Links to sections of a document - Anchors for Evernote

[AppleGuy 19]

Now that Evernote supports links to other documents how about an enhancement so that links can link to a section within a document? This would work the same way Anchor tags work on a webpage.

I would personally like to have "Anchor Links" at the top of some Evernote documents that would take me to a certain section of that same document. This would work much like a Table of Contents. I could see other individuals wanting to link to sections in separate documents, again working much the way the web does.

I appreciate your consideration.

Greg Paskal

[Lauren E 3]

I agree, I've been wanting this feature for a long time and it would be the only reason I switch from Evernote to another platform if I ever do!

[Gema_SF 1]

Yes, please!!!

[PinkElephant 8,998]

Why do we need yet another thread about this topic. There is a nice and long one already, probably among the 10 most voted feature request in the forum.

This one for example:

 

 

[AppleGuy 19]

PinkElephant, mind your own business.

[AppleGuy 19]

PinkElephant, please remove your comments. They add no value here. I've gone ahead and reported you again to Evernote for continuing harassment.

[Grant837 154]

On 6/14/2023 at 11:59 PM, PinkElephant said:

Why do we need yet another thread about this topic. There is a nice and long one already, probably among the 10 most voted feature request in the forum.

 

Because this is another unique aspect of the same problem, and very much worth its own focus. 

What you link to is about an outlining feature, which is also a very very useful feature, but it's not about being able to uniquely link to each item in the outline (let alone be able to search based on such an outline).

This is a functionality that is available in other competing products, like Obsidian, and is very popular and used by those users, and would add great value and customer appreciation for the Evernote product.

[AppleGuy 19]

@Grant837 great point. Thanks for your support on this topic.

[BrandonT 0]

I've been an Evernote user/evangelist for years and this is absolutely a top feature request for me. It's really discouraging that it's not happened after all the interest expressed over time.

[PinkElephant 8,998]

How long - 12 years by now ?

Given the current situation with some urgently awaited bug fixes, I wouldn’t bet to see it any time soon.

[AppleGuy 19]

40 minutes ago, BrandonT said:

I've been an Evernote user/evangelist for years and this is absolutely a top feature request for me. It's really discouraging that it's not happened after all the interest expressed over time.

@BrandonT, we just need to keep asking and keeping it in front of the Evernote Dev’s. I’m optomistic we will eventually see this capability added.

[agsteele 3,069]

@AppleGuy I admire your patience and determination. I don't know why this option hasn't been provided but it is nine years and counting since it was suggested.  Mind you, changes of ownership may alter the priorities. So keep asking.

[AppleGuy 19]

I agree @agsteele. With Evernote under new management, maybe feature request like this will make it to the working backlog to be developed not too far down the road. I am a huge Evernote fan and use this tool everyday, all day. As it stands, it’s perfect for most of the things I need it to do and very reliable. I hate to see Evernote move from the US to out of the country as this company has been around for a very long time in California. Regardless, I want to support the new engineering team that will be taking over the development.

Have a great day @agsteele

[Grant837 154]

I believe this post, with many more votes, is the same, or rather, the key collection place... The description is not very clear, but the post under it seem to be the same topic?

 

[PinkElephant 8,998]

Sure it’s all about the same. The flavors may vary, but it’s about the same dish.

This tells a) there is a significant number of users who think it would help them with their use cases, b) it is not simple to implement, because it has not yet happened and c) opposite to some opinions, the fate of the app is not depending on it.

Anybody who is interested can tell from observation that posting more about the same will probably achieve more of the same ….

[AppleGuy 19]

@Grant837, let me try to reiterate the request here. The best technical way to describe this feature request is to parallel it to how anchor tags work on a webpage. Now if the reader has never developed a basic webpage, this description will not make sense, but since most developers of the Evernote product likely have, I'm hopeful this will be helpful to them.

My feature request would allow the following.

1. A user can put a link into any part of an Evernote document.
2. A user can put an "anchor" into any location of an Evernote document. For instance, the user may have a 10-page Evernote document containing a term they have defined somewhere else. They could place an "anchor" (or whatever Evernote decides to call these) at that term definition so the inserted link described above would take the user to that anchor location.
3. A link should follow the same web usability standards and be represented with an underline. Hovering over the link would provide a popup with details about where the link would take them. It might also provide a short summary of the words where the anchor is located, thus negating the need to click the link unless greater detail is needed.

This is the easiest way I know how to describe this feature. Model the functionality after the way the web and HTML have been performing this identical functionality for the past 25 years.

[Grant837 154]

@AppleGuy  Your preaching to the choir here... I know the feature well, also having dabbled in HTML, plus apps like Notion, OneNote and Obsidian have decent implementation of this feature. 

Its one feature that would really help Evernote compete.  Most people do not know how handy this capability is until they realize it exists and try it out

Alas, as @PinkElephant points out, Evernote is in survival mode, and have to get the many serious bugs fixed first before they can expand on core functionality. 

[AppleGuy 19]

@Grant837 I think Evernote is a great product and have not encountered any serious issues with it for years. I don’t see Evernote in survival mode but in transition mode. I’m hopeful for the future of this product and the developers now taking over the product development.

[AC11 0]

I would love to have this feature! As some of my notes are getting bigger, it would be nice to have some Section links on top of the note that redirects you to a section instead of scrolling down and finding those part on your notes.

[AppleGuy 19]

@AC11, Yes, that a good use case for this feature as I have the exact same scenario. These notes are invaluable to me as collections over similar types of information but would be unmanageable to be broken into hundreds of smaller notes. The “Anchor” feature that exist in HTML would work perfectly and is a proven, valuable approach to solving this problem for many decades now. If we can just get the attention of the Evernote developers to implement this capability, that would be great.

[johnmarshall4 45]

Vote ++ for me. 

[nbink 4]

Hey, they just added anchor links, plus Table of Contents within a single note! Thanks for posting about this to begin with (and unfortunate that someone was trying to  bully you into  posting it on a separate thread): yours was the first post that I found when Googling how to use this feature . Evernote does not clearly explain it anyhwere — to be fair, presumably because they just released this.

It took me a second to figure out, but your anchor link only works with headers.

To find the anchor link, hover over the header and a link icon appears to the right:

As a side note, I made mine a Small Header (first changing "Update Small Header" to match the font style of the text that I gave the header — nice feature, Evernote!):

 

[PinkElephant 8,998]

Good you found it and are enthusiastic about it. Actually this was added last week or so.

What is matching it is the possibility to add an in-note table of content through the + - menu, or a slash-command.

However it needs some more polish - for example if you collapsed sections, you need to expand each one manually. There is no section management to expand all at once. But that´s probably in the making already.

[nbink 4]

Indeed, the in-note T.O.C. is a useful feature — and agreed, I imagine they'll tighten up that experience. But nice to have!

[AppleGuy 19]

Wow, I am so happy to see this feature in Evernote finally; I have needed it for a long time. Thank you Evernote for adding the ToC feature working with header content. I am looking forward to implementing it right away.

[npbaron 1]

Using anchor links within a note works well - click the link, and it takes you to the relevant section.

But if I paste the anchor link into another document, then clicking the link just takes you to the linked note, not to the relevant section. Using it this way, then, it's not different to a normal internal link and, if I link to a specific section in a very long note, rather useless.

Or am I missing something?

Thanks.

[Mike P 3,058]

8 hours ago, npbaron said:

But if I paste the anchor link into another document, then clicking the link just takes you to the linked note, not to the relevant section

It generally works fine for me. However if your link is to a sub section within a collapsed section it will not work. This is also a problem with the new and related internal TOC function.

 

 

[AppleGuy 19]

Now I am looking forward to them getting this working within the Mobile App. The feature is still new and you can see it needs a bit of tuning but at least it's a start.

[Me5 0]

Hej, I would like to ask for another feature in this case, but it may have already been mentioned: is there a way to create a "top button", i.e. that I can return to the top of the note from wherever I am in the note?

Thanks!

[Me5 0]

For example, would a "freeze function" for the top area be a solution?

[Mike P 3,058]

On 6/22/2024 at 3:06 PM, Me5 said:

is there a way to create a "top button", i.e. that I can return to the top of the note from wherever I am in the note?

On the windows desktop version ctrl+Home normally takes you to the top of the note. I have found this unreliable in the past although it does seem t be working for me at the moment. 

[nbink 4]

I agree, re: keyboard shortcut to go to top of note. I'd add that you can also use keyboard shortcuts to go to the bottom of the note, and up or down a screen's "page" view. At least on a Mac, but I'm guessing these or equivalent shortcuts (like @Mike P's above) exist on Windows.

Another nice thing is that this works in some other apps (in Chrome browser, for example).

On a Mac, it works like this (and may on Windows?):

Go to Top = Command (Apple) + Up Arrow

Go to Bottom = Command (Apple) + Down Arrow

Scroll Up One Pageview = Option + Up Arrow

Scroll Down One Pageview = Option + Down Arrow

[Hoss_Boss 9]

Table of content functionality does not seem to work in view only mode when you share a note with someone 

[lastfreedom 1]

I assume such a feature should work like OneNote's 'Copy Link to Paragraph' option (found in context menu)