EverTool - an Evernote editor helper

[ctxhou 27]

Hi guys,

This is the developer of EverTool, an Evernote editor helper. In this post, I would demonstrate why I create this tool, how this tool can help you enhance the productivity, and present all the features you can use in this tool. Thanks for gazumped suggested to post it on this forum.

As one of the Evernote user, I love Evernote and I think it is still the best note-taking tool. However, there are some features requested by lots of users, like Markdown, text style management, templates, etc.. As an engineer, I agree that the Evernote team has their roadmap to build and enhance this product. I think to build a successful product needs time and a thoughtful plan to make sure the new features fit most of the users.

But like other users, I still hope I can use Markdown, code highlight, and other features to enhance my Evernote productivity.
Therefore, I build EverTool, an Evernote editor helper.

What is EverTool?

EverTool is a kind of third-party app for Evernote. But it's not like other third-party apps. EverTool works independently from Evernote. 

Working independently means two things:

1. EverTool will NEVER request the authorization from Evernote

2. Keep the original usage behavior of Evernote

Why do I think these two points are important?

Many users use Evernote to manage their data. Especially for business users, they use Evernote to save secret data and communicate with team members. When we use Evernote, we trust Evernote, but do you trust other third party integration apps they can fully access your data?

Another point is keeping original usage behavior. Evernote is an excellent tool. It already provides tons of useful features. Thus, when using EverTool, you don't need to change any usage of Evernote. EverTool is just a helper. You only use it when you need it.

How EverTool works?

It's super easy to use. Three steps make your note better:

Cut the text → Click one of the actions in EverTool → Paste to Evernote

 

Useful features

In this section, I will introduce all the features of EverTool in version 0.3.0.
Before we started, just keep in mind, the usage is the same: cut and paste.

Text style management

When creating a note, we usually use the same font style to present the same level.
This feature will be handy when you want to reuse the text style. (It's similar to the styles pan of Microsoft Word).

Demo:

 

 

 

Transform Markdown

This thread has great discussion about integrating Markdown in Evernote. 

Here I provide the EverTool solution.

Demo:

 

Resize images to the same width

When we import lots of images to Evernote, Evernote will use the original image width to present on the note. If the image is too big, it will be full width.
Think about if your note has many images and all of them present full width, your note will be very long and filled with images.

This action can help you resize all images to the same width in one click.

Demo:

 

Highlight text

We know Evernote only provide one highlight color. This action can let users define any highlight color.

Tutorial: https://evertool.app/how-to-use/customized-highlight-color

 

Transform Excel spreadsheets to Evernote native table

Some users hope Evernote can provide the more powerful table, like primary math function. But in my opinion, Excel or Google spreadsheet already do a really good job. We can keep Evernote as a presentation place and do the complicated calculation on Excel.

Therefore, what we need is transform the spreadsheets to Evernote table seamless.

Demo:

 

This action support Excel, Google spreadsheet, Mac Numbers and Evernote table. Therefore, you can also use it to beautify your Evernote table! The table style is also customizable.

 

Url → Url + Title

This feature is based on my personal usage scenario. I usually paste links in my note, but it is just url not the title.
Of course, I can copy the title of the web page and alter the url name in the note, but it's too slow.
Thus, this action makes you select all urls and transform them to urls with the title.

Demo:

 

 

Highlight code

Dear engineers, it's time to write your technical notes on Evernote!

EverTool supports 74 different highlight code themes. Engineers can write beautiful technical notes on Evernote.

Demo:

 

 

 

In short, EverTool is an independent tool provided several useful features. It's just a helper but it's powerful.

All the features mentioned above are all customizable. You can define the font style, table style, highlight code as you want.

Besides, it supports on both Mac and Windows platform.

If you like this app, you can buy this app on Mac and Windows store to support me develop more useful features in the future.
It's a one-time payment and you can enjoy all the follow-up update. 

Download link:

Mac Store: https://lihi.cc/l9Twv
Windows Store: https://lihi.cc/c1EEv

EverTool is well documented. Know more on the homepage ?https://evertool.app/

 

Thanks for the reading. Should you have any suggestion, please don't hesitate to leave the comment.
Hope EverTool becomes the wings of Evernote. Make Evernote fly farther and higher.

Cheers!

[stephen_bradley 58]

This is pretty good.

I've been using it for about 30 minutes. It covers my most common complaints about the editor (aside from the editor just being buggy); The absence of set styles, and code highlighting. Stays out of way, looks good, works as advertised. 

I have a single complaint or request so far: the fonts you allow me to choose in the styles, none of them are the fonts I actually use. Evernote lets me choose any font on my system, and I'm using the IBM Plex family. But EverTool only gives me a handful of default fonts. 

If a future version could just hook into the Mac font system, same as Evernote does, to display all the fonts available, that would be cool.

Otherwise, great job!

[Vladislav Krakhalev 0]

Why you love this app? It wastes time, because you need every time do cut-paste action. Idea is good, as some functions, but cut-paste .. 

[DTLow 5,749]

3 hours ago, Vladislav Krakhalev said:

Why you love this app? It wastes time, because you need every time do cut-paste action. Idea is good, as some functions, but cut-paste .. 

Confirmed: copy/paste is used to implement the text reformat.
Some users want to use styles and/or Markdown in editing their notes.  
This is an easy and quick way to accomplish this.
Do you have alternative steps to achieve the same functions?

[stephen_bradley 58]

14 hours ago, Vladislav Krakhalev said:

Why you love this app? It wastes time, because you need every time do cut-paste action. Idea is good, as some functions, but cut-paste .. 

Love is a strong word. I like the app because it lets me do two things that were harder to do before:

1. Write in markdown and get it into Evernote

2. Highlight code. A LOT of my notes are code. 

Previously I've used both Marxico and the EverMonkey extension for VS Code to handle my markdown/code highlighting needs, and they both work superbly for me. My issue with them though, is that they "lock" the note so it cannot be edited in Evernote any more, which is sometimes really inconvenient. This app lets me get my highlighting and/or markdown into Evernote without having to leave Evernote, and without making the note non-editable.

Bonus: pre-defined text styles which I've always wanted Evernote to do. Its the only thing OneNote does that I like better than Evernote. I suppose it's a redundant feature if I'm using Markdown, but I'm not always using Markdown.

The mechanism is not awesome, but it works. If you have a better solution for accomplishing the same things, I'd be interested in exploring it.

 

[dlh2109 19]

Thanks for telling us about EverTool. I'll definitely check it out!

Honestly, it's amazing this sort of functionality isn't baked into Evernote from the get go.

[noteaddict48 5]

@ctxhou

Please do keep the good work up☺️

Will certainly give EverTool for Windows every chance.

Thanks so much.

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

On 9/9/2018 at 7:32 AM, ctxhou said:

Thanks for the reading. Should you have any suggestion, please don't hesitate to leave the comment.

Very nice tool!  👍

One suggestion: provide option for EverTool to use the SELECTION in the source document without needing to CUT/PASTE.

[DTLow 5,749]

On 1/3/2019 at 8:40 AM, JMichaelTX said:

One suggestion: provide option for EverTool to use the SELECTION in the source document without needing to CUT/PASTE.

There is a discussion here on simplifying the integration.

 

[JohnLongney 83]

Just checked in Win 10 Microsoft Store. Same price, usual daft store practice of buy before you see what you get. As such, not one single review. 

 

 

 

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

7 hours ago, DTLow said:

This was discussed here

Maybe so, but this would seem to now be the main thread for EverTool.  I still have not seen a response from the developer, @ctxhou.

[ctxhou 27]

在 2019/1/7 在 AM2點47分, JMichaelTX說:

Maybe so, but this would seem to now be the main thread for EverTool.  I still have not seen a response from the developer, @ctxhou.

Hey! Thanks for the suggestion.

This is also one of the features I am working on. Hope I can release it soon 😃

[matthieu. 4]

Evertool seems a great and easy to use tool, but I have one question

when I look at the videos, I don’t see you can choose the importance of titles : Heading 1 2 3 4 5 6

 

Is it only about styling and not about syntax ?

when I export in html a note stylized with Evertool, are the titles with differents Heading tags ? <h1><h2>…. that I can choose ?

 

thank you

[DTLow 5,749]

6 hours ago, matthieu. said:

Evertool seems a great and easy to use tool, but I have one question

when I look at the videos, I don’t see you can choose the importance of titles : Heading 1 2 3 4 5 6

 

Is it only about styling and not about syntax ?

when I export in html a note stylized with Evertool, are the titles with differents Heading tags ? <h1><h2>…. that I can choose ?

Further to this request;  The  <h1><h2>... html tags are supported in Evernote's enml format.

However, we need to use a different tool to insert these tags; they're not currently supported by Evertool.

[matthieu. 4]

what an enlightenment this morning discovering this thread, and what a disappointment now

***** styles, it's no value. i will continue to pay evernote but with contempt, I have to pay because i use it for more than 10 years, but I will never understand the fact they don't car about syntax

 

 

 

 

[matthieu. 4]

f.u.c.k. is a forbidden word here, wow

[DTLow 5,749]

8 hours ago, matthieu. said:

I will never understand the fact they don't car about syntax

Profanity is a violation of forum rules.

I'd say it's an exception for users to care about the underlying enml syntax in a note. 
Most users are concerned with setting font, size, ...
I'm using a Mac and a text editor to directly edit the note's content.enml file

Did you have a specific requirement for inserting these tags into a  note?

[matthieu. 4]

you always reply in the same way DTLow  yes we need heading so we can use notes in other contextes, with a real STRUCTURE, syntax is everywhere in web an so we can extract structure, table of contents, and I'm far to be the only one who needs that

styling comes AFTER syntax, and is way more easy to use when connected to syntax

I use evernote to prepare tutorials for exemple, or offers, directly connected to export of my notes and I don't want to modify the text after exportation, I just apply stiles with CSS, every time the same CSS for my exported notes

I use evernote fot ten years now, and I pay for 5 ort 6 years the premium account, they added lots of features we don't need, but this one, requested from the beginning, nothing  they ignore it

 

[ChristianM 1]

Thank you for your great effort and this wonderful tool, @ctxhou! EverTool works great as described! I'm using it in conjunction with MacDown and the results have been very slick 🙂  My process right now is to create a new note, create a new MacDown file and attach it to the note, then write and use EverTool for the transform.

[lee z. 0]

it's a shame for Evernote as such tool exists. 

[nickhq 4]

Curious — could one possibly use this to copy/paste a tweet URL and create a nicely formatted tweet to appear within a note?

[Cadpoobah 0]

Cool concept but not sure I want (4) steps just to highlight my text:

1. Cut text to clipboard
2. Click Highlight tool in EverTool
3. Click back in Evernote note
4. Paste highlighted text.

Sorry, but that's too many steps for me. Now, I wonder if I can get a $5 refund.

[ForestD 1,555]

I actually bought and used EverTool and thought it was pretty cool, but it doesn't work on Version 10 and they have a disclaimer up in the description that states that:

I wonder what "fix" they are talking about. My guess is it's more about something the way that legacy Evernote worked and that it won't work like that ever again. (Like it's not a bug that needs to be fixed, it was a feature that isn't ever coming back.)

 

[PinkElephant 9,019]

From the blog post it is a lack of formatting options in v10 that stops the tool with v10.

The 2 options mentioned to still use it are using legacy, or to use the classic editor on the web. As we know, both are options with a limited perspective - they will stop working one day. And both do not support the new features that came along with v10. Furthermore there is a risk that even if used, the look brought into the notes will change when the note is opened with v10.

What they ask for in the blog post is to turn the wheel back on the editor, allowing the broader feature set it had before. Personally I think this is not going to happen, the new version was build around the editor. These changes are here to stay - sorry, but reading their own blog tells me EverTool is toast.