9 replies to this topic

[lgretton]

I've been migrating notebooks from EN 2.2 to EN 4 recently. With EN 2, notebooks were entirely discrete, so tags created for one notebook were completely separate from tags created for any others.

In EN 4 as I understand it, tags aren't associated with any particular notebooks, and there's just a single namespace for all tags for all notebooks. I'm coming round to seeing how this could be useful, but generally I don't want to mix every notebook's tags together.

What I've done is create a top-level tag for each notebook and placed the tags I want associated with that notebook within it. Is this what everyone else does or is there a neater solution? A major problem is that the single tag namespace means I can't have two tags with the same name even though they're nested at different places.

While I'm at it, I'll mention that I miss EN 2's ability to order the tags as I wish and to have icons for them.

[Wern]

Choose a notebook and click VIEW and unselect "Show unassigned Tags".
That way, only tags from that notebook will be shown.
Wern

[Owyn]

In EN 4 as I understand it, tags aren't associated with any particular notebooks, and there's just a single namespace for all tags for all notebooks. I'm coming round to seeing how this could be useful, but generally I don't want to mix every notebook's tags together.

Correct. As Wern said, "Hide Unassigned Tags" is your friend.

What I've done is create a top-level tag for each notebook and placed the tags I want associated with that notebook within it. Is this what everyone else does or is there a neater solution? A major problem is that the single tag namespace means I can't have two tags with the same name even though they're nested at different places.

Tag nesting is a display enhancement. It has no functional impact on the namespace.
Most frequent practice for unique tags in different notebooks/use cases is to prefix the tag to:
- Group related tags
- Provide unique tag when desired. e.g.
-- I use "bug" and "tip" as global tags, but,
-- I have a whole pile of application specific tags, e.g. "App_Evernote", "App_VirtualBox", "OS_Linux", etc.

[lgretton]

Thanks both of you for your suggestions.

I think I'll embrace the tag design philosophy and not try to make it behave as it did in EN 2, just need to put in a fair amount of time organising the tags.

[Owyn]

Good luck.
You should also spend some time getting familiar with the Assign Tags feature (Ctrl+Alt+T).
You can use it to change tags on a collection of notes.

e.g.
You want to change tag "a" to "new-a" for SOME notes. So:
- Multi-Select notes to be changed
- Invoke Assign Tags
- Add tag "new-a"
- Uncheck (remove) tag "a"
- Click OK

Bingo.

[jefito]

I think I'll embrace the tag design philosophy and not try to make it behave as it did in EN 2, just need to put in a fair amount of time organising the tags.

Yeah, fighting against the current design just makes using Evernote more difficult; version 2 is long in the past, relatively speaking.

Making the tag namespace global means that can use the same tagging system in different notebooks, without recreating tags. If you were to keep separate projects in separate notebooks, you could still use the same tag set (e.g. "Overview", "Requirement", "Task", "Deliverable", etc.) to describe project-related documents.

I use a somewhat different approach than is described here -- I tend to use them like adjectives, rather than for describing fixed locations in a hierarchy. I do organize the tags in a hierarchy in the tag tree, but it's pretty loose, and I usually keep it closed in the UI anyways.

I haven't done so yet, but if I wanted to build up a hierarchical structure based on tags, I'd build it -- along the lines suggested by Owyn -- using common prefixes at different levels of the tree. What's nice about that is that you can combine the common prefixes with the ability to use wildcards in search (postfixed '*') to implement AND/OR queries that are not otherwise implementable in Evernotes search grammar. E.g. (using Owyn's tagging system), use "tag:App_* tag:OS_Linux" to return notes for any Linux application. This naming technique also lends itself to being able to select notes related to a specific branch of a tree, e.g., assume that we've extended Owyn's OS-related tags by adding different flavors of various OS's (OS_Windows_Vista, OS_Windows_Win7, OS_Linux_Ubuntu, OS_Linux_Debian, etc.). Then "tag:OS_Linux*" returns all notes related to all Linux OS's.

[jbenson2]

I've been using prefixes on my tags for a couple years.
It does improve Evernote's search capability substantially.
Here is a link with a few low-tech examples.
http://discussion.ev...post__p__113133
.

[JamesCE]

Yep I do use that method for a few... I wish i could save tags in different nests. This is particularly important for people new to evernote. Because as I've learned its important to use tags very well its is helpful (at least for me) to sort of organize my tags by topics and activities. The prefix idea works well for distinct areas but I like using "meetings" frequently in all areas. As a new user I don't want to have to scroll through a list to find that one tag laying around. Although once I have a notebook filled with a few activities I can then hide unused tags as use those as a quick reference but THAT requires those darn prefixes.

So I hope they bring it back !

[Owyn]

The prefix idea works well for distinct areas but I like using "meetings" frequently in all areas.

Use a separate e.g. "meeting" tag (tag:meeting) which can be used along with any other criteria.
Alternatively, include "Meeting" in the note title (intitle:meeting).

I only take hierarchy in tags as far as I need it for my regular use.
As I mentioned before, I use "bug" as as separate tag, therefore, "tag:app_evernote tag:bug" finds all notes which I have tagged as Evernote bugs.

[JamesCE]

yes I've learned that its not bad to be too detailed in the title... so i sort of tag and explain my tag in the title
Tags: Meeting, Project Alpha, Status, Meeting Notes, Company D
Title: Meeting notes regarding the status of project alpha with contractor Bravo from Company D