(Archived) emailing to shared notebook

[trilbytvc 0]

My husband will be taking an extended trip and we plan to use evernote for various things. Before we switch to premium to be able to use shared notebooks, I have a couple of questions about how they work.

For one use, we will be scanning our receipts into a shared notebook, as he will be keeping our books on the road. One of us will have a flatbed scanner, the other a new scansnap 1300. We also both have blackberries so can email from those.

For a shared notebook, will one of us "own" the account and the other access it, or is it a part of both accounts? If my husband sets up the shared notebook, do I have to use his evernote email to add the receipts, or can use my email to send them to my evernote and to the receipts notebook? Or will it work better if I put my receipts in a separate notebook in my account and just give him access.

I have been using evernote for the last year or so. My husband is just getting started. We have a lot of travel in our future (together!), so plan to make extensive use of our accounts.

Thanks for the help!

[gazumped 11,652]

By my understanding if you're both Evernote Premium subscribers, and one of you (the sharer) sets up the shared notebook on his/ her account choosing the option to allow the sharee to make changes to the notebook, you will both have access whilst logged in under your own separate account names. You could both then upload, edit and tag new items directly.

You could also use the email address of one account plus some specific subject-line markers to direct emails into the shared notebook with suitable tags. (Which is a good fallback if you have any equipment losses or failures.)

I stress I've not tested any of the above and have no experience of doing this, and if you're planning on relying on the process while travelling I'd recommend some hands-on testing for a week before you do this for real!

Do bear in mind that the shared account isn't instantaneous - you have to sync one end of the share, then the other before you can see all the data that has been edited. Emails take a little while to arrive too..

Have a great time however - and I'm sure the Paternal Pachyderm would like to hear how you get on, travelling with the Elephant!

[trilbytvc 0]

My husband is leaving tomorrow, so any tryouts will have to be while he is on the road. He keeps scanned copies of all our receipts, but putting them into evernote will be new for him. I keep some receipts in my evernote, by taking a photo with my blackberry and using email.

So if I understand shared notebooks correctly, one of us will "own" the notebook, but can both open and change it from our respective computers. It sounds like the easiest option would be to copy the receipts with a scanner, then drag them into a note. Perhaps the best organization would be a note for each month. Email could be sent as long as we use the address of the one that has the notebook.

We have a new scansnap 1300 on order, which should be here any day. Oddly enough, I will have the scansnap at home for now, and he will have the large flatbed scanner with him, as he is working on a photo-scanning project. Will I be able to set the scansnap up to scan to a choice of either account?

By next summer, we hope to (both!) be living nearly full-time "on the road" in our RV.

Thanks for the help!

[gazumped 11,652]

Hmmn - "large flatbed scanner" and "photo-scanning project" suggest this is a hi-res machine that produces BIG files. If you're expecting any volume of traffic to the account you'll need to dumb the scanner down to produce small pics. Unless you need it for other reasons I'd suggest scanning to email and sending it into Evernote via the account's email address. You can specify the notebook into which the email will go, and some tags to ID it too.. stealing from the Evernote guide on this an email to the account with the subject "Authentic cornbread @Cooking #recipes #vegetarian #baking" will put a note headed "Authentic cornbread" into the "Cooking" notebook with the tags "recipes / vegetarian / baking". See http://www.evernote.com/about/kb/article/email-to-evernote for more details. (The notebook and tags must exist in your account before the mail is received)

So: I'd have a notebook for receipts, with separate notes for each receipt. If you're rigorous about filing these as they arise, the creation date will give you the timeline and searches on creation date can give you specific months or weeks. You could apply tags for expense type and also (a little belt and braces here) for month. The most important thing though is to do something you're comfortable with and which suits your knowledge and need. Whatever you call these things, and whether you have PDFs or JPGs of the receipts, they will be OCR'd, so searches can also give you vendors / places / receipt dates. The information will be in this notebook whether you can find it quickly or not - and I'd bet most of us have done the occasional "I know I saved that last week - lets look through from the nth" type of search. Creation dates are a Good Thing.

I don't have any experience with an SS1300 (mine's a 1500) but if you install the scan manager software from Fujitsu you will be able to save to a single account (you set this up beforehand, so it's not exactly flexible) but you can have import folders with your Evernote account, and if you have access to both accounts on your machine you could simply "scan to folder" -which will be a folder of your choice- and then drag that file to the appropriate note book or import folder for one account or the other. Or you could also email - there's an option for "scan to email" and if you set up the additional notebook / tags subject line (in Evernote of course) you can copy/ paste it easily into emails to consign them accurately.

Hope all that made sense - remember the great thing about EN is you can't lose information once it's in your account. Scan / photo / email it in and sort it out later if you have to... 8)

[trilbytvc 0]

I appreciate all your information and tips. You are right about the scanner. I will remind my husband to be sure to do lower res for the receipts. Which makes the smallest file - PDF or JPG, and which does the best when searching later? I am always confused as to which one is best for evernote.

I guess it does make sense to do 1 note = 1 receipt. That's the way I do mine now and it works well, although I have just a few, and sounds lke Email is the easiest option.

Another idea might to make a folder that uploads automatically and put the scanned receipts into that. I tried one once to see how it worked, and it was pretty slick.

Thanks again for the help!

[gazumped 11,652]

Which makes the smallest file - PDF or JPG, and which does the best when searching later? I am always confused as to which one is best for evernote.

I'd say JPG and PDF are interchangeable for one-page scanned documents. Both are OCR'd, both documents are shown in the note, so you can eyeball search a list of results for the correct one. PDFs are better for multi-page scans - which are still OCR'd up to 25MB or 100 pages. If your scan is bigger. change the resolution or split the file.

..a folder that uploads automatically

That's the "import folder" I mentioned before.

Seems like you have things pretty much in hand - now roll it out and see what happens!

[trilbytvc 0]

Thanks for all the help. We should be able to make this work successfully now.

[trilbytvc 0]

Now that we have been trying this for several weeks, I have a couple more questions.

Initailly, my husband could not view the link, but after several tries we got that working. He has had an evernote account set up for about a year, but just starting to use it, so I have a feeling he was not doing something correctly. We have one shared notebook set up so far and are using it for me to put receipts for him to view and log into Quicken. (I love my new scan snap 1300!)

Now he can view the notebook, but the PDF's show up as a symbol only, and must be individually clicked to view the notes. Apparently this is the way this is supposed to work. (As suggested here, I use a separate note for each receipt.) It is very cumbersome.

Is there a way he can view them from his account rather than the web version? We only have the free version, but are willing to upgrade if needed. As of now, he has no need to edit the notebook, just to view the receipts. Would it be better if I just put the receipts all into one note (say one per month) and gave him access to a note rather than a notebook? I think I saw something about a slide view - is that something that would work here?

I really appreciate the help given on this forum - I seem to always have more questions!

[Owyn 457]

I think scan to image (png/jpg) instead of PDF would probably work better for you.

Most receipts are single page and images are immediately viewable in the note.

Occasional multi-page receipts could be merged into a single note.

[gazumped 11,652]

As Owyn says, "scan to image" should sort out your immediate view issue - I have a Fujitsu S1500 which will scan a multi-page document to multiple JPG files; you may be able to do the same with your 1300 if necessary. But check the output file size - if you have quality set too high you'll have large files that might eat up your monthly upload allowance.

I'm a little hung up on

Is there a way he can view them from his account rather than the web version?

- if you're putting these receipts into your own account and have shared the notebook with him, he's looking at your account online.

You could put receipts into his account if you send the JPGs to his account email address. (go to ~Help and ~Go to my account page to find the address..) He would then be able to look at the new notes in his account (after syncing with the server).

Doesn't sound as though he needs to go Premium unless you need the higher limits for uploads, or he needs to alter notes in a shared account.

If you put all the receipts in one note, in a form that he can read without 'opening' a file, you're going to have a very long note...

Slide Views are some thing that hasn't happened yet in my version of Evernote, but could be coming shortly to a waterhole near you.. no experience of the system yet, but I don't think it will help you - it's a way of looking at multiple notes, but not in sufficient detail to get receipt details off each one.

[trilbytvc 0]

Emailing them to his account was my original idea. I guess I should have stuck with that instead of making a shared folder. The nice part about the shared folder is the auto-upload file on my desktop.

I just changed my scanner to .jpg, so will try it out when I send this week's receipts. I will see how that works for him to view them, and if he prefers the email option, I will do that, although that would mean sending each note separately.

I think we will get this right eventually - Thanks for the help!

[gazumped 11,652]

De nada - happy to be of assistance. I think everyone here's still learning something...