(Archived) HOWTO: Hierarchical notebooks

[douglerner 17]

Now that I'm diving into Evernote more, I'm finding one thing missing from what I usually do - hierarchical organization.

Is it possible?

For example, I might have 3 customers A, B and C.

Right now I have them organized as:

Customers

-- A

-- B

-- C

So far the only thing I can see to do in Evernote is create three notebooks, all on the same level, and call them

Customer A

Customer B

Customer C

to keep them together.

Is there a better way?

Thanks,

doug

[jbenson2 2,149]

Try searching for hierarchical in this forum. There is a lot of discussion about it.

What I do is try to limit the number of notebooks to very broad categories and use specific tags to find the customers or companies.

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=24233&p=103963#p103963

In your case, instead of notebooks, you could use the following Parent and Child tags:

• Customer
  
  • Cust-Abc
    Cust-Def
    Cust-Ghi
    

One additional tip - to make it easier to remember and eliminate the need for quote marks, none of my tags have spaces.

For instance, the tag I use for Hewlett Packard is Com-Hewlett-Packard

[gotofritz 21]

+1 for hierarchical notebooks

[Metrodon 2,188]

Based on what has been said on here......Never ever going to happen.

[douglerner 17]

One of the reasons I decided not to use Yojimbo was because they were so fanatically opposed to hierarchical folders and insisted on doing everything with tags. It's just nice to be able to organize things hierarchically and browse through them.

On the other hand, search is very fast in Evernote. I'm pleased that I can actually find notes! The iPhone app UI is a little awkward (it would be nice to be able to jump out of search without backing up so many pages), but the fact it actually finds stuff, and quickly, makes up for a lot.

It almost makes me feel like I don't even need tags.

doug

[douglerner 17]

In another discussion I discovered "stacks". That's just what I needed for a bit of hierarchical organization.

Things are much neater now.

doug

[Metrodon 2,188]

You can add notebooks to a stack - but this is as 'deep' as you can go.

[douglerner 17]

You can add notebooks to a stack - but this is as 'deep' as you can go.

I notice that the stack hierarchy also only is visible in the computer client, not in the iOS clients.

The same seems to be true with nested tags.

doug

[Metrodon 2,188]

Yup, Stacks will be on iOS 'soon'.

[epete 1]

Add me to the list of people requesting folder creation. For organizational purposes, we need more than one level of "stacks". I'd vote to just rename them what they are commonly called in the industry - "folders" of notebooks. Allow them as deep as we want.

[jefito 5,598]

Add me to the list of people requesting folder creation. For organizational purposes, we need more than one level of "stacks". I'd vote to just rename them what they are commonly called in the industry - "folders" of notebooks. Allow them as deep as we want.

As jbenson says, there's a lot of discussion, suggestion, recrimination, etc. on the topic elsewhere in the forums. Search for hierarchies, folders, subfolders, whatever. You can often use tags to organize things as well as or better than using folders. That seems to be the Evernote way, for now and the foreseeable future.

[mluka 0]

Add me to the list of people requesting folder creation. For organizational purposes, we need more than one level of "stacks". I'd vote to just rename them what they are commonly called in the industry - "folders" of notebooks. Allow them as deep as we want.

Add me too: FOR folders (call 'em "stacks" if you must), AGAINST tags.

(Actually, moved from iPhoto to Aperture FOR the ability to organize photos using folders which are only available in Aperture, not iPhoto. Decided to also use tags as well. After I had created my 100th tag (including several synonyms), gave that up as pretty useless for organizing stuff.)

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Add me too: FOR folders (call 'em "stacks" if you must), AGAINST tags.

You can often use tags to organize things as well as or better than using folders. That seems to be the Evernote way, for now and the foreseeable future.

[jefito 5,598]

After I had created my 100th tag (including several synonyms), gave that up as pretty useless for organizing stuff.)

I think that there are a fair number of folks who would not agree with the characterization of 'useless' (I have over 100 tags; I find them very useful). But give us an idea of what your tagging scheme is. Maybe someone here might be able to help you to make them more useful for your purposes.

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

I suspect that what many people miss by not having "folders" in Evernote is the ability to organize Notes in a hierarchical manner.

While Tags may be organize in a hierarchical manner, this has no effect on the Notes to which the Tags are assigned.

Evernote could, IMO, address the request of many users for folders/subnotebooks, by adding some grammar/syntax to Searches.

For example, if there were a syntax as simple as "tag:Finance+" which would find all Notes tagged with "Finance" OR ANY sub-tag of "Finance".

I think jefito has suggested some other syntax that would also be helpful.

Finally, if Evernote would add a Sort feature of Tags which sorts alphabetically by the top parent Tag, and then by its sub-tags, it would provide a Note list much like you see when you view a list of folders/subfolders in Windows Explorer or Mac Finder. I suspect this is what many are looking for when they ask for folders/subnotebooks.