I just discovered Obsidian and I’m amazed so far. I just got some newbie questions, I hope you can help me and the questions are not too dumb…
I want to take notes for different topics e.g. learning English and Japanese, book notes, work notes and so on. Would it make sense to create different vaults for each topic or should each topic be a folder? At the moment I don’t understudy the difference between both, is a vault just a “big folder” for the other folders?
Is there a way to add different text editing functions like coloring, creating spreadsheets or adding images and such stuff?
Beside for work notes I want to use Obsidian specific for language learning (grammar notes) are there any tips that you can give me on my journey?
I want to take notes for different topics e.g. learning English and Japanese, book notes, work notes and so on. Would it make sense to create different vaults for each topic or should each topic be a folder? At the moment I don’t understudy the difference between both, is a vault just a “big folder” for the other folders?
You can view the vault as your root folder which Obsidian tracks all your notes. You can make folders if and when you get to the point you want to organize it more. The nice thing about this tool is you don’t need to worry about folder structure when making links between notes since it hides the info and adjusts all connecting notes automatically if you move the note to a different folder inside your vault.
There are different schools of thought here, so you could go about it in 2 ways. For the first way, try to keep everything in a single vault and use Maps of Content (basically a very flexible Tables of Contents) to organize your notes into different subjects. See here for more info!
If you want to use folders, I like to keep certain notes like John Smith or School A under a folder called people and places so it doesn’t get mixed into my main thinking notes. Others may prefer to go folderless, so it’s up to you really.
The second way is to keep your personal notes separate from work notes, then making a second work vault that is encrypted (if necessary). If security & privacy are not a huge issue I’d recommend using 1 vault and see how you like it first!
Is there a way to add different text editing functions like coloring, creating spreadsheets or adding images and such stuff?
Colouring: I’m not sure what you mean here, but you can play around with different themes people have made to change the look of your current vault. If you mean having multiple colours for highlighting then you might want to try tinkering with the css so that bold + italics also has different colours.
Spreadsheets: If you install the Advanced Tables plugin it makes it so that markdown tables can be manipulated like spreadsheets (ENTER & Tab navigates to next cell). You can go to Settings > Third Party Plugins > Turn off Safe Mode > Browse for Advanced Tables and install > Turn it on under Installed Plugins.
Images: You can copy and paste screenshots and other images from your clipboard and also drag and drop images into a notes page. Although you can only see it in Preview mode. Look at the help vault for more info.
Try to look at the help vault in Obsidian! It should be near the settings button.
Beside for work notes I want to use Obsidian specific for language learning (grammar notes) are there any tips that you can give me on my journey?
I’m not really sure how much I can help you here since I didn’t use Obsidian in this way yet. I’d imagine the Third party Anki plugin might be helpful for you though. Try to start with a note per language and see how you’d like to organize your knowledge from there. Everyone thinks differently and it’s best to not have so much structure at the start until you need it!