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How To Guide: NoodleTools Citing & Research: Work with Projects

This guide is chock full of tutorials that will show you how to create an account, work with projects, create citations, and do other research tasks in NoodleTools

How to Create a New Project

On the Projects screen, click New Project.

New Project

On the Create a New Project screen, provide information about the project:

Create a new project screen

1. Enter a Project title. Enter a brief description that will help you remember the contents or purpose of this project when you see it later among other projects in your account.

2. Select a Citation style. Ask your teacher or instructor before choosing between MLA, APA, and Chicago. You will be able to change the style later if you need to, but since the data required to cite a source in one style can be different in another style, it is always best to start with the citation style your teacher is requesting.

3. Select a Citation level. NoodleTools allows you to select between three levels: Starter, Junior and Advanced. These are intended to roughly correlate with a student’s grade level:

  • Starter: Elementary school or middle school ESL learners
  • Junior: WSA Grades 6 and 7 or high school ESL learners
  • Advanced: WSA Grades 8-12

4. Click Submit to create your new project. if you change your mind, click “X” in the upper right corner to return to your Projects screen.

When you open your new project, the first screen will be the Dashboard. See the NoodleTools Help Desk tutorial How to use the Dashboard.

How to Copy a Project

You can create a duplicate copy of an entire project (source list, notecards and outline) in your own folder, or transfer a copy to another NoodleTools user. For instructions on how to copy individual citations, see “How to copy a source reference to another project.”

To copy a project, on the Projects screen, next to your project select the Options menu and Copy.

How to copy a projectTo copy more than one project at a time, mark the checkboxes next to the projects you wish to copy and click Copy at the top of the Projects screen.

On the popup screen, Copy projects, select my own personal folder if you want to duplicate the project in the same folder, or select another user’s folder and enter a personal ID to transfer a copy of the project to another user.

If there is a paper (in Google Doc) associated with the project, check the box next to Copy the linked Google Doc (if any).

Copy projects screen

If you have work under two separate NoodleTools accounts, (for example, you accidentally set up two accounts under a West Sound Academy's subscription), the copy feature is a simple way of gathering all your work into a single account. 

Note: If there is more than one user with the same personal ID, you may be prompted to identify the school or account type of the user before the transfer completes.

How to Rename Projects

To rename a project, on the Projects screen, next to your project select the Options menu and Rename. You will be prompted to enter a new description for the project. Each project in your folder should have a unique name.

How to Email a Project

You can email a RTF version of your source list and an HTML version of your notecards and/or outline to yourself or someone else. The recipient will be able to open the source list in a word processing program. The HTML versions of the notecards and outline can be opened in any Web browser. The recipient is not able to log in to your personal folder or change your master project in any way – only a copy of your work is sent. While there is also no way for the recipient to import the RTF version of your source list into their own personal folder, you can share an editable copy of your project with another NoodleTools user. See “How to copy a project" above. 

1. On the Sources screen, click Email.

Emailing a project

2. Enter your name.

3. Enter the recipient’s email address.

4. If your source list contains notecards or an outline, check the box to Include outline or / and Include notecards.

5. Click Send to email the source list and outline and/or notecards.

NOTE: The Google Docs paper is not included in the email. If you want to email the paper to someone, log in to your Google Docs account and email it from there.

How to Merge a Project

Two or more projects in your account can be merged into a single project. As a safeguard, the original projects you select to merge will also remain in your account unchanged. The new merged project will be added to your account, identified by a new description that you provide.

NOTE: Merging projects with different levels will result in a project set to the highest level (e.g., merging a Starter and Junior project will yield a Junior-level project).

1. On the Projects screen, check the boxes next to the projects that you want to merge. NOTE: All projects must contain source lists of the same style.

2. Click Merge above the projects.

Merging projects

3. Enter a new Project title for the merged project.

4. If you want to prevent duplicate citations from appearing in the new source list, check the box next to Remove duplicate citations from merged project.

5. If the original projects have notecards, decide whether or not you would like those notecards to be transferred to the merged project. By default, Include notecards from original projects (if any) in merged project is checked.

NOTE: Checking both the “remove duplicates” and the “include notecards” options can potentially cause unwanted results. If there are duplicate citations that have different sets of associated notecards, then only one set of those notecards will be transferred to the merged list.

More than one outline from the selected projects cannot be merged. Under Include outline from… select which project’s outline you want to include in the new merged project.

6. Click Submit.

How to Delete or Recover a Deleted Project

One or more projects can be deleted by checking the boxes to the left of the projects on the Projects screen, and click Delete above the projects. The selected projects will no longer appear in your account.

Deleting a project

As a safeguard, NoodleTools does not remove deleted projects. To recover a deleted project, click Undelete.

NOTE TO COLLABORATORS: If you select a collaborative project and delete it from your Projects list, the project is not deleted at all – you are simply removed as a collaborator from that project. The project will still remain visible to your teammates. If you accidentally delete a collaborative project from your folder, ask one of your teammates to re-add you as a collaborator to the project. For more information, see “How to set up a collaboration with your classmates.”

How to Archive a Project

While it may make sense to delete some projects you no longer need, you may also decide to keep certain projects for future reference or as part of your academic portfolio. As your projects pile up, it may become more difficult to find current work and can even slow down the Projects screen loading time. To solve this, you should archive old projects.

Projects can be archived via the Archive on the Projects screen.

To view archived projects, check the box next to Show archived projects.

Archived projects are highlighted in pink. Archiving a project has no effect on its Shared or Collaborating status. A teacher that you have shared the project with will still be able to view and comment on the project. Team members of a collaborative project that you archived will continue to see and have full access to edit the project.

If you want to continue working on an archived project, you will need to move it back among your current projects by checking the box next to the project’s title and click Unarchive above the project list.

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