Tab indents the whole paragraph

[Kruger2147 46]

In the new Web Beta, hitting TAB indents the whole paragraph, not just the line. When writing documents I have to hit the spacebar 5 times to indent the line for a new paragraph. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

I see this too, now that you point it out, and I agree!

[Kruger2147 46]

@Shane D. This post is 7 months old, this is still an issue. Any update?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

I've got v. 6.12.0 of the Web beta in Opera and v. 5.32.0 in Firefox, and they both do the same thing. But of course it is still a beta under development, and allowing first-line indentation (or hanging indentation) may simply be farther down the list of features to be implemented. FWIW, it does work in the older version of the Web client (click the account initial at top left and select the option to switch). Since you're a Premium user, you could raise this with Evernote support. Also definitely use the Feedback button at bottom right in the Web client.

[JSBarrett 2]

After sticking with the old web client for a long time for various reasons, I just recently switched to the new one, and this change in tab behavior is very annoying. I'm also kinda old-school and want to indent the first line of a paragraph when writing in my journal notes. Maybe I'll just switch to line breaks between paragraphs. I'm used to doing it virtually everywhere else (email, forums, etc), so it won't be that drastic of a shift, but effectively being forced into a behavior change by a design choice is still frustrating.

On 6/3/2020 at 3:05 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Also definitely use the Feedback button at bottom right in the Web client.

The UI must have changed since you wrote that, because the lower-right corner (in the new version) only has a control for switching back to the old version. Using the feedback form on the main site just leaves me with a message to post in here if I have feedback, so...here I am. 🤷‍♂️

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

2 hours ago, JSBarrett said:

The UI must have changed since you wrote that, because the lower-right corner (in the new version) only has a control for switching back to the old version. Using the feedback form on the main site just leaves me with a message to post in here if I have feedback, so...here I am.

Indeed it has changed--it's now what it used to be, a button for switching versions. Hard to see why they changed it, or changed it back. Appreciate your reporting on the tab issue--using Tab to indent the first line of a paragraph is definitely old school (the same school I learned in), and may be on the way out. But it'd be useful to have it available.

[ben.bland 1]

This is basically a +1 for allowing indented first lines of paragraphs. Use case: I write most of my content using line breaks between paras but when I'm drafting long-form content (i.e. for books) it is cleaner to use indented first lines. If I can't do this in Evernote, I can't draft my long-form content in it, because converting it afterwards is a serious pain.

[PinkElephant 8,088]

The EN editor is for writing notes, not for elaborate layouts.

Use a word processor if you need more than the basic layouting options provided with the EN editor.

[jamge 3]

On 6/21/2021 at 11:30 AM, PinkElephant said:

The EN editor is for writing notes, not for elaborate layouts.

Use a word processor if you need more than the basic layouting options provided with the EN editor.

Tabbing the first line in a paragraph is not "elaborate layouts".

I've just finished drafting a novel in v6.2, at the insistence of Evernote upgraded to latest version, only to discover tabbing first line now tabs entire paragraphs.

Evernote was the perfect tool for writing a novel. Now it isn't. 

What's wrong with being able to tab the first line? You can indent paragraphs with the indent function. 

Utterly stupid update. 

Edit: I've just discovered that you can install a legacy version of Evernote here Install an older version of Evernote – Evernote Help & Learning which has solved my problem for now. However if anyone with any influence at Evernote happens to read this - please leave the ability to indent lines in future versions.  

[PinkElephant 8,088]

For writing book style text there are IMHO far superior tools, like Ulysses or Scrivener.

But sure, one can use a stone to drive a nail into a piece of wood, even when a hammer would be the better option.

[SPO 4]

Hey Level 5 Wizard - Instead of making insults and attacking the suggestions of others as if they're dumb, try taking a more professional, emotionally mature. For example, if you feel that indenting paragraphs is dumb and only belongs in a full-blown word processor, you could simply say, "I can understand why you might want to indent paragraphs. Unfortunately, Evernote doesn't support that feature at this time. If that's an absolute requirement for your needs, I know there are other tools which are better equipped for comprehensive page layout such as...." What you offered in response is not only rude and useless, but also happens to be purely subjective. It's your opinion, and you are an audience of one. Unless you are the Product Manager for Evernote, I'd guess that your opinion carries no more, or no less weight than the author of the original post. At the end of the day, product managers make choices about feature inclusion based on customer feedback. 

Quote

But sure, one can use a stone to drive a nail into a piece of wood, even when a hammer would be the better option.

👆 Unnecessary. 

Regardless of your opinion, for many of us, Evernote is a paid-for tool and I would argue that indenting paragraphs is extremely basic - a table-stakes feature of any rich text editor. It's not as though the author of the question is asking for the ability to edit videos or something clearly out of scope. In a parallel universe, you would make an identical argument that tables is a ridiculous request - and yet it exists in EN. Code formatting - pfff - go get Coda or Atom. The fact is, many of us use Evernote to keep notes on a wide variety of topics, so the more formatting tools it has, the more flexible we can be with our note taking. In light of the many other advanced formatting and content features available in Evernote such as tables, code format, or dropping in audio clips (go buy a digital recorder!) your bold and rude argument that indentation is an absurd idea is ridiculous. Incidentally, the very editor that this forum uses supports the absurd idea of indenting paragraphs. 

As for me, I would like the ability to indent paragraphs in Evernote. 

[PinkElephant 8,088]

If I feel in need, I will come back to you as ghostwriter. Or maybe not, you managed to answer 2 lines of mine with 18 of yours.

Fact is that EN v10 was build around the new editor. This is sort of a statement (for those who want to see it), saying „We designed this to do a number of things, and we excluded several others“. Technically much more would have been possible, as we know, but they restricted themselves.

This makes EN good for note taking, probably less so for writing stuff like a novel. You asked explicitly for that purpose, you got an answer. And no big surprise: I write answers „as it is“, not to please the reader. But I am not writing novels, call it insight.

[agsteele 2,944]

On 11/8/2021 at 8:30 PM, SPO said:

As for me, I would like the ability to indent paragraphs in Evernote. 

As does Evernote version 10. This thread was about the ability to indent a line with the tab key rather than that triggering a whole paragraph indent. It is also two years old and pre-dates version 10 by around 12 months.

[ForgetfulElephant 9]

This is exactly my current problem with Evernote. It used to be that they had this feature, but after the new UI redesign, a tab now indents everything. I complained about this months ago, and since the customer service is so horrible that I can't get a serious reply from anyone about it, it will probably be the reason I cancel my Evernote subscription after using it for years. This is probably the most basic thing for a typing application to have, and the only thing Level 5 moderators seem to latch on is that "Evernote is not a text editor", when it clearly functions as that.

Is there any actual fix to this issue yet? Is it in the pipeline to add the feature to change this? At this point, there's no point in spending money to use Evernote when something that any other platform offers for free can do this simple task.

Waiting to hear more on how this is being resolved.

[Graychild 6]

On 11/11/2021 at 4:58 AM, agsteele said:

As does Evernote version 10. This thread was about the ability to indent a line with the tab key rather than that triggering a whole paragraph indent. It is also two years old and pre-dates version 10 by around 12 months.

since i've been trying to get a bleedin' answer on this issue for a year, im going to spell thhis out for you real ding dang clear.

That button.
indents.
The entire
Paragraph
which is what

the thread

is actually about

not just using the tab key for it

stupid.

[ehrt74 240]

On 11/24/2021 at 1:38 AM, ForgetfulElephant said:

This is exactly my current problem with Evernote. It used to be that they had this feature, but after the new UI redesign, a tab now indents everything. I complained about this months ago, and since the customer service is so horrible that I can't get a serious reply from anyone about it, it will probably be the reason I cancel my Evernote subscription after using it for years. This is probably the most basic thing for a typing application to have, and the only thing Level 5 moderators seem to latch on is that "Evernote is not a text editor", when it clearly functions as that.

Is there any actual fix to this issue yet? Is it in the pipeline to add the feature to change this? At this point, there's no point in spending money to use Evernote when something that any other platform offers for free can do this simple task.

Waiting to hear more on how this is being resolved.

For me Evernote is not a typing application (not actually sure what one of those is). it is storage and retrieval software for content of all types. One of the types it supports is simple text. The question is, how simple? If you use a text editing software (like open office writer or microsoft word) you will find a lot of functionality that Evernote doesn't have. So what subset of this functionality would it be best to support? What is the minimum subset that would annoy the smallest number of users?

Evernote has decided that indenting the first line just isn't important enough for most users to justify working on it. From my point of view this was a good decision - it's a functionality that i don't use. I'm happy to just press <ENTER> twice at the end of a paragraph.

If you had said "i'd like a way to change the spacing between paragraphs", then i would have been all with you  

[Graychild 6]

do you realize how many different ways you can make evernote indent?
its fecking 3.
why can't *one* of them indent a single line? if its really asking for the moon, why have 3?

[PinkElephant 8,088]

It may be the action is initiated in 3 ways (still counting…), but the result is always they same: The paragraph gets indented.

This is little code, triggered in different ways.

Building a whole paragraph layout control (just look at MS Word for an example, real layout programs do it even more granular) is a completely different story.

[Boot17 1,445]

This is just a work-around, but it looks like you can space just one time and then tab and you'll get pretty close to an indented paragraph. And it looks like Evernote actually converts that tab press after the space into four spaces so you'll actually still have fives spaces vs a tab character.

[christopherhopper 0]

So, am I correct in assuming that there is still no way to indent just the first line of a paragraph?

Evernote has been my go-to app since 2011, and now I'm getting very close to pulling the plug. And, yes, over this seemingly tiny little issue. But it's annoying as hell. I opted out of the Beta test because if it, thinking, "Surely, this won't be part of the next launch." Ugh…

[LaurieT 0]

This is +1 for an option to indent the first line of a paragraph.

[Sharon jenkins 0]

On 6/3/2020 at 5:05 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

I've got v. 6.12.0 of the Web beta in Opera and v. 5.32.0 in Firefox, and they both do the same thing. But of course it is still a beta under development, and allowing first-line indentation (or hanging indentation) may simply be farther down the list of features to be implemented. FWIW, it does work in the older version of the Web client (click the account initial at top left and select the option to switch). Since you're a Premium user, you could raise this with Evernote support. Also definitely use the Feedback button at bottom right in the Web client.

 

[Raspi 0]

"Evernote is not a text editor/word processor" is IMHO, a terrible excuse for not having this feature.

I switched to Evernote from the default Notes app. Evernote has highlighters and the ability to place lines, as well as a wider collection of fonts. These are all reasons I chose to switch to EN. But for some reason, EN can't handle single-line indents for paragraphs, even when Notes can. This irked me when I tried to use EN to draft a story.

Now, I know you're thinking: "Well, maybe don't use EN for writing a story." But the app already provides templates for creative writing, and I often use bullet-point structure to outline my stories, so it's just easier to take the points and turn them into sentences. And it's great for drafting, when I don't need a full-blown word processor to jot down a couple paragraphs for a scene that just popped into my head. 

So, y'know, it's not really that complicated of a feature for an app even if it's mainly used for note-taking...

[PinkElephant 8,088]

Picking a feature from another app and expecting it must be there is a non-argument.

Telling for „writing“ one needs a first line indent is not logical - see your own post here on the forum (not indented).

It may be you feel better when the first line is indented - as the medieval scriptors only felt good when the first letter on a page was a piece of art. On the other hand, every additional function complicates the apps code and often UI.

If a feature is important for yourself, you can tell EN by using the feedback function build into all clients.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

On 4/17/2022 at 4:03 PM, Raspi said:

"Evernote is not a text editor/word processor" is IMHO, a terrible excuse for not having this feature.

I switched to Evernote from the default Notes app. Evernote has highlighters and the ability to place lines, as well as a wider collection of fonts. These are all reasons I chose to switch to EN. But for some reason, EN can't handle single-line indents for paragraphs, even when Notes can. This irked me when I tried to use EN to draft a story.

Now, I know you're thinking: "Well, maybe don't use EN for writing a story." But the app already provides templates for creative writing, and I often use bullet-point structure to outline my stories, so it's just easier to take the points and turn them into sentences. And it's great for drafting, when I don't need a full-blown word processor to jot down a couple paragraphs for a scene that just popped into my head. 

So, y'know, it's not really that complicated of a feature for an app even if it's mainly used for note-taking...

It's true that Evernote is (a) not really meant for longer-form writing, but (b) good enough at formatting, and so easily available with notes editable on all platforms, that it tempts one to do longer-form writing in it. But you've got an edge-case going in the Evernote universe as a whole, and while I agree it would be great to have the tab key indent  the 1st line, I don't think it's likely to reappear.

What I would do (assuming that eventually you have to transfer what you've written from EN to a true word processor) would be to just put a blank line before each new paragraph as you write, so you can see what you're doing; then when you've copied the text into a WP, first set up the paragraph style with indentation as you like it, then remove all the blank lines with a find - replace-all operation. (If you insist on using tabs instead of paragraph styles--and I learned to type on a typewriter, so I know the habit is hard to break--you can fool around with the replace-all operation to change the blank lines to paragraph-initial tabs.)

[ChaseThePen 0]

How is this still an issue? It's 2022. They've had years...

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

On 6/28/2022 at 12:47 PM, ChaseThePen said:

How is this still an issue? It's 2022. They've had years...

Hi, and welcome to the forums. Do you have a specific response to any of the posts on this thread?

[PinkElephant 8,088]

Currently I would assume that indenting the whole paragraph is exactly what is intended.

EN does not offer any sophisticated layout control, and indenting just the first line is a typical candidate for such a set of layout features.

So yes, I think it is working like described since years, it is working like that by design, and "they did have years" tries to tell something was missed - no, everything is as it is defined, and most likely they will do nothing to change it. Even when more years pass by.

If a user wants an elaborate format control, use another app.

[Thail 0]

I may be misunderstanding what PinkElephant is trying to say and if so please educate me.  I consider Microsoft's Notepad to be the most basic text editor that isn't something like Vi on Linux, and it allows you to tab indent single lines.  You can't bold, or italicize, or change font or color, in Notepad but you can indent a single line.  Type writers which existed in the way back allowed you to tab indent a single line.  With that in mind I don't think the request is to have Microsoft Word level formatting, or even Wordpad level editing.  Which is why every time you write about "Elaborate" format control it just sounds like you're being snarky and rude.

 

Just saying.... (also would prefer tab to indent single lines)

[PinkElephant 8,088]

My dog will not search and bring me a stick I throw. He just does not understand the concept of stick throwing.

I mean, it is a fine dog and all, but I always get upset when other dog owner get their sticks returned. What a pity, I mean I got a dog because I wanted to play stick throwing with him. Oh man, what a useless dog, the place is full of sticks I threw and just stayed where they landed. The breeder told me it is a first class dog, and I did not explicitly ask to get one that will get me my sticks returned …

Oh, I am deviating, this dog drives me crazy. To contact EN, use the feedback function in the clients, or issue a support ticket.

[Thail 0]

I have submitted feedback, I just assumed and perhaps wrongly so, that these Evernote forums also bubbled up to the developers in some form.  For better or worse PinkElephant, you seem to be the most prolific commenter on this topic which is why I mentioned you.

 

On a side note, I'm sorry your dog doesn't play fetch, my dog too doesn't fetch, he was trained at a young age to play keep away instead so thrown items are collected and taken to the far corners of the yard.

[PinkElephant 8,088]

A well trained dog is a blessing.

The forum is user2user. We can shared ideas, workarounds and solutions here. EN staff may show by, but my impression is they don’t monitor and harvest the forum systematically.

[coco26 0]

I also need a way to indent the first line of a paragraph! Still not available in any version of evernote I have used - web/mac/windows.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

22 hours ago, coco26 said:

I also need a way to indent the first line of a paragraph! Still not available in any version of evernote I have used - web/mac/windows.

And so I think, at this point, maybe only temporarily but maybe not, we must regard this not as an annoying bug but as an annoying feature. Suggestions made in this previous post in the thread and in this one pretty much sum up the options: use a blank line between paragraphs (as is common in some other short-form writing software, e.g. emails), or write longer-form material in software designed for that purpose, such as a word processor or Scrivener. Or press the spacebar a few times--3 ought to be enough.

[Boot17 1,445]

On 9/21/2022 at 11:38 AM, coco26 said:

I also need a way to indent the first line of a paragraph! Still not available in any version of evernote I have used - web/mac/windows.

For an indefinite workaround, press space once, then press tab. It's the closest thing you'll get with the least amount of keystrokes.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

@Boot17, you're a genius! On the Web client, anyway, this inserts a total of 5 spaces.

[farfar76 0]

I just want to say to the Evernote staff: This is still a problem important to people that should be solved. I experience it on Evernote for Mac. Solving it is likely a low labor time task.  

Make "tab" key do a normal indent of first line of paragraph. If you want, you could make tab+[other key] indent all lines of the paragraph.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,950]

Hi, and welcome to the forums. As noted previously in this thread, these are user to user spaces. To address Evernote directly: feedback@evernote.com; or https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new, and use the Feedback and feature requests button.