Philosophical Question: Should I Migrate Notes from Evernote Personal to Evernote for Business?

[Michael Hyatt 17]

A few months ago, I started using Evernote for Business. However, I still have a legacy personal account with about 10,000 notes in it. Should I move all those notes over to my business account? If so ...

1. How do I do the migration in the most efficient manner possible?

2. How should I organize my business accounts so they personal notes are available just to me?

3. Is there any reason to keep my personal account>

Thanks in advance for your advice. (I'm definitely NOT a guru when it comes to Evernote for Business!)

[phils 220]

Hi Michael,

(Have followed you for years, happy to hopefully be able to "give back".)

Taking your last question first, you can't really get rid of your personal account, because for the moment at least, an Evernote Business account requires a connected personal account.

Having said that, the question is, does it make sense to move all of your personal notes over to your business account?

I think it largely depends on the degree of conceptual separation between the notes you have in personal and what you're now starting to put in business. In order to provide useful advice, can you tell us a bit about why you decided to start an Evernote Business account and what you plan to use it for?

 

[Michael Hyatt 17]

Thanks for your reply, Phil.

I mainly started an Evernote business account so I could more easily collaborate with my colleagues. We share information with one another that (a) we need to collectively reference or (b) create. We tried Work Chat with individual accounts, but that was simply not robust enough for our use.

Hope that helps.

[phils 220]

What I would do is take any notes from your personal account that you think you'll want to be sharing with your colleagues, and move them to the business account.  (In the Mac client - I believe I recall you use a Mac - you can Cmd-click and Shift-click multiple notes and then choose "Move Notes to..." to get them over to the business side. You can't move a whole notebook so you have to use this move-notes method.)

Then I would keep using the personal account for your own stuff that you won't be sharing.

One of the disadvantages of the split, sometimes, is searching - you have to do separate searches if you're looking for the search term in both sides (although the desktop client makes it easy to do the same search in the other side by providing you that option at the top of the notes list).  I say sometimes because at times the split can be an advantage instead.  For example, if I search in my personal account for my wife's name "Diane", I'm happy that I don't see notes in my business account with "Diane" in them because they will definitely not be what I'm looking for.

One good thing about having a personal account is that, if you email notes into Evernote using the email address they provide you, you can only email into a personal account - there's not at present a capability to email into your business account (though it's definitely been requested).

Let me know if you have any questions about the above, or anything else Evernote-related!

[Michael Hyatt 17]

Thanks, Phil. I want to keep thinking about this. Frankly, it adds a layer of complexity to my workflow that I was hoping to avoid.

[Shane D. 1,818]

@Michael Hyatt 

Certainly great questions!

As you prefaced in the title with 'philosophy', and @phils touched on, there may not be a definitive answer as the solutions would be dependent on your specific needs and desired workflow.

In this case, I've relayed your questions to our Customer Success Team and they'll be reaching out to you directly as they will be best equipped to answer those questions, and hopefully can provide solutions that work within the context of your desired workflow.

I hope this helps, and certainly feel free to reach out to me directly if have any other questions!

[Michael Hyatt 17]

Thanks, Shane. I have already heard from Laura. I hope to talk with her next week. Thanks.

[BrightHomesRE 31]

Hi, @Michael Hyatt!  Like many here, I am a big fan ?

I am hoping that you might circle back on your original question, EN Business vs Personal question, and let us know what you determined would be the best for you.  I agree that switching between the two does add a layer of complexity to one's workflow.  I am hopeful that future releases will address this and perhaps provide another solution for those who wish to work between business and personal views.