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(Archived) Feature Request: Add Notes to Notes


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One of the biggest problems I am having with evernote is if I have a note, say a PDF of a contract, adding any further information to it, my thoughts, correspondence, phone calls etc, has to be added either to the top or the bottom of the note - it's incredibly clumsy, and most of the time the information needs to be kept separate from the note. If it was a physical document I would slap post it notes on the contract so I can remove them later.

I think it would be a massive asset and incredibly helpful to be able to add notes to notes, creating a hierarchical tree structure which could be easily be opened or collapsed in the main index table.

Another example would be if I had an idea of oh say a film, I could start expanding it and growing it not just in a single text document, but as a tree of notes covering everything from story ideas, to images of locations and the voices of actors, all neatly expandable and collapsible right down to the one first note called "Film: Evernote does Trees".

Thanks in advance

Chris

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Not to be unhelpful but if you are wedded to a folder tree structure, then you have two options: adjust somewhat or look elsewhere. Evernote seem committed to a single level of notes, and there's been lots of discussions in the Forum about tags vs trees. The general consensus seems to be - tags good; trees bad.

To take your use cases specifically though - what's wrong with tagging your PDF and related notes with something like a project name, which will bring up all the information in one place if you click the tag? And why not use note links to create a "high level" note with links to all the sub levels - and use a level 1 child to link to all the notes in level 2, 3 etc.

Your last point about film titles is more about Outlining than folder trees - again, why not use an existing product to generate a file.. "Film Idea 1.XYZ" and embed that in a note. Click in the filename in the note to open your outline in it's application window - make your changes - save back to Evernote.

Simples?

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this is a topic that i think has come up recently. you may want to search around for it. in the current system, note links (links to other notes) and targetd searches can be a solution to the problem you raised.

in my case, i recently cancelled my subscription to a service the process took three emails. i forwarded each email to evernote and named it using yymmdd keyword keyword. if i ever want to see the exchange, i can just type "intitle:keyword" into the search. all of the related notes will display and the search filtering remains, so i can work with the notes.

a long project with several dozen notes, in my system, would get one note with links to all of the related ones. it would be tagged "index" so that a search for "tag:index" would pull up all my master lists, and a search for "intitle:keyword tag:index" would pull up that specific note.

the cool thing is that i make my post-it-like notes in evernote and don't have to mess with threading them together. consistent naming, note links, tags, and searches free me from organizing and let me be productive.

your idea has merit, but i think that it might be introducing a complex feature that other existing features already handle spectacularly well.

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One of the biggest problems I am having with evernote is if I have a note, say a PDF of a contract, adding any further information to it, my thoughts, correspondence, phone calls etc, has to be added either to the top or the bottom of the note - it's incredibly clumsy, and most of the time the information needs to be kept separate from the note. If it was a physical document I would slap post it notes on the contract so I can remove them later.

Chris,

I get your point -- how can we quickly/easily create related Notes.

With the current EN feature set you really have 3 options after you have created your primary Note:

  1. Tags
  2. Note Links
  3. Common Keyword in Note Title

I personaly like and use #2 Note Links.

  • At the top of your primary Note enter a descriptive Title some blank lines and then a Horizontal Rule (line)
    • You can make this top "header section" as fancy or plain as you like.

    [*]Above the line you will enter links to other related notes

    [*]Create a new related Note.

    [*]Copy the Note link and paste into top "header section" of Primary Note

I use this a lot. Sometimes I create several related Notes, and then add the Links to the Primary Note. This goes pretty fast after you get the workflow down.

You can also put the Note links in a numbered list with a checkbox after the number.

Then you can check off when you have completed the follow-up (like removing the sticky note, only better).

Good luck.

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Not to be unhelpful but if you are wedded to a folder tree structure, then you have two options: adjust somewhat or look elsewhere. Evernote seem committed to a single level of notes, and there's been lots of discussions in the Forum about tags vs trees. The general consensus seems to be - tags good; trees bad.

Actually, I would frame that a bit differently: tags exist, trees do not. Hierarchical structures are not inherently bad; they're proven to be useful, and they have the advantage of familiarity. Tags, though are potentially more useful for note categorization since a note may have more than one tag, while in a strict tree organization, a note would belong to only one parent; moreover, you can go some distance towards emulating a tree structure (though you need to work at it a bit). Reality is, though that tags are implemented by Evernote, while arbitrarily nested note hierarchies are not.

To take your use cases specifically though - what's wrong with tagging your PDF and related notes with something like a project name, which will bring up all the information in one place if you click the tag? And why not use note links to create a "high level" note with links to all the sub levels - and use a level 1 child to link to all the notes in level 2, 3 etc.

Exactly. Here again, with note links, you can create a tree (or even a graph) structure of your notes.

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