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(Archived) Notebook Stacks


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Is there a way to organize notebooks by stacks on the ipad? On the Mac, notebook stacks are so helpful in organizing my work, but the stacks are lost on ipad. Wading through all the notebooks is difficult and time consuming. Am I missing something? If stacks are not available on the ipad, what have any of you found to help w/ organizing notebooks on the ipad?

Thank you,

Joe

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hi joe. there are no stacks in ios. it is an oft-requested feature. i am sure evernote will get around to it someday.

in my case, though, i generally avoid notebooks, except when i want to view something offline. i find the tags to be a much more efficient way of organizing content. others use a combination of notebooks and tags.

there are a lot of organizational schemes, and if you search around on the forums, you will find that this is a frequent topic of conversation. in general, it is probably good to name notes well (i prefer yymmdd + general -> specific keywords) and use a few different tags (general -> specific). I just made a note this morning titled "111119 journal" and because i talked about a meeting i had with a student yesterday i also used the tags "class" (a general tag for any class taken or taught) and "11his101" (a tag specific for the class meaning 2011 history 101).

when searching, if you use "tag:name" you are able to replicate what a folder view would be without actually having to move a note. combine tag searches and you can be even more precise. i have thousands of notes and i easily find anything i am looking for with one search.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I, too, would like to see Stacks supported in iOS.

I use Awesome Note (AN) for to-do lists in conjunction with Evernote (EN) for synchronization. This adds AN folders as notebooks to EN. On Windows, I can group the AN notebooks into a single stack to keep things neat. But on iOS it becomes somewhat of a wasteland. Sure, I can quickly find something in particular through tags. But sometimes I just want a quick overview of how the stacks, notebooks and notes are organized - especially when I haven't used a certain stack in a while. That's where I find myself waiting until I can get to a workstation client for a clearer perspective.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ya, I would really like to see stacks across the board for mobile devices. I got stack support on my android phone (and its awesome), but for work I use my iPad which still doesn't support stacks. With my current structure its almost impossible to find that I'm looking for with my stacks in place. I understand how to move everything around with nested tags, but frankly that isn't they way I want to work and the tag interface isn't any better on the iOS apps. I love evernote, but I'm really disappointing this feature is taking so long to come around. It seems very fundamental to me.

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Evernote's often stated aim is to get all functionality across all platforms - however this is a time consuming process across 14 (i think) platforms. So, Stacks will get to iOS eventually.

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I put my vote in for Notebook Stacks on the iPad/iPhone clients. I am in the process of writing a book using Evernote (which is what initially drove my to Evernote) and have become spoiled to what I see on the Mac and Windows. Really would like to have the same functionality on the iPad/iPhone where I do most of my lookups/reference when out of the office. My uses have now expanded to using it a mobile filing cabinet for tax papers and other docs that I now dont have to worrry about where I put it unless I need the original.

Ron

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Sub-tags would be much more useful than notebook stacks. Tags are more flexible and you can also use tags instead of notebooks.

I personally don't need notebook stacks at all but sub-tags and the ability to copy note links is 2 features I look forward to the most.

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Stacks would actually be more useful. Notebook stacks have functionality: you can use a stack as search context. Nested tags are only for organizational tidiness; there is no semantic carryover from the implied hierarchy.

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Having said all that I do use evernote on iPad 99% of the time and organize all information there without using sub-tags. It's possible too. There are workarounds.

But it sure would make the whole process a lot better if I could use them. Basically 2 features that I need are sub-tags and to copy note links. Then it's perfect in terms of I wouldn't have to use workarounds. I don't care about notebook stacks. I'm sure even if notebooks stacks are more useful to some people that they could also replace them with tags and sub-tags

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Having said all that I do use evernote on iPad 99% of the time and organize all information there without using sub-tags. It's possible too. There are workarounds.

ROFL

You do keep beating that drum. But, at least it is now muted with a dose of making things work anyway. :)

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I think you'd be pretty much incorrect if you concluded that I haven't thought about the idea of subtags. Plenty of evidence to the contrary in the forums, should you care to search for it.But we're not talking about whether semantically meaningful tag trees would be useful, we're talking about whether stacks should be made available to iOS Evernote clients.

I honestly can't tell if what you're saying describes Evernote as it is today, or the Evernote of your dreams. Or if you're just kidding. Your 'very simple example' sheds no light on the topic, as best I can tell (maybe you use some special meaning of 'simple' of which I was not previously aware). Fact is, I don't see any tags anywhere in your chart. Honestly, your chart reminds me of the ones I see in meetings, which are used to 'prove' that the bosses have thought deeply about some topic (or that their underlings have), and now they have a pretty picture, devoid of actual implementation realities, that they can then point to, and then roll up into a tight bundle and swat you. Yeah, they look great in the PowerPoints, but they slowly sink to the bottom of your stack of project documents when you're actually trying to get the darn thing to work.

Anyways, here in the Evernote of the present-day (50 years down the line, we may all look back and laugh faintly), there really is no intrinsic semantic content inherent in the parent tag / subtag relationship. There are no facilities to connect them together in searching / filtering, as there are with stacks and their contained notebooks, for example. Any semantic content for searching comes from content you add yourself, by making use of naming tricks.

That there could be a semantic connection is of course the subject of occasional hot debate. I'd agree that they could be useful, and to that end, I've even proposed a few concrete suggestions as to how they might be made more useful. But none of that exists today.

But in the context, yes, I would prefer that stacks (which do exist in present-day Evernote) be made available for iOS ciients (bringing them up to par with other clients), rather than waiting for semantically aware tag trees, which do not exist anywhere in Evernote at this time, and which would be a complex undertaking (it's a fundamental change to how tags operate after all, and would affect saved searches, which are persisted across all clients), and which probably wouldn't be available in any near-term time frame.

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But in the context, yes, I would prefer that stacks (which do exist in present-day Evernote) be made available for iOS ciients (bringing them up to par with other clients), rather than waiting for semantically aware tag trees, which would be a complex undertaking (it's a fundamental change to how tags operate after all, and would affect saved searches, which are persisted across all clients), and which probably wouldn't be available in any near-term time frame.

Agreed. Client feature parity is a stated current priority at Evernote. Stacks are obviously around to stay and need to get out to all the clients.

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Notebook stacks? Sub-tags? Sure. I doubt there is anyone deeply opposed to having either of these on the iPad. The more parity we have across platforms the better. I wouldn't use either of them myself, but I can certainly see why someone would.

Do we really want to argue about which one is more useful? My answer would be neither :)

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Notebook stacks? Sub-tags? Sure. I doubt there is anyone deeply opposed to having either of these on the iPad. The more parity we have across platforms the better. I wouldn't use either of them myself, but I can certainly see why someone would.

Do we really want to argue about which one is more useful? My answer would be neither :)

They aren't equally useful.

Everything you can do with notebooks could also be done with tags (except local storage but you don't need stacks for that). However you can't replace tags with notebooks. So this is why sub-tags would be more useful than notebook stacks.

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After giving this topic a lot more thought and looking at all approaches to using tags and sub-tags in evernote which I could think of - I changed my mind about sub-tags and tend to agree with Jefito now.

The more I think about this topic the more I see that stacks aren't all that useful at all considering the way evernote doesn't have true sub-tags and you have to rely on naming conventions to encode hierarchies into tag names and then use search.

Here is an example to explain what I mean

Book

Bk-Fiction

Bk-NonFiction

Bk-Romance

BK-SciFi

To find all books search for tag:Bk* instead of looking in a parent tag "Book"

If evernote treated sub-tags as true sub-tags then whenever you applied Bk-Fiction tag for example all parent tags like "Book" would get applied automatically. In this case sub-tags would've been useful. However the way evernote works currently sub-tags aren't really useful.

You could still apply all parent tags manually but it's just more work compared to using naming conventions. The results would be exactly the same, you're just going to use different ways to find stuff. Applying all parent tags manually gives no benefit and just takes a lot more work.

So you have to use naming conventions. I actually don't see it as a problem at all except sometimes tag names would get too long to be readable on iPad.

As long as you use naming conventions all tags and sub-tags are sorted nicely in the tag list so sub-tag functionality would be useful only to make this list easier to scroll by collapsing some stuff.

I explained why I don't find notebook stacks useful in my above posts.

So the bottom line is after giving this topic a lot more thought I find that stacks aren't really useful at all considering the way evernote currently works.

Real sub-tags would be useful but this would be a different feature request.

Jefito was right on for the most part in his posts in this topic. It'd still be more useful to organize tags in stacks instead of notebooks but that's not the point.

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  • 3 months later...

Evernote is one such software which changes the way you use it.. I like my notes to be stacked.. someone else prefers them to be organized by tags, someone witha combination of stacks and tags. I have been using Evernote on Web, Desktop and my Android phone. Where I have stacked my notes, I would like to seem the same on iPad too. On iPad without stacks it appears as all together a new application.. More than often I pick up my iPad to search for some notes and in 2 seconds I get pissed off and turn to my small screen android device.

So i request Evernote to provide stacking as an option in iPad version of Evernote. For me without it is almost un useable.. and to be honest I am looking for alternatives like OneNote from Microsoft. Only the price tag is keeping me away :P I like applications to be consistent..

my 2C

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So i request Evernote to provide stacking as an option in iPad version of Evernote. For me without it is almost un useable.. and to be honest I am looking for alternatives like OneNote from Microsoft. Only the price tag is keeping me away :P I like applications to be consistent..

Evernote aims for consistency across platforms (sometimes it's not possible due to platform constraints), but the different teams operate independently, and there can be a lag in delivery of like functionality. I'm pretty sure that this issue is on the iOS list; it's already available on Android.

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So the bottom line is after giving this topic a lot more thought I find that stacks aren't really useful at all considering the way evernote currently works.

May, I understand that you don't find Stacks useful.

However, that does NOT mean they "aren't really useful at all".

There are a number of users who have posted in other threads that they prefer to include Notebooks in their organization.

When you use NB, Stacks can be quite helpful.

For example, I might want to setup each of my Projects as a separate NB.

Then, I might want to have a Stack named "Projects" to contain all of these NB.

Then I can use the Search term "stack:Projects" (along with other terms) to limit my search to my projects.

In the EN Win and EN Mac UI, notebooks are displayed within Stacks, making it easier to select.

I don't want to get into a debate of NB vs Tags here -- that has been exhaustively debated elsewhere.

Stacks and Notebooks are just one more option of how to organize Evernote Notes.

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If we were able to share a tag or saved search, the argument of not having to use stacks would make sense. Unfortunately, I need to share several notebooks with a collegue. I'm writing this reply on a new iPad, however, I've had the opportunity to use an Acer (android) tablet for the past month and am surprised at how much better Evernote is on this platform. Anyone who has any gripes about Evernote iPad should try using Evernote on the droid tablet, it's great! There are some definite downsides, (I will probably never get used to: the weird keyboard and general droid-isms of EVERY other app being horrible) but it's kind of shameful how much better Evernote works on this platform. If you're looking for an example of what Evernote on a tablet should be, try one out.

If you're on the Evernote team trying to decide what to do next for iPad, go try Evernote on android.

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I mentioned this elsewhere but I will mention it again - in different words :)

It is simply not true that tags can do everything that stacks can do. More exactly it is not true for every use case, and it is not true for mine. I personally use both stacks and tags, and I use them for different purposes, but that is because I use EN for storing research material including how-to-do information, links, web articles grabbed with Readly, internet statistics found online, snippets from emails and newsletters. Some of this is grabbed because it might be useful in the future, and some of it is stored because I know it will be useful in the future.

In case 2 I attach sets of tags. In case 1 I put notes in notebooks in stacks. Why? Because sometimes the best way to use these unassigned notes is to browse through them, reading a notebook the way I might read Feedly or Flipboard. To this end almost all my notes are entered as "2011-10-22 Windows: drive letters - a fix' or similar

Now of course it is possible to tag everything first and search for it, and if I tagged everything in thie How-To notebook with the tag "how-to" then I could assemble a virtual notebook. Sure. But I personally like to have two systems on the go. I read through notebooks and sometimes move content from one to another - AND I tag notes so that I can do topic-based searches across notebooks.

Now I would not do this at all if I was using EN as the basis of my GTD system. In that case I would probably only use tags. But I am not. I am using Pocket Informant & Toodledo to do that for me.

Finally: while I am completely in favour of feature-parity across all platforms some things are more urgent than others. As people have pointed out above if you do start using stacks on a Mac or Windows computer then you will suffer a big productivity slump when you try to use your notebooks on an iPad. The system you have built up becomes floppy and unresponsive. This is not about "improving" EN on the iPad, its about making it a comparable product.

Cheers

Owen

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It is simply not true that tags can do everything that stacks can do

everything except offline and shared notes ;)

but it's only a technical difference, not a conceptual

btw you don't even need tags to replicate notebooks/whatever, you could do it with just notes and search only ...

it's true that if you rely on tags/notebooks specifically then that might be a problem when you use different platforms or export data to other apps. That's why I personally don't depend on them at all.. at this point, that is.

my point is it's up to you whether you choose to depend on notebook stacks or not... you can replicate all of the functionality and also keep the system completely independent and cross platform.

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It is simply not true that tags can do everything that stacks can do

everything except offline and shared notes ;)

but it's only a technical difference, not a conceptual

May, I think you forgot that Stacks offer true hierarchical organization with Notebooks.

You cannot achieve this with Tags. The Tag/Sub-Tab hierarchy is for tag organization only -- has no effect on organizing/searching for Notes.

You can use the "stack:<StackName>" term in a Search to limit the Search to all Notebooks within the Stack.

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I didn't forget that. you can replicate it with tags/keywords in multiple different ways, e.g. encoding hierarchies in names; or use temporarily tags during (for) search when/if necessary - which is what I prefer and it's even more powerful and flexible compared to notebook stacks

btw I'm not saying that notebooks and tags shouldn't work the same on all platforms ideally...

i just pointed out that if you really want to - you can have anything anyway, you don't have to depend on any specific organizational software feature other than search

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I didn't forget that. you can replicate it with tags/keywords in multiple different ways, e.g. encoding hierarchies in names; or use temporarily tags during (for) search when/if necessary - which is what I prefer and it's even more powerful and flexible compared to notebook stacks

IMO encoding hierarchies in names is a cluge, more difficult to use and maintain, than the Stack - Notebook approach.

Stacks allow you to easily view the Stack/NB relationship in the Left Panel, and is easy to remember/use in Searches.

Stacks enable a native way to limit search/selection of Notebooks.

While it may be possible to use some combination of Tags and naming conventions to achieve this, it may not be as intuitive for some users.

It is basically the same argument for using Tags instead of Keywords in the Title.

Using the direct features of Evernote is more convenient that using work-arounds.

Some people will prefer to use Tags. Others will prefer to use Stacks/Notebooks.

As many of us have previously stated, you have to find what works best for yourself.

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IMO encoding hierarchies in names is a cluge, more difficult to use and maintain, than the Stack - Notebook approach.

I agree. I almost don't use this approach at this point. notebook stacks and tags/sub-tags are too limited for me as well.

Notebooks and tags are useful for me but not to manage hierarchies and parent-child relationships because I don't like their limitations.

It is basically the same argument for using Tags instead of Keywords in the Title.

not exactly... each note can have only a single notebook but unlimited tags/keywords. so it's impossible to replicate my non-hierarchical system with notebook stacks...

in other words I can do anything without notebook stacks but not the other way around

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not to sidetrack the debate, which is obviously of great interest to me, i have to say that even if i don't use something, and it isn't high priority for me, i think it is in evernote's best interest to move forward on achieving parity in some of its core elements: notebooks, tags, and searches. i imagine some of the silicon valley crowd are using ipads and recognize their explosive growth as a market they ought to invest effort in, and they are probably feverishly at work trying to improve the app, so if they need some moral suport, here it is (cue: hands clapping). this could be interpreted as an effort to cheer them on and keep them awake through the night.

connected with this, i would also like to see a basic ui available across devices: notebooks and tags in the left pane, a list view in the center (or "snippets" only showing one line of text), note content on the right, and a search explanation "bar" (or section) along with the search field at the top.

obviously, as a power/experienced/old/grumpy user, my desires may not reflect those of my younger, gtd friends, but i just want to do a few things: organize my stuff, see as much information as possible on the screen, and have all of Evernote's wonderful search filter capabilities available (this means, of course, the ability to filter notes displayed, which really makes Evernote unique). pretty pictures, slick layouts, and lots of fancy features like social media sharing are fine and all, but...

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connected with this, i would also like to see a basic ui available across devices: folders and tags in the left pane . . .

GM, by "folders" do you mean "Notebooks", since Evernote does not support folders?

I point this out only for newer users who may be reading this thread, now or in the future. :)

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connected with this, i would also like to see a basic ui available across devices: folders and tags in the left pane . . .

GM, by "folders" do you mean "Notebooks", since Evernote does not support folders?

I point this out only for newer users who may be reading this thread, now or in the future. :)

changed. thanks for pointing that out :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

While I would love to have everything in one notebook and just use tags, stacks do give me two advantages.

First, Stacks act in a hierarchy so I can click the parent and see all the notes. That's something I've always wished tags did. Actually I think they did back in Evernote 2.0.

Second, I have over 11,000 notes. If I put that in one notebook, my performance, especially on IOS devices sucks and I get a huge increase in crashes. So, for me it's a combination I have to use.

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While I would love to have everything in one notebook and just use tags, stacks do give me two advantages.

First, Stacks act in a hierarchy so I can click the parent and see all the notes. That's something I've always wished tags did. Actually I think they did back in Evernote 2.0.

Second, I have over 11,000 notes. If I put that in one notebook, my performance, especially on IOS devices sucks and I get a huge increase in crashes. So, for me it's a combination I have to use.

i'm pushing 7000 now with no problems. are you using notes offline? i wonder if the crashes are because of your note count or something else.

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Second, I have over 11,000 notes. If I put that in one notebook, my performance, especially on IOS devices sucks and I get a huge increase in crashes. So, for me it's a combination I have to use.

Agreed. One of the primary uses of Notebooks is to limit the notes you keep offline on the iOS clients.

Another good use of NB is for sharing.

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  • 3 months later...

Interesting debate on stacks vs tags, but the bottom line is that this feature is available on iPhone and in the browser. For those of us that use it, it would be very helpful to have it on the iPad, especially since the iPad offers more desktop real estate. I am a bit shocked it is not there.

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Interesting debate on stacks vs tags, but the bottom line is that this feature is available on iPhone and in the browser. For those of us that use it, it would be very helpful to have it on the iPad, especially since the iPad offers more desktop real estate. I am a bit shocked it is not there.

I think Evernote would agree with you here about the need for stacks on the iPad, because they are aiming for parity across clients, and stacks are a significant organizational tool. Assuming they also think there ought to be stacks (they don't release roadmaps for features), there must be a design reason (perhaps they have been waiting for the next significant update (4.3?) to include it) that has prevented them from doing it yet. It exists on the iPhone, so I think we can expect it will come someday :)

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  • 7 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Does anybody know if the stacks ability already exists for the iPhone / iPad, please? or if it is possible to create a Notebook on the iPhone / iPad and then assign it to an already created stack? Many thanks in advance.

 

Yep! iOS devices recognize and display stacks.  However, there does not seem to be anyway to move notebooks in and out of stacks in iOS.

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