(Archived) Evernote Query Language?

[dallasvaughan 0]

Is there a way to create a search that uses boolean operators and Evernote attributes in the Search field? For instance, what if I want to create a search that display all notes in the "Research" notebook as well as notes that have the tag "research" (regardless of which notebook they're in)?

This type of search is currently not possible by selecting the "Research" notebook and the "research" tag at the same time, since the query that's created automatically is:

Viewing 0 notes from "Research" matching "All" of the following: tagged with "research"

The query I'd like to make and results I'd like to see would be:

Viewing 5 notes from "All Notes" matching "Any" of the following: tagged with "research", notebook named "Research"

Is there a way to form such a query in the Search field or is it just for keyword searches?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You can select notebooks & tags & a bunch of other info in the search bar. (Or by clicking on the left pane.) But you can only search one notebook or all notebooks. So if you want to find your five notes across multiple notebooks, you'd need to tag them 'research' & search all notebooks for any notes tagged 'research."

AFAIK, you cannot do "any" searches.

[jbenson2 2,147]

The Any search does work in a search, but it is limited in scope.

Evernote uses Search grammer (noted on the API Overview Section C) so that you can ....

- Search by Tag: "tag:schoolnotes" (searches for notes tagged by "schoolnotes")

- Or function: "any: exam test" (searches for notes containing "exam" or "test")

- Wildcard: chem* (to search for chem101, chem102, etc)

But you can't select one notebook and all other mentions

A way that might work is to tag all the items in the Research notebook with the tag Research. Then just run a search for tag:Research

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Thanks, jbenson2. Plus, in the Windows desktop, there's a dropdown for any/all. (Duh...)

(I really need to keep reviewing that documentation.)

[dallasvaughan 0]

Thanks guys - I did find the Evernote API doc which describes the search grammar: https://www.evernote.com/about/develope ... te-api.htm

Like you said, the notebook name can only be used as a scope modifier and not a proper term.

Tagging everything in a notebook the notebook name seems a bit redundant - the reason I think it would be useful to associate notes with more than one notebook is that sometimes a piece of information can be relevant to multiple notebooks, and (currently) there is no way to link notes within other notes, and so this was a potential workaround... Oh well :-/

[jbenson2 2,147]

"Tagging everything in a notebook the notebook name seems a bit redundant"

Yes, I felt the same way. But I had a problem I could not solve, so I tried it and it worked.

About half of my notes are in a notebook that contains stuff relating to national politics. Fortunately I don't have any friends or relatives named Barack, Michelle, Harry or Nancy. But there are tens of thousands of words in that one notebook. To totally blank them out, I assigned a tag: Hacks to each of the notes.

Now I can run a search for a common word across all notebooks and eliminate the Political notebook.

If I want to see all posts about my medical insurance, but not get cluttered up with Obamacare stuff, I can run the following search: "Medical Insurance"-tag:Hacks

The other issue is maintenance. How can I be sure the Political notebook is fully populated with the tag: Hacks?

Every other day or so, I run this search: notebook:Politics -tag:Hacks. Then I just drag those notes to my Hacks tag and they are updated.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I do have a couple of notebooks & tags that have the same name, such as "Journal", "Mother". Yes, it's redundant but I'd rather be a bit redundant than have trouble finding my notes. If I want to find the note about my mother wanting some things from the grocery store, did I put it in the "journal" notebook & tag it "Mother" or did I put it in the "Mother" notebook & tag it "journal"? :shock: If I tag it "Journal" & "Mother", it doesn't matter which notebook it's in, even if it accidentally got dropped into the "Auto info" notebook. I just search all notebooks looking for notes that are tagged "Journal" and "Mother".