Searching by dates

[llbean 8]

Out of curiosity, say you scan in a bunch of receipts/statements/checks, whatever. Nearly everything has a date associated with it. How are people codifying EN to later retrieve these items when part of the search includes either a date or date range?

A couple of possibilities I can see is :

1) Having a tag for each year, month, and even day of the month (1-31) if you so choose to be so precise

2) Including the date as part of the name of the note

3) Altering the EN created date to reflect the date the piece of paper was actually generated. This actually makes most sense to me. Of course then you loose the functionality of the way the field was originally created by no longer being able to see which notes have been sitting in your inbox the longest.

Ideas, pro's/con's???

[logandb 227]

Hi @llbean,

Option (1) sounds fiendishly complex! I use a mixture of (2) and (3), but I generally like (3) because I can sort notes by 'date created' and they make sense in the list. I have gas bills from 1995 and photos from my childhood with the correct date associated with them - right back to a scan of my birth certificate from late 1968!

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Keep it simple. I often include the date in the title in YYYYMMDD format. If I need to find all the bills for May of 2005, I select the notebook "bills" & search on intitle:200505*

[llbean 8]

So how would you do an intitle search of a date range? Seems like searching by date created might be a little more versatile?

Also, in general I can understand not getting carried away with too many tags, but when would you put sort information in the title versus using tags? For example, if I have a bunch of bank statements, what are the pros/cons of having the date/bank name/account type named in the title versus using date created and two tags?

[Jamie Todd Rubin 17]

Since I try to do all of my scanning once a day (when I pick up the mail), I the create date of the note is usually the same as anything that I am scanning, including receipts. Of course, not everyone works this way, but it's become a pretty good habit for me. That said, create date to me means "date the paper was created" so I have no qualms about changing the create date to match the on a document if I need to because it will make my searches easier.

[hherbzilla 3]

I also tend to use option 3) and change the create date. However, I may start doing more with dates in titles to provide additional flexibility.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

So how would you do an intitle search of a date range? Seems like searching by date created might be a little more versatile?

Also, in general I can understand not getting carried away with too many tags, but when would you put sort information in the title versus using tags? For example, if I have a bunch of bank statements, what are the pros/cons of having the date/bank name/account type named in the title versus using date created and two tags?

I normally don't do a search for a date range that is very extensive. IE, I can't say as I've ever had to find all bills between May 15, 2002 and July 7, 2007. It's normally by year or vendor. NBD. There is a process I would use to do the 5/15/02-7/7/7 search but won't go into right now.

No real pros between using descriptive titles vs tags. Except I think a lot of people tend to overtag, which may be seen as "more work". (I certainly prefer using the title field rather than tags, when applicable.)

[Grimmknuckle 6]

I don't really need to look up what date I made a purchase so I haven't really tagged my receipts with dates.

The only exception to this are receipts that I have scanned in because I need to create a title for them and having a bunch of notes labeled Best Buy 1, Best Buy 2, etc. wouldn't be helpful. In order to distinguish them I add the date of purchase in the title.

I tried searching my receipts notebook by year after reading your post and that brought up the receipts I titled like I wanted, but understandably it brought up other receipts that weren’t in the target search date. I think the best option, for me at least, would be to create tags just for the year

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I don't really need to look up what date I made a purchase so I haven't really tagged my receipts with dates.

The only exception to this are receipts that I have scanned in because I need to create a title for them and having a bunch of notes labeled Best Buy 1, Best Buy 2, etc. wouldn't be helpful. In order to distinguish them I add the date of purchase in the title.

I tried searching my receipts notebook by year after reading your post and that brought up the receipts I titled like I wanted, but understandably it brought up other receipts that weren’t in the target search date. I think the best option, for me at least, would be to create tags just for the year

If you're talking about my methodology, then yes, searching for:

intitle:2006*

will bring all receipts up for 2006. BUT, if you know you bought something at Best Buy & use an accurate title, you should be able to search on:

intitle:2006* intitle:"best buy"

And peruse the titles. So if you have a note that's titled "20060504 - Best Buy - Kodak Playsport", you could quickly/easily find that receipt.

If you don't remember if you bought it from Best Buy or Amazon or what year, as long as you use the title above, just do this search:

intitle:"kodak playsport"

And that should narrow down the notes. You may (or not - depending upon the number of results in the results pane) want to further refine the search by using the "tag:receipts" option, too...

[Grimmknuckle 6]

Yeah, I haven't had really much need to recall any of my receipts or things I bought, but it is nice to know that they are there if I need them. Right now the only tags I have for them are individual tags for each store. I used to have a notebook stack called receipts and individual notebooks for each store but I quickly saw that this would get complicated real fast.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Yeah, I haven't had really much need to recall any of my receipts or things I bought, but it is nice to know that they are there if I need them. Right now the only tags I have for them are individual tags for each store. I used to have a notebook stack called receipts and individual notebooks for each store but I quickly saw that this would get complicated real fast.

Using the title method I described above, you don't need a notebook (or tag) for each store. (Again, I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or having problems using my methodology. So if you're agreeing with me, then apologies...) I would simply apply one tag (receipts).

Here's one of my examples:

"Me too. I think people new to Evernote have a tendency to over tag (I did) and not utilize the EN search engine. I have hundreds of documents in my EN & almost never tag them. But I'm diligent about using an accurate title. I always include the date of the bill/letter in YYYYMMDD format as well as the company or the name of the sender/recipient (if it's something I sent). So if I need to find the Cox cable bill from May of 2007, I'd simply do this search:

intitle:cox 200705*

and boom...out of thousands of notes, the one note I'm looking for pops up, no matter what notebook it was in. And no tags involved."

[Grimmknuckle 6]

Using the title method I described above, you don't need a notebook (or tag) for each store. (Again, I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or having problems using my methodology. So if you're agreeing with me, then apologies...) I would simply apply one tag (receipts).

Yeah I was agreeing with you.

Recently I was seeing that I had notebooks for each store and that this was going to be a waste, since we are limited to only 250 notebooks.

So I just delete all those notebooks and now store all my receipts in a single notebook called "Receipts" and I tag each receipt with the store's name. I may add more tags later on, but for now this suits my needs just fine.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Recently I was seeing that I had notebooks for each store and that this was going to be a waste,

Yeah, I think it's easy to fall into creating too many notebooks & overtagging, when you're new to Evernote. I know I did. IMO, using accurate titles & keywords, a few tags & a broad notebook AND utilizing EN's strong search engine is the best way to make Evernote "sing".

[jeverest 0]

I think I found a way to do date ranges without tags or title hacks. You can create a saved search using both an inclusion and an exclusion on date. For example, to get all notes created in the second half of November you could save this search: created:20111115 -created:20111130

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I think I found a way to do date ranges without tags or title hacks. You can create a saved search using both an inclusion and an exclusion on date. For example, to get all notes created in the second half of November you could save this search: created:20111115 -created:20111130

Yes, you can use that method. I prefer my method because it's easier IMO because I don't have to fiddle with the created date when entering old documents. If you often need a date range that spans several years or months, then that may be a better option, assuming you set the dates correctly.

[Goetz 2]

Is there a way to search for entries with today's creation date? Or this week? created:day -created:day+1 doesn't seem to work. +1 is interpreted as a term to search for not as tomorrow.

[jefito 5,589]

Is there a way to search for entries with today's creation date?

Doesn't "created:day" work?

Or this week?

"created:day-7" should work (created within the last 7 days)

-created:day+1 doesn't seem to work. +1 is interpreted as a term to search for not as tomorrow.

The '+1' is not supported; it's been suggested as useful if we ever get due dates, but for updated and created dates, not so much.

[Goetz 2]

Thanks for your reply. The background of my question is my attempt to migrate from "The Journal" (which lacks a mobile solution) to Evernote. I've used "The Journal" as an all-in-one tool for notes, project, journal and todo list (by creating entries at dates in the future).

The idea is to set the creation date into the future when an action is due.

[jefito 5,589]

The idea is to set the creation date into the future when an action is due.

You can certainly do that, with the understanding that using creation date for this purpose is a bit of a hack, until the long-awaited due date field arrives.

[Goetz 2]

Sure, but the idea fails if I can't search i.e. filter for entries with today's date and only today's date.

[jefito 5,589]

That is unfortunately correct.

[Grimmknuckle 6]

Sure, but the idea fails if I can't search i.e. filter for entries with today's date and only today's date.

Why don't you just add something like, "Due Date: 12/1/2011" to the end of your note's title. That way you don't have to fuss around with the creation date and you can search for it by just type in the search query

for example:

intitle:"Due Date: 12/1/2011"

I would go one step furthur and create a saved search with the search query intitle:"Due Date: " to bring up a list of all your notes that have a due date with just one click.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Sure, but the idea fails if I can't search i.e. filter for entries with today's date and only today's date.

Evernote agrees. Here is a comment last year from Dave Engberg on the Today Date problem.

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Re: Saved Search Grammar for "today plus the past"

by engberg on Mon Oct 04,

2010

6:14 pm

We're adding '+' to the grammar in

anticipation of

due dates

, so you'll be able to do:

-created:day+1

I think it already works that way on the web, but we're adding it to the clients.

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What? I'm just saying...

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Over a year later, and we still don't have Due Date, nor does "-created:day+1" work on the Mac.

I changed the Created Date to 1/1/2012, sync'd, quit/opened EN Mac, and amazingly enough,

-created:day

returns the Note I changed the Created Date on.