(Archived) A single tag organized in multiple locations - organization problem

[Falck 3]

I am currently organizing notes from a course. Several topics base themselves on one prinsipal, but in different ways, and they do not only cover this principal, but they all relate to it.

Intuitively I want to organize the same tag under several other tags, but Evernote doesn't seem to want to let me do that. Has anyone else had a similar issue and found a clever way to resolve it, if not, has anyone got any good ideas on how this can be solved?

-Hans

[jbenson2 2,147]

Let's consider one principal (Science) and several topics.

You could create a parent tag and children tags like this:

Science

Sci-Biology

Sci-Chemisty

Sci-Physics

To search for all your notes that involve science, you could search for

tag:Sci-*

[Falck 3]

Hmm. I'm not sure it will work in my case, but I appreciate the input. My problem is as follows (not sure if I am useing the right translations to English).

Budgeting

Result Budgeting

Calculcaions

Cash Budgeting

Calculations

Balance Budgeting

Calculations

Management Accounting

Standard Cost Accounting

Calculations

Normal Cost Accounting

Calculations

All the tags tagged calculations are the same two calculations. They vary slightly in each parent tag, but are based on the same principal and reasoning every time. Any suggestions?

[jbenson2 2,147]

If Calculations is important, I would use two tags for the appropriate notes.

Here is one example of Parent / Child tags. The Parent tags (Budgeting and Accounting) would not be used on any notes. They are just a place holder to group the child tags.

Budgeting

Bud-Result and Calc

Bud-Cash and Calc

Bud-Balance and Calc

Accounting

Acc-Std Cost and Calc

Acc-Nor Cost and Calc

To find all Budgeting notes, search for:

tag:Bud-*

To find all Accounting notes, search for:

tag:Acc-*

To find all Calculations notes, search for:

tag:Calc

[May 268]

Here's how I solve the problem (organise tags separately outside of Evernote)

...Next problem with using prefixes (and also sub-tags in Evernote) for organisation is that you can't organize Tags in multiple ways.

While it's possible to nest tags into a tree structure in the Tag List, i.e. use parent/child tags - any tag can have only a single parent tag.

Here's an example of organizing a tag in multiple ways, I have no limitations in my organizational structure. I can organize anything into any kind of structure, i.e hierarchical or even non hierarchical networked structure.

When you can tag/organize notes in as many ways as you like - why would you want to limit yourself to organizing tags themselves only in a single way?

[roschler 158]

Hmm. I'm not sure it will work in my case, but I appreciate the input. My problem is as follows (not sure if I am useing the right translations to English).

Budgeting

Result Budgeting

Calculcaions

Cash Budgeting

Calculations

Balance Budgeting

Calculations

Management Accounting

Standard Cost Accounting

Calculations

Normal Cost Accounting

Calculations

All the tags tagged calculations are the same two calculations. They vary slightly in each parent tag, but are based on the same principal and reasoning every time. Any suggestions?

Are you trying to have the same tag be a child of multiple parent tags? If so, I don't think Evernote can do that (someone jump in here if I'm wrong please). That would require something for tags that works the way a Windows shortcut on does with files. While Evernote does support linking notes like that, I don't think tags can be linked.

-- roschler

[May 268]

Evernote can't do it, and there is a lot more stuff Evernote cant do. However the problem can still be solved if you organise Tags outside of Evernote tag list. It's actually very simple but not obvious and it requires some outside of the box thinking.

Personally I don't organise Tags in Evernote itself, I do it in a separate mind map. This allows me to organise Tags in any way I want, and it works on both desktop and mobile which is important because I use iPad as my main computer.

All tags are still in Evernote but in a completely flat list. So if I want to find Notes with a certain tag or multiple tags, I just search for those tags in Evernote. If I want to find actual Tags (by browsing) then I look in a separate mind map instead of Evernote tag list. This mind map is basically an organisation tool for an organisation tool.

[lenarr 27]

I do something quite simple. I use two or three tags to describe a single note. Using your example, Falck, I'd make a tag called cash, another called budget(ing), and another called calculations.

I'm on the steering committee of two organizations, so I have a tag called SC. I use SC tag + organization's tag + agenda tag, or the minutes tag, or the "action item" tag.

I'd go insane keeping a separate catalog just for the tags. If I wanted all my tags for budgeting, rather than searching for tag:Bud-* I'd simply search for tag:budget.

lena

[jefito 5,589]

I am currently organizing notes from a course. Several topics base themselves on one prinsipal, but in different ways, and they do not only cover this principal, but they all relate to it.

Intuitively I want to organize the same tag under several other tags, but Evernote doesn't seem to want to let me do that. Has anyone else had a similar issue and found a clever way to resolve it, if not, has anyone got any good ideas on how this can be solved?

Tags are unique to your tag list; there can only be one of each them in your list. I've found that it's best not to worry too much about tag organization. There is no intrinsic meaning to tags (they mean what you want them to mean), nor does the tag hierarchy impart any semantic parent-child relation based on relative location in the tree. Tags are just labels in Evernote.

To get around the uniqueness problem, you can do a couple of things. One is to create different tags for different areas of discipline by adding a prefix (or suffix) to the tag indicating the area of application, e.g. for the overloaded term "field", you might have something like: "math-field", "sports-field", "study-field", "physics-field". These tags you store in whatever branch of the tag tree is most appropriate. You can also treat this sort of approach as a means to get to a true hierarchical categorization of your notes, if that's important to you.

The other approach is to treat them like we treat homographs (words that have the same spelling but different meaning) in our natural language. Store them in your tag tree any way that's convenient to you -- alphabetically, or the first place that you put the tag, or whatever. You can distinguish different meaning of the tag by adding more context in your search, like other qualifying tags (e.g.,"math", "sports", "physics", "study", "work"), or just plain adding a simple text term. You don't get any sort of single hierarchical categorization of your notes, but that may not be necessary for you, since you can do your own classification using Evernote search flexibly, just as we do in natural language. This is pretty much the approach that I use.

[jefito 5,589]

Are you trying to have the same tag be a child of multiple parent tags? If so, I don't think Evernote can do that (someone jump in here if I'm wrong please). That would require something for tags that works the way a Windows shortcut on does with files. While Evernote does support linking notes like that, I don't think tags can be linked.

I think that that's what's being asked, and your reply is quite correct.

[Falck 3]

I have read through the answers posted and have found them all to be very helpful. Thank you very much for the feedback and perspective, I see that there is no one correct way to organize my notes using tags and will look into finding a way to do it that works for me. Thanks again to the Evernote community.

[aashish108 11]

I don't like the flat-list style tags. I prefer an organisation akin to Onenote: Notebooks -> Sections -> Pages -> Sub-pages. Otherwise it becomes a mess once you reach critical-mass for number of notes.

[jefito 5,589]

I don't like the flat-list style tags. I prefer an organisation akin to Onenote: Notebooks -> Sections -> Pages -> Sub-pages. Otherwise it becomes a mess once you reach critical-mass for number of notes.

Tags are not flat-list in the three Evernote clients that I use (Windows, Android, Web). Are they flat in Mac or iOS?

[aashish108 11]

I don't like the flat-list style tags. I prefer an organisation akin to Onenote: Notebooks -> Sections -> Pages -> Sub-pages. Otherwise it becomes a mess once you reach critical-mass for number of notes.

Tags are not flat-list in the three Evernote clients that I use (Windows, Android, Web). Are they flat in Mac or iOS?

Sorry, I didn't mean flat, just the unique named tag style.

[jefito 5,589]

@aashish108: I think that you'll find that there are a number of folks who use tags effectively to organize large numbers of notes, but I know they're not for everyone. Still some of those folks are around and can share their approaches.

[mogf01 12]

I don't like the flat-list style tags. I prefer an organisation akin to Onenote: Notebooks -> Sections -> Pages -> Sub-pages. Otherwise it becomes a mess once you reach critical-mass for number of notes.

Tags are not flat-list in the three Evernote clients that I use (Windows, Android, Web). Are they flat in Mac or iOS?

Yes, they are flat in iOS, and its one of the issues which makes the iPad version feel so needlessly different (very frustrating).

I like your own reply above, @jefito, where you wrote: "There is no intrinsic meaning to tags (they mean what you want them to mean), nor does the tag hierarchy impart any semantic parent-child relation based on relative location in the tree. Tags are just labels in Evernote." That is very sound advice it seems to me.