How to easily switch between Skyrim and Something to take notes on?

I would like to play Skyrim, pause the game and switch to a program to take notes on. Any suggestions?

Solution 1:

I have used a web based editor in the browser within the steam overlay for this. You could use something like gist, evernote, markable.

Press shift tab to bring up the overlay.

Solution 2:

Skyrim doesn't handle switching between applications very well. At all. Roughly 50% of my alt-tab attempts with Skyrim end in a crash to desktop. You could switch out of Skyrim with alt-tab (or similar key combo, depending on your operating system), but I don't really recommend it.

If you're not too afraid of mods, you could use Take Notes - Journal of the Dragonborn. It adds an in-game journal which could be used to take notes within the game. It also allows you to export your journal entries to a text file.

Solution 3:

Play in windowed mode. After starting Skyrim, go to options and enable the windowed mode setting. The windowed mode plays much better with alt+tab compared to playing fullscreen.

Unfortunately, you will now have a non-borderless window decorated with the Skyrim titlebar and the max/min/close buttons of a normal Windows' window. I have yet to find a way to launch in borderless window mode without mods.