Problem with tags in shared notebooks

[caitkennedy 8]

My husband and I have a shared notebook that he created and in which he is able to create tags but I am not. I can add them to a note but when the same note is reopened, the tag is gone.

Is there a reason for this or is it a bug? (He is a premium user, I am not.)

TIA,

Caitlan

[gazumped 11,652]

On 23/01/2017 at 7:14 PM, ooMikeoo said:

Yeah, this tag issue is a problem. Can't add new tags to notes in the shared notebook. Can't add tags and then add it to the shared notebook. Tags are important and they are not working in shared notebooks. 

Keeping an eye for alternate solutions.

Well,  if the notebook is shared to you,  you can't add tags that don't already exist in the other account.  Only the owner of that account can add new tags.  If the tag already exists,  then you should be able to add it.  If you can't I'd suggest you contact support directly if you can at https://help.evernote.com/hc/requests/new - or message them on Twitter via https://twitter.com/evernotehelps

Meantime you could add keywords to titles or content,  or have a 'master' note in the notebook where you can suggest new tags to be added to the account.

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2017-01-23 at 11:14 AM, ooMikeoo said:

Keeping an eye for alternate solutions.

Currently, by design,  only the owner can add new tags to a notebook
You and the other users now know this, it's not a surprise

The sharees can add and use a keyword like tag_xxxxxx in the title
This is workable for all uses as a search term and works as well as a tag
The owner can use it to identify new tags to be added

 

[martinayrton 0]

This has also been an issue for me for the last couple of years.

I've worked round it in the past but just found the thread, so wanted to add that I would also wish to see the ability for shared users to add their own tags.  I also see the point about users creating them irresponsibly but maybe the issue is that only one person can be the Owner of the Notebook?

Perhaps the ability to set multiple owners on a Notebook would fix this, it would also assist me incase the owner of that Notebook wasn't around for what ever reason and other members of the group wanted to carry on ownership.

[gazumped 11,652]

IME in multiple companies,  one of the fastest ways to render a reference database totally unusable is to have too many independent 'owners'.  The best compromise I ever ran was to have a small group of a dozen 'mentors' with whom we agreed a set of data control goals  Over a period they trained around 300 users how to submit new entries,  which went to an offline 'holding' area until vetted and passed by a mentor.  Their job was to make sure the entry complied with the various standards we had set up and went in the correct 'notebook'.  Even so I'd find myself beating up around one mentor each week for allowing something through. (Ah the good old days...)

IMHO it would be incredibly dumb to have someone else - especially several someone elses - able to mess with your data,  but it's your account...  you're paynig..  (although if the extra bodies manage to blow your upload allowance you won't necessarily be able to use it sometimes...)

Most of your concerns would be addressed by Evernote Business which has central libraries available to all and multiple users - though even EB users I've spoken to moan about the problems of controlling tag use....

[Dani CS 4]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

IME in multiple companies,  one of the fastest ways to render a reference database totally unusable is to have too many independent 'owners'.  The best compromise I ever ran was to have a small group of a dozen 'mentors' with whom we agreed a set of data control goals  Over a period they trained around 300 users how to submit new entries,  which went to an offline 'holding' area until vetted and passed by a mentor.  Their job was to make sure the entry complied with the various standards we had set up and went in the correct 'notebook'.  Even so I'd find myself beating up around one mentor each week for allowing something through. (Ah the good old days...)

IMHO it would be incredibly dumb to have someone else - especially several someone elses - able to mess with your data,  but it's your account...  you're paynig..  (although if the extra bodies manage to blow your upload allowance you won't necessarily be able to use it sometimes...)

Most of your concerns would be addressed by Evernote Business which has central libraries available to all and multiple users - though even EB users I've spoken to moan about the problems of controlling tag use....

As I said before, I am not a paying customer of Evernote.

It is certainly dumb to "let others mess with your data" in an enterprise setting with hundreds of users and with appointed curators/mentors. That's not the real life scenario that everyone else in this thread is painting. 

I, for one, would gladly give Evernote my money and become a paying customer, if they take action to satisfy this "let someone else mess with my data" request.

[gazumped 11,652]

If only Evernote had a dollar for everyone who would pay to join 'if only'...  they could probably afford to pay the software guys to add some more features...

[wantti 0]

I am facing the same problem as the most users in this topic.

I have created a notebook and want to share it with my team members. I understand the argumentation to not allow other users to mess with my tags. On the other hand, I understand everybody who wants to decide themselves about this feature.  

Creating tags inside the note or to the titel is a good workaround. But doing so makes tags completey obsolete. Every user of a shared notebook will write his/her own tags, which ends up in the same mess like I would do with tags. I think the Evernote designers should consider how to solve this issue by the roots. Why not creating an algorithm which learns to merge similar tags? 

 

But I could live with the given rules if other users of a shared notebook would be able to add the already existing tags in a more comfortable way. So far they are not allowed to add tags with the webclipper at all!!! This doesn´t make sense to me.

They have to clip it, then open the Evernote tool to add the tags. Next problem occurs: When adding the tags there is no autocorrect - users have to know how the tag is written. It should be the same comfort as for notebook owners. If you start typing your tag, the system should recommend the existing tags. I think that this should be possible from the technical side.

 

What does the Gurus think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[gazumped 11,652]

On 26/05/2017 at 9:16 AM, wantti said:

What does the Gurus think?

Hi.  The answer to your problem is not to make tags easier to apply.  I have some experience of managing big editable databases and support systems,  and without clear direction from one central authority,  the links and tags within such systems rapidly deteriorate into complete chaos very quickly.  Everyone has their own idea of how 'best' to index an item,  not to mention how to spell.  (On one system we tagged some router specs with 'modem' and 'rooter' after various misunderstandings...)

The best way to provide such direction is usually to have an edit and approve system - new and edited pages are moderated by a small team or one individual to make sure they're publishable before being added to the live system.  One of my larger systems had 12 moderators.

Another way to control tagging particularly is to have a published directory of tags - a hierarchy that's pre-designed to cover any possible content.  That way all anyone has to do is to find the sub-tree that they're writing or posting within and attach some keywords from the tree.  If it's discovered that some keywords are missing,  that's a separate process to request their addition.  The creation of the directory means you can involve everyone in suggesting terms for it so the users also feel more like owners of the system.

If you use the 'directory' approach,  that will solve your problem within Evernote anyway,  because the owner of the account can set up all the possible tag terms as active tags to cover most everyday situations.  The first weeks or months of use will probably see some additions that weren't thought of up front - but that's a shared responsibility rather than being one person's 'fault' that an essential tag wasn't included.

The directory tree should also be available to everyone to assist with searches and lookups of existing information.

Clipper not being able to add tags to a shared note is a different issue,  and one I agree should be corrected.  I'd suggest you raise that with Support.  Reach out to them directly if you're a paying customer on https://help.evernote.com/hc/requests/new or tweet them if not via https://twitter.com/evernotehelps

 

[pariot 1]

Completed agree with Miguel-S.  My wife and I use a Shared notebook, and it would be INCREDIBLY USEFUL for both of us to create tags within the Shared Notebook.  Please, please, please consider adding this feature for an upcoming update.

[Marianne Hj 0]

My husband and I have a shared notebook, and it is very annoying that he can not add new tags (since it is I who own the notebook). 

Is it possible to make that an option when you share a notebook with someone. Now there are a few options per user: Can view, Can edit, Can edit and invite. We would really like something like: "Can edit and add new tags". 

For us it seems strange that this is not an option, but maybe it is hard to implement? 

[chirmer 567]

It's July in 2018 and this is still super annoying.

I know other Super Gurus are in here who would disagree, but I find it, frankly, a bit sad that this still isn't a feature. I've been an active Evernote user since 2010, active in this forum, but have been off and on with Evernote over the past year because of little problems like this. Except in my case, this is still a major pain in the rump.

I don't think it's appropriate to tell people how to manage their information in their use case, either. If people say they want to give people permission to create/edit tags in their Shared Notebooks, trying to convince them otherwise is a bit rude IMO. They know their use case best. It reads like we're trying to say Evernote shouldn't have notebook function at all because we find Tags the best way to organize information. It's our database, to pollute or organize as we see fit.

And I simply don't find "we designed it this way on purpose" a reason to stop having a conversation about this very needed feature. I honestly can't use tags in my account AT ALL because this "feature" is so broken. I've got 3 different versions of essentially the same tag from different shared notebooks with different owners. Instead of just being able to do a tag:tagName search or click the tag to find things, I have to remember that there are all these different tag versions floating around and to look in each one. Pretty useless.

The fact is, this "feature" cripples tags across the entirety of Evernote. Let us make this a permission setting when sharing a notebook. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. 

Of course, it's been 7 years, so I have 0 hope of it becoming a feature. I'll just continue to migrate my shared data out of Evernote, because this cripples my entire account.

[Carlos Cadu 16]

18 minutes ago, chirmer said:

The fact is, this "feature" cripples tags across the entirety of Evernote. Let us make this a permission setting when sharing a notebook. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. 

Of course, it's been 7 years, so I have 0 hope of it becoming a feature. I'll just continue to migrate my shared data out of Evernote, because this cripples my entire account.

2

+1

[LeoG 0]

Users requesting this feature since 2011, how do you plan to engage enterprise companies without essential sharing features like sharing tags management?

[cbaston82 0]

I see this thread is very old. I been a Evernote user for a few years now and been loving it. But now that Im sharing a notebook for work Im getting a little discouraged. Can't believe this is still an issue. I would like for the people I share my notebook with to be able to add tags. Im a software engineer and hard to understand why there still isn't a way to grant access to another user to add  tags also. SMH

[cbaston82 0]

3 hours ago, DTLow said:

You're welcome to add your support to requests for this feature.
Use the voting buttons in the top left corner of the disucssion

 

I voted up for this feature. But clearly it wont matter as this has been an issue for yearns now and Evernote has not done anything about it. 

[Dani CS 4]

Upvoted. We've been asking for this since 2011 at least.

[Skycowz 0]

This is still a problem - surely we could have the option of giving someone you share a folder with access to tags. This is causing a major problem for me atm

[gazumped 11,652]

2 hours ago, Skycowz said:

This is still a problem - surely we could have the option of giving someone you share a folder with access to tags. This is causing a major problem for me atm

This thread from nearly 3 years ago predates v10,  so the app has been completely rewritten since this was an issue.  Can you explain in much more detail what you're trying to achieve,  and how it's failing please?  (Plus details of Device / OS / Evernote version)

[PinkElephant 8,072]

Sharing follows a basic logic: The shared note still belongs to the account where it was created. And some activities are account-owner only. Creating tags are among them - because if another person was allowed to create tags wildly, a whole tagging structure could get compromised.

AFAIK for single shared notes, only the owner can assign tags. For shared notebooks, the recipient of a share can assign all tags to notes in that notebook that already exist in that notebook.

If a tag does not exist, the owner needs to create it and assign it to at least one note in that notebook. It is good practice to have a „tag note“ in a shared notebook that carries all available tags.

When assigning it gets tricky sometimes. Because the tags belong to each account, it may be there are 2 identical looking tags available. One from your own account, one from the share. Only when selecting the shared tag it will be applied and stick.

Tags in shared notebooks can be made different, for example by starting them all with an „x“ - but this can create other issues. So if it is a huge issue, and you are sharing a lot in an organization, think about a Teams subscription. 

[IDV1978 1]

On 2/18/2022 at 9:38 AM, PinkElephant said:

Sharing follows a basic logic: The shared note still belongs to the account where it was created. And some activities are account-owner only. Creating tags are among them - because if another person was allowed to create tags wildly, a whole tagging structure could get compromised.

AFAIK for single shared notes, only the owner can assign tags. For shared notebooks, the recipient of a share can assign all tags to notes in that notebook that already exist in that notebook.

If a tag does not exist, the owner needs to create it and assign it to at least one note in that notebook. It is good practice to have a „tag note“ in a shared notebook that carries all available tags.

I have a professional account and I'm sharing a notebook with my wife who has a free account. Sharing of the notes works relatively fine but even if I follow the above recommendations for adding tags to the shared notes (so me first adding a note in that notebook with all tags we will ever need), it still doesn't seem to work (we both use the app on a Macbook):

1. When I add a tag (which I previously added to a note in that same shared notebook) to a new note in that notebook, I can see it attached to the note but my wife doesn't see it (even not after log-out and log back in)
2. When my wife wants to add a tag (a tag that I previously added to a note in that notebook), she can't do that and keeps getting the warning that she can only add existing tags from that notebook (which I added to several notes of that notebook already - but she can't see them).

What are we still doing wrong then?

When I google about it, seems so many people are struggling with this for already more than a decade...
Difficult to understand that there still is no decent working solution for this...

[gazumped 11,652]

9 hours ago, IDV1978 said:

Difficult to understand that there still is no decent working solution for this...

I'm confused as to why this was a 'thing' 3 years ago,  but then disappeared completely until now.  Either not many users are finding it an issue,  or there's a highly specific cause...  not to mention that the product was completely recoded a couple of years ago and sync - which (obvs) affects whether or not you can see applied tags - is actively under review.  I think your logs may be important to understand how and why this issue arises - I'd suggest you raise it with Support (which is not us) to allow them to investigate in more detail.  If 'many' others are also struggling - they should really do the same...

[IDV1978 1]

11 hours ago, gazumped said:

I'd suggest you raise it with Support

I just did that and the issue is solved now. I unshared the notebook and shared it again via the Evernote web interface. Seems now the tags are working 👌

[l3utterfish 19]

On 1/17/2011 at 11:22 PM, engberg said:

Guests can only add tags to a note if those tags are already part of that shared notebook. I.e. the tag must already be applied to at least one of the other notes in that notebook. This is to prevent a guest from polluting your account with dozens of tags that you need to find and delete on the left side.

This is not working for me. I share the note with TAGS already applied to some notes, and the other person cannot add those tags to other notes

[l3utterfish 19]

11 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

You can try to revoke the share, and share it again.

Thanks! IT WORKED!