Exclude Notebook from search

[Viv Ilo Veith 30]

I cannot seem to exclude a Notebook from a search. Wouldn't it be -notebook:Errands? (Without the ?)

But when I put that in it pulls up only notes from the Errands notebook instead of excluding it. It apparently does not "read" the minus sign.

Specifically, the Search I wanted to do and Save is:

Search All Notebooks for unfinished To Do but exclude all Notes from the Notebook Errands.

I would think that that would be: -notebook:Errands todo:false

My work around is that I tagged all the notes in my Errands notebook with a Errand tag so I can easily exclude them that way: todo:false -tag:Errand

But my question remains just for my understanding of Evernote:

Is there a way to exclude a whole notebook from a search?

[jbenson2 2,147]

I have a Notebook for press cuttings, and another for generic "everything else" stuff. If I want to exclude cuttings, I select the generic notebook and search only on that. More of my data can probably be hived off into specialised areas - "work" and "personal" maybe; but I'll get to that if/ when my tag searches fail or start to generate too many hits!

Here is another tip. To reduce the number of hits, I find that adding a date restriction helps. The Evernote date grammar is difficult to remember, so I save all date range searches in an Evernote note.

For instance if I wanted to find a PDF on a 2010 Christmas gift return, I would add the following to my search:

created:20101226 -created:20110201

This reduces the number of hits to notes created between December 26, 2010 and January 31, 2011

[MyDogTom 0]

There is a workaround. First, create a notebook stack which contains all yours notebooks except those that you want to exclude search. Second, do a search in stack.

How to create notebook stack: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/01/29/create-notebook-stacks-evernote/

[gazumped 11,656]

Noted - did you see the previous discussions?  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/18597-exclude-notebook-from-search/

[jrpasley 0]

Enhancement request - exclude specific notebooks from Search, e.g., -Notebook:Archives

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Could someone from the Evernote team give some indication whether the ability to exclude notebooks from a search is either: 

•  Unlikely to be implemented in the near term (e.g. too much work, not enough users care about this etc etc) OR 
• Is something being considered in the current pipeline. 

 

As I have become more and more familiar with Evernote I have begun using it to store more and more information/documents. Unfortunately, I now have many shared notebooks and other notebooks that appear in my "All Notes" view which I would previously use to review and organise my "core" notes. The ability to negate certain notebooks is now becoming a pretty desirable feature for me as too many notes that I dont care to review are clogging up my "All Notes" view.

 

This isn't a rant, but if its not in the pipeline, I think Im going to have to start using Evernote just my personal important documents/info and try find another solution for all my other information. Before I make the plunge I just wanted to know if it was something that Evernote was finally considering given the efforts to encourage users to use Evernote as their universal document storing/sharing system. 

 

Cheers.

Evernote rarely publishes their roadmap or ETAs.

[UncleJr 1]

Could someone from the Evernote team give some indication whether the ability to exclude notebooks from a search is either: 

1.  Unlikely to be implemented in the near term (e.g. too much work, not enough users care about this etc etc) OR 
2. Is something being considered in the current pipeline. 

 

As I have become more and more familiar with Evernote I have begun using it to store more and more information/documents. Unfortunately, I now have many shared notebooks and other notebooks that appear in my "All Notes" view which I would previously use to review and organise my "core" notes. The ability to negate certain notebooks is now becoming a pretty desirable feature for me as too many notes that I dont care to review are clogging up my "All Notes" view.

 

This isn't a rant, but if its not in the pipeline, I think Im going to have to start using Evernote just my personal important documents/info and try find another solution for all my other information. Before I make the plunge I just wanted to know if it was something that Evernote was finally considering given the efforts to encourage users to use Evernote as their universal document storing/sharing system. 

 

Cheers. 

[roschler 158]

If you have Parallels, VM Fusion, or Crossovers on your Mac you can run BitQwik, my free application for doing natural language searches on your Evernote notes. You'll have to run the Window client though since it's a Windows app. BitQwik can include or exclude one or more notebooks from a search, combine AND & OR logic in the same search, do searches for notes with a certain string in the middle of their source URL, and much more, all searches you can't do with Evernote alone.

Also, in a few days a version is coming that automatically handles nested tags and Notebook stack searches properly. All with plain English sentences. (You don't need to know the Evernote search grammar.)

http://bitqwik.com/

-- roschler

[jefito 5,589]

This is discussed in the Win 4.6 beta threads. No idea how they're going to address it, or if.

[Colin 13]

This was not an issue for me until the latest upgrade to V4.6. Now all joined notebooks are included in searches. I utilise tags for context and urgency as well as todo. So when I search todo:false for example it now includes all the example templates in the Evernote Holiday notebook that have lots of [] unchecked boxes.

For now I unjoined all public notebooks, but thats not a long term solution, although it has speeded up my evernote syncing. It seems to me one solution would be a new parameters to restrict search to my notebooks only

eg todo:false -joinednotebooks.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Another, reliable method is to use stacks. We're in the process of moving & I have multiple notebooks for that. One is notes & "paperwork" (since much of the process of buying/selling a home today is done via the net with apps like Docusign, at least IME) for buying the new home. One is notes & "paperwork" for selling our current home. Another is for the things we need to buy & do before moving into the new home, etc. All the notebooks are in a stack called "_move". (The underscore puts it up top, so it's quickly accessed.) If I'm wanting to search all the notebooks related to the move, I search the "_move" stack.

[gazumped 11,656]

I have a Notebook for press cuttings, and another for generic "everything else" stuff. If I want to exclude cuttings, I select the generic notebook and search only on that. More of my data can probably be hived off into specialised areas - "work" and "personal" maybe; but I'll get to that if/ when my tag searches fail or start to generate too many hits!

[jbenson2 2,147]

Thanks for your replies! Nice to know that I was not missing something.

Yes, it is very easy to tag everything in a notebook with the same tag so that is an easy work around.

Not a big deal that the capability to exclude a notebook by using a minus sign in search is not possible.

You're welcome. The Evernote search is so fast that I often run different searches just to see what turns up.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Thanks for your replies! Nice to know that I was not missing something.

Yes, it is very easy to tag everything in a notebook with the same tag so that is an easy work around.

Not a big deal that the capability to exclude a notebook by using a minus sign in search is not possible.

IMO, that's a more reliable way. Using a tag to indicate a false positive can also create a false negative as explained in this post.

[Viv Ilo Veith 30]

Thanks for your replies! Nice to know that I was not missing something.

Yes, it is very easy to tag everything in a notebook with the same tag so that is an easy work around.

Not a big deal that the capability to exclude a notebook by using a minus sign in search is not possible.

[jbenson2 2,147]

One additional comment to my previous post. About once a week, I will run a housekeeping search to be sure all the notes in my Politics notebook are tagged with a Z. If any turn up, it is easy to do a bulk tag and update them.

Here is the saved search I run:

• notebook:Politics -tag:z

[jefito 5,589]

There is no way to exclude a notebook from a search. The API doc states this pretty clearly, in the section on the search grammar. See: https://www.evernote.com/about/developer/api/evernote-api.pdf.

[jbenson2 2,147]

No, it is not possible to exclude a notebook from a search using standard Evernote search grammar.

Here is a link (which uses the same technique you mentioned) to exclude a specific notebook (containing political news clippings) from a search.

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=21142&p=89467&hilit=politics#p89467