(Archived) Suggestions For New Features

[MikeSFV 0]

I had been using Micrsoft Office Journal for the last couple of years. I was totally frustrated at my inability to sync my journal notes with the web and iphone. I stumbled across EN from a trainer at my local Apple retail store. I have only been using EN for the last 2 days but it looks like I will be totally converted very soon. The following are a couple of suggestions that have come up and I am sure I will be posting other ideas in the near future.

When printing a note it would be great if the Date Created, Title, Notebook and Tags were included as a header to the note being printed. At a minimum these should be included manually and the alternative is to make the inclusion of these items optional.

Microsoft Office Journal has a stop watch feature that I have grown to appreciate as I do charge most of my clients for my time. It would be nice to have this option in Evernotes. At least include this feature in a desktop version if not the mobile versions.

In using the Winows Desktop version, it is very common for most programs to have a Save button under File in the Toolbar. When creating a new note, it looks like all you have to do is exit the note and it is saved automatically. while this is great, I guess I am holding on to the past and find it would be nice to be able to save or save and exit a note from the File item in the Toolbar.

The other thing I am curious about is how old notes may be archived in the future. I tend to take a seperate note for each phone call or interaction I have with a client during the day. I can end up preparing anywhere from 20 to 30 notes during a single day. Over a couple of years this really adds up and of course it would be nice to have access to these notes for several years. Has any thought been given to possibly archiving these notes in PDF (which may not provide the attachments) or some other format that would take old notes out of the database and allow a user to keep them offline but still accessible.

So far this is turning out to be one of the best productivity tools I have found and look forward to being part of future enhancements.

[jefito 5,589]

When printing a note it would be great if the Date Created, Title, Notebook and Tags were included as a header to the note being printed. At a minimum these should be included manually and the alternative is to make the inclusion of these items optional.

This is not an uncommon request (you can see by searching the forums). The Evernote folk have indicated that improving their printing capabilities, possibly in this area.

Microsoft Office Journal has a stop watch feature that I have grown to appreciate as I do charge most of my clients for my time. It would be nice to have this option in Evernotes. At least include this feature in a desktop version if not the mobile versions.

Evernote is mainly a note storage mechanism, and only secondarily (in my opinion) a note-taking application -- yes, you can take notes, but it's not as full featured as a dedicated word processor, for example. This sounds like a pretty specialized piece of functionality, so I'm guessing it would be lower on the priority list for them.

In using the Winows Desktop version, it is very common for most programs to have a Save button under File in the Toolbar. When creating a new note, it looks like all you have to do is exit the note and it is saved automatically. while this is great, I guess I am holding on to the past and find it would be nice to be able to save or save and exit a note from the File item in the Toolbar.

If it's not needed (because saving is automatic), then why is it a nice-to-have?

The other thing I am curious about is how old notes may be archived in the future. I tend to take a seperate note for each phone call or interaction I have with a client during the day. I can end up preparing anywhere from 20 to 30 notes during a single day. Over a couple of years this really adds up and of course it would be nice to have access to these notes for several years. Has any thought been given to possibly archiving these notes in PDF (which may not provide the attachments) or some other format that would take old notes out of the database and allow a user to keep them offline but still accessible.

The Evernote philosophy is to save everything, forever. Current limits are for 100,000 notes, I believe, and I also believe that that will need to increase at some time. 30 notes/day over 365 days ~= 10,000 notes, so I am guessing that you would be good for awhile.

~Jeff

[C.Noize 2]

When printing a note it would be great if the Date Created, Title, Notebook and Tags were included as a header to the note being printed. At a minimum these should be included manually and the alternative is to make the inclusion of these items optional.

That would be indeed a very useful thing to have.

Microsoft Office Journal has a stop watch feature that I have grown to appreciate as I do charge most of my clients for my time. It would be nice to have this option in Evernotes. At least include this feature in a desktop version if not the mobile versions.

I can pretty much guarantee you that this feature won't be integrated into EN. The EN team said on various occasions, that the integrated features should be kept to the basic functions and that any further functionality should be realized through third party applications.

They don't even want to integrate rotating buttons for images because it can be done by Imaging tools. That's a little exaggerated if you ask me. They also don't want to integrate a calender functionality in EN. They will provide a functionality for the notes, that make it possible for third party calender applications to use Evernotes Database, though.

To make it short. Your stop watch is a pretty special piece of functionality, that has not much to do with note taking. So i see no chance it will ever make it into Evernote.

If your really really want that feature, maybe you should write it your self and implement it into your own version of Nevernote.

When creating a new note, it looks like all you have to do is exit the note and it is saved automatically.

That's not the case. The note is saved while you are typing, so to speak. It looks like every 2 seconds or so the DB is updated with the content of the note. So, there is nothing to save and if your application crashes while typing, your notes will be there pretty much till the point where the application crashed.

Has any thought been given to possibly archiving these notes in PDF (which may not provide the attachments) or some other format that would take old notes out of the database and allow a user to keep them offline but still accessible.

As Jeff said. The philosophy is normally to keep everything, although i could see why you would want to take notes out. For example to increase search speed and reduce search results. It would be great if you could exclude notebooks from the search index. Than you could move all your notes into this notebook. But that's not possible as far as i know.

But if you really want to take notes out you can export notes as html files. PDFs aren't supported (yet). Maybe they will someday, if you ask nicely.

[engberg 89]

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.