E-mail tags don't show up as tags on my evernote account

[aaronernst 0]

Evernote appears to be having a problem tagging my e-mails.

I often send e-mails to my evernote e-mail address in order to store contact information. When I forward the e-mail, I place tags in the subject line. For example, I often add the tags #contact #companyname #lastname.

The e-mails all end up in my evernote account, but without tags. Or sometimes only a single tag will show up. I'm not attempting to send to a specific notebook using the @ mark.

Is anyone else having this problem?

[jhull 130]

Sorry to hear you're having issues with emailing in a note and tags. In general, anything emailed to Evernote will only assign a tag if we find that it already exists on your account. If you indicated a new tag using a '#', we'll leave the word in the subject line.

When you find notes that weren't tagged, was the word still in the subject? If so, you'd need to create the tag in your account before using that tag in email.

[ThomasK 2]

I'm seeing the same problem. Both the target noteboook and tag already exist. However, although the emailed note does get placed in the required notebook, it doesn't get tagged. For example, if my email has the following subject:

"This is a test @foobar #personal"

I end up with a note with title "This is a test #personal" in notebook foobar. The new note's body is the email message body, however there is no tag on the note. I've tried this with two different tags (both already created) and it fails for both. I'm emailing from Gmail and have looked at the message source in case there were some extra characters being added to the subject line after the tag. There weren't.

However, if I send the email with *only* a tag -- i.e. no @notebook -- the tagging appears to work correctly. For example, if my email has the following subject:

"This is another test #personal"

I end up with a note with title "This is another test" in my default notebook. The new note's body is the email message, and the new note has a tag of "personal".

[ThomasK 2]

I'm seeing the same problem. ... if my email has the following subject:

"This is a test @foobar #personal"

I end up with a note with title "This is a test #personal" in notebook foobar. The new note's body is the email message body, however there is no tag on the note.

It may have something to do with Evernote Business. I'm an EN Business user and the problem seems to arise for me only when the target is a Business Notebook. However if I mark the email subject for the note to be inserted into a Personal Notebook, the tagging works fine.

I tried it with two different Business Notebooks, to make sure it wasn't just a problem with one specific notebook. The problem arose for both.

I also checked that I was able to *manually* tag the Business Notebooks (in case perhaps the tags were "visible" only to Personal Notebooks). That worked fine, so tagging is possible in general. It's just email tagging, to Business Notebooks, that seems broken.

[ThomasK 2]

I've reported this to EN support under Premium user support, so I'll report back on what I get from them if we don't see it resolved here "in the open".

Their first reply is as follows:

"Do the tags you are using already exist in that Business Notebook you are emailing into? The tag you are using

must

be a tag that is already applied to that specific Business Notebook, not just any Business Notebook."

That -- the fact that the tag must not only be pre-existing (which I knew) but also be "already applied to that specific Business Notebook" -- is news. And I don't actually know what it means to apply a tag to a *notebook*. I thought tags got applied to notes.

I've asked for clarification, but anyone got a clue what it means?

ADDENDUM (so I don't use up my new-forum-user posting quota)

They replied to my question about how does one tag a notebook and said:

"Yes, tags are applied to the note. Sorry for the miscommunication... You will need to make sure a note inside the notebook you're sending into has the tag you're using. This will make that tag available for use on any note in that notebook."

I'm testing that right now. I'll report back.

ADDENDUM 2:

OK, I checked it. I set up four notebooks, two Business and two Personal. One of each was "preloaded" with a note that had been tagged with "test-tag". The other two were empty of notes. I then sent a note by email to each of them, in all cases tagging on the subject line with #test-tag. It's just as they say. To tag an emailed note aimed at a Personal Notebook, the tag in question merely has to exist in your account. But if you are targeting the note at a Business Notebook, the tag must exist *and* there must already be at least one note already in the target notebook and pre-tagged with the tag in question.

Aside: One little quirk I spotted is that I had to run my tests twice. The first attempt failed to tag on the pre-tagged Business Notebook. But I tried again and it worked. I suspect it may be some kind of synchronization race condition or something like that.

Back to the original poster then. If you are using Evernote Business, this may be your answer. If you are on just regular (personal) EN and you're still seeing the problem, it must be something else. I'd be interested to hear which you're on.

ADDENDUM 3:

I asked support if this behavior, where email tagging of Business notebooks was different from (and more restrictive than) tagging of Personal notebooks, was a bug, or if they did it for a reason. It's the latter, and I think I agree with their thinking. Here's what they said (minor editing for clarity):

"Suppose a business user has Business Notebook on a secret project that is shared only with the CEO. Other users may not even know that Notebook exists. We did not want that notebook's tags to just show up in everybody's accounts. Therefore, for Evernote Business, a tag must be on a note in a specific notebook before it really shows up in that notebook. Otherwise, everyone could be running around with hundreds (or thousands) of other people's tags that relate to notebooks any given person isn't even synced to."

I guess that makes sense.

[aaronernst 0]

Hmmm, I'm not sure what that means. Regardless, it seems like a clunky way for e-mail tagging to work. It would be so much easier if a user could simply add a tag to a subject line and if it didn't exist previously, create a tag via the subject. I'm not sure why that would be so difficult to program.

[ThomasK 2]

Hmmm, I'm not sure what that means. Regardless, it seems like a clunky way for e-mail tagging to work. It would be so much easier if a user could simply add a tag to a subject line and if it didn't exist previously, create a tag via the subject. I'm not sure why that would be so difficult to program.

Well that's a slightly broader issue than the problem of tags having to not only exist but *be in use* in a Business Notebook.

But overall, I agree that creation on the fly has benefits, but it also has the drawback that if you incorrectly enter a tag name -- e.g. you ask for #presonal instead of #personal -- EN would not fail "safe". It would simply create the note and apply the incorrect tag. With the current system, you essentially get error checking because if you mistype a tag, you end up with a note with a #<tag> in its title, thereby flagging to you that you need to fix it. Of course you could also see that if they had auto-tag-creation, because you'd see notes tagged with the incorrect "presonal". But it could be argued that is less obvious than seeing the #<tag> staring at you from the note's title.

But yes, it's a tradeoff -- ease of creation of new tags, versus protection against mistyped tags. Reasonable minds may differ on which is more valuable.

[DogCompany97 0]

I am having this issue.  Sometimes tags work and sometimes they don't.  And yes, I am using existing tags.

[Bebbo 0]

 

Hmmm, I'm not sure what that means. Regardless, it seems like a clunky way for e-mail tagging to work. It would be so much easier if a user could simply add a tag to a subject line and if it didn't exist previously, create a tag via the subject. I'm not sure why that would be so difficult to program.

Well that's a slightly broader issue than the problem of tags having to not only exist but *be in use* in a Business Notebook.

But overall, I agree that creation on the fly has benefits, but it also has the drawback that if you incorrectly enter a tag name -- e.g. you ask for #presonal instead of #personal -- EN would not fail "safe". It would simply create the note and apply the incorrect tag. With the current system, you essentially get error checking because if you mistype a tag, you end up with a note with a #<tag> in its title, thereby flagging to you that you need to fix it. Of course you could also see that if they had auto-tag-creation, because you'd see notes tagged with the incorrect "presonal". But it could be argued that is less obvious than seeing the #<tag> staring at you from the note's title.

But yes, it's a tradeoff -- ease of creation of new tags, versus protection against mistyped tags. Reasonable minds may differ on which is more valuable.

 

Hi, I agree on the tradeoff.

However, for large Notebook with multiple tags (f.i., we are writing a book with > 200 chapters and would need > 200 #), would it be possibile to provide for the possibility to accept new # in the email subject provided that, for instance, some sort of specific symbol ("##" or "#+") is used to specify that the # would be new?

For instance, one could say that for existing tag it would be required to use the formula "#existing tag" and for new tag it would be required to use a different formula such as "##non existing tag" or "#+non existing tag"?

In this way, maybe, You should be able to satify both needs of the said tradeoff.

Many thanks!

[PhiloRock 0]

Same problem - tried to add tags (already existing) to subject line and they still show up in subject line without the proper tagging

[GavriloBozovic 0]

I have the same problem, and it's very annoying. I sent many e-mails to evernote adding tags, which appear in the note's titles.

 

In addition, I don't understand the requirement for the tag already to exist. Why couldn't it be created? When something new comes up, it's a mess to have to fire up evernote, create the tag, then go back to the e-mail and send it.