(Archived) How to search notes only with no tag?

[Art 0]

Hello,

I would like to know how to search notes only with no tag exclusively from ones with tags.

Due to near shutdown of Google Notebook, I just started moving my notebooks to Evernote. The Evernote feature of importing Atom .xml file from Google Notebook really helps here.

On Google Notebook, I have the notes what are not categorized to under any section header in each notebook of mine. (I might say that I have meant that such notes were categorized to the root section of each notebook in my use of Google Notebook.)

Evernote seems to interpret the section header as tag for importing from Google Notebook. Hence, I assume that those notes do not have a tag added via the import process.

And I'm puzzling how to get the list of only notes without a tag in each notebook on Evernote after import.

Sincerely,

Art

[jbenson2 2,147]

To find notes with no tags, use the following in the search field

-tag:*

[spg SCOTT 736]

Some people find this a little frustrating since as soon as they tag the notes, the note disappears from the search.

I am going through my untagged notes* and am doing it this way:

- Search for -tag:*

- Select all found notes

- Ctrl + Alt + T (assign tags dialog)

- Assign all untagged notes with a tag (untagged)

- Search for the tag untagged

- Assign my notes with the intended tags

- Once done, remove the "untagged" tag

- The note disappears from the search, moving you on to the next tag...

*I just accidentally removed all tags from most of my notes by messing up a search and clicking the wrong thing in the assign tags dialog...sigh...

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

*I just accidentally removed all tags from most of my notes by messing up a search and clicking the wrong thing in the assign tags dialog...sigh...

Sorry this happened, Scott. I do think over time, as our databases grow, that EN will have to add an undo option for stuff like this. Although you can recover some of the data if you have a recent backup, it would be most helpful to just click "undo". Another risky thing I've noticed is that since I use two monitors, if I pull up an Evernote on one monitor & then am referring to the other monitor & start typing woo changing focus to the 2nd monitor, I end up adding the text to my Evernote that's pulled up. OTOH, I'm not sure this is an Evernote issue - more of a dual monitor use issue & perhaps just a discipline I need to incorporate.

Anyway, good luck with retagging your notes...

[spg SCOTT 736]

Pretty much done now. I don't have as many notes as you

I would welcome a "You are about to change multiple notes" confirmation message, maybe that would stop it happening...all because I missed the colon in the -tag:* search...live and learn I suppose

[jbenson2 2,147]

Some people find this a little frustrating since as soon as they tag the notes, the note disappears from the search.

I am going through my untagged notes* and am doing it this way:

- Search for -tag:*

- Select all found notes

- Ctrl + Alt + T (assign tags dialog)

- Assign all untagged notes with a tag (untagged)

- Search for the tag untagged

- Assign my notes with the intended tags

- Once done, remove the "untagged" tag

- The note disappears from the search, moving you on to the next tag...

*I just accidentally removed all tags from most of my notes by messing up a search and clicking the wrong thing in the assign tags dialog...sigh...

A comment from Evernote would be helpful. After 3 years and 12,000 notes, I have not run into this problem yet. (fingers crossed)

Many of my notes require multiple tags, so I prefer to open the note (to review the content) and then add the multiple tags.

When the note is closed it disappears and I move on to the next note.

[spg SCOTT 736]

A comment from Evernote would be helpful. After 3 years and 12,000 notes, I have not run into this problem yet. (fingers crossed)

The tag issue?

Well it was mostly my fault...messed up the search, selected the notes (thinking they were only untagged ones) assign tags dialog...

"why are all of these tags selected?" Uncheck them, check the "untagged" one. Couple of minutes later, searching for the "untagged" tag..."huh why are there 295/302 notes which were untagged...I thought I was better at tagging than that...oh...duh..."

Many of my notes require multiple tags, so I prefer to open the note (to review the content) and then add the multiple tags.

When the note is closed it disappears and I move on to the next note.

I suppose that it depends on how you work...before, I would have done the same, since I had note view disabled. Now with the favorites bar, I have the left view disabled and the note showing.

[davidward 13]

When I have a bunch of untagged notes to tag, I've taken to moving them all to my Inbox first. I can then add multiple tags without having them disappear from search results after I add the first tag. When I'm done, I move them back to my "All Notes" notebook. Obviously, this won't work if you collect untagged notes from a variety of notebooks; I have only the two.

[Art 0]

Thank you for the valuable replies, everyone.

The instructions what spg SCOTT wrote about how to tag untagged notes is helpful for me. Thanks.

Regarding search, I would like to ask your valuable advise again: How to search notes only with root tag exclusively from ones with sub-tags?

For an example, let's say that I have "Notebook1" notebook. I have "Tag1" root tag, "SubTag1" sub-tag under the "Tag1" root tag. And I have 15 notes in the "Notebook1" notebook. Those notes were tagged like below:

Notebook1 (15 notes)

+ Tag1 root tag (15 notes)

+ SubTag1 sub-tag (5 notes)

So, all notes in the "Notebook1" notebook have "Tag1" tag and only 5 notes among them have "SubTag1" tag as well.

Is it possible to get the list of 10 notes tagged only with "Tag1" by search?

My sincere apology if the same question has already been posted in the forum before.

Regards,

Art

[jbenson2 2,147]

Several of my tags have a two level structure which allows me to find all notes in Notebook1 that are tagged with Tag1.

Here are a couple examples. I have many more.

Companies

Com-IBM

Com-Target

Com-USB

Insurance

Ins-Car

Ins-Home

Ins-Medical

To find all insurance notes in my Personal notebook, I would search for:

Notebook:Personal tag:Ins*

or

Notebook:Personal tag:Ins-*

p.s. I use this setup, not for searches, but for keeping my tags grouped together in the left panel.

.

[peterfmartin 221]

For an example, let's say that I have "Notebook1" notebook. I have "Tag1" root tag, "SubTag1" sub-tag under the "Tag1" root tag. And I have 15 notes in the "Notebook1" notebook. Those notes were tagged like below:

Notebook1 (15 notes)

+ Tag1 root tag (15 notes)

+ SubTag1 sub-tag (5 notes)

So, all notes in the "Notebook1" notebook have "Tag1" tag and only 5 notes among them have "SubTag1" tag as well.

Is it possible to get the list of 10 notes tagged only with "Tag1" by search?

You should be able to get them with the following search:

tag:Tag1 -tag:SubTag1

[Art 0]

Thanks again for the replies.

As it seems like it is only way providing every sub-tags with the -tag: option to get the list of notes only with root tag exclusively from ones with sub-tags, I decided to make a tag named "Top" under root tag and add "Top" tag to notes currently only with root tag too, since some of my notebooks have many sub-tags.

I should have added more words about my situation in migrating from Google Notebook in my previous post: I have roughly 80 notebooks and about the number of notes between 2000 to 3000.

Since EverNote feature of importing Google Notebook interprets section header of Google Notebook as tag, I suspect that I will have some duplicate tags among notebooks when I import. Because I like to make the tag structures of my notebooks on Evernote to resemble the way of accessing note currently on Google Notebook, I like to have unique root tag to each notebook and add such root tag every notes belong to that notebook.

And then I hit those questions I posted in this thread.

I appreciated every given advises.

Thank you very much,

Art