HOWTO: Implement note hierarchy

[justme100 0]

I'm new here and I know Evernote offers bookmark storage but can I set it up such that I have a parent/child/personal notes hierarchy (or tree structure)? For example:

SPORTS (parent folder); Click on SPORTS and I get:

----Baseball (child folder); click on Baseball and I get:

-------Atlanta Braves (grandchild folder); click on Atlanta Braves and I get:

----------Atlanta Braves Web site (great-grandchild folder)

-------------My account number for tickets is 12345” (personal note)

Football (child folder)

Hockey (child folder)

Tennis (child folder)

Also, can I upload favorites from Internet Explorer or Excel or Access tables?

Thank you.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Evernote does NOT provide/allow a full hierarchical organization like you have requested.

EN supports only two types of hierarchies:

1. Notebooks Stacks
   
   • Stacks -- which can contain ONLY 1 level of Notebooks
     
     • Notebooks -- which can contain only 1 level of Notes
       
       • Notes
         

• Tag Hierarchy
  
  • Can have as many levels as necessary
    
  • Is used ONLY to organize Tags, not Notes
    
  • Has no effect on Searching for notes with specified Tags
    

  Unfortunately Evernote does NOT support the type of hierarchical organization that many of us would like and are used to using on our PC and Macs, like folders and sub-folders. This has been requested for many years but it seems very unlikely that Evernote will ever provide this.

  There is no one best way to organize your Notes in Evernote. You have to find out what works best for you, which will probably require some trial and error.

  You are likely to get a number of replies with a variety of ideas and suggestions, which is good.

  One way to organize is with Tags. Tags can be used in the Search tool to find the Notes you want.

  One approach is to use Tags where you have used sub-folders in the past.

  While a few of the users who post in these forums use a number of Notebooks (max of 250), most users seem to have adapted to using Tags. You can have up to 10,000 tags, but I can't imagine having more than a few hundred.

  You can try searching the forums, but I find the forum search to not be very effective.

  Instead, try a Google Search using these terms:

evernote notebooks vs tags

You can also search the Evernote Knowledge Base

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

You might also find the following post helpful:

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

hi justme100. welcome to the forums!

i think jmichael's link to the post he made in an earlier thread is worth a visit. basically, the answer to your question is "no." but, if you are willing to modify your usage to fit the application, then there are lots of possibilities.

as for excel files and anything else, they can be uploaded to evernote without any problem. but, evernote does not open them. instead, it draws upon other applications (like excel) to open the files. so, the easy answer to your question is "yes," but it is helpful to know that you need to have the application (excel, word, etc.) installed on your computer if you want to edit the files. understandably, evernote does not contain every other application in the world inside of it

two things to note: 1. you have an upload allowance, and every time you edit a file you will have to re-upload the whole thing. this is one reason why i recommend keeping works-in-progress in something like dropbox, and completed things in evernote. 2. evernote only indexes a few file types (notably pdf) in its searches. you will not be able to search the contents of an excel file. this is why i recommend uploading both a pdf and excel version of a file.

[justme100 0]

Thank you JMichael and GrumpyMonkey for answering my post. Blinkpro.com was a Web-based bookmark storage service that had a beautiful, fully developed, folder/subfolder system and hierarchical organization with an unlimited amount of folders and subfolders but they went out of business. I've been looking for a similar service to no avail.

[jbenson2 2,147]

There are no folders in Evernote - just Stack, Notebook, Note

If you have a lot of Sports stuff to record, you could use the following format.

SPORTS (stack)

Baseball (notebook)

Atlanta Braves (note) tagged with Braves; note include website + your acct #

Football (notebook)

Hockey (notebook)

Tennis (notebook)

You could place a link for each notebook in SPORTS. Personally, I would rely on the tags and search to find the info.

The above format would be helpful if you want to record the results of specific games.

Here is title of an example:

yyyymmdd home team vs away team

20120325 Boston Bruins vs Ducks

If you have just a few bits on info and local teams, then I would use the following format

SPORTS (notebook)

Atlanta Braves (note) tagged with Baseball

Boston Bruins (note) tagged with Hockey

USTA (note) tagged with Tennis

.

[peterfmartin 221]

I also vaguely replicate that hierarchy, but only with tags, as jbenson alluded to. I have lots of "hierarchies" like this:

Sports

Baseball

Braves

Braves' website

etc.

Football

Falcons

etc.

Hockey

Thrashers

etc.

Tennis

Novak Djokovic

Etc.

There's nothing truly hierarchical about this, since the tag relationships are just visual, but it helps me, since I know where my child tags are, and if I want to browse my sports notes I can open that tag, see what's under it, open the baseball tag, etc. I don't use notebooks, since a note can be within only one notebook—while it can be tagged with up to 100 tags (so I can tag a single note with "Sports," "Baseball," "Braves," and more if I want.)

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thank you JMichael and GrumpyMonkey for answering my post. Blinkpro.com was a Web-based bookmark storage service that had a beautiful, fully developed, folder/subfolder system and hierarchical organization with an unlimited amount of folders and subfolders but they went out of business. I've been looking for a similar service to no avail.

i am well known on these forums for eschewing the use of notebooks (folders) and tags. while i have great respect for filing systems, and the concept of the folder within them, i have to say that in a digital environment, tags are much more powerful, and i cannot emphasize enough how limited notebooks are in comparison. there is a place for notebooks, of course, but they don't have the same value they had in the past. here are some links to posts that might give you a better sense of what possibilities are out there for tags:

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

[jbenson2 2,147]

Blinkpro.com was a Web-based bookmark storage service that had a beautiful, fully developed, folder/subfolder system and hierarchical organization with an unlimited amount of folders and subfolders but they went out of business.

I use Xmarks (part of LastPass) to store all my bookmarks in the cloud and sync with my desktop with a hierarchical organization.

www.xmarks.com

[LarryEN 0]

I would like to add my voice to those who are requesting that Tag Hierarchy have "meaning" in that if I search for (or exclude in a search) a particular tag, then that rule is automatically applied to the child tags.

 

So if I have a tag hierarchy that looks like this:

toptag

  subtag1

  subtag2

  subtag3

 

And I make a custom query that involves "toptag", such as I simply search:  tag:toptag  ... then any note with "toptag" or "subtag1,2 or 3" would be returned.  Or excluded if I was doing "-tag:toptag".

[jefito 5,589]

I would like to add my voice to those who are requesting that Tag Hierarchy have "meaning" in that if I search for (or exclude in a search) a particular tag, then that rule is automatically applied to the child tags.

 

So if I have a tag hierarchy that looks like this:

toptag

  subtag1

  subtag2

  subtag3

 

And I make a custom query that involves "toptag", such as I simply search:  tag:toptag  ... then any note with "toptag" or "subtag1,2 or 3" would be returned.  Or excluded if I was doing "-tag:toptag".

This line is sort of not really topical to the original thread topic, but there's a fair bit of discussion, proposals for improvements, etc, on this elsewhere in the forums. You can find some of it by searching on "semantic tags". You should note that "-tag:toptag" already has meaning in Evernote: return notes that do not have the tag "toptag". Support for tag hierarchies in the search language can also be found.