Ability to display (and sort on) AUTHOR field on the list of notes (ctrl-F7 view)

[tfeltz 1]

I would like to add the field AUTHOR to my list of notes so that I can see it without having to invoke the Note Info details. It is in fact the only missing field that is visible in Note Info but not selectable in the detailed view list (ctrl-F7 view). This would also allow sorting the list on Author.

It is important for my needs; I use Evernote as a research database. That's why I've held on to the Legacy Evernote version (where this feature was available) until now.

I am currently using:

10.63.3-win-ddl-public (20231003171454)
Editor: v176.13.0
Service: v1.75.3
© 2019 - 2023 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

[gazumped 12,075]

Hi.  You could of course Tag for authors,  but I'd imagine that is you've been doing this for a whle you already have a lot of notes.  Have you tried the AI search? Just ask for "notes where <name> is the author"  If you find it accurate,  you could use that to bulk-tag notes as a backup...

[tfeltz 1]

Yes, I have tagged authors, and searching on this tag works fine. However, on the Top View list, it's convenient to see Author immediately and be able to sort on this field (in combination with a tag search). Oddly, one can include all fields (listed in Note Info) as columns, but Author is the only field excluded from the selectable fields in the Top View.

[tfeltz 1]

 

The Author field is missing here (above), where the columns of the Top View can be selected.

These correspond exactly to the fields in Note Info (see below), but Author is left out. Could this be an oversight by the Evernote product development team?

[gazumped 12,075]

Hmmn.  Other than some complicated way to extract authors from exported data and compile a list of names I don't think this will be possible,  but to get it on Evernote's radar as soon as possible,  I'd recommend feeding this back to Support (we're mainly users here). 

One fallback option is AI search,  the other is - temporarily - to look for an installer for Evernote 6.25.3 (Windows) and run that for as long as you can.  If you go that route,  don't use v10 and Legacy at the same time - ideally just stick to one until you can find a viable work-around with v10.

The search for an author,  then tag all the files would work well in Legacy,  and if you used a unique system,  like an x-prefix,  all your author tags would pop-up on a tag search for "x-".

Please keep us in the loop as thus plays out!

[Mike P 2,982]

2 hours ago, tfeltz said:

This would also allow sorting the list on Author.

Perhaps just worth mentioning that inclusion of the author field would definitely not automatically mean you could sort by the field. You can currently only sort by title, date created and date updated irrespective of which fields you have included in the side or left list view.

Secondly, a quick reminder about the advanced search syntax, which allows searching by author including the use of the wildcard character at the end of the search string.

[Dave-in-Decatur 4,006]

I'm a little confused here. The only author Evernote's note information shows for my notes is me. To my surprise, I see that this field is editable, and I assume then that @tfeltz has been populating it with an author name relevant to the note in question. To me, this seems like another use of metadata for an unintended purpose (like editing the date updated field) that could become useful in older versions of Evernote but not in the newer one. I suspect tagging is going to be the only method going forward, along with advanced searching and maybe AI as suggested.

[PinkElephant 8,838]

To me it seems that a ton of uses have been invented for a number of fields in the metadata. I may be that there is a certain desire for database-style functions in EN.

However these fields are no database, and the ability to sort by a field is not database management.

Who needs a database to structure information more rigidly should use another app.

[tfeltz 1]

Author makes perfect sense when saving articles from the web with the Web Clipper. As in 'original author' and not oneself as computer user. That some people (=Dave) have never thought of using it, does not make in 'unintended use of metadata'. It's not like I'm entering my shoe size in the Author field. This was an attractive feature of the old (Legacy) Evernote, but for some reason it has been dropped from the Top View where it's convenient to see it instantly (instead of having to invoke the Note Info window for each note). Sorting on Author is not strictly necessary for my needs.

And yes, even Evernote is actually a database, albieit with (perhaps) a non-relational structure.

 

[Mike P 2,982]

18 minutes ago, tfeltz said:

Author makes perfect sense when saving articles from the web with the Web Clipper.

I'm not going to enter in to a discussion about whether what you were doing in Legacy is sensible or not! The fact is that we cannot currently display Author in the top view. Maybe EN will reintroduce it, but we don't know and we don't know what the time scale would be if they did.

I wonder if some of the functionalities of the webclipper could be utilised to help here. You can change the title, add tags and add a comment directly from the webclipper. You could therefore add the author details directly at that stage in any one of those fields. The title and tags are obviously visible in the top view. The comment appears at the top of the note. I often modify titles (particularly pdfs that tend to have stupid entries in the title field) at that stage, with the name of the document and principle author. It's also easy to search for the author using the intitle: search syntax.

 

[tfeltz 1]

Searching for author has never been the problem, tags can fix this easily. It's about directly seeing it in the Top View, rather than having to invoke the Note Info window for each note. It seems like an arbitrary omission (in moving to the new EN) by the Evernote team to make Author the only non-selectable column name, while all the other Note Info fields can be selected as columns in the Top View.

[Mike P 2,982]

6 minutes ago, tfeltz said:

It seems like an arbitrary omission (in moving to the new EN) by the Evernote team to make Author the only non-selectable column name, while all the other Note Info fields can be selected as columns in the Top View.

I don't disagree, but in practice you have to come up with a solution you are happy with (or leave EN) because we have no idea whether EN are going to do anything about it. There are now "Created By" and "Updated By" fields so maybe the author field is on the way out - we really don't know.

[Mike P 2,982]

If you really wanted to upset  @Dave-in-Decatur you could copy the note url into the body of the note (if you need to keep it) and replace the url with the author name. EN does not seem to check whether the url is actually valid and it displays it in the top view with no problem. Of course there is no guarantee that EN will not introduce some sort of url validation in the future.

[Dave-in-Decatur 4,006]

1 hour ago, tfeltz said:

Author makes perfect sense when saving articles from the web with the Web Clipper. As in 'original author' and not oneself as computer user. That some people (=Dave) have never thought of using it, does not make in 'unintended use of metadata'. It's not like I'm entering my shoe size in the Author field. This was an attractive feature of the old (Legacy) Evernote, but for some reason it has been dropped from the Top View where it's convenient to see it instantly (instead of having to invoke the Note Info window for each note). Sorting on Author is not strictly necessary for my needs.

And yes, even Evernote is actually a database, albieit with (perhaps) a non-relational structure.

No offense intended. I was mainly referring to the not insignificant (apparently) number of users who would edit the Date Updated (or Date Created?) field in Legacy and then sort on that as a means of organizing notes. That sort is also no longer an option in v. 10. I do think that it's somewhat hazardous to use metadata fields outside their obvious intended purposes, and I suspect that the author field is editable for use in a Teams or similar context. But that's only my opinion.

What I think is that Evernote should add one or two user customizable metadata fields as fields that can be sorted in various note views. There's clearly some demand for this (I have no idea how large), and Evernote users are unquestionably creative in the way we structure our workflows around Evernote. I also have no idea how messy it would be to program this, but if nothing else it would be a nice gesture toward users and the diversity of their needs. See also this existing thread: