(Archived) GTD with evernote3 - search issues

[ignatz 0]

I use Evernote 2.2 to implement a basic GTD system (among other things). I have categories set up such as "@home" or "@phone" that will be familiar to anyone using GTD. In 2.2 I have search filters built into the categories so that I just have to add the "@home" text to any note to categorize it automatically in the GTD categories. I tried to set up a similar system in 3 using the saved searches structure. However, when I set up a search for "@home" it only searches for "home". The "@" character is completely ignored and thus I wind up with many notes that I did not want. I tried a similar search for ".home" with the same result. This search, then, is not useful for me. I have to redefine my labels to something using just characters, such as "ahome" or "zhome". This is not a huge problem, but it is very inconvenient. As more GTD'ers begin to try EN3, you will certainly hear more complaints.

Can this search functionality be fixed? Why would I put another character in my search box if I did not want the software to search for it? Has anyone else experienced this?

[engberg 89]

The current behavior is a "word search" which allows you to find words and phrases without having to exactly match the punctuation. This means you can search for "murder, she wrote" and it will find the note containing "Murder She Wrote" (or vice versa) even though the punctuation and capitalization don't match exactly. This is identical to how search engines like Google work ... if you search for "@home" on Google, you will get pages that have the word "home" in them without the preceding punctuation.

Case- and punctuation-insensitive searching is more friendly for most consumers, but we recognize that this breaks an existing usage pattern. With the current system, you can achieve the similar goals via:

Mark notes with "words" made up of just letters, numbers and underscores: "xxxHome" or "_home"

Assign named tags for categorization instead

We considered making "@" a "word" character for searching (like underscore), but this means that you wouldn't be able to find the word "whitehouse" in "president@whitehouse.gov", since the words would be "president@whitehouse" and "gov".

[ignatz 0]

• Mark notes with "words" made up of just letters, numbers and underscores: "xxxHome" or "_home"

I tried the underscore trick and this did not work. Searching for "_home" does the same thing as searching for "@home": it finds the text string "home". Has anyone else tried this?

[engberg 89]

It looks like the behavior isn't consistent on the clients. We'll get this resolved. Thanks for the follow-up.

[crane 40]

I have dozens of categories that use keywords with @, #, etc. I have 7000+ notes in my database. You want me to change each and every tag in each and every note?

Riiiiiiight.

[engberg 89]

Nope, didn't say what we wanted anyone to do, I was just trying to answer the question about the current behavior of the beta software. Like I said, I realize that this breaks an existing usage pattern for some people, and we're thinking about the best solution to resolve this in a way that doesn't make it harder to search in Evernote than it is to search on Google (et.al.).

Treating the '@' character as a word letter is likely to surprise/confuse new users who search for "evernote" and don't find notes with "bobdobbs@evernote.com". (For the same reason that they don't find notes with the word "vegetables" when they search for "table").

Underscore is less problematic, since the underscore is typically used to join, rather than separate, linked terms, so if we were going to treat any punctuation as "part of" a word, this seemed like the best candidate. (Yes, I realize the distinction is fine.)

Again, none of this is to disagree with your points, or to to force you to do anything. Just trying to provide some technical information about the current behavior of the beta software, for context. We understand that this may not (yet) meet everyone's requirements to convert from 2.2 (the current shipping release) to the 3.0 beta.

[ignatz 0]

• Mark notes with "words" made up of just letters, numbers and underscores: "xxxHome" or "_home"

I tried the underscore trick and this did not work. Searching for "_home" does the same thing as searching for "@home": it finds the text string "home". Has anyone else tried this?

To clarify, I am using the Windows desktop platform. I did not try the search on the web version.

[engberg 89]

To clarify, I am using the Windows desktop platform. I did not try the search on the web version.

Thanks, I misspoke based on the difference between the search behavior in development vs. released. The search engine in the Windows client is undergoing some changes which should, in most cases, increase search performance.

Thanks