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(Archived) Nested Folders/Notebooks & Everynote?


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I've been using evernote for a 3-4 years now. To be honest though i don't use it that much because of the lack of hierarchy / organization. For example if i wanted to store recipes on evernote i would need some better system of organization then a combination of a 1 high level folder + Tags.

I go out there every couple months when i think about it to see if there is news about nested folder and i'm suprised to still see no news on this front. This should be something that would be extremely easy for them to add and i know a lot of people want nested folders. I use evernote free because i don't use it that much and would be willing to be a premium member for this feature.

Do you guys think i should give up hope? Are there any competing products that offer better organization (folder/subfolder system)?

Id sure like to stick with evernote though because its available almost everywhere and the picture search is simply one of the most amazing things i've found.

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I'm a new EverNote user, and I agree that the lack of semantically meaningful nested tags is non-intuitive and a hindrance to EverNote's usefulness. I know this post is about the need for nested Folders/Notebooks, but I feel that nested Tags would serve this need adequately -- at least it would meet my initial expectations.

You can already create nested tags, but there is currently no semantic difference between a nested tag and a root-level tag. IMO, selecting a root-level tag in the left pane should cause all the notes to be rendered in the right pane that are tagged with any nested tag of the selected tag. In terms of object-oriented-design, I'm suggesting that the relationship between a nested tag and its root tag should be an IS-A (generalization) relationship.

For example, if I create a Recipe tag, and a nested tag called Burgers, then when I select the Recipe tag I should see all notes that have been tagged with Burgers.

Of course, this would present some consequences on the UI.

For example, if I had two nested tags named Burgers, one a nested tag of Recipe and another a nested tag of Cooking Techniques, then when I tagged a specific note, I should be asked to clarify which nested Burger tag I intended.

This allows the system to automatically enforce my policy that whenever I create a Burger tag, I also want to implicitly tag it with either Recipe or Cooking Technique. Of course, I could try to remember to always manually enter the parent tags myself, but I'd rather have that integrity constraint managed automatically.

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Donmadison you talk like your a UI design guy :). Very intune with screen look & feel. I'm actually a developer myself. I agree that nested labels would suffice but i still think folders would be the best solution and the implementation difficulties between nested labels & folders shouldn't be that different. I actually think it would be easier since an item can be associated with only one folder but i can be associated with multiple tags. I love gmail and its where i house all my email but i hate that they make you use labels (which are pretty much the same thing as tags). Sure they want you to use search to find anything your looking for and i get that...but much easier to find something if you have them organized under folders rather than blindingly searching.

What i wish i knew if the evernote guys are hard set against ever adding folders or other such hierarchical structural organization so as not to waist my time and so i know i can give up hope. Do i understand why? Nope because i know it shouldn't be hard to do no matter how their code is structured but at least it would be nice to know that i shouldn't waist my time anymore.

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  • Level 5*

There is no new news on this topic. At the current time, there are:

Stacks, which contain

--> Notebooks, which in turn contain

----> Notes

All of these are flat containment, no recursive nesting of any of the above. There are, of course, no folders in Evernote.

In addition, there are Tags, which can modify any Note. Tags are organized using a tree structure (though they're not intrinsically (or semantically) hierarchical.

I don't experience any of the above design choices limiting to my use of Evernote or unintuitive, though I understand that some people do. On the topic of tags, people who use, for example, GMail, should find tags (the equivalent of labels) entirely familiar. They're really just adjectives. I find them to be simple, flexible and powerful. There's certainly ample discussion elsewhere in the forums on the topic.

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  • 5 months later...
I love gmail and its where i house all my email but i hate that they make you use labels (which are pretty much the same thing as tags).

That was a bingo moment for me. I love GMail and an completely happy with labels and searching. Which probably goes a long way to explaining why I find Evernote so comfortable to work in. Limited at times. Occasional bugs, sometimes serious. Lots of growing problems. But. Just a nice place to be.

It is not my only tool, by far, but after my browser(s), it is my most used tool.

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  • 1 year later...

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