Samsung Notes gets less attention than the iPad apps and deserves more. On a Galaxy Tab with an S Pen it is a genuinely good planner surface, it is free, and it has handled hyperlinked PDFs properly for several versions now.
Here is how to set one of our planners up in it, including the two settings that decide whether the experience is good or slightly wrong.
Import as a PDF
In Samsung Notes, tap the plus button and choose PDF rather than creating a new note and inserting the file. The distinction matters. Importing as a PDF keeps the document's page structure and its link layer. Inserting a PDF into an existing note can flatten pages into images, and images have no links.
Pick the file you downloaded from the vault. On a large planner the import takes a few seconds and the app will show a page count when it finishes. If the count matches the page count on the product page, the import went in cleanly.
If you downloaded on a phone and are opening on a tablet, let the file finish syncing before importing. A partially downloaded PDF sometimes imports with missing pages rather than failing outright, which is a confusing thing to debug later.
Keeping links alive
Samsung Notes follows internal PDF links when you are not in a drawing mode, the same rule the iPad apps use.
Tap the pen icon to toggle drawing off, and the tabs become tappable. Toggle it back on to write. If a tab seems dead, this is nearly always why.
There is one genuine limitation: Samsung Notes does not preserve the link layer if you later export the annotated planner back out as a PDF. Your handwriting comes across fine, the tabs do not. If you want an archival copy with working links, keep the original file rather than relying on the export.
Tip. Lock the page while you plan. Long-press the page thumbnail and choose Lock, and stray palm marks stop happening entirely on the pages you only read from.
Which export to use
Every planner in the vault ships in A4, Letter and iPad 4:3 in the same download. On a Galaxy Tab, use the 4:3 file.
The name is unhelpful for Android users, so to be clear: 4:3 refers to the page shape, not to Apple. Galaxy Tab S series screens are close to 16:10, and a 4:3 page fills that better than a tall A4 page, which leaves large grey bands down both sides and shrinks the writing area.
The 4:3 export also has wider side tabs, which is the right call on a tablet you hold in landscape.
If you are printing rather than writing on screen, use A4 or Letter as usual. The 4:3 file will print, but it wastes paper.
S Pen settings worth changing
Two settings make a real difference and neither is on by default.
Palm rejection is usually on, but check it. Settings, S Pen, and confirm handwriting ignores touch input. Without it, resting your hand on a weekly grid produces marks you will not notice until later.
Straighten shapes is worth turning on for planner use specifically. Drawing a rough box around a day and having it become a rectangle is far more useful on a grid than it is on a blank page.
The pressure and tilt settings are a matter of taste. The one thing we would suggest is reducing the pen width from the default. Planner grids have smaller boxes than a blank note page, and the default stroke is tuned for the latter.
One more page-level setting is worth knowing about. Samsung Notes lets you set a default zoom per document, and for a planner you almost always want it fitted to width rather than remembered from wherever you last pinched. A planner you have to re-zoom on every page turn stops getting opened.
If you use a Galaxy Tab with DeX or an external keyboard, the planner behaves well in a window rather than full screen, and the 4:3 export is the one that survives being resized. The A4 file in a narrow window becomes a column of text you cannot write in comfortably.
Sync and backup
Samsung Notes syncs through Samsung Cloud, and the planner will appear on your phone. As with the iPad apps, the phone is good for the Notes pages and cramped for a weekly spread.
Back the original PDF up somewhere that is not the app. Samsung Cloud syncs the annotated note, which is what you want day to day, but if you ever need to start a clean copy you want the untouched file. Your vault download counts as that backup, since you can re-download any time your key is live.
When a new drop lands, import it as a new document rather than replacing the old one. Samsung Notes has no in-place PDF update, so replacing means losing your annotations.
A word on older devices. Samsung Notes handled PDF links inconsistently before version 4.3, and on a tablet that has not been updated in a while the tabs may genuinely not work no matter which tool is selected. Check the app version before assuming the file is at fault. Updating is free and fixes it.
One closing note for Android users generally: our files are plain hyperlinked PDFs with no app-specific features, so if you prefer Xodo, Noteshelf or CollaNote, they all work the same way. Samsung Notes is simply the one that comes with the device and does the job well.