Manual Sort order

[brentwinters 4]

I've used Info select for many years but I'm looking at migrating to Evernote or OneNote for mobile support. In both Info select and OneNote, you can manually drag and drop notes in a list to organize them in any order you wish. Is evernote ever going to add this feature or a view option to sort my manual order? This is the one big thing that is pushing me towards using OneNote. Seems like others have asked for this.

There's many uses for this like making a list of priorities, or quickly putting more important notes at the top of a list. I also created a vacation itinerary for each date in OneNote, then imported into Evernote and lost the order where I had one note for each day of our trip followed by miscellaneous notes. Starting each note with 08, 09, 10, etc. solved this problem but that's pretty awkward for situations where you commonly reorder notes in a list.

[jefito 5,589]

This has been requested before. I wouldn't say that it's never going to happen, but neither have I seen anything from the Evernote folks that it's in the cards either.

[anilhk 4]

I need Manual sort order also to drag and drop sort my priorities. In addition to store my information I want to use Evernote for my tasks management so that I can fully depend on one single application for all my professional needs. And yes, really others have done it. Evernote is popular for being innovative and may lose its current standing if it doesn't continuously improve.

Palm OS was a market leader with 90% share in early times, when they stopped innovating the market share was taken by Microsoft and then again by iPhone and Android. Time and opportunities never wait for anyone. The only way to stay on top is to continue to improve and listen to the customers. Please take the manual sorting seriously, I believe those who don't know much about it will also appreciate. You can give them option to do what they do now or choose to sort manually

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Evernote is always being innovative. I'd have to say manual ordering of notes would be a step backwards, IMO. Also, their focus is not to be a task manager. You may want to look at third party apps that integrate with EN for your needs.

[jefito 5,589]

In lieu of actual manual sorting which does not exist in Evernote at this time, you may be able to come up with a tag system that allows you to order your tasks.

[anilhk 4]

Evernote is always being innovative. I'd have to say manual ordering of notes would be a step backwards, IMO. Also, their focus is not to be a task manager. You may want to look at third party apps that integrate with EN for your needs.

Thanks for the reply. Why would it be a step backward? This is definitely a step forward if there are additional features such as manual sorting. Also, users will not be forced to use this featur

i e, this can be optional only and maybe only for Premium members. This will be one way to attract users to Premium membership if they like basic funcionality. I would definitely pay even more than what I pay now as a Premium member.

Also, I don't agree that their focus is not on this or that. Even now Evernote is not a simple notetaking app, its functions have greatly expaned. I personally switched from Paperport 12 Pro to Evernote to organize and store all my files for easy reference.

I really think that Evernote should give this serious consideration and should work on this. There are other note taking apps which can do this then why not Evernote.

Others who want this funcationality should really show their interest here in this forum.

[Wern 246]

You can achieve everything you want with present EN capabilities.

I'd suggest a combination of TAGS (priority x, Priority y) and a naming scheme.

If you are in list view, click the TITLE BAR and you can re-arrange your list according to note titles:

! Important note or

1-Important note

would send these notes to the top of your list.

Exclamation mark (!) has priority over numbers.

Wern

[jefito 5,589]

i e, this can be optional only and maybe only for Premium members. This will be one way to attract users to Premium membership if they like basic funcionality. I would definitely pay even more than what I pay now as a Premium member.

It seems unlikely, given past behavior, that this would be the sort of feature that Evernote would put in the Premium-only feature list. And even if it were, the usual calculation on this is how many more paying customers would this gain vs. the effort that it would take to implement it (including any necessary database changes to support it, and any side-effects of making those changes compatible with all other Evernote clients).

I really think that Evernote should give this serious consideration and should work on this. There are other note taking apps which can do this then why not Evernote.

Sure. But Evernote does a lot of things that other note-taking apps don't do. Ultimately, Evernote could probably do anything that they chose; so far, they just haven''t chosen to implement this particular feature, and that doesn't seem to have hurt its growth. But who knows, maybe they'll do it someday.

[RobinAshworth 1]

I have a couple of note books where note order is important and I just manually modify the "Created Date" as required. Works well for me, but there are a couple of other fields available (Author maybe?)

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Why would it be a step backward?

Because notes have created dates/updated dates that are set automatically & can be user modified. Notes can also be sorted by title, notebook, etc. Having to manually set the order would certainly be a step backwards b/c it would be something needed to be entered by the user, when all the other sort options are set automatically. Rather reminds me of having to order 3 x 5 cards manually.

[idoc 400]

Personally I would like to be able to set the order just like I used to do in Infoselect. I have a lot of reasons for doing this. I have some "master notes" that I would like to park on top. Also, I have some other notes that I like to see in sequence. The parking on top does not seem to be too much of an issue: I changed the "date created" to a very early date and I put a ! before the note. Now I can see it on top no matter which mode I'm in. I'm still not sure how I'm going to put notes in sequence but will experiment until I figure it out. I agree with the others that this should be a standard feature on Evernote as it was in infoselect. I suspect that many users would be happy if this were implemented.

[Wern 246]

As I said before, you can achieve any of your ideas with current EN capabilities.

If you want to sort notes in a specific order, you can just use numbers in front of the titles:

1-important note

2-important note

3-important note etc.

"!" will take your important note to the top.

It is all there for you to use, just go ahead and apply it.

Wern

[black.rhino 20]

Here is how evernote for windows sorts punctuation, it seems to be inconsistent on android and web:

Evernote sorts punctuation in note names (and tags, i think) as follows:

^

_ (underscore)

-

!

.

@

*

#

Saved Search Hierarchy seems to have a different order in my last test

-

!

#

*

.

@

_ (underscore)

[jefito 5,589]

I believe that it's also true that you can't depend on getting the ordering on other devices / clients that you get in Windows.

[black.rhino 20]

That is correct, jefito. Numerical will work across the board, but using punctuation tokens will sort differently depending on where you view your notes.

[dlu 628]

Thanks for all your comments and concerns

[cpchang 12]

I've used Info select for many years but I'm looking at migrating to Evernote or OneNote for mobile support. In both Info select and OneNote, you can manually drag and drop notes in a list to organize them in any order you wish.

Personally I would like to be able to set the order just like I used to do in Infoselect.

To brentwinters and idoc: As an InfoSelect user myself (near 20 years since the DOS-TORNADO days), I fully understand why you want to have this option. I am now using all the workarounds as pointed out by others here, but they are all like a car driver now having to walk the distance. In this sense I share your frustraions that your message does not seem to go through. For me, one of the purposes of manual sorting is that one can experiment different orders to see how the result may look, or, in the case of writing or editing, moving sections or paragraphs around in different ways. Another example is organizing the presentations in a meeting. This function used to be called "Idea Processing" in the DOS days when word processing and number processing (spreadsheet) were emerging. The functions are used in a lot of dedicated writing and thought processing softwares now. It is rather unfortunate that not all people can appreciate how useful such an option can be. It can elevate Evernote to a huge new dimension of poweful applications. On the other hand, I can see that programing resources will be needed to modify the Evernote structure which may take considerable development efforts. But if the option can be implemented, such as in One Note according to brentwinters, it should not interefere with other functions. Namely, people do not use this option will not be negatively affected.

[Grant837 110]

I would like to revive this feature request. It really would be a step forward for Evernote, as it is an information collection and organization tool, and manual sorting is a base part of that functionality set.

For example ordering my notes into a logical topics order when researching at topic from many sources, or re-ordering my brainstorms. Other examples where given above too.

I know I could just add a number to each note and sort by title, but that is not very flexible or intuitive. What I would like to be able to do is drag the notes up and down the notes list, plus have a move command in case i have a long list and want to quickly move something from way down in the list to near the top without a long drag - maybe just a copy and paste type of function.

Also, the order would have to be stored with the notebook so it the manual order is synced to each device. In principle this should fit in the database model as its just an extra field like dates, etc., but then I dont know how evernote was designed in regards to future extensibility of its data model.

Indeed it would be nice to hear some more explanation than the recent evernote employed response of ´Thanks for all your comments and concerns´ ;-)

Cheers,

Grant

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Indeed it would be nice to hear some more explanation than the recent evernote employed response of ´Thanks for all your comments and concerns´ ;-)

Or, all the above expert input aside, I would like to hear the product philosophy directly from Evernote why such a feature as ´stickies´ or ´stars´ would not fit in their product plans.

Just so you know, this is primarily a user forum, and while Evernote staffers do participate, they do not necessarily come here to enlighten us about their plans and feature roadmaps, or justify their design decisions. Just so you know...

[Jonny Travels 1]

Evernote is always being innovative. I'd have to say manual ordering of notes would be a step backwards, IMO. Also, their focus is not to be a task manager. You may want to look at third party apps that integrate with EN for your needs.

What third party apps would you recommend? Also how is adding more features to Evernote a step backwards?

[ahugeproduction 1]

Why would it be a step backward?

Rather reminds me of having to order 3 x 5 cards manually.

Exactly. And I can't think of anything faster and more practical than visually reordering notes and notebooks like index cards. Until Evernote adds this feature, I will continue to prioritize my projects (very quickly) using actual index cards.

[Rg2013 0]

I find I am in need for manual sorting all the time. I DO use my notes like 3x5 index cards, so the benefit is there.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Why would it be a step backward?

Rather reminds me of having to order 3 x 5 cards manually.

Exactly. And I can't think of anything faster and more practical than visually reordering notes and notebooks like index cards. Until Evernote adds this feature, I will continue to prioritize my projects (very quickly) using actual index cards.

I find I am in need for manual sorting all the time. I DO use my notes like 3x5 index cards, so the benefit is there.

Glad that works for you.

[Andrey Vetlugin 1]

I also want to be able to sort my notes manually using simple drag-and-drop.

[Waynefish 1]

Yes, this is would be very helpful to a lot of people.  As a new user, I was really surprised to to see this feature missing.    Hopefully it happens soon.

[ZZZ 135]

+1 for this very useful feature.  This would be useful for both the personal and business users.  For business users it would be immensely useful for knowledge base type applications, where the business wants to create an ordered knowledge base or table of contents.

[Slartibartfast 0]

their focus is not to be a task manager. 

 

It's not? So, the reminder function, the ability to create sub-lists, the checkbox to-do lists, the ability to share notebooks with colleagues, EN's integration with an array of 3rd-party platforms such as LIcorize and Expensify -- to say nothing of Evernote's pledge that its "apps and products make modern life manageable" -- none of that is about task management?

 

I've learned to use tags and numbers to trick a notebook into sorting notes into the order I need them. But honestly, it's a kludge workaround. I'm a journalist. I throw dozens of notes into a notebook quickly, and then I need to keep a blank note pinned to the top, where I can write my story, and I need to create separate notes where I write different sections of the story, and I need to move them around frequently; organization is a fluid thing. And I need to organize the interview notes and web clips and sound files, etc., by various themes, such as chronology (of the content of the material inside the note, not the time-stamp on the Evernote note), or subject, or some other organizational element. Click-&-drag would be the most efficient way to do this, not continually opening notes and (re)-editing the titles according to some numbering scheme -- a scheme that, of necessity, I change frequently as the story takes shape. Short of that, tags appear to be the most efficient method available, because the tag filter applies itself only to the contents of the current notebook. That way, I can use a common tag across notebooks, but I don't have to worry, while working in Notebook B, that the filter will sweep up identical tags in Notebook A.

 

Hard to see how EN loses by adding this functionality. It's a database challenge, for sure. I'm also sure they're up to the task.

[jefito 5,589]

their focus is not to be a task manager.

 

It's not? So, the reminder function, the ability to create sub-lists, the checkbox to-do lists, the ability to share notebooks with colleagues, EN's integration with an array of 3rd-party platforms such as LIcorize and Expensify -- to say nothing of Evernote's pledge that its "apps and products make modern life manageable" -- none of that is about task management?

It's a matter of intent and extent. I'd say that it's designed to be generally useful, but not as a full-on dedicated task manager. The new reminders, basic bulletted lists, checkboxes -- all of those features meet my admittedly lightweight needs pretty well. They don't match up with the needs of a heavy duty GTD'er, or a professional writer, or anyone who needs more specialized functionality, quite so well. So yeah, you can do lightweight task management, but it doesn't have all of the bells and whistles to even be in the same category as a the dedicated task management systems. I don't think that that's a bad thing; I just don't think that that's where they want to be at this juncture. Down the road, who knows?

 

Hard to see how EN loses by adding this functionality. It's a database challenge, for sure. I'm also sure they're up to the task.

Sure, it'd be useful to some segment of the user base, as would the other hundreds of other worthwhile feature requests (I have a bunch of of my own). Since resources are finite, implementing feature 'X' necessarily impinges on time to implement other features. It's the usual thing, what they see as priority vs. what each of us sees, from outside the bubble.

[Slartibartfast 0]

Jeff,

 

You won't get much argument from me. Even as a professional writer (part of a famously absent-minded and disorganized breed), I don't need heavy-duty task-management tools. A calendar and a task list -- that is to say, Outlook -- do nicely, and EN's own functions, such as email integration, provide a welcome assist with that management. I will say, however, that sorting notes within notebooks is not so much about task management as it is about information organization, and this would seem to be right in Evernote's wheelhouse. Everything about Evernote, right down to the elephant logo, is about capturing information, cataloging it, filing it, ordering it, filtering it, sorting it, searching it, remembering it, and retrieving it. Putting notes in a preferred order would seem to be as natural to EN as creating a notebook.

[Matsing 0]

This is the only feature i REALLY miss in EN- to drag and drop sort my notes as I wish.

 

I use EN for writing. Currently written two books using nothing but three versions of EN: mobile, tablet and desktop. The combination of these three is unique to EN and fits how I go about writing. Taking a quick note on my mobile as I get an idea on the tube to work, using the tablet at lunch at the coffee shop and the laptop at home or at work.

 

If I could just drag and drop my notes to easily sort chapters and notes it would be perfect!
 

[Wordsgood 526]

Please forgive me if I've already mention it before, but I too, would LOVE the ability to manually sort all of my Notes AND Notebooks.

[Luiz Siqueira Neto 0]

You can achieve everything you want with present EN capabilities.

I'd suggest a combination of TAGS (priority x, Priority y) and a naming scheme.

If you are in list view, click the TITLE BAR and you can re-arrange your list according to note titles:

! Important note or

1-Important note

would send these notes to the top of your list.

Exclamation mark (!) has priority over numbers.

Wern

 

This approach don't work well, if user have more than 10 notes then become awful to manage. Evernote is a great tool to capture data but it's not good to work with it. User should reorder notes as wish, otherwise if the user need to think in a workaround the mind flow go away. OneNote is a great tool to brainstorming just because it's more like a real notebook.

[ahugeproduction 1]

https://trello.com is a great example of drag-and-drop manual sorting that I wish EverNote would (could) institute.

[Luiz Siqueira Neto 0]

I found a workaround for the lack of this feature: set all notes that you want to be manually ordered as a reminder, now you can sort as you wish in any device. You can use tags and folders to filter reminders too.

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