Reading, highlighting and noting the board packet

Where do I read and mark up the packet?

(For what the packet itself contains — which attachments are included in full and which are only listed — see What's in the board packet.)

Open a meeting's Packet page and choose a version to open it in the in-app reader — no need to download it and switch to another app. The reader shows the real, selectable text of the packet, with every page stacked in one continuous view, so you read a 40-page packet by scrolling, exactly as you would in a browser's PDF tab. On a laptop or desktop the reader fills almost the whole window; close it with the × in its top corner, or by pressing Escape.

Scroll with the wheel, a trackpad, a swipe, or the ↑ / ↓ keys and the space bar once the reader has focus. Nothing needs clicking to keep reading.

When you want to jump rather than scroll:

• Previous page / Next page move one page at a time and bring that page to the top of the reader.
• ← / → and Page Up / Page Down do the same from the keyboard, and Home / End go to the first or last page.

The page you're on is always shown ("Page 3 of 12") and follows your scrolling, and each change is announced to a screen reader. Every page is also its own labelled region ("Page 3 of 12"), so a screen reader can move through the packet page by page.

Very long packets load a few pages at a time: pages you haven't reached yet show as a placeholder box with the page number, and fill in as you scroll to them. That's what keeps a 200-page packet responsive.

Making the text bigger (zoom)

Each page is sized to fit the width of the reading column, which on a phone can leave a dense page's body text very small. The Zoom out / Zoom in buttons sit beside the page controls, with the current level shown between them:

• Fit width — the page fills the reading column. This is the default. (On a wide screen the column stops short of the full window width, so a page stays a comfortable reading size rather than being blown up edge to edge.)
• 150%, 200%, 300% — the page is enlarged by that much. Scroll (or swipe) sideways as well as up and down to move around the enlarged pages.

Zoom stays where you put it as you scroll, so you can read a whole packet at 200% without re-setting it, and it resets to Fit width the next time you open the reader. Zooming the page this way doesn't reflow the text — it is the real page, just bigger — so a table or a signature block still looks the way it will on paper.

Reading on a phone

On a phone the reader opens full-screen rather than as a small centered window, so the pages, their controls, and the notes panels all have room. The controls themselves show in a single compact row: the page arrows and the zoom buttons, with the page count beside them. A few things work a little differently from a laptop:

• The instructions at the top of the reader start collapsed behind a Show more link, so they don't push the page itself below the fold — choose it to read them in full, or Show less to collapse them again.
• The Select text (keyboard) control isn't shown — it exists for people navigating with a keyboard rather than a touchscreen.
• To leave a note, select some text with your finger the way you would in any app. An Add note to selection button appears just above the page, quoting what you selected; choose it to open the note composer.

Adding a note

1. Select some text on any page.
2. Choose Add note — on a phone, Add note to selection, which appears as soon as you have selected something (or, using only the keyboard, Select text (keyboard) to move between the words on the page, mark a start, extend the selection, and press Enter to open the same composer).
3. Type your note — or leave it blank to save a plain highlight — and save.

Every note starts private: only you can see it.

Where notes appear

Each page with notes on it carries its own notes panel, directly below that page in the continuous view, headed "Notes on page 3". A note therefore stays with the page it belongs to as you scroll: scroll past page 7 and back and page 7's notes are exactly where you left them. Pages with no notes show no panel, so scrolling stays smooth; until you've written your first note, a short reminder of how to add one sits above the pages instead.

Editing or deleting your own notes

In a page's notes panel, each of your own notes has Edit note and Delete note controls (you never see these on someone else's note — you can only change notes you wrote):

• Edit note opens the note in a small dialog where you can change its text. The highlighted passage and who can see it stay the same; only the words change.
• Delete note asks you to confirm first, then removes the note for good — along with any replies on it if it was shared. This can't be undone.

Both actions are recorded in the board's audit log.

Sharing a note and replying

Open one of your own notes in that page's notes panel and choose Share with the board to make it visible — with your name and when you wrote it — to every other board member who can open this packet. A shared note can be replied to by any member with access, building a small thread under the note. You can flip a shared note back to private at any time, which hides it (and its replies) from everyone else again.

Following a "someone replied to your note" notification

When another member replies to a note you wrote or replied to, BoardTools notifies you in app, and that notification links straight to the note — not just to the meeting.

Choosing it takes you to the meeting's Packet page, where a card headed The note you followed names the note, the page and packet version it is on, when it was written, and the note's own text. The reader then opens by itself, already scrolled to that note's page, with the note and its whole reply thread in that page's notes panel — so you can read the reply and answer it without hunting through the PDF.

Because the reader opens without you asking it to, it announces where it landed ("Opened at page 7 …") as part of its title. Press Escape (or use the ×) to close it: you land back on The note you followed card, which still explains why you are here and carries an Open the note button to go back in.

If the link can't be opened — the note was deleted, or the member who wrote it set it back to private — the page says That note isn't available and explains why in a sentence. Nothing else changes: the packet, the contents list and the reader are all exactly where they always are, and you can still open the reader to see the notes you do have access to. You will never see someone else's private note through one of these links; the link resolves as though the note did not exist.

What happens to my notes when the packet changes?

A packet's draft is often regenerated as the agenda and attachments are finalized, and it is later turned into an immutable final version. Your open notes are never dropped when that happens — they carry forward automatically:

• If the new version has the same number of pages, your notes reappear on the exact page you left them on.
• If the new version has a different page count, your notes still reappear, but each one is marked "May be on a different page now" — a reminder to double-check it against the current packet rather than assume the page number is still exact. Content rarely reflows much within one meeting cycle, so this is meant as a nudge, not an alarm.

Nothing is ever silently deleted or silently moved to the wrong spot — a flagged note is still the note you wrote, just possibly on a different page than before.

One-off: BoardTools now includes each attached document's own pages inside the packet (What's in the board packet), which makes a packet much longer than it used to be. So the first time a packet is regenerated after that change, expect every note on it to come back flagged — the pages really did move. Regenerations after that behave exactly as described above.