Index cards, but digital

May 3, 2023 11:34 AM

I’m looking for a free, simple web app or free, simple piece of Windows software that would function like a set of index cards. Most useful in this case: the ability to re-order the cards by drag-and-drop.

No luck so far, exactly because it’s such a plain idea. I’m not very interested in coding a solution myself.

Would like rich text functionality on the cards. No images or hyperlinks needed, though, just basic formatting.

I’ve also tried putting things into a Google Doc with headings, and while the document outline does work well for navigation, you can’t, as I’d hoped, re-order sections easily.

Appreciate any ideas! Again, I do not want to pay money for this, unless I guess under $5 as a one-off payment.

posted by lokta to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Apologies if you’ve considered this already, but would PowerPoint or Google Slides meet your needs? In PowerPoint at least, you can easily drag individual slides and sections around and can set up the slides so they’re visually simple.
posted by MadamM at 11:47 AM on May 3, 2023

I would use Mural.co for this. It's an online whiteboard tool (Miro is another - I use Mural more tho) that would allow you to create a set of sticky notes or card shaped things you can write/type on and drag around to your heart's content. They have a free tier and the ability to create an infinite canvas, and a robust search capability.
posted by ersatzkat at 11:52 AM on May 3, 2023

Depending on what you're trying to do, Trello might work. I've used it to write some notes to self and then re-arrange them.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:59 AM on May 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: MadamM: I hadn’t realised! I tried this just now, and it’s possible to make the interface (at least on Slides) very stripped-down and not visually distracting, and so it might just work. :)
posted by lokta at 12:03 PM on May 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

You can do something like this pretty easily in Microsoft OneNote, which is free to use with a Microsoft account and may already be installed on your machine.

OneNote has "pages" and "notebooks", where notebooks are just lists of pages you can rearrange. Pages can also contain subnotes that can be dragged around visually.
posted by rollick at 2:52 PM on May 3, 2023

Here is a quick screenshot of a demo in OneNote -- I think all these features are in the free version, although I have an Office 365 account so I'm not sure. You can sort the "cards" in the list pane manually
posted by rollick at 3:01 PM on May 3, 2023

The free note taking software Obsidian has a feature like this, called “canvas”. It lets you see your notes on separate cards and drag them around spatially.
posted by wyzewoman at 5:24 PM on May 3, 2023

Anki?
posted by nostrada at 5:17 AM on May 4, 2023

Windows 1.04 came with a program called CARDFILE.EXE which seems pretty close. Wikipedia has an article about it.
posted by leaper at 10:13 AM on May 4, 2023

I think Google Keep might even work for this.
posted by QuakerMel at 1:14 PM on May 4, 2023