Suggestion - Allow custom reordering of notebooks and notes

[psycoceanic 3]

I would really like to be able to customize the order of the notebooks and notes, because I don't like having to constantly find where it has been placed, or scroll everywhere to get to the notes I want.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

This thread is funny. Once EN adds the "manual sorting" feature the EN apologists will rave about it and say how awesome it and EN are, but until then they'll subtly suggest it's an outlier, not really needed, and those who ask for it are big babies. Based on results I'd say they're correct, but I still can't stand the "the product isn't wrong, you are" sanctimony. Reminds of Apple forums.

 

Having expressed my bitterness towards those who suggest that something I desire, custom note views, isn't obviously the most important thing that EN could be working on RIGHT NOW (WAAAHHHHH!), I'll just add my +1 and pretty please to the please let me order my notes the way I want without having to adopt a bunch of moronic workarounds fray and move on. Oh and I want that ordering to be notebook specific and not just global. Now that I've said it out loud it sounds incredibly simple. I think I'll dust off the old text editor and knock that out tonight. HTML RULEZ!

 

Peace

The thing that I find ironic is that just b/c someone states that a feature doesn't seem to be something EN would ever implement, then it's translated that person doesn't want that feature. Please show where anyone has said those asking for it are "big babies" (your term).  Or that "the product isn't wrong, you are" (your phrase.)

 

And it's telling that you use the term "apologists".  I guess those who disagree with you are apologists or fanbois.  Can we simply be adults here & think maybe we have a differing (and maybe valid (gasp!)) POV?

[Martin Packer 162]

Actually I doubt the scalable usability of some form of custom sorting. Alright for a few but maybe not so usable for many.

And it would take a whole load more state saving.

 

Personally I use shortcuts to keep the handful of high referral rate notes handy.

 

But I could be persuaded.

[jefito 5,589]

Hey, I'm a developer too!!!  

 

OK, so I've thought about this for a bit, and on the surface, the original question seems pretty tractable: allow custom sorting of a notebook. Seems pretty straightforward: associate an ordinal with every note in a notebook such that if the note has been explicitly moved in the "Custom View Mode" mode, the note's ordinal number gets the appropriate index. Anything that's never been explicitly moved gets some default value. So every note that doesn't have the default ordinal gets sorted first, in that order; everything with the default trails behind in some unspecified order.

 

OK, great, I can sort a notebook that way. Now I have two notebooks, and they're in a stack together, and I'm displaying that stack in "Custom View Mode". What is the ordering then? Maybe it's still on the raw ordinals?

 

OK, so I move a note from one sorted notebook to another. What happens to its ordinal? Are ordinals in a notebook unique? If they're not, what is the subordering?

 

OK, so now I have a notebook that's been shared to me, and it's been carefully ordered by the owner, so that the notes have some semblance of organization to the end user (this is an actual requested scenario). So ordinals need to be sync-able entities. Again, how do they mix and match when those notes appear with other notes?

 

The sorts of questions are the ones I tend to think about, because even if they don't seem to apply to the original scenario, they still need to be handled, due to Evernote's architecture. Maybe they're also pretty tractable (hey, rule-of-thumb can solve a lot of problems).

 

Like Martin, I just use shortcuts, and also saved searches, for items that I want to get to often...

[Martin Packer 162]

So that's the "plumbing" side @jefito (and I too am a "data" merchant so wonder about the data model in a similar vein). The other side is the UI. Not so hard but still something @Evernote would have to invest in - and one where they've had, ahem, a few :-) troubles in the past.

 

Not anti, just going with @BnF's drift of "it ain't necessarily so :-) (easy as a non-dev might think)".

[Lukey 1]

Hey, I'm a developer too!!!  

 

OK, so I've thought about this for a bit, and on the surface, the original question seems pretty tractable: allow custom sorting of a notebook. Seems pretty straightforward: associate an ordinal with every note in a notebook such that if the note has been explicitly moved in the "Custom View Mode" mode, the note's ordinal number gets the appropriate index. Anything that's never been explicitly moved gets some default value. So every note that doesn't have the default ordinal gets sorted first, in that order; everything with the default trails behind in some unspecified order.

 

OK, great, I can sort a notebook that way. Now I have two notebooks, and they're in a stack together, and I'm displaying that stack in "Custom View Mode". What is the ordering then? Maybe it's still on the raw ordinals?

 

OK, so I move a note from one sorted notebook to another. What happens to its ordinal? Are ordinals in a notebook unique? If they're not, what is the subordering?

 

OK, so now I have a notebook that's been shared to me, and it's been carefully ordered by the owner, so that the notes have some semblance of organization to the end user (this is an actual requested scenario). So ordinals need to be sync-able entities. Again, how do they mix and match when those notes appear with other notes?

 

The sorts of questions are the ones I tend to think about, because even if they don't seem to apply to the original scenario, they still need to be handled, due to Evernote's architecture. Maybe they're also pretty tractable (hey, rule-of-thumb can solve a lot of problems).

 

Like Martin, I just use shortcuts, and also saved searches, for items that I want to get to often...

 

Yes, everything gets an ordinal number and unsorted notes have a default value. All that needs to be added to the data structures is an integral value on the Note entity.

 

If a note gets moved to another notebook its ordinal can either be simply reset to a default value or the ordinal value can be relative to the user. For example say the user has two notebooks: notes in notebook 1 can be ordered as: 0005 0006 0008 and notes in notebook 2 could be ordered as 0004 0007 0009. You can see how these would mesh together.

 

When a notebook is shared with another user the sorting order that the author had in place can be sent along too and these values analyzed on the new user's end then the sorting can be adjusted or duplicated to be relative to their existing notes.

 

Obviously this is only a simple rundown of how it might work and B&F is right in saying we don't know the code within Evernote but that doesn't mean we don't have a fairly good idea in what's involved. Evernote has some pretty swish features such as cloud syncing and web clippers. In comparison this feature would not be that difficult in comparison. The developers could add basic custom sorting first then build up from there later. I'm very surprised they haven't actually.

 

As for how many users have asked for it...well not everyone who wants something asks for it. I can imagine there would be a lot of people who would make use of this feature if available. Judging by the number of requests for this I stand by what I said that the benefits outweigh the effort. It's just something the developer doesn't want to do and maybe they do have good reasons but I haven't seen those properly explained yet.

 

My final remark is that the community behind Evernote should foster a healthy environment where users can have their say without having their understanding being questioned. Maybe it does but I just felt that on this thread the opinion of some was little demeaned.

 

That's it for my feedback. It's only my opinion. Anyone can choose to take it or leave it I guess.

[jefito 5,589]

Yes, everything gets an ordinal number and unsorted notes have a default value. All that needs to be added to the data structures is an integral value on the Note entity.

 

If a note gets moved to another notebook its ordinal can either be simply reset to a default value or the ordinal value can be relative to the user. For example say the user has two notebooks: notes in notebook 1 can be ordered as: 0005 0006 0008 and notes in notebook 2 could be ordered as 0004 0007 0009. You can see how these would mesh together.

 

 

When a notebook is shared with another user the sorting order that the author had in place can be sent along too and these values analyzed on the new user's end then the sorting can be adjusted or duplicated to be relative to their existing notes.

Seems like you're casually brushing away any difficulties of canonical note ordering not only in a single user's notebooks (tricky/expensive enough, I'd guess), but now across multiple users'notebooks. I'd guess things are a heck of a lot messier than all of that, and I'd also take in Martin's hint that the UI wouldn't be so easy either. It's awfully fun to speculate and all that, but it's also fun to speculate on things like who the best hitter in baseball was, for example.

 

 

Obviously this is only a simple rundown of how it might work and B&F is right in saying we don't know the code within Evernote but that doesn't mean we don't have a fairly good idea in what's involved. Evernote has some pretty swish features such as cloud syncing and web clippers. In comparison this feature would not be that difficult in comparison. The developers could add basic custom sorting first then build up from there later. I'm very surprised they haven't actually.

Again, you can say that you have a good idea of how it all would work, and that one feature is easier to implement than others, but you really don't know (neither do I). All we can know is that they haven't done it already. Heck, if it was all that easy, maybe they would have done it already. I'd guess that it's just not that important to them (or the to the people that make the feature decisions; not every Evernote employee wants the same feature set as far as I can tell); you need look no further than GMail for an example of a program that does without manual sorting. I'd also guess that they believe that tagging presents a cleaner solution; it's already inherent in their architecture, for one.

 

As for how many users have asked for it...well not everyone who wants something asks for it. I can imagine there would be a lot of people who would make use of this feature if available. Judging by the number of requests for this I stand by what I said that the benefits outweigh the effort. It's just something the developer doesn't want to do and maybe they do have good reasons but I haven't seen those properly explained yet.

Evernote staff don't necessarily always explain every decision/feature to the forum users (this is a user forum, primarily), or they may have done so in the past (I can't remember, myself), and they don't feel the need to repeat themselves.

 

My final remark is that the community behind Evernote should foster a healthy environment where users can have their say without having their understanding being questioned. Maybe it does but I just felt that on this thread the opinion of some was little demeaned.

As this is a user forum (those tagged as 'Evangelists' are users, too, and not Evernote employees, though we are also forum moderators), users can have their say without much interference, but users who post may have other users reply to their posts. Replies can be replied to or ignored, at the poster's choice. Just so long as things stay within bounds of the forum rules, there should be no problem.

[jefito 5,589]

Just to clarify: This forum exists so that users have a voice that's heard by (though not necessarily a conversation with) Evernote. Comments of all stripes (positive and negative), so long as they're more or less topical to Evernote, are welcomed by Evernote staff, who do read every one, but don't respond to everything. Comments/replies by other users are just part of the process -- no one user's voice gets any more credence than any other's. In the context, the suggestion that we be able to re-order notes in a note view is a fair one; speculation and discussion on things like feature feasibility, general utility, possible implementations, etc. are all fair game and fine forum fodder, but the proof is always in the Evernote pudding: we probably won't know that we're going to get such a feature until it appears in public releases, including betas.

[whitz14 1]

Hi,

 

This is a great thread.  

 

Thread Observation (optional read):

• I'm a developer also.  Yes in this thread "Developer" is becoming overused just like "Architect" generally in IT.  I'm an advocate for customer ordering.  I am new to EN and have been comparing various solutions.  In my opinion EN is clearly ahead on the multi platform capability however this framework alone is not enough to get over the line with usability.
• Working for large software companies I have had the benefit of working with people in engineering and development that have more doctorates than I care to mention.  They are extremely talented people yet are not always customer facing and lack the tacit knowledge of their market.  We all think we are the typical user I guess.  The tail wagging the dog.  
• Sometimes development drives the outcome and this can lead to a beautifully engineered solution looking for a customer instead of the other way around. I'm sure EN know where they are going and possibly a similar feature is already in testing.  It is their product.
• Maybe the 80/20 rule is applicable here given the cost of development etc. Anyway...

 

Feature Request:

• Custom ordering of notes +1

 

cheers.

[reassembler 1]

This thread is funny. Once EN adds the "manual sorting" feature the EN apologists will rave about it and say how awesome it and EN are, but until then they'll subtly suggest it's an outlier, not really needed, and those who ask for it are big babies. Based on results I'd say they're correct, but I still can't stand the "the product isn't wrong, you are" sanctimony. Reminds of Apple forums.

 

Having expressed my bitterness towards those who suggest that something I desire, custom note views, isn't obviously the most important thing that EN could be working on RIGHT NOW (WAAAHHHHH!), I'll just add my +1 and pretty please to the please let me order my notes the way I want without having to adopt a bunch of moronic workarounds fray and move on. Oh and I want that ordering to be notebook specific and not just global. Now that I've said it out loud it sounds incredibly simple. I think I'll dust off the old text editor and knock that out tonight. HTML RULEZ!

 

Peace

[jefito 5,589]

This thread is funny. Once EN adds the "manual sorting" feature the EN apologists will rave about it and say how awesome it and EN are, but until then they'll subtly suggest it's an outlier, not really needed, and those who ask for it are big babies. Based on results I'd say they're correct, but I still can't stand the "the product isn't wrong, you are" sanctimony. Reminds of Apple forums.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A guy walks into a forum... and immediately knows absolutely everything about it and all of its participants, and can mischaracterize them all in a single sweeping post. Reminds *me* of every forum I've ever seen, ever.

[Lukey 1]

I'm not sure of what coding background you may have, but I found your responses to both rjones1138 and myself somewhat personally targeted. Accusing either of us of not knowing what we are talking about as you appear to make out isn't the best approach if you want to share your view on the topic. We merely pointed out that such a feature is not that difficult in comparison to most of the other advanced features in Evernote already.

 

I'm sure the effort of adding a custom sort option wouldn't outweigh the benefits because so many people have asked for it. As users of Evernote should be able to suggest features. It is up to the developers to choose if they implement them but we are entitled to argue our point and it sounds to me that many people desire it so maybe this feature should be taken a little more seriously.

 

It seems you've encountered a lot of developers that use Evernote and I admit some of them may have ill-advised ideas of what the developers should do but that doesn't mean every self-confessing developer is wrong. They simply state that they have knowledge of development practices as a means to backup their argument. Is that wrong?

[reassembler 1]

I only wish there were a thumbs up. You'd both get one from me. I deserved every scathing syllable.

 

Sanctimony was too strong and a bit sanctimonious of me. Sorry.

 

Oh, and please don't take this the wrong way, but the only things telling about my use of "apologists" is that I talk about religion a lot and I tend to lose track of details. I meant to say "evangelists". Maybe it was Freudian. But apologist does seem to fit also. Being an apologist though isn't a negative thing. It just means that you're a defender of something that's being attacked or questioned. In this case that would be EN and/or their Dev team. Why on Earth would you think being called an EN apologist is an attack?

 

Also, I don't think I disagreed with anyone. As a matter of fact I stated that those who thought the feature wasn't really needed were correct.

[rjones1138 2]

Still waiting for custom ordering of lists and enjoying the forum posts. But Onenote now has apps on tablets and phones that work like the desktop and sync well via your MS account. But I get asked about EN and ON a lot because of my work and people notice I am organized and want to know why. I always show them both apps and some people care about roughing and some people don't. I have had issues with both and am glad I have a choice. Just wish all my clients used one so they were more organized. EN reacts well to users so I get we just have to understand that not many people have requested this.

[jefito 5,589]

I only wish there were a thumbs up. You'd both get one from me. I deserved every scathing syllable.

Sanctimony was too strong and a bit sanctimonious of me. Sorry.

Fair enough, I had actually edited my reply down a bit to be *less* sarcastic than it was (I'm supposed to know better, but sometimes...). Anyhow, welcome -- you do seem to know how to make an entrance...

Apropos: I'm really not against adding this feature. I would be unlikely to use it, because I use reminders to temporarily keep specific items at the top of my note lists and it actually works pretty well for me now. But I know that there is a valid use case for it too. Any discussion / speculation on implementation on my part is just idle thought, trying to think through implications, but not trying to dissuade anyone that it's somehow a bad idea. Bottom line, though, if it's added, then we -- the apologists and many other helpful forum users -- will be digging into it to see how it works, because it's for certain there'd be questions about it in the forums here that'll need answering.

Oh yeah, there is a thumbs-up of sorts; the little button that says "Like This" at the lower right hand side of each post. See?

[jameskachan 17]

I would really like my notebook list arranged in a manual way - having to use the alphabet to decide order is dumb.

I would prefer to arrange notebooks so that the ones that relate to one another (but are different enough to justify being different notebooks entirely)  can be beside one another.

 

This is how anyone would interact in the real world, and how I would like my information collected in Evernote too..

You would always put knives and forks and spoons in the same drawer, because they they are all flatware, it would be insane if spoons were in one drawer at the bottom and forks were in a another drawer way at the top all because of the first letter to spell them.

We think and arrange things by type, not by alphabetic order.

 

Please address this for sanity sake.

[jameskachan 17]

Custom order is essential. Please Evernote.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Until/IF Evernote provides a custom/manual order for NBs and Notes, you can try these workarounds:

1. For NBs, create shortcuts, which can be ordered manually.
2. For Notes, add Reminders w/o a date, which can be ordered manually in the list above the Note list.
   1. Although it sounds strange, the Reminder list is really just a special Note list.

Both of these really only work for a small number of NBs/Notes.  But then that would be true for a custom order features as well.  I can't imagine manually ordering a 100 items, much less 1,000s.

[onewhaleid 1]

I use Evernote every day for my research journal.

 

Every 6 months or so I create a new notebook, and try to move it to a specific place on the sidebar. Then I remember, 'Nooo, Evernote really loves alphabetical order!'.

 

I become grumpy, so I Google 'Evernote custom sorting of notebooks', so I can read through this thread once again, and feel the wrath of other users with the same problem.

 

By the time I reach the end of the thread, I am no longer grumpy, because I know for a fact, that:

 

- Every single Evernote user is a developer (like me!); and

- BurgersNFries is probably not a Mr.

 

I will continue to use (and enjoy using) Evernote, but if custom notebook sorting is ever implemented, it will just make it just a little bit more complete.

[jameskachan 17]

 

I use Evernote every day for my research journal.

 

Every 6 months or so I create a new notebook, and try to move it to a specific place on the sidebar. Then I remember, 'Nooo, Evernote really loves alphabetical order!'.

 

I become grumpy, so I Google 'Evernote custom sorting of notebooks', so I can read through this thread once again, and feel the wrath of other users with the same problem.

 

By the time I reach the end of the thread, I am no longer grumpy, because I know for a fact, that:

 

- Every single Evernote user is a developer (like me!); and

- BurgersNFries is probably not a Mr.

 

I will continue to use (and enjoy using) Evernote, but if custom notebook sorting is ever implemented, it will just make it just a little bit more complete.

 

I feel your pain.

[pnewcomb 3]

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned elsewhere, but you can just manually change the note's 'created' date to get the order you want. Cmd+Shift+I on my mac brings up the info window to change it quickly. It's not as elegant as simply clicking & dragging, but it works for me. I could, however, see this being a pain in the butt if I had a lot of manual sorting to do!

[jefito 5,589]

Moved to the Evernote Feature Request subforum so that forum visitors can at least vote on it.

[rjones1138 2]

Mr. BurgersNFries. I own a web development company with hundreds of clients so I am well aware of what it takes to develop content for browers, apps, and mobile platforms. Being able to order notes is not "more bells and whistles" but a basic feature that should be part of Evernote. And it will be part of Evernote eventually. Every person I teach to use Evernote, without exception, asks me how to do this. So I teach them my workarounds.

If you are going to just reply to my comments with some version of "sorry tough luck", please save your own time for other areas of the forum.

I like Evernote and will like it more when they allow ordered notes. All the other "bells and whistles" are gravy at best.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I would really like to be able to customize the order of the notebooks and notes, because I don't like having to constantly find where it has been placed, or scroll everywhere to get to the notes I want.

Hi. Welcome to the discussion forums!

I agree. I think it would be great if we had a "manual sort" option. It is a request that occasionally comes up ().

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I just remembered (thanks to my external brain) that Evernote talked about something like this in Podcast number 12 (http://blog.evernote...pping-and-more/). Dave (technical guy at Evernote) gave a clear explanation about why things are the way they are (see 26:41-28:05) with the current sort system. The podcasts often contain interesting bits of information like this. I've got the entire list of them on my site (at the bottom of the page http://www.princeton...multimedia.html).

[thearchitect 0]

I just remembered (thanks to my external brain) that Evernote talked about something like this in Podcast number 12 (http://blog.evernote...pping-and-more/). Dave (technical guy at Evernote) gave a clear explanation about why things are the way they are (see 26:41-28:05) with the current sort system. The podcasts often contain interesting bits of information like this. I've got the entire list of them on my site (at the bottom of the page http://www.princeton...multimedia.html).

Let me just say that I'm somewhat new to Evernote as a user. I've heard of it in the past and thought it a great idea but never found a use for it until recently.

I don't think your developer's answer in the Pod caste is even an acceptable answer. How can one compare a note book to a list of emails? It might be logical for someone to sort their emails in an predefined fields like received date or even by sender or subject. For instance, order by date makes sense for emails since they are sent to you chronologically. But ideas doesn't always come to you that way, so you don't have the order of your thoughts for the particular project right way. I sure as hell do not have enough tallent to make my ideas flow in an alphabetical order.

How could a valuable feature like custom sorting be missing and dismissed (that's the worse part) by incorrectly comparing apples to oranges?

[jbenson2 2,147]

Many of the heavy users of Evernote restrict the number of notebooks and let the Evernote search, tags, and titles do the leg work in finding the information. I've got 17,500 notes in 7 notebooks. No need to worry about sorting.

For the folks who want custom sorting, Evernote does have a solution.

The notebooks can be renamed with a prefix to position them. Many GTD advocates use the ! as a prefix.

Grumpymonkey did a fine job documenting his procedure to organize his notes.

http://www.princeton...ganization.html

[Jayden 8]

I have to disagree with the above, this is certainly a work around, but i believe in choice and options over the "do it our way or the highway" approach - i can't image it would be too difficult to implement the option to arrange notes yourself, and for those of you who don't want to use it, don't use it! but i would rather have the choice.

Also, as far as i can tell, deleted notes are not sortable. I create hundreds of notes every week with reminders and general "short" notes that are only temporary, i delete them, then look for them in 2 years in the deleted folder, i wish i could arrange this or search through this as a separate function.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I just remembered (thanks to my external brain) that Evernote talked about something like this in Podcast number 12 (http://blog.evernote...pping-and-more/). Dave (technical guy at Evernote) gave a clear explanation about why things are the way they are (see 26:41-28:05) with the current sort system. The podcasts often contain interesting bits of information like this. I've got the entire list of them on my site (at the bottom of the page http://www.princeton...multimedia.html).

Let me just say that I'm somewhat new to Evernote as a user. I've heard of it in the past and thought it a great idea but never found a use for it until recently.

I don't think your developer's answer in the Pod caste is even an acceptable answer. How can one compare a note book to a list of emails? It might be logical for someone to sort their emails in an predefined fields like received date or even by sender or subject. For instance, order by date makes sense for emails since they are sent to you chronologically. But ideas doesn't always come to you that way, so you don't have the order of your thoughts for the particular project right way. I sure as hell do not have enough tallent to make my ideas flow in an alphabetical order.

How could a valuable feature like custom sorting be missing and dismissed (that's the worse part) by incorrectly comparing apples to oranges?

Hi. Welcome to the forums. Actually, I think a lot of people probably do use their emails as a place to store ideas, things to do, and so forth. I know I did for a while. Obviously, it is a little less robust than Evernote! However, I think the point they were making in the podcast wasn't so much that Evernote is structured like email, but rather that (like email) Evernote uses metadata associated with a note to sort the notes, and (like email) does not have an empty field available for manual/custom sorting, because that wasn't the organizational model they had in mind. It was a design decision that I imagine was probably made to make things simpler for both the developers and users, and I think it does that. My main point was that the developers are not unreasonable novices, but that they simply had a different vision of the app in mind.

However, anyone who wants to create an external brain and organize stuff is also likely to desire lots of control (some might call this anal retentive). I know I am one of those people, and I'd like to reiterate my hope that Evernote gives us manual sorting. I think I understand why the initial design decision was made, but I think it is time for a change

I have to disagree with the above, this is certainly a work around, but i believe in choice and options over the "do it our way or the highway" approach - i can't image it would be too difficult to implement the option to arrange notes yourself, and for those of you who don't want to use it, don't use it! but i would rather have the choice.

Also, as far as i can tell, deleted notes are not sortable. I create hundreds of notes every week with reminders and general "short" notes that are only temporary, i delete them, then look for them in 2 years in the deleted folder, i wish i could arrange this or search through this as a separate function.

I don't think it is a "do it our way or the highway" approach so much as it is a "this is what we have now, so this is how you can work with the app that is, instead of getting frustrated trying to work with an app that isn't." Based on what I have heard from Evernote (you may want to watch the keynote speech by Phil Libin at this year's Trunk Conference) Evernote prefers to make the user interface decisions for users, and they are aiming for something that "just works" rather than something that is infinitely tweakable. I am quite happy to have Evernote define the default interface for us, but personally I prefer to also have the option to customize my account, so I have a different design philosophy.

The good news? Evernote's API is open to everyone. Whatever you want can be done. Heck, it may have already been done! Find a developer (there is a developer forum), propose your ideas for improvements to the app, and see if you get any traction.

Anyhow, I don't think Evernote envisioned the Trash to be a place for people to actually do any work. I'd recommend that rather than deleting these short notes and removing them from searches, etc. that you put them into a "Temporary" notebook. I'd think this would solve your problem, and also let you take advantage of Evernote functionality (like searching).

[HerbyDE 101]

+ manual sort option

I organize very different project with evernote - in most cases the sort options are okay or I can use the prefix thing 1-aaa, 2-bbb, 3-ccc and so on.

But in a very, very important field this is not the best solution: if I've to write articles or books I've to rearrange my notes often. 'Should this piece of text more at the beginning?' and so on.

I know as an academic writer that a lot of my colleagues have the same problem.

Why not simple put an option "manual sort" in the list? If someone don't need it, he will not use it - and the rest of us poor lonesome writers would be very happy :-)

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

+ manual sort option

I organize very different project with evernote - in most cases the sort options are okay or I can use the prefix thing 1-aaa, 2-bbb, 3-ccc and so on.

But in a very, very important field this is not the best solution: if I've to write articles or books I've to rearrange my notes often. 'Should this piece of text more at the beginning?' and so on.

I know as an academic writer that a lot of my colleagues have the same problem.

Why not simple put an option "manual sort" in the list? If someone don't need it, he will not use it - and the rest of us poor lonesome writers would be very happy :-)

Yep. It is a constant problem for me, especially with longer pieces. I think the best option is to use a text editor (Simplenote / Notational Velocity / Notational Acceleration) + Scrivener combination. Evernote sees my first drafts, and it sees the final products, but in-between the lack of a manual sort makes it unwieldy. It is truly a shame, as I have no desire to work outside the app and split up my work this way

[rjones1138 2]

This topic is similar to ones that are posted on 37signals. People need a feature and the developers defend why it is not in the product. I have been a power user of OneNote for more than a year. You can drag your notes whereever you like. It is a great feature that is the one thing I miss from OneNote.

I really am liking Evernote because of it's cloud sync feature. OneNote never worked well on phones, tablets or it's cloud version. Evernote is superb in this regard.

But I am continually amazed and disappointed in the lack of imagination and insight some developers show. So the developer for Evernote uses Evernote and thinks of it as a string of emails - excellent! But this is not a static, one way street kind of an environment. So add the code to allow a preference to allow custom ordering - or not!!!!!!!!

Both parties get what they want.

But I can guarantee even the developer who tried to defend the email string idea (which makes no sense to me whatsoever) will need the feature sometimes.

My real point here is, you don't have to decide - allow both ways of working.

BTW the way I short circuit this limitation of Evernote is by using prefixes. I use numbers and capital letter shortcodes. So, "1 INFO - " puts my item at the top of my notebook's INFO section. I use DONE, INFO, FUTURE, etc, to subsection each notebook. OneNote allowed custom ordering and indentions of items, but my system in Evernote works just fine.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

This topic is similar to ones that are posted on 37signals. People need a feature and the developers defend why it is not in the product. I have been a power user of OneNote for more than a year. You can drag your notes whereever you like. It is a great feature that is the one thing I miss from OneNote.

I really am liking Evernote because of it's cloud sync feature. OneNote never worked well on phones, tablets or it's cloud version. Evernote is superb in this regard.

But I am continually amazed and disappointed in the lack of imagination and insight some developers show. So the developer for Evernote uses Evernote and thinks of it as a string of emails - excellent! But this is not a static, one way street kind of an environment. So add the code to allow a preference to allow custom ordering - or not!!!!!!!!

Both parties get what they want.

But I can guarantee even the developer who tried to defend the email string idea (which makes no sense to me whatsoever) will need the feature sometimes.

As GM said above, EN is striving for something that works. I've said many times on the board that IMO, certainly at least one of the reasons Onenote doesn't live on as many platforms as EN is due to all the stars, anywhere editing, tabs, etc, etc, etc. the more bells & whistles you have to add to all the platforms, the more difficult it is. Based upon your comment, you've found this part to be true with Onenote. Perhaps someday, EN will work it's way up to all this stuff. But they apparently decided to take a different approach & start out with what works and move up from there. Ridiculing them for not doing something you think should be easy or should have been included from the beginning is futile. You have no idea what problems or issues exist in trying to make something work well across many OSes and devices. But also, as GM points out, Evernote's API is out there. So if anyone thinks they can make a better UI using the Evernote data, feel free to do so.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I'm not sure of what coding background you may have, but I found your responses to both rjones1138 and myself somewhat personally targeted. Accusing either of us of not knowing what we are talking about as you appear to make out isn't the best approach if you want to share your view on the topic. We merely pointed out that such a feature is not that difficult in comparison to most of the other advanced features in Evernote already.

I'm sure the effort of adding a custom sort option wouldn't outweigh the benefits because so many people have asked for it. As users of Evernote should be able to suggest features. It is up to the developers to choose if they implement them but we are entitled to argue our point and it sounds to me that many people desire it so maybe this feature should be taken a little more seriously.

It seems you've encountered a lot of developers that use Evernote and I admit some of them may have ill-advised ideas of what the developers should do but that doesn't mean every self-confessing developer is wrong. They simply state that they have knowledge of development practices as a means to backup their argument. Is that wrong?

Again, unless you are intimately involved with Evernote under the hood (IE an employee), you are simply not "sure" that the effort of adding a custom sort option wouldn't outweigh the benefits. You state "so many people have asked for it." On the board, it may seem like a lot of people. But when you're talking about 60+ million users, the board/FB & Twitter users are still only a small portion. To reiterate, even if it was easy, that doesn't mean EN has even decided to add it. It may be something EN has decided not to add. It might be easy to change the color of the EN apps to purple. But maybe they simply don't want to do that. You don't even know that EN hasn't taken this feature request (manually arranging notes) very seriously and simply decided against it (for whatever reason(s)).

There is nothing wrong with people stating they are or have been devs. But it almost always prefaces something (basically) like they "know" a particular feature is easy to add. Which again, is simply not true, unless you're EN staff. That's a fact. Some users even take it further by claiming EN does or does not do certain things because they are purposely being obstinate or their devs are morons or they cripple something "so they can make a lot of money", etc. As users, we are normally not privy to why any feature is not/will not be added. And frankly, it's not our business. It's EN's app & it's their jobs at stake. They have to make decisions & prioritize for the "greater good". Those decisions are not going to satisfy every 60+ million users.

So far, Evernote has proven to be a company that seems to know where they are going. Like any successful company, they have a long term plan. Some features will be added over time. Others will never be added b/c it does not mesh with what Evernote is about. (IMO, manually ordering notes is one of those, just as EN does not want to be yet another task list/to do list manager or incorporate lan syn'ing.) Many users seem to think EN should add feature A because it's "fundamentally basic" and/or a lot of users have asked for it and/or have been asking for it for years and/or it should be easy to add - it could be optional, will cause more people to go premium & therefore generate millions of revenue dollars, etc, etc, etc. Users debating these issues is pointless, IMO. So I will conclude with this... Users are free to request features. But stating you know something is "easy" is incorrect. Accepting that just because it's a feature that you & "a lot" of others have requested and/or consider "fundamentally basic" and/or have requested for years doesn't mean it will ever be added is part of life. (Not all of those phrases may have been used in this thread...but they often crop up when users are upset that their "it" feature is missing.)

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Mr. BurgersNFries. I own a web development company with hundreds of clients so I am well aware of what it takes to develop content for browers, apps, and mobile platforms. Being able to order notes is not "more bells and whistles" but a basic feature that should be part of Evernote. And it will be part of Evernote eventually. Every person I teach to use Evernote, without exception, asks me how to do this. So I teach them my workarounds.

If you are going to just reply to my comments with some version of "sorry tough luck", please save your own time for other areas of the forum.

I like Evernote and will like it more when they allow ordered notes. All the other "bells and whistles" are gravy at best.

Sorry dude. But web development really isn't what Evernote is about. Kind of the same thing. But not exactly. Kind of like saying Mexican food & Italian food are the same thing because they both use cheese & tomatos.

If you're so certain you know how to make a OneNote type of app for Evernote to work across all the platforms, then please, go ahead. EN's API is published. I'm sure there are many other ON users who would love it.

[jefito 5,589]

Mr. BurgersNFries.

Just FYI, BurgersNFries is not a "mister". "Assume" and all that.

Being able to order notes is not "more bells and whistles" but a basic feature that should be part of Evernote.

Having observed the various feature requests in this forum over the past several years, I'd have to say that your "basic feature" is someone else's "bell and whistle". And vice-versa. It's a fair request, for sure, but Evernote's priorities haven't caused them to add it so far (I tend to let them worry about those sorts of things, since it's their livelihood). That being said, if it's really such a perceived gotta-have, then maybe some 3rd-party developer will make it happen, as has occurred before (e.g. Linux client, tag clouds, calendaring, and so on).

[SoloScorpio777 2]

+ 1 More for Manual Sorting!!!

How awful would it be to add this as an option in the Sort function? Really? C'mon Evernote, not everyone works the same on every single notebook/project. This is a sorely missing feature. Please add my vote to the list of requesters.

Sincerely,

Tim

[kc1144 1]

I'm considering to go premium, and this is a feature that I would want to see before I upgrade.

 

Can't you at least have that option buried somewhere in settings so that the people who really need it can enable manual sorting?

 

Currently the notes keep rearranging every time I edit them, and I keep losing track of the notes!

 

This feature is very valuable when you want to present your notes in a meeting as an alternative to powerpoint slides.

[Martin Packer 162]

@jefito It really is a BAD photo if people think BnF is a "Mr". :-) The "Don't make me come over there..." might just've been broken. :-)

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

@jefito It really is a BAD photo if people think BnF is a "Mr". :-) The "Don't make me come over there..." might just've been broken. :-)

Hehehe... Fortunately, IRL, I've never been mistaken for a mister. ;-)

[gbarry 2,658]

The latest version of Evernote for Mac offers something sort of like the OP's request. You can shortcut notes and notebooks on the left hand navbar. I regularly swap in and out individual notes based on my priorities of the day/week/month/year, and have my most used notebooks listed there as well.

I'm less sure about the technical requirements of taking and saving your manually sorted notes, then multiplying this across every platform, but have logged the request.

[Lukey 1]

 

Mr. BurgersNFries. I own a web development company with hundreds of clients so I am well aware of what it takes to develop content for browers, apps, and mobile platforms. Being able to order notes is not "more bells and whistles" but a basic feature that should be part of Evernote. And it will be part of Evernote eventually. Every person I teach to use Evernote, without exception, asks me how to do this. So I teach them my workarounds.

If you are going to just reply to my comments with some version of "sorry tough luck", please save your own time for other areas of the forum.

I like Evernote and will like it more when they allow ordered notes. All the other "bells and whistles" are gravy at best.

Sorry dude. But web development really isn't what Evernote is about. Kind of the same thing. But not exactly. Kind of like saying Mexican food & Italian food are the same thing because they both use cheese & tomatos.

If you're so certain you know how to make a OneNote type of app for Evernote to work across all the platforms, then please, go ahead. EN's API is published. I'm sure there are many other ON users who would love it.

 

 

As both a web and application developer I find your response somewhat offensive on behalf of rjones1138. Fact of the matter is that programming is programming, it is nothing like Mexican vs Italian food.

 

A custom sort is not something that would be difficult to add on all platforms. The EN developer doesn't have to implement this feature if he has a good reason but his excuse isn't very solid and I'm very surprised Evernote would look at something like that as a "bells and whistles" feature. A custom sorting mechanism could be well hidden and non-obtrusive. It is something many users want and would make use of.

 

If it is a common request maybe Evernote should pay a little more attention to their users and consider this feature more seriously.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

As both a web and application developer I find your response somewhat offensive on behalf of rjones1138. Fact of the matter is that programming is programming, it is nothing like Mexican vs Italian food.

 

A custom sort is not something that would be difficult to add on all platforms. The EN developer doesn't have to implement this feature if he has a good reason but his excuse isn't very solid and I'm very surprised Evernote would look at something like that as a "bells and whistles" feature. A custom sorting mechanism could be well hidden and non-obtrusive. It is something many users want and would make use of.

 

If it is a common request maybe Evernote should pay a little more attention to their users and consider this feature more seriously.

Ok, 97% of the users here are, have been or claim to be devs.  Regardless, any dev who has been around the block a time or two & is worth much of anything knows that you really don't know for sure how easy or difficult something is to code in code that you are not familiar with.  Or the ramifications of that code in other operating systems or certain scenarios.  Or different devices.  Or maybe it's not a workable solution for the volume of data involved, since Evernote is looking to be a 100 year company.  Or maybe it's simply not what Evernote is about.  So no, you do not know if it would be easy or difficult to incorporate and/or support or even if they have a desire to add this feature.  You're simply armchair quarterbacking.