Evernote 10 Related-Tag Functionality Removed in Evernote Web?

[LateToTheGame 31]

A few weeks ago, it was possible to search for a tag in Evernote 10 Web, say "portland", and then when you clicked in the search box, a filter was applied such that all the other tags that were associated with notes tagged "portland" were offered, in my case: "food", "accommodations",  "transportation", "tourism", "travel". This functionality allowed the user to quickly drill down on related tags to find, say, all notes regarding food in Portland.

This functionality is now removed from Evernote 10 Web, and that's quite frustrating. I'm still on Evernote Legacy for the Mac. Have users of Evernote 10 for Mac found that this type of tag filtering by related tags to be working or not?

For the record, I'm a big user of hyphenated tags (which solves this problem), but I find that for the "travel" use case (and many others), the related tag system is much easier because the user doesn't have to create as many tags (see below).

Hyphenated Tags

portland.food, portland.accommodations, portland.transportation, portland.tourism, portland.travel

seattle.food, seattle.accommodations, seattle.transportation, seattle.tourism, seattle.travel

minneapolis.food, minneapolis.accommodations, minneapolis.transportation, minneapolis.tourism, minneapolis.travel

new.york.food, new.york.accommodations, new.york.transportation, new.york.tourism, new.york.travel

chicago.food, chicago.accommodations, chicago.transportation, chicago.tourism, chicago.travel

Related Tags

portland, seattle, minneapolis, new.york, chicago

food, accommodations, transportation, tourism, travel

The number of hyphenated tags required grows exponentially with each additional city (okay, I'm not a mathematician).

I brought this issue up approximately a year ago, and Ian Small responded to my post, stating that the related tag approach would work in Evernote 10. Is anyone else bothered by the fact that it appears to have been recently removed from Evernote 10 Web? Perhaps I'm making a mistake and the functionality is still present. And as I asked above, is this functionality still present in Evernote 10 for Desktop?

Thanks, Jason

 

 

[Mike P 2,639]

5 hours ago, Jason Goldsmith said:

A few weeks ago, it was possible to search for a tag in Evernote 10 Web, say "portland", and then when you clicked in the search box, a filter was applied such that all the other tags that were associated with notes tagged "portland" were offered

I don't think there is a straightforward answer to this but I will make a few comments from my experience.

• For me the behaviour of EN web and EN V10 on Windows is identical
• If you select the first tag by "filtering" e.g. by clicking on a tag in the sidebar you get a very limited number of tag search sugestions if you then click into the search bar.
• If you search for the first tag by typing it into the search bar you get a larger list of search sugestions but certainly not all of them.
• The search suggestions are driven by some algorithm which suits the needs of the person who designed it but certainly not me. I want to see all the tags and I'm very unlikely to want to find notes containing telephone numbers. Surely after a year of using this through the beta and GA releases any decent ML algorithm would realise this!
• Not directly related but I would love the return of shift-clicking tags in the sidebar to add another tag.
• The filter menu will obviously work but you need to wade through all the tags because it certainly doesn't filter for only the relevant ones.

I think EN still have lots to do on this. There was the talk of the return of ctrl-Q (on desktop versions). This seems to have morphed into "Search and switch to a different note using a keyboard shortcut" (whatever that means) in the latest "coming soon" section of the release notes.

[PinkElephant 8,094]

Thanks for diving deep into this.

Some remarks, from my personal user experience and way to set things up:

Desktop and web clients are very close twins, with a few restrictions existing on the Web compared to the desktop. Both still don’t beat the legacy client.

AFAIK search is pretty straightforward and deterministic. The only AI-Style (or at least dynamically created) feature I was aware of was Context, which was removed with the release of v10.

Building tags in the way „Portland.Restaurant“ wakes the monster, exponentially growing the tags needed. This is not necessary and even counterproductive.

The idea behind tags is a dynamic network: When selecting 2 tags, all notes carrying both are selected in a makeshift relation. When I select Portland and Restaurant in the filter, notes tagged with both appear. By adding a search word, I can narrow it down further. The last step is selecting the note with the searched content from the shortlist presented by EN. IMHO the concept is not to exactly hit the one note by tags and search, it is to get close enough to be able to pick it. Works for me.

Sometimes a Boolean approach like „contains Tag X AND (Tag Y OR Tag Z)“ would be nice.

[Mike P 2,639]

Some good points @PinkElephant. I do get frustrated by EN's wild guesses of where I want to go to or what I might like to filter on. It would be nice to be able to say "show me all the relevant tags and if you've got space I will entertain your preoccupation with telephone numbers". Here for example there are a lot more than 6 tags I could use to further filter the list which has come up with my initial "Asset allocation" tag search. For me those tags are more important than the 5 generic suggested filters because if I have to use the filter menu I don't necessarily know which tags are relevant.

[LateToTheGame 31]

Thanks for the replies.

I've resolved my own confusion on this matter. One needs to search for each tag sequentially using the Search Box -- and using not the tag icon. 

Agree with above comments that it would be much better if all the related tags showed up after searching on one tag, rather than just a limited subset of suggestions based on an algorithm. The only way it works under the current design is if you remember all of the related tags.

[Paul A. 615]

13 hours ago, Mike P said:

I think EN still have lots to do on this. There was the talk of the return of ctrl-Q (on desktop versions). This seems to have morphed into "Search and switch to a different note using a keyboard shortcut" (whatever that means) in the latest "coming soon" section of the release notes.

Totally agree they still have lots to do here.

If I'm not mistaken, Ctrl-Q on Windows is the equivalent of Cmd-J on Mac? This has been listed as "coming soon" in the Mac version for at least 3-4 months, and I've been puzzled by why it's taking so long. One thought I had, is what if it were being designed to be forward thinking, with an eye towards enabling in-line commands and auto-completion of note and section names, for example? Something along the lines of what apps like Notion and Roam Research support. That would help take the sting out of the long delay.