Saved Search Syntax

[Feitz 278]

Hello, 

I exported all of my notebooks to ENEX files prior to having to switch to V10 in March. In Legacy I tagged all 22000 notes in one go with 'export0324'.

Now I need to export all newer notes that don't have that tag which is a mess since I can't select more than 100 notes in one go.

I search for all notes without the tag 'export0324', select 100 of them and move them to a new notebook where they get another tag 'export1124'.

How can I search for all notes NOT containing tag 'export0324' and NOT containing tag 'export1124'? 

This is needed to successively select 100 notes that have not been exported in March and have not been moved to the new notebook. Otherwise I would select the same notes again which is not helpful.

The search -tag:export0324 AND -tag:export1124 does not return any results and is therefore not correct, but I can't find a help page where the syntax for negative conditions is explained.

Why on earth can't I simply select ALL notes that don't contain one tag? Thanks!

[Feitz 278]

Looks like other filter conditions do not update: When I move 100 notes to the export notebook and limit the tag search to Inbox the notes that have been moved out of inbox still show in the search results...

 

[AlbertR 784]

Within tag searches, EN allows to use wildcards. The following works for me

• -tag:*
  • lists all note without any tag
• -tag:!SW-BOM  -tag:#*
  • lists all notes without "!SW-BOM" and without any tag that starts with an "#"
  • there is no AND necessary because giving several sub-tokes (delimited by a blank character) is interpreted as "AND"
  • BTW: be careful with tag names that contain ">" or "<": These characters lead to invalid results in conjuction with wildcards.

 

[AlbertR 784]

1 minute ago, Feitz said:

Looks like other filter conditions do not update

Yep - search indexes are not updated immediately. Sometimes you can force an update by exiting/restarting EN - but this is not an adequate workaround 😞

[Feitz 278]

2 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

there is no AND necessary because giving several sub-tokes (delimited by a blank character) is interpreted as "AND"

Thanks, Albert - 
I tried to combine -tag:export0324 export1124 in a search but that didn't return any results

[Feitz 278]

1 minute ago, AlbertR said:

Yep - search indexes are not updated immediately.

sorting by date modified won't work either

[AlbertR 784]

Just now, Feitz said:

I tried to combine -tag:export0324 export1124 in a search but that didn't return any results

Try "-tag:export0324 tag:export1124" because you have to mark every token to be interpreted as a tag. Your examples searches for notes that contain the word "export1124" and tag "export0324"

[Feitz 278]

-tag:* returns all the recently tagged notes, so it seems that I have to 1. tag 100 notes, wait a couple of hours until the index is updated (RENT anyone?) and then tag the next 100 notes and so on until I am at ca. 2500. 

Reminds me of  ("Nun, ich hab' die erste Hälfte der ersten Platte fertig. Ich verschnauf' ein wenig, dann *****' ich die zweiten Hälfte der ersten ...")

[Feitz 278]

3 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

-tag:export0324 tag:export1124"

The first thing I tried was -tag:export0324 -tag:export1124" but that didn't return any results which is clearly wrong and should not be affected by a slow index update.

[Feitz 278]

Is there a downside to simply exporting every notebook again to ENEX  i.e. are the export results identical to Legacy?

 

[AlbertR 784]

13 minutes ago, Feitz said:

sorting by date modified won't work either

Modifying display settings is a nightmare: It works in notebook lists - but not in search results and has no effect on updating internal index lists 😡

6 minutes ago, Feitz said:

... should not be affected by a slow index update.

Did you try use the Web app? By using the Web all, the index is maintained only by the server which seems to be faster that on your local maschine 😤

5 minutes ago, Feitz said:

are the export results identical to Legacy?

As far as I've seen: Yes. But didn't test it in depth..

[Feitz 278]

8 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

Did you try use the Web app?

That's a good idea, I'll try this... Thanks for your help, I'll play around a bit and see where I land. 

[Feitz 278]

15 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

Did you try use the Web app?

That seems to be working much better than the mac desktop app. There is some lag but at least the search returns valid results.

[PinkElephant 9,010]

If the search results between installed and web client don’t match, your local database is damaged and needs to be replaced.

[Feitz 278]

36 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

If the search results between installed and web client don’t match, your local database is damaged and needs to be replaced.

Nope, not again. Tagging 100 notes obviously is a major task for V10, so it takes time but eventually matches. I thought RENT would make metadata sync instant?

Working with tags for me has become virtually useless, mainly due to the 100 notes selection limit.

[Feitz 278]

So, I'm slowly making progress with the web app, half of my new notes tagged and moved to a new notebook for ENEX export.

The web client seems to update the tags search index much faster than the desktop, but still with a considerable delay.

This would all not be necessary if V10 allowed to select all notes that match search criteria. This is such a basic operation in every app that uses tags but alas not in V10.

[Feitz 278]

PS.: Web client: when I scroll down in a saved search with 1000+ notes (V10 doesn't tell me how many there actually are) the notes list keeps refreshing and resetting me to the top of the list. Impossible to work with these search results. 

4 more days and my subscription ends (after a decade and a half) and by then I will hopefully have made the switch out of V10. 

[Mike P 3,065]

9 minutes ago, Feitz said:

PS.: Web client: when I scroll down in a saved search with 1000+ notes (V10 doesn't tell me how many there actually are) the notes list keeps refreshing and resetting me to the top of the list. Impossible to work with these search results. 

That definitely doesn't happen to me in a search list with "1000+ notes found" on either the web or desktop versions. 

[Feitz 278]

1 minute ago, Mike P said:

That definitely doesn't happen to me

Then you're lucky. I'm on latest Macos / safari. Hoped I could use the web client as a reference base once I'm on the free tier. 

[Mike P 3,065]

2 minutes ago, Feitz said:

Then you're lucky.

True. Not sure I believe in luck but I also have no idea as to what is different between our two setups that means I don't have  the problem.

[ForestD 1,554]

Just tested for me on the web client with regards to loading notes after a browser cache clear. (It also told me close all browser tabs so that it could update to the latest version of the web client.)

I'll search for something generic and it will show "1000+" results. I scroll to the bottom of the note list of about 100 notes and it just ends. It doesn't send me to the top of the list, but it also doesn't load any more notes in the note list that I can scroll. I'm pretty sure that used to work, so maybe it's a recent bug that got introduced.

[Feitz 278]

7 minutes ago, ForestD said:

I scroll to the bottom of the note list of about 100 notes and it just ends.

Thanks for this hint, I didn't check whether the results list actually showed the 1000+ notes or stopped earlier. Anyway, none of this should happen.

 

8 minutes ago, Mike P said:

Not sure I believe in luck

If it isn't luck then some flakey programming base that constantly returns inconsistent results.

[Feitz 278]

11 minutes ago, ForestD said:

I scroll to the bottom of the note list of about 100 notes

OK, I closed and reopened the web client window, now it doesn't reset me to the top of the list but stops at about 105 notes (out of 1000+).

So some consistency here at last, but not the result one would hope for.

[PinkElephant 9,010]

2 hours ago, Feitz said:

Nope, not again. Tagging 100 notes obviously is a major task for V10, so it takes time but eventually matches. I thought RENT would make metadata sync instant?

RENT is not yet fully in place, since they need to remove old code from the backend while introducing the new functionality.

If you want to tag faster in a batch, take the client offline before you apply the changes. I use an app called TripMode (that I bought because it allows to decide which app can go online when on weak internet. It avoids being dragged down by a background download, when being in the train, for example). It sits in the menu bar and allows to just klick an app off- or online easily.

[Feitz 278]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

TripMode

thanks for the tip, that sounds like it is a helpful utility.

[PinkElephant 9,010]

Worth the price (it’s a one time payment, no subscription), and useful in different situations. Once the apps are selected, it is a one switch toggle to start or stop it. Or you let it run toggled off, watch which apps connect to the internet and then selectively switch apps off that demand too much.

On projects I am working through a mobile router, with a data SIM with limited data volume. Trip Mode allows to focus that restricted volume on the apps I need to work.