Site Management and Collaboration > About Design Notes > Saving file information in Design Notes

Saving file information in Design Notes

You can create a Design Notes file for each document or template in your site. (Note that if you add Design Notes to a template, the documents created with the template do not inherit the Design Notes.) You can also create Design Notes for applets, ActiveX controls, images, Flash movies, Shockwave objects, and image fields in your documents.

To set up Design Notes for your site:

1	Choose Site > Define Sites, select a site, and click Edit.
2	In the Category list at the left, click Design Notes.
	Enable Design Notes for your site by selecting Maintain Design Notes (if it's not already selected).
	When Maintain Design Notes is selected, you can create Design Notes for files in your site. Whenever a file is copied, moved, renamed, or deleted, the associated Design Notes file is also copied, moved, renamed, or deleted.
	Choose whether the Design Notes associated with your site are uploaded with the rest of your documents, by selecting or deselecting Upload Design Notes for Sharing.
	When Upload Design Notes for Sharing is selected, you can share Design Notes with the rest of your team. When you put or get a file, Dreamweaver automatically puts or gets the associated Design Notes file. If you work alone on your site, you can deselect this option to improve performance of file transfers; when the option is deselected, Design Notes are maintained locally but are not uploaded with your files.
3	Click OK.

To add Design Notes to a document:

1	While the document is active in the Document window, choose File > Design Notes.
	You can also select the file in the Site window, and then choose File > Design Notes, or double-click on the Notes column. If the file resides on a remote site, you must first check out or get the file, then select it in the local folder. (See Checking in and checking out files on a remote server or Getting and putting files.)
2	In the Basic Info tab, add notes of various sorts:
	Choose the status of the document from the Status pop-up menu.
	Type comments in the Notes text field.
	Click the date icon (just above the Notes text field) to insert the current local date.
	To make the Design Notes file appear every time the file is opened, select Show When File Is Opened.
3	In the All Info tab, add other keys and values that might be useful to other developers of your site. For example, you could name a key Author (in the Name field) and define the value as Heidi (in the Value field). Click the Plus (+) button to add a new key/value pair; select a pair and click the Minus (-) button to remove it.
4	Click OK to save the notes.
	The notes you entered are saved to a subfolder called _notes, in the same location as the current file. The file name is the document's file name, plus the extension .mno. For example, if the file name is index.html, the associated Design Notes file is named index.html.mno.

To add Design Notes to an object:

1	Choose Design Notes from the object's context menu. (Open the context menu for the object by right-clicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Macintosh) the object.)
2	Follow steps 2 through 4 above for adding Design Notes to a document.
	Note that an object's Design Notes file is saved in a _notes subfolder in the same directory as the object's source file, which is not necessarily in the same directory as the document that the object appears in.

To open Design Notes associated with a file, do one of the following:

	Select the file in the Site window, or open the file itself; then choose File > Design Notes. The Design Notes associated with that file opens.
	In Notes column of the Site window, double-click the yellow Design Notes icon.

To assign a status that isn't listed in the Status pop-up menu:

1	Open Design Notes for a file or object.
2	Click the All Info tab.
3	Click the Plus (+) button.
4	In the Name field, enter the word status.
5	In the Value field, enter the status.
	If a status value already existed, it's replaced with the new one.
6	Click the Basic Info tab and note that the new status value appears in the Status pop-up menu.
	Note: You can have only one new value in the status menu at a time. If you follow this procedure again, the new status value you entered the first time is replaced with the new status value you enter the second time.

To disable Design Notes:

1	Choose Site > Define Sites.
2	In the Define Sites dialog box, select the site and click Edit.
3	In the Site Definition dialog box, click Design Notes.
4	Deselect Maintain Design Notes.
	Deselecting this option disables the Design Notes capability. If you deselect this option and then click Clean Up, all local Design Notes files for your site are deleted.
5	Click OK.
	A dialog box appears, asking if you would like to delete existing Design Notes files. Click Yes to delete such files, or No to leave them in place.

To use Design Notes locally only:

1	Choose Site > Define Sites.
2	In the Define Sites dialog box, select the site and click Edit.
3	In the Site Definition dialog box, select Maintain Design Notes in the Design Notes box.
4	Deselect Upload for Sharing.
	Design Notes will not be transferred to the remote site when you check in/put your files. You will still be able to add and modify the Design Notes for your site locally.

To delete unassociated Design Notes from your site:

1	Choose Site > Define Sites.
2	In the Define Sites dialog box, select the site and click Edit.
3	In the Site Definition dialog box, click Design Notes.
4	Click Clean Up. Dreamweaver prompts you to verify that it should delete any Design Notes that are no longer associated with a file in your site. (If you use Dreamweaver to delete a file that has an associated Design Notes file, the Design Notes file is deleted too, so usually orphan Design Notes files occur only if you delete or rename a file outside of Dreamweaver.)
	Note: If you deselect the Maintain Design Notes option before you click Clean Up, Dreamweaver deletes all Design Notes files for your site.