(Archived) Questions from a newbie

[mathieu 0]

Hi,

In my personal search for the best note taking apps, I'm finally giving evernote a try.

Right from the start, it seems evernote doesn't do some basic stuff I expected it would. Maybe I'm just not looking right, or maybe evernote is not the app for my needs.

Anyway, I was hoping evernote could:

-quickly and easily clip contents from a webpage into an existing note (it seems the chrome clipper I installed can only clip to new notes??)

I often research a particular topic and in doing so I would browse a large number of websites. I'd like to be able to quickly clip portions of those into a master document, while keeping references to the original sites. Somehow I expected evernote to do this but can't figure out how to make it happen.

- does evernote auto-save? I find myself pressing CTRL-S which doesn't work (blame google docs for a fabulous browser integration).. Also, I see "save and close" but not "save and keep editing", which is frustrating. This is probably a dumb question, but I find it annoying that it is not *obvious* from the UI if I should manually save my edits or not to prevent losses.

- it there a way to create sections + a table of contents in a note? When I research a topic I often organize the note by section and slowly this becomes a complete document. I find this a conveniant way of structuring notes but couldn't find the equivalent in evernote.

Apologies if these questions are dumb. I will confess I did not read all the docs but I did give an honest try at quickly searching docs to find the answers to my questions.

If evernote is not a good fit for what I'm trying to do, I wouldn't mind if people had suggestions.

Thanks,

-mathieu

[jefito 5,589]

-quickly and easily clip contents from a webpage into an existing note (it seems the chrome clipper I installed can only clip to new notes??)

I often research a particular topic and in doing so I would browse a large number of websites. I'd like to be able to quickly clip portions of those into a master document, while keeping references to the original sites. Somehow I expected evernote to do this but can't figure out how to make it happen.

Nope, no way for the clipper to append to a particular note.

- does evernote auto-save? I find myself pressing CTRL-S which doesn't work (blame google docs for a fabulous browser integration).. Also, I see "save and close" but not "save and keep editing", which is frustrating. This is probably a dumb question, but I find it annoying that it is not *obvious* from the UI if I should manually save my edits or not to prevent losses.

You're posting in the general discussion area, and ou didn't say which client you're using, but the WIndows client does autosave.

- it there a way to create sections + a table of contents in a note? When I research a topic I often organize the note by section and slowly this becomes a complete document. I find this a conveniant way of structuring notes but couldn't find the equivalent in evernote.

Nope, not really, unless you do it by hand.

~Jeff

[mathieu 0]

Thanks a bunch Jeff for taking the time to reply.

Actually, I was hoping to simply stick to the web interface.

I'm not a fan of applications that require a local install and try to avoid them when it makes sense due to the impact on mobility. But I guess evernote's best UI is the local client application, so I should give it a try.

-mathieu

[jbenson2 2,147]

Thanks a bunch Jeff for taking the time to reply.

Actually, I was hoping to simply stick to the web interface.

I'm not a fan of applications that require a local install and try to avoid them when it makes sense due to the impact on mobility. But I guess evernote's best UI is the local client application, so I should give it a try.

-mathieu

If you are using Windows, the client version is heads and shoulders over the web version. I've used Evernote for a couple years, with thousands of notes and tags. It is amazing what the program can do. The 3 pane list view is super. And the keyboard shortcuts make it even faster.

Due to speed issues, I've only used the web version perhaps a dozen times during the same time.

[nova47 60]

I'm not a fan of applications that require a local install and try to avoid them when it makes sense due to the impact on mobility.

As jbenson2 said give the client a try, it adds outstanding functionality and speed over the web interface. I use web based email and calendar services but will always use the EN client. Your mobility won't suffer since you can access the web interface if you need to.

[jfwarrior 6]

...

- it there a way to create sections + a table of contents in a note? When I research a topic I often organize the note by section and slowly this becomes a complete document. I find this a conveniant way of structuring notes but couldn't find the equivalent in evernote.

...

Excellent idea. Would be easily done within HTML (Anchor tags?).