the first page output. Note that the notebook and tags must already exist on Evernote. An email with such a subject is supposed to be filed as indicated (according to the Evernote documentation at the time Note Taker HD version 4.5 was created). See the app "Optional Fields" Help topic for more information.

Yes, and many people prefer using a stylus with notetaking programs like Note Taker HD. Note, though, that the iPad screen uses a technology that only works with a special type of stylus. This is usually not the sharp-pointed type that you might find on desktop tablets, Tablet PCs, or many older pocket organizers, but rather one that has a wider end that simulates the electrical characteristics of a finger. Even though the tip is wide, the iPad software only tells programs like Note Taker HD about a single point of contact for the tip so it acts like a pointed pen and small finger motions result in small variations in the "ink" position.

The Help includes information about one such device, the Pogo Sketch stylus, which was used for some of the sample pages in the screenshots.

Different people prefer different brands of stylus. Some designs have more "drag" against the screen and perhaps work better for those who print with short strokes. Other designs have less drag and may be more comfortable for those who use cursive handwriting. Some have thick barrels and some have thin. Which is best for you is a matter of personal preference.

There is an App Setting for email called "Include Background (Lines and Images) in PDF Output". In some older versions of the app this was set to a default of "No". Set it to "Yes" to include the backgrounds.

Note that background images can only be included in PDF output. When emailing as an image (from the Editing Tools) only the ink itself is output. Image output usually takes up a larger number of bytes and is not of as high quality as PDF output, but is required for some purposes such as character recognition by other products.

Normally, PDF backrounds are included in the PDF email as PDF data for maximum quality (and often smallest size). There are cases, though, where the fonts in the original PDF do not export correctly, in which case you can specify that background output for that particular background be a bitmap image of the PDF instead of the PDF data. This is set on the Background Image List where the background image is defined using the "Output as PDF: YES/NO" button (set it to "NO" if you are having font issues with that particular PDF page). iOS version 4.2 seems to fix this issue so you will have much less need, if any, to use the "Output as PDF: NO" option.

Some people have missed that the wrist guard must be turned on for each sheet in which you want to use it. You use the "Wrist Guard On" tool on the Editing Tools in Edit 1. The setting is remembered for each sheet and defaults to off. For new blank sheets, you can have the wrist guard start in the "on" state by setting the appropriate "New Ink Page Initial Settings" app setting. This setting does not affect existing pages. New pages created from template pages will have the wrist guard set whichever way the template page had it set. For more information about the wrist guard, see the "Wrist Guard" section of the Page Editing help topic.

No. The pen color on the color chooser that looks like black is indeed black. However, in Edit 2, all colors are displayed a little lighter in the bottom Close-Up View. (Technically, they have an alpha value less than 1.0.) I found the lighter color less jarring than a solid one so left in this effect that was first introduced in the iPhone Note Taker app. The line actually being drawn in the Page View, though, is indeed the color you chose, in this case black.