(Archived) Documentation isn't comprehensive

[sh31mart 0]

Hi, folks

I have a Premium Evernote account, and use EN on my iPhone and Macbook. I really enjoyed reading the "Ask the CEO" blog posting, and learned a few things from Phil's responses to various questions. One topic was of particular interest: For quite some time, I have been wishing that I could edit images saved to Evernote, and I was quite surprised to learn from one question and answer that this function already existed in Evernote -- I had flipped through the manual for OS-X a couple of times looking specifically for any mention of photo editing, but found nothing indicating that this was possible.....which leads me to the conclusion that the manuals for this excellent product are not as current as they might be. And this in turn leads me to wonder if there are other really useful functions in Evernote that I don't know about because I haven't stumbled upon them, and that are also not mentioned in the manuals.

I'm curious to know how often Evernote's documentation is updated, and why something as useful as the ability to edit images (via whatever other image editing software a user has on their computer) is not mentioned in the manuals. I would also like to know if there is any type of "quick start" list anywhere that itemizes all the things you can do in Evernote.

Shelley

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

The best way, IME, to learn what you can do with Evernote is to read the message board.

[engberg 89]

Thanks for the feedback. You're correct that our documentation is a bit haphazard. We have a lot of information in different places (user guides, PDFs, etc.), but it's not very well organized and is particularly poor for new users to know how to get started.

We've hired a full time person to be in charge of writing and organizing our materials, and he's starting on Monday, so I'm optimistic that we can improve this situation significantly over the next few months.

Thanks!

[sh31mart 0]

We've hired a full time person to be in charge of writing and organizing our materials, and he's starting on Monday, so I'm optimistic that we can improve this situation significantly over the next few months.

Hi, Dave

Thanks for the informative reply. Very happy to hear that you're going to be improving your documentation. In the long run (and maybe even in the short run, LOL!) this will surely benefit both Evernote and your user base. Methinks that the easier it is for non-premium users to discover all the amazing functions and features of EN, the more people will convert to premium accounts. And the more familiar your user base (premium or free) becomes with all the bells and whistles, the more likely any user will be to recommend this product to others.

I notice that another commenter said the best way to learn about the product is to read the user boards -- but I completely disagree. I think user boards are a good supplement to well-crafted documentation, but can never entirely take the place of full documentation. There are plenty of times that I want to know something and don't have time to sift through the messages in the forums trying to find information that might not even be there, and/or answers to questions that haven't already been asked.

Shelley

[katahdin 8]

Good to hear about the documenation person. Hope that person has no EVERNOTE experience so he/she takes notes on what is confusing as they learn.

[engberg 89]

He has Evernote experience, but he has many hours of video to watch of usability studies we've done with brand new users experiencing lots of painful problems.