Research notes for your dissertation: from paper to searchable

1. Set up a notebook and projects. Create a notebook in Axsuro for your thesis. A #project in a line collects everything on one chapter or question, such as #chapter3 or #interviews.
2. Photograph the pages. After reading, in the archive or in the lab: a photo with the Axsuro app on your iPhone, or photos and PDFs in the browser at app.axsuro.com. Bring in full old notebooks in one go.
3. Search, ask, reuse. ⌘K finds any line, and Ask answers with a link to the page. Copy formulas as LaTeX and tables as cells, and turn longer drafts into a document for Word.

A dissertation takes years, and the note that matters is often in a notebook from eighteen months ago. Once a page is read, you can find it again:

• Search: ⌘K searches every line that was read, plus notebooks, projects, tasks and events. Ask searches your documents too.
• Ask: ask in plain words, such as “What did I note about Müller's sample size?”. Ask searches by words and by meaning, across languages too: a German note answers an English question. It answers only from your notes and links the pages it found.
• Projects: every line with #chapter3 goes into that project, whichever notebook it is in.
• Open questions: a line starting with ? becomes an open question, and @supervisor says who should answer it. That way you collect what to raise at your next meeting.

If you already have full notebooks from the first years, bring them in in one go with “Bring in an old notebook”, without anything turning into tasks. More in the guide Make old diaries and notebooks searchable.

• Formulas: Axsuro also recognises handwritten maths and chemistry as LaTeX. “Copy LaTeX” for Overleaf, “Copy for Word” for an equation in Word. Axsuro reads; it does not solve. See Handwritten maths to LaTeX.
• Tables: a hand-drawn table, such as measurements or a coding scheme, goes to Excel as real cells with “Copy table”, or out as a CSV. See Handwritten table to Excel.
• Drafts: write doc: Introduction draft above a longer text, and everything below it to the end of the page becomes a typed document, word for word, never rewritten. Edit it in the editor and export it as Word, PDF or Markdown.
• Sketches: keep models and processes drawn on paper as sketches, and with Pro also as a clean diagram.

Many people prefer to read papers printed out, pen in hand. In the web app at app.axsuro.com/pdfs you upload a PDF, up to 50 MB and 200 pages. Axsuro gives it back to print, with room to write and a code on every sheet.

You write your comments on the sheets, photograph them like any page and get the original PDF back, with your notes as comments where you wrote them. Markers such as todo: work there as on any page.

Axsuro is not a reference manager. Keep citations, references and bibliographies in the tool you already use.

With Pro and up, you can connect an assistant such as Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor to your notes. It can then search and read your pages, documents and tasks, for example to find a note on a topic while you write. At most it proposes tasks and events, and they only count once you “Confirm”.

To be honest: what the assistant reads goes to its provider, and their terms apply there. Lines you start with private: are never seen by an assistant, nor by Ask.

Free reads 60 pages a month, Plus 500, Pro 1,500. Search, formulas as LaTeX, tables and PDFs to write on are included in every plan. Ask has 10 questions a month on Free, 100 on Plus and 500 on Pro. Students get 30 % off Plus and Pro, and every new account starts with 14 days of Pro, no card needed. All details are on pricing.

Your pages are stored in Frankfurt, read in the EU and never used to train AI models.

• How to turn handwritten maths into LaTeX for Overleaf and Word
  Turn handwritten formulas into LaTeX: photograph the page, Axsuro recognises maths and chemistry, Copy LaTeX for Overleaf, Copy for Word for an equation.
• How to make old diaries and notebooks searchable
  Digitise old diaries: bring in whole notebooks at once, Axsuro reads and dates every page with nothing to confirm. Then search them and ask them questions.
• Flashcards from handwritten notes
  Turn notes into flashcards: write q: and a: by hand, photograph the page, and Axsuro builds a deck per notebook with five boxes for spaced repetition.