Outlook Email Clipper Improvement

[Ben Marsh 0]

Hi guys,

At the moment when you clip a conversation, it saves all the emails - which is great, until someone else replies back. Then it adds the entire conversation again to another note.

Is there any way you could tweak it such that it appended an existing note rather than creating a new note each time?

I'd also like the option to save the original Outlook file, as I tend to delete the original once I've clipped it and I can't hit "Reply" to a thread in Evernote.

Thanks for listening in any case!

[gazumped 8,005]

Hi.  It's possible to drag and drop the original email file into your Evernote note.  It's also slightly roundabout - drag from Outlook to your desktop, and then from desktop to Evernote - but you'll get an email icon in your note.  Click that and it opens up in Outlook again and can be responded to.  I tend to save an original email via clipping,  and then just add the latest reply / response with dragndropuntil the chain is complete.  Delete the history (unless you want it for some reason) and open / re-clip the last email for neatness and completion.

Don't know how technically difficult it would be to update / replace a note contents with an updated message automatically,  but I wouldn't have thought it's going to be easy...  I agree documenting email conversations in Evernote isn't exactly an intuitive process.  Maybe the team can come up with some other way to follow a complete conversation...?

[Mirjam 1]

I manually copy and paste new responses in an email conversation to my evernote not, or sometimes just add a new note and deduplicate later. Automatically having new responses added to the note would be a really cool new feature. They should be added below any remarks/tasks that I have added on top of the email note though. And it shouldn't change my title. Seems difficult to develop.

[Ben Marsh 0]

Doesn't necessarily need to be able to automatically find that email chain, more just a feature to allow me to append it to the end of an existing note if I wanted it to.

MS OneNote already allows this, so I don't think it should be too difficult.

[gazumped 8,005]

I used to work in an insurance office and every sales conference had a session where all the sellers got together for a massive "the competition do (x) so we should too..."  Eventually a tired sales manager commented something to the effect of "So if their sales team had yellow socks,  you'd want us to provide you with some too?"

Thereafter this wish to become a complete clone of the competition was known as "The Yellow Socks Syndrome".

The fact that OneNote can parse messages with their product architecture doesn't necessarily make it possible for Evernote to do the same....

[FactMan 196]

I can see challenges with this - how do you deal with messages where the previous messages in the chain have been deleted, and those where the chain has not been deleted? I have seen this problem when someone who has done the filing does not understand the chain - it becomes a mess to sort through. Also, sometimes people will respond by saying "see below". In this case, their responses are mixed up with the previous replies (I have even done this myself). I am forced to use OneNote in my day-time job (I will be able to consult with IT next week about the possibility of using Evernote as my app of choice). So far, I have not been particularly impressed with OneNote, so I hope Evernote does not attempt to replicate the other platform!

[Ben Marsh 0]

I think you've both misinterpreted my comment. All I was envisaging was being able to simply append the existing email text/formatting into a note of your choice. The OneNote mention was illustrative of the process to select the appropriate note, nothing more.

FactMan's point regarding email chains is valid, though this is basically true of any documentation system and I'd agree that automating this would be a massive undertaking which would likely not satisfy everyone (personal preferences, "see below" responses, organisational differences, replies to only one person, etc.). Whilst I'd love this eventually (if even possible), all I'd be asking at the moment is the ability to have the Evernote Clipper allow me to append the selected email to an existing note.

[gazumped 8,005]

I was mainly commenting on "shouldn't be too difficult",  and I can see the attraction of being able to essentially 'merge' two notes automatically - but I still think it's very much a 'nice to have' rather than mission-critical,  while lots of other things still need fixing or improving.  Still - you suggested,  folks can vote in support here,  so you never know...