(Archived) HELP: Questions about limits and sync

[bmestre 0]

Dear friends:

During my professional activity (I lecture in a college), I have to take a number of different notes of meetings, articles, books, seminars, etc. I have been searching for a convenient application to organize my notes for ages and finally I decided to give some attention to Evernote. This really seems the perfect application for me! I am a Mac OS user and I am also planning to buy a tablet (IPad or Android) in order to use it during meetings and at the library and sync it with my macbook.

However, I have a few questions I'd like to ask before I decide to buy a tablet.

(1) I am aware that Evernote has an account limit of 100.000 notes and 250 notebooks. My question is: can I create more notes / notebooks beyond these limits and choose not to save them in the cloud and opt to email them to a specifically created email or just save them in my HD?

(2) Even if I go beyond these account limits, can I still sync them with a tablet device?

(3) If I buy a tablet device, can I use a stylus to write notes in Evernote or do I have to type them? I am saying this because I am more used to taking handwritten notes then typed notes during seminars and meetings.

Thank you very much,

[bmestre 0]

Just to reiterate what others have said:

It is conceivable you may be constrained by the 100,000 note limit, but it would take you a very long time to encounter that problem—at which point, as I said, the note limit could easily be higher.

There is no reason for you to think about the 250 notebook limit, since, if it's constraining, you can easily use tags to replicate your notebook structure.

If you think that 10,000 tags will somehow not be enough, you should use GrumpyMonkey's keyword-in-the-title method, since it will provide you similar functionality and has no limitation.

Let me just ask you a question: what if I reach my monthly account limit? Does EN stop me from making new notes or can I still make new notes and leave them as a "credit" for next moth's limit?

Thank you

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Two other things to add, since I also use this for teaching.

1. Learn to get good with tags.

This has become a serious necessity due to the really limited search capabilities. Don't rely on search to help you figure out where you left an article or a reference to something in a note! That's gotten me into a lot of bad places recently.

2. Pay attention to how you organize your classes and lectures. This one took me a while (and I am still learning!).

i can't really argue with your recommendations, as those seem very reasonable to me, but i would disagree with your evaluation of the search capabilities. what would you suggest to make the searches less limited?

in my case, i taught a class last semester and simply made sure to put the name of the class in the title of anything related to it, from research for lectures to photographs of the chalkboard. so, any search for "intitle:his101" brings up all of my notes. for lecture notes and handouts only, i have an "index" note with note links to those notes. a search for "inttitle:index" brings up this note (along with other similar index notes). i wasn't using random codes at the time, but i could put those into each note as well to ensure that they came up in a search.

in other words, consistency (however you manage to do it) will be one of the best things you can do to help out the searches, because they cannot find what isn't there

[dlrh 0]

Two other things to add, since I also use this for teaching.

1. Learn to get good with tags.

This has become a serious necessity due to the really limited search capabilities. Don't rely on search to help you figure out where you left an article or a reference to something in a note! That's gotten me into a lot of bad places recently.

2. Pay attention to how you organize your classes and lectures. This one took me a while (and I am still learning!).

[Metrodon 2,188]

https://support.evernote.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=532&hitOffset=23+19+17&docID=19848

https://support.evernote.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=1281&hitOffset=636+421+335+321+312+281+273+238+231+166+98+59+48&docID=19951

[bmestre 0]

What is the difference between a synced and a non-synced notebook? Can I have all my notebooks non-synced and save all my data by simply emailing it to a specific email account (such as Gmail)?

Difference is the non-sync'd notebooks are not OCR'd by Evernote and the user is responsible for conducting regular back-ups.

You must have at least 1 note inside your default notebook that is sync'd.

All other notes can be inside non-sync'd notebooks.

Thank you very much! Now a few more questions:

(1) Do I have a limit for non-sync notebooks?

(2) How can I undertake a backup of my non-sync notebooks?

[jbenson2 2,149]

What is the difference between a synced and a non-synced notebook? Can I have all my notebooks non-synced and save all my data by simply emailing it to a specific email account (such as Gmail)?

Difference is the non-sync'd notebooks are not OCR'd by Evernote and the user is responsible for conducting regular back-ups.

You must have at least 1 note inside your default notebook that is sync'd.

All other notes can be inside non-sync'd notebooks.

[bmestre 0]

If, however, you hit your limit (60 MB free or 1 GB premium) and you don't buy more space (as Metrodon said, only for premium users), you can not add any more notes to synced notebooks. You can't even sync changes to existing notes in synced notebooks, since that would require you to upload more data. Remember that the monthly limit is just about how much data you upload to the Evernote servers. What you can do is add notes or make changes to local notebooks, and the next month, when you can upload more data, move those notes to synced notebooks. (Until that time, of course, the non-synced data will only be available on the device with which it was created.)

What is the difference between a synced and a non-synced notebook? Can I have all my notebooks non-synced and save all my data by simply emailing it to a specific email account (such as Gmail)?

[peterfmartin 221]

If, however, you hit your limit (60 MB free or 1 GB premium) and you don't buy more space (as Metrodon said, only for premium users), you can not add any more notes to synced notebooks. You can't even sync changes to existing notes in synced notebooks, since that would require you to upload more data. Remember that the monthly limit is just about how much data you upload to the Evernote servers. What you can do is add notes or make changes to local notebooks, and the next month, when you can upload more data, move those notes to synced notebooks. (Until that time, of course, the non-synced data will only be available on the device with which it was created.)

[Metrodon 2,188]

You can buy extra storage if you are a Premium user....

[Metrodon 2,188]

Evernote increase the size of individual notes, the limit on total notes and notebooks as cost/technology/efficiency allow.

I'm sure they could us limitless storage, but at a cost. The limits at the moment seem pretty reasonable and if you are just starting out now then I reckon it will take you quite a while to get to 100k.

[peterfmartin 221]

Just to reiterate what others have said:

It is conceivable you may be constrained by the 100,000 note limit, but it would take you a very long time to encounter that problem—at which point, as I said, the note limit could easily be higher.

There is no reason for you to think about the 250 notebook limit, since, if it's constraining, you can easily use tags to replicate your notebook structure.

If you think that 10,000 tags will somehow not be enough, you should use GrumpyMonkey's keyword-in-the-title method, since it will provide you similar functionality and has no limitation.

[bmestre 0]

Dear friends:

During my professional activity (I lecture in a college), I have to take a number of different notes of meetings, articles, books, seminars, etc. I have been searching for a convenient application to organize my notes for ages and finally I decided to give some attention to Evernote. This really seems the perfect application for me! I am a Mac OS user and I am also planning to buy a tablet (IPad or Android) in order to use it during meetings and at the library and sync it with my macbook.

However, I have a few questions I'd like to ask before I decide to buy a tablet.

(1) I am aware that Evernote has an account limit of 100.000 notes and 250 notebooks. My question is: can I create more notes / notebooks beyond these limits and choose not to save them in the cloud and opt to email them to a specifically created email or just save them in my HD?

(2) Even if I go beyond these account limits, can I still sync them with a tablet device?

(3) If I buy a tablet device, can I use a stylus to write notes in Evernote or do I have to type them? I am saying this because I am more used to taking handwritten notes then typed notes during seminars and meetings.

Thank you very much,

hi. welcome to the forums! i am a researcher who uses evernote as well. i've written a few pages on using evernote in academia and using handwriting apps + evernote.

http://www.princeton...ofessional.html

1. no. i don't think so. i have one notebook, and several thousand notes, so i guess the notebook limit never bothered me

2. i doubt it.

3. see my site.

hope it works well for you!

Hi there! Thank you for your reply!

Your site is fabulous, I've been reading it and taking a few ideas out of it. The comparison with the similar software is very good albeit there is a problem: most of the free apps do not allow you to organise your notes into categories (such as EN notebooks); in this sense, EN is superior because of its fabulous organisation system. Is is really the best answer to my needs. The limits are the only hassle although I do not think that I'll ever reach them because I mainly use EN for taking written notes although - if I choose to integrate it with the IPAD - the limits may become a bit more serious because apparently these programs export to PDF.

[bmestre 0]

Welcome to the forums, bmestre.

1. No, sorry.

To my knowledge, Evernote staff have not answered previous questions here about what exactly happens when a user hits 100,000 notes, but they have said it has happened, and there is a hard limit at that point. The limit is for your account, so presumably if any single device (your Mac, for example) sees 100,000 notes in the account, it blocks you from creating new ones. And while users have hit the limit before, I believe they have all or mostly done so with heavy automation, that is, lots of auto-forwarded emails that become notes, etc. This is basic math, but helpful to think about: To manually create 100,000 notes over five years, you would need to create an average of 55 notes every day over those five years. If you only create notes on weekdays, but never take a vacation, you'd need to create 77 notes every day for five years. While possible—and though I don't know the details of your professional work—I think few people can manage to do this. You can also, remember, merge notes to keep the same content in fewer notes. And it's quite possible that, even if you do start using Evernote like a fiend and create 55 notes a day every day for the next five years, by March 2017 Evernote will raise the note limit.

As to notebooks, if you find the limit of 250 notebooks constricting, just search the forums for tags vs. notebooks (or ask again, though fellow users will probably point you to existing conversations), since many of us believe there's no need for more than one, two, or a few notebooks, and that tags can do everything notebooks can do—and more. (There is a limit of 10,000 tags.)

2. Moot point (see #1). And if you somehow can secretly get more than 100,000 notes on a device, you definitely will not be able to sync 100,001 notes across devices.

Thank you very much for your reply!

I agree that 100.00 notes really is A LOT (albeit 250 notebooks is not so for someone who make research) and quite probably I'll never reach that limit; my only problem is that I really don't like this kind of limitations. I agree that Endnote is perfectly legitimised to impose limits to the online accounts because they are using server space but I do not agree that they may impose limits on my personal computer. It is more of a question of principle. In any case, EN is really an awesome app.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Dear friends:

During my professional activity (I lecture in a college), I have to take a number of different notes of meetings, articles, books, seminars, etc. I have been searching for a convenient application to organize my notes for ages and finally I decided to give some attention to Evernote. This really seems the perfect application for me! I am a Mac OS user and I am also planning to buy a tablet (IPad or Android) in order to use it during meetings and at the library and sync it with my macbook.

However, I have a few questions I'd like to ask before I decide to buy a tablet.

(1) I am aware that Evernote has an account limit of 100.000 notes and 250 notebooks. My question is: can I create more notes / notebooks beyond these limits and choose not to save them in the cloud and opt to email them to a specifically created email or just save them in my HD?

(2) Even if I go beyond these account limits, can I still sync them with a tablet device?

(3) If I buy a tablet device, can I use a stylus to write notes in Evernote or do I have to type them? I am saying this because I am more used to taking handwritten notes then typed notes during seminars and meetings.

Thank you very much,

hi. welcome to the forums! i am a researcher who uses evernote as well. i've written a few pages on using evernote in academia and using handwriting apps + evernote.

http://www.princeton.edu/~cmayo/professional.html

1. no. i don't think so. i have one notebook, and several thousand notes, so i guess the notebook limit never bothered me

2. i doubt it.

3. see my site.

hope it works well for you!

[nova47 60]

#1- Before you go too far I suggest search the forums for tagging methods. jbenson2 from the post above has posted very detailed examples of his scheme. Grumpy Monkey posted about his minimalist approach recently, and there are many others.

If you are a notebooks (folders) person you might consider tags instead. Tags can be nested so they have the look and feel that you are probably used to with folders. I'm a notebook / folders fan myself and they work well for my use, but I started EN some time ago without the benefit of understanding tags so it's been tough to change my entire structure.

#3 - No. And that's a good thing. Check out this thread then shop around for a handwriting app that fits your needs. Many have EN integration, however be open to those that don't. I use Notability because of specific features. It doesn't integrate (yet) with EN. Other posters use Penultimate, Noteshelf and Ghostwriter. It all depends on what features are important to you.

[jbenson2 2,149]

Probably not a good idea to test the 100,000 limit at this time.

Comment from Heather: "you need to prune down your account because the entire thing becomes read-or-delete-only. "

http://discussion.ev...post__p__108146

[peterfmartin 221]

Welcome to the forums, bmestre.

1. No, sorry.

To my knowledge, Evernote staff have not answered previous questions here about what exactly happens when a user hits 100,000 notes, but they have said it has happened, and there is a hard limit at that point. The limit is for your account, so presumably if any single device (your Mac, for example) sees 100,000 notes in the account, it blocks you from creating new ones. And while users have hit the limit before, I believe they have all or mostly done so with heavy automation, that is, lots of auto-forwarded emails that become notes, etc. This is basic math, but helpful to think about: To manually create 100,000 notes over five years, you would need to create an average of 55 notes every day over those five years. If you only create notes on weekdays, but never take a vacation, you'd need to create 77 notes every day for five years. While possible—and though I don't know the details of your professional work—I think few people can manage to do this. You can also, remember, merge notes to keep the same content in fewer notes. And it's quite possible that, even if you do start using Evernote like a fiend and create 55 notes a day every day for the next five years, by March 2017 Evernote will raise the note limit.

As to notebooks, if you find the limit of 250 notebooks constricting, just search the forums for tags vs. notebooks (or ask again, though fellow users will probably point you to existing conversations), since many of us believe there's no need for more than one, two, or a few notebooks, and that tags can do everything notebooks can do—and more. (There is a limit of 10,000 tags.)

2. Moot point (see #1). And if you somehow can secretly get more than 100,000 notes on a device, you definitely will not be able to sync 100,001 notes across devices.

3. (Don't know, since I don't have one, but someone will hopefully answer soon.)