Search links...

[Graham Gott 17]

Is there any chance that one day we may be able to put a saved search link actually into a note?  I know note links are very useful but I find (in my case) they tend to become redundant, especially when notes are merged - where the original notes are deleted and a new note created.  It would be awesome to be able to have a page of specific links that are dynamically updated when you use them.

I know there is the Saved Search area in the left panel and that you can save them in the Shortcuts area but - to be honest - in my case, they just end up in a mess as my needs change and I lose track of which ones search for what.  Having Saved Searches in the actual notes would enable users to create a complete menu (and sub-menu ) system for their data which would always be current and up to date.

Just a personal observation which I'm sure would be useful to some others...

[DTLow 5,736]

4 hours ago, Graham Gott said:

Is there any chance that one day we may be able to put a saved search link actually into a note?

Currently, there is no "link" to a saved search.
An option I use is to put the search terms as text into the note, for copy/paste into the search box
For example:   tag:aaaaa intitle:"bbbbbb" cccc

[CalS 5,281]

11 hours ago, Graham Gott said:

Is there any chance that one day we may be able to put a saved search link actually into a note?  I know note links are very useful but I find (in my case) they tend to become redundant, especially when notes are merged - where the original notes are deleted and a new note created.  It would be awesome to be able to have a page of specific links that are dynamically updated when you use them.

I know there is the Saved Search area in the left panel and that you can save them in the Shortcuts area but - to be honest - in my case, they just end up in a mess as my needs change and I lose track of which ones search for what.  Having Saved Searches in the actual notes would enable users to create a complete menu (and sub-menu ) system for their data which would always be current and up to date.

Just a personal observation which I'm sure would be useful to some others...

You can roll your own if it is that important to you.  I have a note which contains a table of searches I don't use that often, two columns, description and actual search terms.  It is in my shortcuts bar.  Using PhraseExpress I created a hotkey (hover over the search terms and Alt+RightMouseClick) which invokes a search for whatever the search text is.  FWIW.

[Graham Gott 17]

9 hours ago, DTLow said:

Currently, there is no "link" to a saved search.
An option I use is to put the search terms as text into the note, for copy/paste into the search box
For example:   tag:aaaaa intitle:"bbbbbb" cccc

I know it isn't available at the moment which is why I asked if there was any chance of it being implemented. I am already using the method you suggest for my journal entries but it's a pain...
 

 

2 hours ago, CalS said:

You can roll your own if it is that important to you.  I have a note which contains a table of searches I don't use that often, two columns, description and actual search terms.  It is in my shortcuts bar.  Using PhraseExpress I created a hotkey (hover over the search terms and Alt+RightMouseClick) which invokes a search for whatever the search text is.  FWIW.

I will look into Phrase Express - thank you...

[CalS 5,281]

3 hours ago, Graham Gott said:

I will look into Phrase Express - thank you...

You are welcome.  FWIW the phrase looks like this.

[Wilf Forrow 15]

I love Evernote, but it is weak on organising and outlining our notes.  With well over a thousand notes, on many topics, it's really hard to keep control, even though I use tags extensively, and create master notes to help index it all.  But that takes huge manual effort. Search links could be an easy way to help with this.  I think proper outlining and/or tabs to link notes would be more powerful, but would be massively more work.  I would not want to wait for searches to complete every time I open a note, so it would need to cache the last contents, perhaps with a 'Refresh' button and a 'last refreshed n days ago' .  Great idea though.

[Graham Gott 17]

8 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

With well over a thousand notes, on many topics, it's really hard to keep control...

I would not want to wait for searches to complete every time I open a note...

I have over 32 thousand notes and my searches are still almost instant. Remember, I only wanted the link on a page - not the results...

[CalS 5,281]

9 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

I would not want to wait for searches to complete every time I open a note, so it would need to cache the last contents, perhaps with a 'Refresh' button and a 'last refreshed n days ago' .

I don't know, I think one of the strengths of EN is that you get a refreshed list of notes each time you execute a saved search or hit a shortcut.  I'm with @Graham Gott, any saved search or shortcut that I execute results in a just about instant response in the note list.  Not sure of the benefit of keeping the last searches note list???

[jefito 5,589]

11 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

I love Evernote, but it is weak on organising and outlining our notes.

It doesn't organize your notes, but it certainly provides some powerful ways to do so yourself.

11 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

With well over a thousand notes, on many topics, it's really hard to keep control, even though I use tags extensively, and create master notes to help index it all.  But that takes huge manual effort.

That may depend on your use case or how you're going about organizing. I don't try to maintain indexes of everything, or link lots of stuff from master notes. I aim to keep my organizational overhead low, and use search to find what I need. I do tend to do more organizational stuff on my work account, and do more often tie related notes together using note links and master notes, but even so, my goal is to not spend lots of time organizing. I get paid to accomplish my tasks, not to organize them.

11 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

I think proper outlining and/or tabs to link notes would be more powerful, but would be massively more work.

I don't understand how these mechanisms work. I am intrigued by the organizational feature Spaces that is already in use in the Evernote business edition, promised to come at some point for the personal editions. We'll see how that plays out.

11 hours ago, Wilf Forrow said:

I would not want to wait for searches to complete every time I open a note, so it would need to cache the last contents, perhaps with a 'Refresh' button and a 'last refreshed n days ago' .

I don't think that automatically activating the searches every time you open the note is the intent of the original suggestion. Just a simple way of embedding and activating them in a note. Besides all that, as Cal notes, searches are pretty quick anyhow.

[lisec 283]

I would love this functionality as well. It would be so great especially for android, where searching for multiple words can be a pain. It's really hard to search for:  "notebook:recipes tag:made tag:@jonnie intitle:Chicken tag:#Italy

But if everyone in the house could just go to the kitchen tablet and select a link from a nice table like this:

that would open a main page with yet another table

Links on this last page would just execute a saved search. Search results would be displayed normally, the way they are now. My husband wouldn't have to browse through a bunch of tags or all those results when he searches for "chicken" (turns out 'chicken broth' is in every recipe!).

Now I know there are ways around this right now.  I could execute one of these searches right now, create a Table of Contents, and link it to the word sous-vide for example.  However, that TOC doesn't get updated when I add new sous-vide recipes, so I would constantly have to re-create TOCs.  Now there's a program called Filterize that creates dynamic TOCS. That works. It isn't cheap.  The thing is I like the results of a search in Evernote; I like seeing the pictures in snippet mode.  I like being able to sort my results by date created or by title.

We already have the ability to save searches, and we have the ability to create shortcuts to them. Is it really a different ballgame to stick some of those shortcuts in our notes?