Table of contents within a note?

[GiacomoLaw 134]

I have a large note, a few thousand words long, which has notes on topics. For example, in my geography notebook I have one note for tectonics, coasts, etc:

Similar for history and economics too.

I am wondering if I can create a table at the top of the note to let me jump to the various sections?

Or would it be better to split the note up into topics, and then create a table of contents for the topic with a link to each subtopic?

Thanks!

[GiacomoLaw 134]

I've split them up into subtopics, then I compile the notes together into an overview note, and link them in a master note like this:

Works pretty well, I will do this from now on!

[EdH 1,670]

As you've discovered, you cannot create links in Evernote notes that are like the HTML anchor tag that will take you to a specific spot in the note.

I don't know how you made your TOC note above, but you can select all the notes you want, right-click, then click the Create Table of Contents Note button. Any additions or changes in the future though would have to be manual, or whack the TOC note and create a new one with more/different notes.

In Windows, you can find your TOC notes fast. Just search for the following:

Quote

sourceurl:"file://Table*"

That won't work for Mac created TOC notes. It doesn't populate the URL field.

[DTLow 5,736]

6 hours ago, GiacomoLaw said:

I've split them up into subtopics, then I compile the notes together into an overview note, and link them in a master note like this:

Good to see you worked it out.

My feeling is it's better to has smaller notes; less scope for editing mishaps.

You also might check out automatic updates to your ToC notes.  This is supported by third party Filterize; I use scripting (Mac)

 

[GiacomoLaw 134]

20 hours ago, EdH said:

As you've discovered, you cannot create links in Evernote notes that are like the HTML anchor tag that will take you to a specific spot in the note.

I don't know how you made your TOC note above, but you can select all the notes you want, right-click, then click the Create Table of Contents Note button. Any additions or changes in the future though would have to be manual, or whack the TOC note and create a new one with more/different notes.

In Windows, you can find your TOC notes fast. Just search for the following:

That won't work for Mac created TOC notes. It doesn't populate the URL field.

Thanks, that what I did but I put them all in a subject note. Thanks for the URL, I'll be using that!

14 hours ago, DTLow said:

Good to see you worked it out.

My feeling is it's better to has smaller notes; less scope for editing mishaps.

You also might check out automatic updates to your ToC notes.  This is supported by third party Filterize; I use scripting (Mac)

 

Unfortunately I'm on Windows, so no scripting available. I'm just going to add them to my subject note as I go along, and when I finish a topic, make a new merged 'master' note, along with the separate subjects.

Thanks!

[DShoxa79 0]

I too have been wanting to do this for a long time.  I tried different combinations of merging the notes than doing the TOC and finally figured that since they are simply HTML Anchor/Jump hyperlinks.  Therefore, while there is a manual way to do it, it isn't worth the opportunity cost for the time it would take in an example such as this one above.  

I am just started to read on the topic but I would be greatly surprised if this hasn't been solved or have 

[haughki 11]

Since it currently has the most votes, I nominate the following post as the main post for this feature. Please cast your votes here:

 

[herrmadbeef 4]

Since we are adding Markdown support. It would be nice to be able to create a table of contents via markdown 

Source https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11948245/markdown-to-create-pages-and-table-of-contents 
``` 

# Table of contents
1. [Introduction](#introduction)
2. [Some paragraph](#paragraph1)
    1. [Sub paragraph](#subparagraph1)
3. [Another paragraph](#paragraph2)

## This is the introduction <a name="introduction"></a>
Some introduction text, formatted in heading 2 style

## Some paragraph <a name="paragraph1"></a>
The first paragraph text

### Sub paragraph <a name="subparagraph1"></a>
This is a sub paragraph, formatted in heading 3 style

## Another paragraph <a name="paragraph2"></a>
``` 

[DMG14 2]

yup having an index at the top of a note to skip to sections within the note is long overdue.

paying for a service that is falling behind its free competitors ~!!!~

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

Not knowing how many people use Evernote for notes long enough to need a TOC, it's hard to know how high a priority it should be for development. Evernote, to me, seems basically to be a note-taking service that allows attachments. It isn't designed for long-form, or even medium-form, writing, and longer notes often develop problems. It isn't designed to be an enhanced cloud storage service either, IMHO, though lots of people use it for that. (In another forum I just saw a couple of posts decrying the limit of 200 MB per note.) Lengthy notes are pushing the limits of Evernote's designed purpose, again IMHO, and hence the apparently successful strategy that the OP of this thread developed for creating a TOC note for multiple topic-specific notes, which is how EN is designed to operate. I do have some longish notes, and I expect that sooner or later it will be advantageous to break them up. Just my perspective.

[Nomis44 1]

On 2/22/2023 at 10:40 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Not knowing how many people use Evernote for notes long enough to need a TOC, it's hard to know how high a priority it should be for development. Evernote, to me, seems basically to be a note-taking service that allows attachments. It isn't designed for long-form, or even medium-form, writing, and longer notes often develop problems. It isn't designed to be an enhanced cloud storage service either, IMHO, though lots of people use it for that. (In another forum I just saw a couple of posts decrying the limit of 200 MB per note.) Lengthy notes are pushing the limits of Evernote's designed purpose, again IMHO, and hence the apparently successful strategy that the OP of this thread developed for creating a TOC note for multiple topic-specific notes, which is how EN is designed to operate. I do have some longish notes, and I expect that sooner or later it will be advantageous to break them up. Just my perspective.

 

Hi,
Is there any progress up to now?
For me this is not about very long texts in a single note. But a checklist can easily spread over 2 or 3 Pages, because each item just has 1 line in the note. I have a master-checklist for travelling wich I do not want to split up, since I need to be able to check all items under temporal pressure.

As a reminder of the notes structure (for example sections like "things to pack" and "things to prepare"...), and as a navigation-help, I would also appreciate converting the headings into a small TOC.

Best,
Nomis

[agsteele 2,942]

There has been no promise of linking to 'anchors' within a note. Even if it is on the possible in the future list, we would not know. What we do know is that developers are almost entirely focused on speed and reliability.

So don't make any plans waiting for this. What you can do is create a ToC note and have each section in its own note. With the back link function this does quite well. 

This is now a v10 function so you'll find this discussed in the V10 areas rather than these Legacy discussions.

[Mike P 2,624]

2 hours ago, Nomis44 said:

But a checklist can easily spread over 2 or 3 Pages, because each item just has 1 line in the note.

I try to avoid long notes but I get your point that a checklist or a list of tasks (which is even more spaced out) can easily get quite long. You can of course split it up and have a TOC note, which is the standard advice.

I have a note which contains a lot of recurring, mundane tasks. I don't really want to split it up. Given that this feature has been requested for a very long time (well before V10) I don't think EN are likely to implement it any time soon. @Dave-in-Decatur above, describes the EN design philosophy perfectly. I therefore manually created a table of contents at the top of the note and wrote an AutoHotKey script that goes to that section. Works well enough for me.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

9 hours ago, agsteele said:

What you can do is create a ToC note and have each section in its own note. With the back link function this does quite well. 

I actually did exactly that when planning a complex trip out of the country last month. I had to plan for a conference where I was delivering a paper, keep track of flights and hotels, work out sightseeing plans for after the conference, set up packing for a different climate.... It worked well to have a head note with links to other detailed notes with checklists, some of which linked to other subsidiary notes. With the backlinks, I found it easy enough and fast enough. FWIW, which of course may not be much for your purposes, @Nomis44.

[s2sailor 2,183]

Now that we have RTE with incremental sync I wonder if there is any longer a strong need to break up long notes into smaller ones, unless one prefers that way for organization?  I don't use full TOCs but will have a main note and then link out specific sections where it makes sense to me.  That said, I would still prefer to have collapsible sections and intranote linking someday.

[Maria Sp. 27]

I'd love to see this feature too - a ToC within a note. I don't necessarily mean long notes but I often find it convenient to have a ToC within the note I'm reading (plus a button to take you to the top of the page). Maybe one day.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

You can have a TOC in a note, linking to other notes. If you keep the notes rather shortish, it works better than with long notes.

We still don’t have sections within of a note.