Notes Folders

[vampireux 0]

Hello, 

    I am currently a student and I use evernote to take notes and make my life easier.

    I found that evernote was a perfect tool to have acces to my notes where and when I want to take a look on them. 

    There is something that I think will be a good improvement to get better sorting of notes.

    When I finish a session, I like to keep my notes for several years, but I can't do it in evernote without making a mess piles of notes.

    My idea is to make it possible for everyone to be able to create folders within folders within folders to help people keep their notes in a beautiful and structured order.

Thanks for reading me and thanks for considering my idea for future updates.

[Anasoft 1]

It is a pity. If there is one thing we have learned over the years looking at Data->Knowledge->Wisdom, or whatever philosophy you follow, is that everyone learns differently.

In this case we have a couple of ways of organising and there are strengths and weaknesses of both. We also have the difference between "grouping" and "filtering". Often types of people see tags as "opting into a group" and a folders as "excluding things outside irrespective of tag". 

One sees structure and control in a nice neat hierarchy. It is how the brain organises information. It can be very effective and is typically excellent for the user, but not so good for multiple users who would have their own 'internal" hierarchy that is right for them.

Sometimes, as the total number of notes grows, even the original user can struggle to find a note if they have changed the way they think about a subject over time.

Tags are great for unstructured data but people who think in hierarchies really struggle with them. It also changes the amount of "organisational effort" that can go into a note. Tags require a lot of consistency, and are (again) things that change over time as you learn more about a subject or topic.

This is why universal search has become almost essential in everything from Google to Outlook to tools like this one.

Personally, I would like to see EN adopt Folders as well as Tags, they are not mutually exclusive, and in fact, can work really well together. It is its only weakness that I find a source of annoyance, even though I am comfortable with Tags. Both have their respective strengths and weakness.

 

 

[Anasoft 1]

9 hours ago, DTLow said:

I think you're referring to the Notebook/Tag trees   
The Notebook tree is listed first

Some users are more comfortable emulating folders by using the Notebook/Tag trees

No, let me show you. These are all of my notes, shown using "Top List". Here you can see the data structure that comes along with the note itself. You'll note that the order of the data fields is "Location" and then "Tag". In fact, using tags as a proxy for hierarchy is actually not really the correct use for this kind of data, and looking at this, it appears that is reflected in this layout.

Typically, folders would have pointers to each other, to effectively support the nesting that they promote, whereas tags are structurally agnostic (as they should be) in order to find content independent of structure. A mature implementation of both is a very sound outcome.

[gazumped 11,652]

On 11/9/2021 at 1:14 AM, vampireux said:

    My idea is to make it possible for everyone to be able to create folders within folders within folders 

Elsewhere in the forums there are several hundred posts over several years talking about exactly this.  It hasn't happened yet.  Meantime try creating more notebooks to help organise your data.

Tips for organizing notes, notebooks, and tags

[DTLow 5,736]

On 11/8/2021 at 5:14 PM, vampireux said:

My idea is to make it possible for everyone to be able to create folders within folders within folders

The Evernote product does not support Folder methodology   
Instead, Tag methodology is supported with two metadata fields; Notebooks and Tags   
imho  Tag methodology is a superior method of organizing notes

Tags support unlimited levels via parent-child hierarchy

Some users emulate folders using the notebook/tag trees in the sidebar

[PinkElephant 8,072]

On 11/9/2021 at 2:14 AM, vampireux said:

  My idea is to make it possible for everyone to be able to create folders within folders within folders to help people keep their notes in a beautiful and structured order.

There are very old threads in the forum about nesting notebooks that you can upvote.

Personally I think it is a deep misinterpretation of the way information is organized in EN by always thinking about notebooks.

The main logical organization happens by tagging. Notebooks are mainly useful to control sharing or other „large“ blocks of information flow, like the InBox to catch everything that enters into the EN database.

Sure, there are many who want to put everything into large tree-type structures of notebooks / folders. As it is today, EN is simply the wrong software if you want to organize by folders. There are deeper technical reasons why EN can’t (and probably won’t) switch to nested notebooks.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

If you build a software in a way that you can configure it every way, you never get the sort of user experience EN has. They decided early to go for a flat notebook structure and a deep tagging logic, and build the app around it.

This goes much deeper than just what shows on the user interface - the internal database setup is tuned for it as well, as are the search routines.

If you need your nested folders, use another product.

[DTLow 5,736]

15 hours ago, Anasoft said:

Tags are great for unstructured data but people who think in hierarchies really struggle with them

fwiw  Tags can be organized into a hierarchy (Parent/Child) with unlimited levels
           Also Notebooks, but there's only two levels

My proces is to reflect hierarchy in the tag  name; sample  !Budget, !Budget-Housing, Budger-HousingUtilities

[Anasoft 1]

12 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

If you build a software in a way that you can configure it every way, you never get the sort of user experience EN has. They decided early to go for a flat notebook structure and a deep tagging logic, and build the app around it.

This goes much deeper than just what shows on the user interface - the internal database setup is tuned for it as well, as are the search routines.

If you need your nested folders, use another product.

While I could clearly be wrong, I am thinking you have never really designed complex software before if that is your response! The UI, table structures and code are related, no doubt, but should not place this kind of hard limit on a product. While I agree, it may be by design, it certainly shouldn't be a limitation - simply an architectural decision.

I haven't elected to deconstruct the schema, but I am guessing (again) that this is highly unlikely a limitation, but, if it exists as you surmise, an architectural decision.

Are you one of the product architects? You speak as if you have inside knowledge and seem quite fine telling others in the user community to move to a competitor...

Quite strange really.

 

[Anasoft 1]

10 hours ago, DTLow said:

fwiw  Tags can be organized into a hierarchy (Parent/Child) with unlimited levels
           Also Notebooks, but there's only two levels

My proces is to reflect hierarchy in the tag  name; sample  !Budget, !Budget-Housing, Budger-HousingUtilities

Thank you for trying to be helpful mate.

Don't you find that bastardisation a little clumsy? I can see how it can be used, it just seems more like a workaround than mature solution. 

What is also interesting is that, when you are in something like "Side List" mode, you see the folder first ("Location") before "Tags".

I know the original DMS systems tried to move away from folders to "Structured Searches" which were essentially the predecessors of Tags nowadays. They were not particularly successful in it and had to bring back folders as well. In fact, when deploying a real document/knowledge management system, this part is some of the most difficult change management for the entire project.

My challenge is that I work with a number of large clients, sometimes directly, sometimes through other large companies. Within each company I have programs or projects, and within those further projects or work package, No client can see another client's work, but I may wish to see everything I have assisted with on Strategy. I would file the notes against the meeting in a work package within a project for a client, but I might also add Minutes / Strategy as tags to it.

While I can see where you are going with your tag structure, I think it would become quite unwieldly for me

This is such a bugger as I really like everything else about the tool...

Seems like EN can't quite get there unless anyone has any other ideas? 

[DTLow 5,736]

10 hours ago, Anasoft said:

What is also interesting is that, when you are in something like "Side List" mode, you see the folder first ("Location") before "Tags".

I think you're referring to the Notebook/Tag trees   
The Notebook tree is listed first

Some users are more comfortable emulating folders by using the Notebook/Tag trees

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, Anasoft said:

No, let me show you. These are all of my notes, shown using "Top List". Here you can see the data structure that comes along with the note itself.

Correct, Top List view shows the note name and other metadata displayed in columns
You chose which columns to show, and the order
Location is an alias for Notebook

I'll show you the sidebar on my Mac that displays the Notebook/Tag trees

>Typically, folders would have pointers to each other, to effectively support the nesting that they promote,

The "pointer" for Notebooks is a field (Stack) in the Notebook record
The "pointer" for Tags is a field (Parent Tag) in the Tag record

The screenshots below show the Notebook/Tag trees and nesting for each

       

 

[Anasoft 1]

I see. I am not sure why EN would choose to confuse these two well known concepts in this way. For example, here is my folder structure:

I'm sorry I can't show more to show the logic, but essentially clients are broken in countries/states/sites/projects, but clearly with the hierarchical folder limitation, this isn't possible.

My Tag structure is simple as you can see from this sample:

I could possibly replicate my folder structure in Tags, but why have folders? It makes no sense.

As I say, these two concepts can work harmoniously, however, for reasons unknown, EN has elected to dumb down one and has promoted the bastardisation of the other to compensate. I can imagine why this has happened, but unfortunately, it is ultimately counter-productive to an awesome tool.

People will go elsewhere...when this one change would have a huge impact on usability and acceptance. Trust me, I know how popular it is, and I know so many people who start and stop. There should be no reason to stop, but it is taking licence like this that drives people to it I'm afraid.

[DTLow 5,736]

33 minutes ago, Anasoft said:

I could possibly replicate my folder structure in Tags, but why have folders? It makes no sense.

Evernote uses Notebooks to identify notes for offline storage
In the Legacy product, Notebooks are also used to identify notes for Local storage (not online)

[Jan H 2]

Nested folders would be SO helpful. It's so intuitive and so analogous to the way we organize much of our lives: physical file cabinets, computer directory listings, email, lists of all kinds, etc. Please listen to your users on this one!

[Boot17 1,439]

I think it would be nice too if we could have nested folders as well. We have no idea how much work that would take EN to implement that though and if the trade-off for that work is worth it.

You should/could check out UpNote -- an app that is similar to Evernote. It allows for multiple nested notebooks (and you can put a single note in multiple notes *and* it has tags in addition to that). I really like UpNote but I still find Evernote a lot better for my use cases.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

Oh yes, we have an idea what nested folders would mean. Simple answer: Rewrite everything, server software, apps and the database on which everything is running.

The reason is that currently there is only one relation at the very core of EN: Each note belongs into exactly one notebook. Stacks are only a field in the notebook header. Tags can be nested, but this is provisioned in the EN database and app.

If nesting is needed (which I doubt, it is more a question of being trained to it by OS folder structures), the EN way is to setup tags accordingly, and apply them.

If somebody can’t live with it, he should probably move on to another app.

[Boot17 1,439]

Also wanted to add that this is already a Feature Request that was first asked for in 2008 and has 566 upvotes and hundreds and hundreds of comments: 

Go add your vote if you want, but since Evernote just did this huge rewrite for version 10 and did not include multiple levels of nesting notebooks at that point, I also doubt that they are ever going to add it.

 

[gazumped 11,652]

9 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

Go add your vote if you want

It doesn't cost you anything to vote,  and there's always the chance that Evernote have some master plan that they'll reveal in due time.  They don't usually share their short or long terms intentions,  so who knows?