Carrell Get Carrell

Guides

How to Organize Bible Study Notes So You Can Find Them Again

November 7, 2026

Most people who study the Bible for a few years end up with notes in many places: the margins of a study Bible, a stack of journals, sermon outlines from the bulletin, a notes app, and highlights in two or three Bible apps. Each one made sense at the time. Together they are hard to use, because the note you want is never in the place you are looking.

This guide sets out a simple system that works on paper, in an app, or with both. It rests on one idea: organize notes around the passage they are about, because that is where you will be when you need them.

Why notes get lost

File by passage

The single most useful habit is to make every note findable from the passage it is about. Dates still matter, but they are secondary.

When a note covers a whole sermon or a long study, file it under the main passage and note the other references inside it.

Use one reference format

Pick a way of writing references and use it everywhere. A good default is the full book name, chapter, colon and verse, with an en dash or hyphen for ranges: “Romans 8:28–39”. If you prefer abbreviations, choose one per book and keep to it. This matters most for anything you will search later, and it makes a paper index much easier to scan.

Three kinds of note

Notes are easier to use when you know what kind each one is. Most fall into three groups:

  1. Observations: what the text says. Repeated words, who is speaking, what happens, what the passage connects to. These are the foundation of study and stay useful for years.
  2. Questions: what you do not understand or are not sure about. Mark them clearly, with a question mark in the margin or a “Q:” at the start, so you can find your open questions later.
  3. Applications and prayers: what the passage asks of you, and what you prayed about it. These are dated by nature. Rereading them later shows you where you were.

You do not need a separate notebook for each. A small mark at the start of a line is enough to tell them apart.

Highlight colours, on purpose

Highlighting helps when each colour means something. Without a system, a page ends up yellow all over and the colours tell you nothing. Keep it small: four to six colours, each with one meaning you can remember without a key. One common set:

The specific meanings matter less than using them consistently. Write your key inside the front cover of your Bible, or in the app’s settings if it lets you name colours. A highlight with a meaning can be found again by that meaning: every promise you have marked, in one list.

Bring everything into one place

You do not have to move every old note at once. Start with what you study next:

Over a year or two, the passages you study most will have everything gathered beside them.

Review, or the notes will not help

A note helps when you read it again. Two habits make that happen without extra effort:

Paper or app?

Paper is quiet, lasting and good for thinking. An app is searchable, goes everywhere and can put notes beside the verse automatically. Many people use both: paper during a sermon or a quiet morning, and an app to keep it all findable. If you do, a photo of each paper page, filed under its passage, joins the two.

Whatever you use, make sure your notes can be exported in a plain format. Notes you can take with you outlast any app.

Organizing notes in Carrell

Carrell is a Bible app built around keeping study material beside the text. Here is what it does for notes today:

Carrell is free for reading, the bundled Bibles, search, highlights, notes and bookmarks, on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Linux, and it is in beta. Download Carrell or see everything it does.