I recently had a chance to talk to Rob Jarrett from the the Microsoft Journal Development Team and I asked if he had any tips he could share (developers always know some cool tricks ). Thanks, Rob!

I was surprised that some users didn’t know about this, but when in ink or highlighter mode (as opposed to Selection, Insert space, etc.), you can press-and-hold and drag to get a lasso to temporarily go into selection mode. You can manipulate the selection as you would in Selection mode, copy/delete/format/etc., and Journal will revert back to the previous mode once the selection has been cleared (i.e. deselected the ink/text/picture(s)).

Tools Options has an option for extended context menus which adds some useful commands.

You can have different background images/stationery per-page by copying and pasting entire pages from another instance of Journal.

The scratchout gesture is best performed if the zigzags are horizontal in orientation, and the ratio of width/height of the scratchout ink bounds is about 5:1. If I recall, at least 50% of the ink you want erased should be covered by the bounds of the scratchout ink.

Finally, another lesser known capability is in the correction UI (Copy as text), the options button has some options like including carriage returns and such.

Other posts that may interest you:

1. Googgy TwoNote: Better Than Journal?
2. The Journal Spiral
3. Using Word for more than typing
4. GoBinder 2006 BETA quick review
5. Sliding over to OneNote…again