Idea: Improving view & sort options and structure

[DMiddleton 302]

There are a couple of things that I think would improve the navigation and use in general, some of these have been mentioned in other posts separately but I thought I would combine them all here into one request.

• Structure - change stacks to allow notebooks within notebooks so you can have multiple layers. I know this goes against the original idea and has been discussed before but would add better management for people who prefer an almost folder structure. Nimbus does this really well and Notion does it with 'pages'. I could give full examples on why I would like this but it would become quite a lengthy post.
• View & sort - allow a specific note to be 'pinned' to the top of a notebook
• View & sort - allow manual sort option, this would negate the above but adding a behind the scenes position index to the notes and allowing the user to manually move notes into whatever order they want would be fantastic (you can do this in OneNote)
• View & sort - allow per notebook sorting options to be saved instead of applying the current option globally.
• View & sort - allow the above options to sync across devices

For me, this would make the use of EN so much better.

[DTLow 5,736]

47 minutes ago, DMiddleton said:

this would negate the above but adding a behind the scenes position index to the notes

How will that work?   
I know Reminders use a reminderOrder field for the "behind the scenes position index to the notes"

[DMiddleton 302]

2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

How will that work?   
I know Reminders have a reminderOrder field for the "behind the scenes position index to the notes"

It would work in a similar way, you would have an option in the sort options alongside sort by title, date etc for 'Custom'.

The note at the top of the notebook would be 0, the next 1, then 2 and so on - these are the behind the scenes position index.
So for each note in a list, if the user moves the position of a note the index gets updated.

If you moved (dragged) the note in position 3 to the top, that note would become 0 and the notes below would be re-numbered accordingly.

In the sort options if you chose 'Custom' and it would list the notes by the "position index". this would allow total custom sorting of notes in any way the user wants.

It may not come across very clearly in words but it quite standard stuff for developers dealing with objects in a list.
It would be fairly simple to implement with just that one additional field on the note object.

[mczin 68]

I would be happy if we had the option to sort by "notebooks" .... 

Is there any known reason why it is not (yet) implement?

[evavcourt 2]

I strongly support the "manual sort" option.

The ability to order your own notes - i.e. to drag and drop individual notecards so that they appear in a particular order (and same with notebooks and stacks on the sidebar) - would be enormously helpful to me. I am writing a dissertation. The whole point of getting a note-taking app for me was to replicate the old "index card" method of organizing your evidence: if this were the 1970s, I'd have all the cards spread out on the floor, shuffling the order according to how I want each claim to appear in the final text. When I signed up for Evernote, I assumed it would allow me to do the same thing, so that my note-storage app could also function as an outline for the dissertation. As it is, I need to translate everything from Evernote into a word document, just so I can see my ideas laid out in the order I want. 

If "manual sort" is, for some reason, not an option, then Evernote should at least provide a "jamboard"-like function: a blank space where users can drag-n-drop their notecards, see them all laid out, and play around with the order and groupings. This might be the best way of replicating that index card experience. 

If Evernote wants to be a useful tool for writers, they're going to need to get a manual sort option. It's an essential - and I should think, rather basic - function for organizing a long text. But Evernote appears to have consistently ignored users' requests on this point for years, so I'm thinking about switching.