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Pin notes to the top of notebook


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I'm actually unsure how changing the note creation date allows for the "pinning" of that note even as a work-around,  (but I could be completely just missing something here).

 

So I took my new note and I changed both the creation and updated date to 2020.  But then I went and edited another note in the notepad and, I guess as expected (?), it went to the top of the list, effectively over-riding the manual change I made in the previous note.  

 

Anyone else experience this or am I simply missing something here?

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I'm sorry to see there hasn't been more interest in this request. I would love this and it seems so intuitive considering it's become a common feature in social media. I'd love to be able to hop to one of my notebooks for each client and have basic info and/or TOC handy at the top. I appreciate the workaround ideas in the meantime.

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This has been discussed before and various solutions were suggested.  You might try a search of the forums.

The method I use is a tag; !HotNotes.  This is saved in my shortcuts section and allows quick access to a selection of notes.

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5 hours ago, Fco said:

To be able to pin notes on top of a notebook (like in these forums are pinned important topics), where you may want to gather links to important notes, or just specific remarks and descriptions for that notebook would be great.

It is a great idea that has been discussed many time in these forums.

Until/IF Evernote decides to provide this feature, here is a workaround that works pretty well:
Use Reminders (without a date)

I have found a good use for Reminders, not as in reminding me of a due date, but in pinning key notes at the top of the list.

So, by combining a new Notebook  and creating Reminders (without dates) of key notes I need handy/quick reference to, I've been able to quickly setup a system that seems to work quite well.  BTW, the Reminders shown also respect any Tag Filters you have in place.

With the Notebook selected, the list of notes are shown, and at the top of the list are the Reminders for that Notebook, which list my key Notes.  You could think of them as "pinned" Notes.  They can even be manually ordered.

So, in the normal Note list, I can sort, filter, search the normal Evernote way.

Regardless of the state of the Note list, I can quickly reference my key notes just by one click on the Reminders line/button at the top of the Note list.   And, I can view the key notes (reminders) without a sort, which enables manual sort, or sort by date incase I do have some with due dates.

Here's a screenshot illustrating use of Reminders as "Pinned" Notes:

EN-Mac-6.3-Reminders.png

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2 minutes ago, Fco said:

This is kind of  a "throwing the garbage in the living room to get the flies out of the kitchen" solution.

It's not a perfect workaround, but not anywhere near that bad.

IAC, I think it is the best we can do until/IF Evernote provides the feature you requested.  I would not hold my breath.  It might be a while.  ;)

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Can't believe I just spent a couple of hours watching tutorials and trying to figure out how to manually order notes within notebooks. It seems so basic, thought I just kept missing it in the tutorials. Well, absent that feature, Evernote is useless for me.  I guess you get what you pay for.

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On 2/11/2016 at 5:05 PM, KEB said:

Can't believe I just spent a couple of hours watching tutorials and trying to figure out how to manually order notes within notebooks.

Did you see the workaround I posted above?

 

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On February 11, 2016 at 3:05 PM, KEB said:

absent that feature, Evernote is useless for me.

Can you provide more details on why you need this?

For me, the title and date sorting is usually sufficient. 
I did find that I preferred a different layout for my daily journal.
I wanted the order to be 
Activities
....

Tasks Now:
...

Tasks Soon:

iTunes - New Episodes
Projects 
...

So I generate the lists in date order, then I copy the links into the above sections.  I can do any further sorting by moving the links around.

Beyond that - there's only two areas that allow manual sorting. Reminders and Shortcuts
For example, if you have a set of notes you need in a manual order; drag them to the Shortcuts area.

Other than that, I would precede the title with a number (example 00100, 00200, 00300) and sort by title.  You will be able to insert new notes (example 00210)

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>> I need a unique note attribute that designates that it should always be on top

I have notes I want quick access to, but I don't really want to see all the time at the top of my list.
For these, I use a special tag (!Hot Notes) and include the tag in my shortcuts area.

Per the original post of having one note (index) they always want at the top of the notes,  I would look at my default search and modify the dates/title accordingly.

I would not find this practical with dozens of notes.  
I find the Reminder section more useful for this.  
Sample below is one of my filtered lists - the note Table of Contents is always at the top
 

Screen Shot 2016-03-30 at 10.15.44 AM.png

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Please allow custom user sorting, or allow notebooks to be placed in grouped "Sections" - which can be arranged into a hierarchy.

 

The ability to group notebooks alongside one another based on their content makes far more sense than letting the alphabet define them.

People use Evernote in many different ways, I wish Evernote would respect the large group of individuals who would prefer to sort their work by it's content and meaning rather than just the alphabet.

 

No one would ever organize a book shelf by alphabet alone. It would be insane to mix cooking and history, erotic fantasy, law etc - all based on author or title. Arranging into categorized areas makes infinitely more sense.

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25 minutes ago, jameskachan said:

Please allow custom user sorting, or allow notebooks to be placed in grouped "Sections" - which can be arranged into a hierarchy.
The ability to group notebooks alongside one another based on their content makes far more sense than letting the alphabet define them.
People use Evernote in many different ways, I wish Evernote would respect the large group of individuals who would prefer to sort their work by it's content and meaning rather than just the alphabet.
No one would ever organize a book shelf by alphabet alone. It would be insane to mix cooking and history, erotic fantasy, law etc - all based on author or title. Arranging into categorized areas makes infinitely more sense.

Are you aware of notebook stacks?
I use a stack called Shared Notebooks to group notebooks.
Still doesn't resolve the manual sorting, and its only one level of hierarchy.

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I forgot about them - Thanks for mentioning. Stacks are kinda nice, like folders I suppose —but I don't think they alone are ideal.

Within stacks, it is still not possible to manually arrange notebooks into a hierarchy or manual common arrangement.

 

Thanks though.

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On 04. april 2016. at 6:32 PM, DTLow said:

Are you aware of notebook stacks?
I use a stack called Shared Notebooks to group notebooks.
Still doesn't resolve the manual sorting, and its only one level of hierarchy.

Signed into the forums just to chip into this discussion. It is a serious omission not being able to sort notes manually. Most of the time when I plan something (an application for a fellowship, a presentation etc.) this is the only way of sorting that makes sense. It doesn't seem difficult to implement and I can't see of no reason for being reluctant to enable us to do so. Any way to vote for this "feature"?

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I have been puzzling because i wanted to arrange my notebooks also and actually found something that actually works (in the windows desktop version).

Number the notebooks in the order you want them to appear

Exampel

1. Inbox

2. MyStuff

3. OtherStuff

And so on, nothing happens yet they still stay in the original order.

The trick is to make stacks and after that you remove the notebooks out of the stack again by dragging them into the "Notebooks" folder and now they reappear as notebooks in the "Notebooks" folder but in the order you numbered them.

 

 

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1 hour ago, jameskachan said:

While I admire your passion and dedication, this is of course a tedious and unideal process to workaround poor design. If you ever wanted to add new notes or notebooks or reflow you'd have to rename everything. 

 

11 hours ago, Johan Talboom said:
I have been puzzling because i wanted to arrange my notebooks also and actually found something that actually works (in the windows desktop version).

Number the notebooks in the order you want them to appear

Example  1. Inbox  2. MyStuff  3. OtherStuff

You might use numbers 10 20 30 ....   It gives room to insert new notebooks into the sequence

>>Poor design

I see this repeated so much in the forums.    "It's a poor design because Evernote doesn't have my feature."

Its certainly a design decision, and it's a question of priorities if and when changes are implemented.

Requests for changes can be posted in the feedback forums and users can vote as to the priority.  It's a better process than tweeting the CEO.

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I know that it's by design. I'm sure Evernote could make this happen if they wanted to. Though it would take some work. 

 

I I just think the design is bad. Human beings don't practically organize things based on alphabetical systems or when things last get modified. Our notebooks and notes are like where we put our keys or where we choose to store our clothes.  We build systems based on remembered location and place association - meaning we put like things together. Currently it's not possible to group "related" notes or notebooks alongside each other or in a hierarchical order. Imagine apple not allowing you to custom order your frequent call favourites list on the iPhone  imagine if you had to rely only on alphabetical nonsensical order.

 

Dissalowing custom hierarchy and sorting is  bad design because it's not human focused design.

 

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Workaround, change the recent edit (updated) date of the note to 12/12/2030 or the like if you sort in reverse order.  

No official way to pin notes.  You can do some note placement with reminders but typically a PITA if you have a lot of notes in the mix.

EDIT:  should you ever modify the note you will need to change the updated date to maintain the "pinning".

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On May 2, 2016 at 2:31 PM, lrainaldi said:

Is there a way to "pin" a note to the top of a notebook. My notes sort by most recent edit which I love. But I would like to have one note stay at the top, like TOC or summary.

There is no "pinning feature".  It's been discussed in the forums, along with the option to manually adjust the note order like the feature in the Shortcut and Reminder sections

For your use case, sorting by Update Date,
as @csihilling said; you can adjust the note update date,
The downside is
- you have to repeat the adjustment every time you modify the note.
- adjusting the date is not an option on all platforms

My preference is to change to title sequence where I can control the sort sequence by prefixing the title with a special character.  
For example, when I look at my notes for a project, I like the my Project Master Note at the top, so I prefix the title with "-"

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Reminders were endorsed by Evernote for this express purpose. When you give a note a reminder, it is pinned to to top of the note list - whether it has a reminder date attached or not.

If you have lots of reminders within a specific notebook, make sure that your "pinned" note is kept at what you deem to be the most prominent position within the reminder list - and in so doing, your pinned items transcend whatever sorting order you might opt for at any given moment.

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I am a paid user and I would really love to see this feature as well, this will make notes in a big notebook much more manageable. In fact, setting a scale of importance for notes can also be very useful.

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Some have said on pc and android you can manually rearrange if you take date sorting off a list. I'm on android and I see no such ability. Can anyone confirm or deny this? I can't believe you can't manually sort notes. How can a note taking app not allow you to do this? And this thread was started when? It's like a new car company comes out with great cars but with steering wheels that only turn right. 

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On 5/7/2013 at 11:26 AM, GrumpyMonkey said:

Hi. Welcome to the forums. It's not an omission, but a design decision (search the forums and you will find discussions about this). I would also like to see manual sorting, but if/until we get it, there are a couple of workarounds:

(1) Arrange note links in a note to create a table of contents. You can move things about as you please.

(2) Use the Shortcuts area to arrange notes as you would like.

Ice tried one and two and haven't seen any ability to manually move anything. It all just sits there unless you change the sort order. Can you help further?

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On 5/11/2014 at 2:04 PM, Bob in NV said:

Reminders CAN be manually sorted - so I use them both as a task list and as a way to keep notes I'm interested in at the top of the display (Android). If you have a group of notes you want sorted, you can put them in a Notebook together, make them all Reminders, and now you have a list of notes that can be manually reordered.

So how exactly are you able to manually reorder these? I have no manual reorder buttons nor when I touch and hold a note do I get any options. 

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20 hours ago, juntjoo said:

So how exactly are you able to manually reorder these? I have no manual reorder buttons nor when I touch and hold a note do I get any options. 

On my Mac, I'm using top list view.
If I expand the Reminder Selection to review reminder notes, I can drag them into the desired order

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I use tags to provide a custom order when merging notes. Tags like !a will appear at the  top of the list when sorted by tags rather than date. This certainly works on Windows.

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I have a lot of notebooks, and In each notebook, I have a lot of notes. But in some notebooks, I have some important note and need update them every day. So I want to pin them to the top of the note list when opening a notebook.

Currently, I use reminder feature to keep a note on top. 

Thanks.

Screen Shot 2016-06-11 at 11.43.37 AM.png

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On June 10, 2016 at 9:43 PM, Thomas Bui said:

I have a lot of notebooks, and In each notebook, I have a lot of notes. But in some notebooks, I have some important note and need update them every day. So I want to pin them to the top of the note list when opening a notebook.

What sort sequence do you use.

If Title Sequence, you can just prefix the note title, for example !Important_Note

If Create_Date Sequence, you can set the creation date.
Similar process for Modifcation_Date Sequence
 

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30 minutos atrás, DTLow disse:

What sort sequence do you use.

If Title Sequence, you can just prefix the note title, for example !Important_Note

If Create_Date Sequence, you can set the creation date.
Similar process for Modifcation_Date Sequence
 

I thought about that, but I often change my sorting sequence to tags, reminder date, etc., which would go against your advice. A pinning option wouldn't be too hard to implement, would it?

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On June 14, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Leni Filgueira said:

A pinning option wouldn't be too hard to implement, would it?

This was implemented in the reminder section by adding a Reminder Order field
So, it is do-able.
I'm seeing it as a question of priorities - is this a feature that the user majority want?
I urge you to up-vote one of the feature requests in the feedback forum, or create your own.

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This request reminds me another one, about tags in shared notes.  There are multi-year threads going on without resolution.  It basically means that Evernote architecture doesn't easily allow this, and legacy code became unmaintainable.  I'd like for a VP of Engineering to come here and explain why they can't implement this feature for so many years.  It can also inform technically-minded investors about the state of product and engineering.

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2 hours ago, braver said:

It basically means that Evernote architecture doesn't easily allow this, and legacy code became unmaintainable....I'd like for a VP of Engineering to come here and explain...

Architecture wise, they've already shown it can be done.
(they added the reminder order field to notes for the reminder section)
So I'm guessing the solution is to add a notebook order field 
Thats the easy part; updating the UI across all the platforms is another matter

I'm not sure what you want to hear from Engineering
I've accepted that in the list of priorities, its been decided not to implement this at this time.

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On 6/19/2016 at 1:38 PM, MikeH said:

There does not seem to be a way to request features from Evernote directly anymore, and based on what I've read in the forums, it seems like posting to the forums is the way to make our requests heard.

Go to this thread in the Windows Feedback forum, and click on the arrow to vote it up. Lots of people like the idea, but only seven have taken the .5 second to vote on it. If that's not quite what you had in mind, there may be another proposal there; or you could start a thread.

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Inability to sort notes manually has got to be the most glaring shortcoming of Evernote. Reading through some of the gyrations people have to go through in order to simply accomplish what should be an obvious Evernote feature, is utterly ridiculous. I'd use this product a lot more if it had this feature; for me, and I'm sure for many others, not having the ability to manually sort notes renders this product nearly useless. What are you waiting for to add this feature?

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I see this topic was created some time ago. Is there still no such feature? I started using Evernote a year ago and it was a reason I soon stopped. Just now I tried again and for a moment it was like a great app but then I had a same problem again.  

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Nope you still can not rearrange your notebooks simple.

I did found a work around but it needs some work, you need to number your note books (see below)

1.Inbox

2.Personal

3.Work

Automatically they do not arrange in the right order to make the notebooks arrange in the right order you first have to create a notebook stack (drag them on top of each other) and them drag them one by one out of the stack (drag them out of the stack on top of the main folder "Notebooks".

When you have done that with all notebooks they are arranged in the right order.

 

Success, lame they did not fix this yet

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@gangelo, @VivienKa, welcome to the forums. I agree that this is a much-needed feature.

@gangelo, as to whether it is "the most glaring shortcoming of Evernote" ... just look around these forums a bit. You will find a very large number of items that have significant numbers of people (sometimes very annoyted people) who have identified those items as "the most glaring shortcoming of Evernote." IMHO, EN is so useful that people use it in a huge variety of ways for all sorts of tasks, meaning that what seems a blatantly obvious lack to some is as nothing to others, for whom something else is urgently needed. So, bottom line, I keep trying to remind myself that my ways of using this software will differ from other people's ways, and that others will identify important needs that I overlook. And the EN developers have to find a way to prioritize and juggle all the various needs. Also, they mess up sometimes. :o

Also BTW, this is a user-to-user forum, so you're not directly addressing EN, though their staff do look in periodically.

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3 minutes ago, Analyst444 said:

@VivienKa - EN has hundreds of features. EN is a great app. Even you said, "for a moment, it was like a great app". - - - Have you considered if you might be throwing the baby out because of dirty bath water?

Not as far as I'm concerned. I like bacon in my salad. At least to have the option. Don't get me wrong, EN looks to be a delicious salad but to exclude the option of bacon? Madness. 

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9 hours ago, Johan Talboom said:

 

Nope you still can not rearrange your notebooks simple.

 

Note that the topic here is rearranging notes in arbitrary order, not notebooks. If you want to be able to rearrange notebooks, you should make  a separate request in the Product Feedback forum for that feature.

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I would really love to see a feature where i can manually sort notes by "importance" and seperately by "urgency". The user could send a note to the top of one of the lists by the press of one button. That would be awesome :D

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@Neyghey - This strikes me as a good situation in which to use Tags.

Create some Tags like ImportanceHigh, ImportanceMedium, ImportanceLow, UrgencyHigh, UrgencyMedium, and UrgencyLow.

Assign them to Notes as you see fit.

Create Shortcuts for each Tag or combinations, thereof, as you see fit.

Turn on "Remember View Settings" for particular cases.

Select the Shortcut that fits you needs at any particular point in time. Evernote will find the appropriate set of Notes, sort them as you like, and present your desired view.

Modify the Tag for any Note and Evernote will effectively "move" the Note to the appropriate list.

I hope you feel this helps.

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 @Analyst444 Thanks for the suggestion, but what if i want to sort 500 ToDos by importance, 100 of them have high importance, but i still would like to do the most important first...? i would have to use tags Imp00001, Imp00002, Imp00003 etc... and if another note becomes the most important i have to change 00001 to 00002 and so on :D my suggestion was a follow up on the manual sort thing only because i feel that even one manual sorting criterium wouldn't be enough for me,  i would need at least two, but an unlimited number would be great...

But thanks again for your quick answer :) 

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1 hour ago, Neyghey said:

I would really love to see a feature where i can manually sort notes by "importance" and seperately by "urgency". The user could send a note to the top of one of the lists by the press of one button. That would be awesome :D

I switch to title sequence, and I control my note sequence using a prefix on the title

For example "-project aaaa" causes my project master note to be at the top

"+task bbbb" causes my task notes to be next

"++next action cccc" causes my next action tasks to be at the top of my tasks

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@Neyghey - Here are a couple thoughts. (3) below may be the most important.

(1) There were at least 2 times in the past that I tried to categorize many (500?) Tasks (Notes) by "importance". I found that I couldn't effectively do it. I was spending too much time looking over each of the Tasks (Notes) to review/redefine each's level of "Importance". If you can make it work, you are a more capable person that I. --- I would have spent an inordinate amount of time, even if I could have sorted the Tasks (Notes) manually.

(2) Never the less, if you feel the need to review/redefine the "Importance" of many Tasks (Notes), then an approach that still uses Tags is to create another Tag that defines "Priority" (sequence). The way to avoid reassigning values for many Tasks (Notes) at one time is to use a scheme for the "Priority" Tag like this:

  • Priority00100
  • Priority00200
  • Priority00300
  • Priority00400
  • Priority00500
  • etc.

Then, when you want to set the "Priority" of a Task (Note) to be between the first two, give it a value of Priority00150. --- The point is to think of defining a Task (Note) as "Important" as different than defining the sequence in which to work on Tasks (Notes).

(3) DTLow and I have offered a some ideas how to implement schemes for sorting Evenote Notes. But, perhaps, an even more important concept to share is that there are other criteria upon which to decide the sequence upon which to work on Tasks (Notes). One criterion I have used is "Urgency". Just because a Task (Note) is "Important", doesn't mean it is "Urgent". A simple scheme to help explain this would be to create a set of Tags like this:

  • ImportantAndUrgent
  • NotImportantAndUrgent
  • ImportantAndNotUrgent
  • NotIMportantAndNotUrgent
Then, Tags Notes (tasks) as is appropriate.
 
First, work on those Notes (tasks) with the first Tag.
 
Then, work on those Notes (tasks) with the second Tag.
 
Then, the third Tag.

If you've got your life under control, then you will never take the time to work on those Notes (tasks) with the 4th Tag.

 

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3 hours ago, Neyghey said:

Thanks for the suggestion, but what if i want to sort 500 ToDos by importance, 100 of them have high importance, but i still would like to do the most important first...? i would have to use tags Imp00001, Imp00002, Imp00003 etc... and if another note becomes the most important i have to change 00001 to 00002 and so on :D my suggestion was a follow up on the manual sort thing only because i feel that even one manual sorting criterium wouldn't be enough for me,  i would need at least two, but an unlimited number would be great...

As a point of practicality, sorting 500 to-dos is a fool's game. Don't do it. You cannot do 500 things at once, so focus on the top few; the rest don't matter. Grade them into several buckets, e.g.: critical, high, medium, low, using tags, and then attack the critical ones. By the time you're done with those, you may have more todos, or the remaining todos may have changed priority, so reload from the next highest bucket, and repeat. Spend your time doing things, not calculating priorities.

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@Analyst444 re(1) You are probably right. I am just looking for a way to get a hold of my Tasks again, without forgetting important ones in the Process. Normally I am working with reminders: I have two Priority tags: asap and wzi (Wenn Zeit ist; its german for when i got time) every asap got to have a due date. This is a good solution for when you got your life under control, but currently i find myself rescheduling everyday, today my "overdue" savedSearch has 349 items. So i was searching for a better Solution...see re(3)

 

re(2) thanks for the suggestion, i never thought of that approach.

 

re(3) Yeah, i saw this method mentioned before, probably in one of your posts. I think its the most efficient way for me and i am going to implement that.

 

@jefito you are right too, thanks for confirming that my approach has no future. Honestly, i never thought that i would ever have that many ASAPs to do. As long as it was 20-30 ASAPs, my approach was running pretty smoothly. But now that i have to "jump back on the waggon" as David Allen would put it, i think i have to rethink my methods.

 

Thank both you guys for taking the time and trying to help me. :) 

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@Neyghey - One follow-on thought. You mentioned ASAPs 3-4 times in your prior post.

When I was working, I found that bosses, peers, and other people would bring me assignments / tasks / things to do. They would present their need with this emotional sense of "urgency" and they labeled it as ASAP. It took me a few years to catch on, but most of the time, I was rarely given a due date for those ASAPs. The requester rarely indicated that the need had to be fulfilled by a particular date. So, I switched my policy for prioritizing my work. If no due date was given, I categorized the ASAP as not urgent and it would go to the bottom of the list with the other, no due date ASAPs. 

You mentioned that "every ASAP has got to have a due date". If your bosses, peers, others are giving you the due dates, then you will have to roll with punches. But, if you are assigning the due dates, then I'd say you are causing yourself more stress that what is needed.

As jefito clearly said, somehow you've got to narrow your focus.

 

 

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@Neyghey

Did you ever look at the The Secret Weapon?  Not sure it is worth following its precepts to the letter, but one thing I plucked from it was the priority hierarchy concept.  

ASAPs for me are tagged with !1-Now, and from there I go to !2-Next, !3-Soon, !4-Later, !5-Someday, !6-Waiting, and !7- Read.  All of the tags are preceded by !# so that they sort in the tag drop down and list views.  The discipline as @jefito says is to clear some of the !1-Now's before adding anything to that "pool" of work.  

I also use reminders for some tasks that are specifically date sensitive.  I end up looking at two searches, one for !1-Now and one for date, but it works from me.  With two clicks on saved searches I get date sensitive items and otherwise important items.  FWIW.

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Thanks again @Analyst444, i AM probably causing myself more stress than is needed, as i said, as long as it was a manageable amount of important tasks, it went pretty smoothly... I realise that we are going a little bit off topic in this thread, but i would have one more question:

you mentioned you are working with Important vs urgent... on which criteria do you decide, what is urgent and what not? An example: above @csihilling mentioned The Secret Weapon. I clicked on the link, decided it was interesting, but was at work at the time and had no time to really dig into it, so i clipped it to my Inbox. now i am processing it and i don't know if it is urgent or not. My instinct says, that everything that, if not done by a specific due date, produces some kind of consequences is urgent. But if the technique could improve my workflow and help me eliminate my overdues, the consequence is more stress, which is the main thing i want to eliminate. 

My fear is that, as soon as i implement your method, i want to label everything ImportantAndUrgent, the same way i now tag (nearly) everything ASAP and schedule it for tomorrow or next week in order to not forget about it...any ideas?

 

Ps: how do you guys mention another user in a post? when i write @Analyst444, it does not get that fancy EN-green highlight...BTW: thanks to you too @csihilling for your link and support

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57 minutes ago, Neyghey said:

My fear is that, as soon as i implement your method, i want to label everything ImportantAndUrgent, the same way i now tag (nearly) everything ASAP and schedule it for tomorrow or next week in order to not forget about it...any ideas?

 

Ps: how do you guys mention another user in a post? when i write @Analyst444, it does not get that fancy EN-green highlight...BTW: thanks to you too @csihilling for your link and support

You are welcome.  Nobody knows your priorities better than you.  

From a process perspective you could set an arbitrary limit on the number of ASAP tasks you will allow, say 5 or 10. This will force you to pick the most important tasks.  Then don't add anything to the pool out of process unless some catastrophe item appears.  Work the pool down and take it back to 10 when all the ASAPs are done or refresh to 10 during your review cycle (end of day maybe).  Try not to worry about the non-ASAP tasks, you will get to them.  You can also set a limit on your next items if you like.  This will give you a quick view as to what should be added to ASAP next.  If you make an error in assigning priority, just change it.  

To get the name to show in green you have to select if from the drop down.

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3 hours ago, Neyghey said:

you mentioned you are working with Important vs urgent

A concept to pare your task list to a manageable level, is Next Action from GTD (Getting Things Done)

Yes, your project has 200 tasks, but you don't need to obsess on 199 of them.  

Identify the Next Action, and focus on that task

When you complete that task, identify the new Next Action and focus on that

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@csihilling, @DTLow, @Analyst444, (Ha, it worked, me as an old copy-paster did overlook that functionality :) ) Just wanted to tell you that I love this Community, it's really helpful and friendly compared to other software-specific Coms out there...

Of course I know GTD, its what got me to start using EN in the first place. The problem is that i currently have 200 projects rather than 200 tasks in one Project. But i guess the concept can be applied to that as well...

With your knowledge and support, i am confident that i'll be back on the wagon in no time. Thanks to all of you, i hope you are allright,

Ney

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@Neyghey - You asked about criteria for defining Urgency. Here is an approach.
  • If you can complete the task in less than 2 minutes, do it now. Don't even waste time categorizing it as Urgent. Do it and then delete it.
  • If the task clearly needs to be done today or tomorrow, categorize it as Urgent and start working on it now.
  • If no other person has imposed a Due Date on you, categorize the task as NotUrgent and go work on the ImportantAndUrgent tasks.
 
Once you've got all tasks categorized as Urgent or NotUrgent, you more than likely have several tasks categorized as ImportantAndUrgent. The issue immediately becomes, "In what sequence do you work on those tasks?" --- Here is a relatively simple approach. (In one sense, sequencing also helps define Urgency.)
 
I suggest there are 4 factors to take into consideration for each ImportantAndUrgent task:
  1. Tasks Dependencies. Do you need to wait for one or more other tasks to be completed before starting on a task? If yes, then, obviously, this is not the tasks to work on first.
     
  2. Task Slack Time - This is the difference between (A) The number of days or hours you are scheduled to work before the Due Date of the task and (B) The number of days or hours it will take you to complete the task. Estimate (in your mind) each task's slack time. For example, if the Due Date is 10 days out and you will plan on working 9 of those days (A), and a task requires 2 days of your time (B), then the task's slack time is 7. --- Tasks with smaller slack times need to be worked on before those with larger slack times. --- If a task has negative slack time, you are in trouble. You can't get it done in time. In addition, working on one task may not leave you with enough time to complete some other tasks by its Due Date. --- Depending the nature of your work and number of tasks, you may need a more elaborate scheduling system.
     
  3. Pecking Order - Completing something for your boss (or a customer) is more important than completing something for a peer (or a supplier). Hedge your bets when it comes to the sequence of tasks.
     
  4. Availability of Other People - If you need help from other people to complete a task, then you should at least start such tasks (and determine the availability of those other people) before starting tasks that you can do on your own.
 
It takes time and experience to be able to quickly evaluate the above criteria and resolve any apparent conflicts resulting from the evaluation. The objective is not to sequence all of the ImportantAndUrgent tasks, but only the first 2-4 to be worked on. Once those are completed, things will have changed and the sequence of the other tasks will likely need to be changed.
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1 hour ago, Neyghey said:

nt that i'll be back on the wagon in no time. Thanks to all of you, i hope you are allright,

You are welcome.  Hope you get it sorted.  :)

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I've been using Evernote every day for many years and so have a ton of notes across many notebooks. So far, so good. What I think would be really helpful though, would be the ability to pin notes that I'm currently working on or, want quick access to, but for which I don't want to create a separate notebook as it's not about reorganising where they live, it's about access to them and possible relationships to notes in other notebooks. Pinned notes would remain within their respective notebooks and their order on the pin board are managed by me. For example, I'm working on two projects and in amongst lots of day to day updates to existing notes and the creation of new ones. I have a presentation coming up which I will be looking to references items from both of those projects. Those items are also not necessarily part of my day to day work and so they quickly disappear in the list as updated or new notes take precedence. The pin board would be a prominent button on the tool bar. The pins could display post it note style and can be moved around so that I can show hierarchy and relationships between notes. Pinned notes are not copied or duplicated so I can update them from the pin board or from their respective notebook. I know I can do something like this using tags though that doesn't really give me the experience I'm looking for. 

ROKO

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3 hours ago, ROKO said:

I've been using Evernote every day for many years and so have a ton of notes across many notebooks. So far, so good. What I think would be really helpful though, would be the ability to pin notes that I'm currently working on or, want quick access to

Have you looked at the Shortcuts section

I actually have too many notes that I want "pinned" so instead I use a tag (!Hot Notes) that I apply to notes I want quick access to
The tag is "pinned" at the top of my shortcuts

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6 hours ago, ROKO said:

Thanks both - solved it. Need to go to the sidebar, select "tags" and then drag the tag from their into shortcuts. Could be easier / more intuitive but at least its functioning. R

If you right click on a tag you get a context menu with Add to Shortcuts as an option.

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Suggestion Box Submission

It is nice to keep the most Updated notes at the top of the Notebook in Snippet View, but it would be really nice to push-pin the most important Note to the top ... and all the updated ones continue to jockey for the top under it.  The most important notes may not be updated that often mostly as a point of reference.

Thanks.

 

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I realize this is an old thread, but I'd like to add my vote for a more flexible pinning feature. As a writer, I use Evernote constantly (and I mean constantly!) in my work. I create dedicated notebooks for my larger pieces and commit one note in each to organization. While I can use the reminder feature or add the note to Shortcuts, pinning seems such a universally useful feature, I would think it would be given more consideration. I'll certainly include my vote in any discussions of its implementation. Surely it can't be that difficult to add to the Evernote feature set.

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Ever since discovering Evernote years ago, it has become an all-pervasive part of my personal and professional computing life. During that time, a feature I have continually felt the lack of (like a missing tooth you can't stop probing at with your tongue) is the ability to pin notes to the top of notebooks. As a writer who dedicates a note for organization on each project, it is a no-brainer. I'm sure would have great value in other fields. I know there are workarounds (the Reminder feature, adding to Shortcuts) and that if every suggestion in this forum were pursued, Evernote would be aiming at replacing every creative, organizational, and communication tool we use (Hey! That's an idea!), but this is such an obviously valuable feature and one I can't help to believe would be relatively easy to implement, that I puzzle at Evernote's neglect to seriously address it.

So, Evernote, take a look at the changing landscape: If I Google "Evernote pin a note to top of notebook", I get over 700K results, the overwhelming majority of which (as far as I browsed the pages of results) lead to forums discussing the feature.

If I limit the results to the past month, the first page is filled with headlines like "5 Alternatives to Evernote", "9 Promising Replacements for Evernote" or links to MS OneNote.

This may seem like a minor issue, Evernote, but please note (!) the competitors at your heels, smelling blood on the trail.

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The odd thing about Evernote is that although it has millions of very happy users,  a significant proportion of them have just that one thing that's such an 'obvious' feature it's inconceivable that it should have been ignored.  Unfortunately those thousands of 'obvious' features are mostly completely different - some impossible to implement on all the devices on which Evernote works.  The test is going to be how many votes this feature gets (remembering that there are several ways around the issue from dates to titles...)

Good luck!

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Hey Evernote Team

It would be so great to be able to pin notes to the top of a notebook. For example, I'm a student and I'd love to be able to easily refer to the study guide whenever I'm in my -- for example -- maths notebook. Using shortcuts isn't an option because this will only clutter up and shortcuts and block me from getting to stuff I actually want there. 

Think Spark's ability to Pin Emails to the top of the page. 

You got this!

Jonathan

Screen Shot 2017-04-26 at 7.15.11 PM.png

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7 minutes ago, Jonathan Michael Copeland said:

It would be so great to be able to pin notes to the top of a notebook.

There's other requests asking for this.

My solution is to switch to title sequence and manipulate the title; for example a prefix of - ensures the note appears at the top of any list

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2 minutes ago, Jonathan Michael Copeland said:

Thanks Jefito, this works perfectly! I still think there should be a feature for this, but this will do until then!

Good to hear it. I like pinned reminders (at least in the Windows client) because the reminders list can be closed, and it can be sorted independently of the note list it appears over, including arbitrary user-chosen ordering.

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On 2016-5-2 at 11:31 PM, lrainaldi said:

Is there a way to "pin" a note to the top of a notebook. My notes sort by most recent edit which I love. But I would like to have one note stay at the top, like TOC or summary.

 

Any ideas?

YES! ME TOO!! it could be a TOC or simply a note that provides relevant information regarding that notebook, or maybe a guide for the use of that notebook (when shared), etc, etc. A reminder is for tasks, also a shortcut does not cut it :))). This is not what shortcuts are for (in fact, the pinning feature is useful precisely to avoid having to use shortcuts or links, which by the way are very useful for other notes).

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3 hours ago, Fuecisla said:

This is not what shortcuts are for (in fact, the pinning feature is useful precisely to avoid having to use shortcuts or links, which by the way are very useful for other notes).

What do you think shortcuts are for?  Not trying to be argumentative, just curious.  In my mind, shortcuts are a pinning feature, and a pretty flexible one especially when combined with saved searches.

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3 hours ago, Fuecisla said:

it could be a TOC or simply a note that provides relevant information regarding that notebook, or maybe a guide for the use of that notebook (when shared), etc, etc. A reminder is for tasks, also a shortcut does not cut it :)))

I really only use one main notebook so Notebook pinning wouldn't be very useful to me

But I do have notes I want at the top of the list; for example the project master note in a project review
I agree the shortcut/reminder solution doesn't "cut it"
My solution is to make use of the title sort sequence and manipulate note titles
For example, "-Master Note" sorts at the top
Manipulating the note dates also works for other sort sequences

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1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

What do you think shortcuts are for?  Not trying to be argumentative, just curious.  In my mind, shortcuts are a pinning feature, and a pretty flexible one especially when combined with saved searches.

hmmm... As I see it, shortcuts (links) take you to a note that may be anywhere in a long list of notes where such note would be difficult or tedious to look for. You click your shortcut and there you are! However, pinning a note makes it stay always on top of your list whatever order you have set, you do not need to call for it. It is like a shortcut 2.0.

Of course, they are compatible, but not the same.

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

I really only use one main notebook so Notebook pinning wouldn't be very useful to me

But I do have notes I want at the top of the list; for example the project master note in a project review
I agree the shortcut/reminder solution doesn't "cut it"
My solution is to make use of the title sort sequence and manipulate note titles
For example, "-Master Note" sorts at the top
Manipulating the note dates also works for other sort sequences

You can use symbols as you do not only for ordering notes, I do it to organise tags. "." for project names tags, "@" for person tags, "!" for subject tags, "-" for places tags.

Given that I use symbols for other purposes, when using alphabetical sorting I like using a cero + hyphen, "0 -", but it does not work if you want to order by dates. This allows you to have 2 (or more) alphabetic sorted lists in one.

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1 hour ago, Fuecisla said:

hmmm... As I see it, shortcuts (links) take you to a note that may be anywhere in a long list of notes where such note would be difficult or tedious to look for. You click your shortcut and there you are! However, pinning a note makes it stay always on top of your list whatever order you have set, you do not need to call for it. It is like a shortcut 2.0.

Of course, they are compatible, but not the same.

Ok, I think I see your point.  Thanks for the explanation.  In my mind you still have to click on either the pinned note or the shortcut to see the contents of the note, so they seem the same to me, but I think you are saying that you also want the content of the note to be pinned at the top and always visible, and not just the snippet or title. 

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In a number of Evernote scenarios, adding a reminder to a note will "pin" it to the top of its note list (including when you are viewing it in notebooks). I use reminders for this purpose.

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25 minutes ago, jefito said:

In a number of Evernote scenarios, adding a reminder to a note will "pin" it to the top of its note list (including when you are viewing it in notebooks). I use reminders for this purpose.

.... in Snippet list view ....

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Here we are, three years after the initial request, trying various hacks for what should be a relatively simple feature.

I'm on a Mac, so no amount of futzing around with Reminders is going to do me any good, as the Mac Version is several YEARS behind the Windows version.

Please add pinned notes.

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1 minute ago, Dave Land said:

Adding a reminder to a note does NOTHING on the Mac version, which is stuck in 2013 or so.

Please add pinned notes.

Adding a reminder to a note ensures the note is listed in the Reminder Section at the top of the note list

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2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Adding a reminder to a note ensures the note is listed in the Reminder Section at the top of the note list

… on the Mac version …

There is no "Reminder Section," as far as I can tell, on the Mac version of Evernote, but if you know how to reveal it (and your GURU status suggests that you do), bring it on!

Thanks in advance.

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16 minutes ago, Dave Land said:

… on the Mac version …

There is no "Reminder Section," as far as I can tell, on the Mac version of Evernote, but if you know how to reveal it (and your GURU status suggests that you do), bring it on!

 

Personally I never liked this work-around593885ab8ab5e_ScreenShot2017-06-07at3_58_27PM.png.2938ea8063c256bedd5cd62b57779184.png.a5e56f34be6d595c1f40d5a61a3c2202.png
My Reminder Section is full of .......reminders

I'm not a fan of "pinning"
I assign a prefix to notes to control my note sequence (title sequence)

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13 minutes ago, DTLow said:

593885ab8ab5e_ScreenShot2017-06-07at3_58_27PM.png.2938ea8063c256bedd5cd62b57779184.png

  1. Thank you for reminding me ;) that that feature is there.
    In all the time I've been using Evernote, I never saw it. Thanks!
    (I expected to see it in the sidebar, so I wasn't looking in the right place!)
  2. I'm grateful that Evernote lets you show it in some notebooks, not others.
    Nice user experience touch on their part.
  3. “My Reminder Section is full of .......reminders”
    Cool for you! Mine isn't. Not everyone wants the same thing or works the same way.
  4. “I'm not a fan of "pinning"”
    Awesome! I am, as it turns out. It would be nice to not have to "spend" reminders to get this one feature.
  5. You evidently sort by title.
    Great! I sort by most-recently-updated, and use prefixes for other things. To each his own!
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On 8/24/2017 at 12:34 AM, Bienne said:

Or at least a 'description' box (or 'memo' pop-up sticky-thing) where you can include priority content. 

I use the shortcut section for priority notes.  Individual notes, and a "Hot Notes" tag that I can use for quick access

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Dear Sirs,

I usually grab ideas, webpages, documents, etc., into Evernote in order to prepare some material for my classes.

As a part of this, I write a first note with the purpose of that notebook and the list of projects that should be done with that info. It would be very useful if I could pin this note at the top of the notebook so I can always focus the work on that notebook on those tasks and projects, otherwise it happens that this note is buried by any new webpage, article or else that comes to that notebook.

In summary, pinning a note on any notebook is a very useful feature that can enhance Evernote. I hope other users think the same and can promote this as a feature to be included in a nextcoming version.

Best regards!

dahz

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13 hours ago, dahz said:

As a part of this, I write a first note with the purpose of that notebook and the list of projects that should be done with that info. It would be very useful if I could pin this note at the top of the notebook

Pinning is not a feature, except for the Shortcuts and Reminder sections.  edited - see @jefito below re: Windows

I use Tags instead of Notebooks, but I also need to control the note sequence

You can search the forums for other posts on this subject.  
My solution is to adjust the dates or title so the note automatically sorts to the top of the list

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You will get better information if you say what platform(s) you are using Evernote on. The Windows Evernote client does have the ability to pin certain notes to the top of a notebook.

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On 2017-09-27 at 12:56 PM, TKOP said:

There should be a way to pin a note to the top, so that it always stays at the top of your note list.

I moved this to the general forum - I don't think the request is specific to the Windows platform
If you search the forums, you'll se there are other requests for Pinning Notes; we didn't need a new discussion

On 2017-09-27 at 9:10 PM, Manya70 said:

Yes would be good if this was implemented and not have to do workarounds for this..

What work-arounds are you using?

My work-around is adjusting the title or dates so the note is sorted to the top of the list.
For example,
- Prefixing the title with "-"
- Setting the date to 2099/01/01

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1 minute ago, DTLow said:

I moved this to the general forum - I don't think the request is specific to the Windows platform
If you search the forums, you'll se there are other requests for Pining Notes; we didn't need a new discussion

What work-arounds are you using?

I Just add ! to the Note title then Sort on Title..  eg. !This Weeks Meeting Notes

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For the Windows client, if you use snippet, card, or thumbnail view, notes that have reminders are pinned to the top of the note list, in a second reminder list. reminder list can be sorted by date, or ordered arbitrarily. List view users are out of luck.

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On 9/28/2017 at 4:16 AM, jefito said:

For the Windows client, if you use snippet, card, or thumbnail view, notes that have reminders are pinned to the top of the note list, in a second reminder list. reminder list can be sorted by date, or ordered arbitrarily. List view users are out of luck.

For Windows users, just make it a shorcut, then have the shortcut bar shown across the top, not down the side. I have about 7 "pinned" notes, and saved searches, and notebooks, that I always have access to regardless of my view, sort status, or even what notebook I am in.

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1 minute ago, EdH said:

For Windows users, just make it a shorcut, then have the shortcut bar shown across the top, not down the side. I have about 7 "pinned" notes, and saved searches, and notebooks, that I always have access to regardless of my view, sort status, or even what notebook I am in.

That works, too, if you have a relatively small number of notes that you want to pin. I almost always use snippet view and have a fair number of reminder notes, some dated and some not, and I like the sorting / filtering ability that carries over into reminder notes, so that's why I use that. Good suggestion.

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