Templates should include tags. Again.

[Ecstatica 1]

I know this has come up before, many times, but I still can't understand why templates do not include tags.

The hack of adding a line at the bottom of your note, with a comma separated list of tags that you then copy and paste into the tag line is just that. A hack.

It's so slow and annoying. Why not just allow tags on templates?

I think part of my frustration is that my flow is interrupted by having to take my hands off of the keyboard to use the mouse, when I think this could all be shortcuts.

Now I have to:

1. Create a new note, ⌘n.
2. Select a template, no shortcut so click Open Gallery then click the template I want.
3. Add a tag. Either:
   • ^⌥⌘t, then type the tag name, hit tab until the right one is highlighted (many times depending on how many matches there are, or how much of the tag name you typed), hit Space to select it, then hit enter.
   • Use the mouse, click add tag, type the tag name, hit enter.

All of step 3. could be eliminated by allowing templates to retain their tags.

In general I'd like to see Evernote be much more friendly to people who don't want to be moving to the mouse all the time.

[Mike P 2,643]

I agree with you. 

There are however plenty of ways of avoiding using templates at all. If you have a notebook of "template notes", which can contain tags, you can then just duplicate or copy  them. The only disadvantage is that you will probably want to manually change the creation date.

Another alternative is to export your template note as an enex file and choose not to save the creation date. I put that enex file on my desktop. Double clicking (Windows) the enex file then creates the note in my default folder with the current time as creation date. 

[Razmataz 218]

Yeah, @Mike P. But that's an instance of "let's make life as hard as possible for the users" strategy of the new EN.

We need now workarounds for just too many things.

And some "things" do not have even workarounds, they are plain not doable.

[Mike P 2,643]

39 minutes ago, Razmataz said:

Yeah, @Mike P. But that's an instance of "let's make life as hard as possible for the users" strategy of the new EN.

We need now workarounds for just too many things.

And some "things" do not have even workarounds, they are plain not doable.

All I can do is point out other ways of doing things. EN templates have never had tags, so this particular issue is nothing to do with V10. I agree there are (for me) more workarounds in V10 than in legacy and I'm certainly making good use of AutoHotKey to give me extra functionaility some of which was available in legacy and some wasn't.

I'm actually much more concerned about the number of bugs than missing functionaility but that is a personal view based on my particular work flow.

[Ecstatica 1]

Thanks for the pointer @Mike P

I had seen that workaround already, maybe even posted by you, but for me it's just not good enough. I played around with Notion for a bit, and even though I ultimately thought for my use-case I preferred EN, I really did like how you could do a lot of things without touching the mouse.

I've been using note links more and more lately (⌥⌘k, type the name, tab, space, enter) and that kind of thing is so much better in Notion. It has to be really fast otherwise it starts to lose its utility. Another thing that drives me mad about note links is that you can't find them with ⌥⌘k for some random amount of time after you create them. Sometimes almost instant, sometimes minutes, which is very frustrating.

[Mike P 2,643]

2 minutes ago, Ecstatica said:

I had seen that workaround already, maybe even posted by you, but for me it's just not good enough.

It's not supposed to be good enough! It's a another work around. It simply gives you another option until EN implement tags in templates or you decide to go elsewhere. As you have clearly described, going elsewhere also requires compromises - there is no perfect app.

Going back to the comma separated list of tags workaround.  If you put them in the first line of your template and have "start a note in the body" as your option, then the following key sequence (no mouse) adds them as tags (Windows shortcuts, mac may differ)

shift+End
Ctrl+X
F3
Ctrl+V
F2 (returns to title area)
Enter (goes to body of note)

I personally would automate this process using AutoHotKey.