(Archived) Print to Evernote - Adobe Style

[swinterroth 0]

Hello,

This has probably been suggested but I've searched and don't have the time to read through 6,000 results.

It would be awesome if you could simply "Print to Evernote" much like you can "Print to Adobe PDF". Ultimately, there would be an Evernote virtual printer installed and would show up in almost any program that you can print too. I believe Microsoft Word had something like this in Word "Send to OneNote" for note taking so I don't think it's an off the wall request.

Keep up the great work.

Scott - Premium User

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Just print to a PDF in an imported folder. Please search the board on imported or watched folder, if you need more info.

[swinterroth 0]

Yes, I understand this but that requires an extra step that I'm trying to eliminate.

[engberg 89]

Thanks for the suggestion. Since Windows doesn't include PDF support in the operating system, this will require us to bundle some sort of "virtual PDF print driver" with our software. This is definitely something we'd like to see, but maintaining this kind of print driver across every Windows configuration (XP, Vista, 7, etc.) is unfortunately not a small task.

[jefito 5,589]

I am guessing that the original poster is asking for something a little bit different. Rather than asking for anything like a PDF print driver (which already exist), I think they are asking for a virtual Evernote print driver, sich that when you "print" a document to it, the document is actually shuffled off to Evernote in the form of a note. So no intermediate PDF import step is required. It's probably the same order of magnitude in terms of difficulty of implementation, though.

~Jeff

[engberg 89]

Yeah, I think that it would be easier to do that into PDF than to take any arbitrary application and convert their data into Evernote's HTML-based note format. I.e. if you print from Adobe Illustrator or AutoCAD, it would be hairy to represent that result in a (portable) Evernote note without using PDF as the representation.

Such PDF print drivers exist, and some are even free, so people can wire this up themselves, but bundling a full solution would be nice. (The Mac client includes this capability automatically, since Apple supports PDF in the operating system.)

[swinterroth 0]

If I can recall correctly, back in the day Macromedia (Now Adobe) had a "Print to Flash Paper" option where you could print any file into a HTML document. Much like the Adobe Acrobat today.

While I think Evernote's .pdf capability is great, I would prefer imported documents to not be in pdf but rather the native "HTML" because I could really just use a thumb drive to organize my pdfs and use Adobe's built in cross-pdf search.

I understand a feature request such as this could be an issue for cross-platform integration but ultimately, that's part of Evernote's job, if they choose to bring its awesomeness to a higher level.

[jna 1]

I'm not sure about this "extra step" thing.

When you print to PDF, have to select the folder to store the file, and click on OK, this is indeed an extra step.

Try the excellent and free PDFCreator (http://www.pdfforge.org/) and set it up so that it saves automatically in a predefined folder (which can be configured as an import folder in EN). You can even specify which "action" should be started after printing (which can be EN with the printed file as a parameter).

Using this technique, you can create a completely automated "print to Evernote".

[swinterroth 0]

I probably should let this die but here it goes.... I use Adobe Acrobat a lot for other graphic design/business projects so I don't really want to configure it to just work with Evernote. For ME, this could be a messy process. I'm a true believer that simplicity is always best and while I understand that it's not that difficult to set this us as an add on, I would prefer it to be a core functionality of the Evernote package.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I understand a feature request such as this could be an issue for cross-platform integration but ultimately, that's part of Evernote's job, if they choose to bring its awesomeness to a higher level.

It's also part of Evernote's responsibility to insure any changes work well across all platforms AND scale well. I'm sure there are a lot of features that many users want that may not fit into both categories.

[swinterroth 0]

Yes, I understand that as that is exactly what I was trying to say... I know you just have to put your 2 cents into everything. I mean, you are a burger AND fries.....

[SandmanCL 0]

"Send to OneNote" is the OneNote feature I've been missing the most since I made the change. I needed something cross-platform, and Evernote works great for my Windows + Mac + iPhone needs. But often I found that nothing saved paper the way printing directly to OneNote did. If this feature gets implemented it would be a great productivity booster for many people, imo.

Edit: On the Mac, "File->Print->PDF->Save PDF To Evernote" works pretty well. Does anyone know if it's possible to assign a keyboard shortcut to this ?

[jfwarrior 6]

Works in Mac.

[dan7000 26]

Saving a PDF in Evernote is decidedly inferior to saving content in a note in Evernote.

First, text in a PDF is not easily visible in Evernote.

If I save one page of text in a PDF, and put the PDF in evernote, I cannot see the text easily from within Evernote. At best, I can open the note in its own window and attempt to resize the note until the text is visible.

In contrast, if copy and past the same page of text into a note, I can see the text right in the main evernote window.

Second, text in a PDF is not easily searchable in Evernote.

Sure, it's indexed (eventually). But if a PDF shows up in my search results, what then? I have to open the PDF in an external viewer and re-run the search before I can see the text in context.

In contrast, if the same text is in an EN note, I can immediately jump to the highlighted text that I searched for, without launching an external viewer.

Finally, of course, PDFs have to be synched before they can be searched, which makes them unusable in local notebooks.

[mdave 1]

Not to be a contrarian, but there may be some value to someone (me) who wants to do both. After I finish working on a text document (in EN), I often need a PDF version of it, which I also want to file in EN. If EN's formatting tools are sufficient, I print to EN from the EN note. Otherwise, I do so from a text editor. It saves the step of moving a PDF from the Finder to EN. However, because there is no standard dialog box to title the PDF document, a subsequent export of the PDF from EN carries the title "untitled.pdf", which adds a step of renaming it after export. So, I guess it's a wash. There is also the consideration that printing to EN is cleaner in that you are not left with two PDF files.