(Archived) TIP: Searching with Evernote; and REQUEST: Return of search explanation bar

[joomux 14]

There are heaps of ways to search in Evernote and the need to get more tricky with searching becomes greater with the more notes you have. Browsing will no longer work.

I posted an article showing 6 ways that I use search to find what I'm looking for here: http://www.cloudproductivity.net/6-tips-amazing-evernote-search/

I'm interested to hear what other search tricks people use in Evernote.

Thanks!

[sschertz 29]

Meh. You're probably right. I like Evernote. I've been a user of EN in some form since 2005 (originally just on windows, long before the mac version existed). I have nearly 7000 notes on my mac; almost 10,000 on my work computer (windows -- there are local notebooks on both machines, hence the discrepancy). I am pretty much a committed user, and I have found some of their designs to be amazingly useful and wonderful.

But I struggle to come up with another word for "a feature that forces you to guess at a what you are seeing, so you are never 100% certain of what you are seeing".

I'm not calling the developers iditots. I'm calling this particular decision....well, not useful. Is that a little better?

I work in software myself. And my company has had its share of angry users wondering why we made a change that screws up their workflow. Our support team hates it when things like that happen, because they are the ones who bear the brunt of it, while the programmers only hear about it second hand. Sometimes we revert things. Sometimes we introduce something new to replace the feature and do it better. This is what I HOPE EN will do in regards to the search bar -- give us back the functionality in some form, even if it looks different.

It is amusing to think of what would happen if they yanked away the search bar for Windows users as well.

I guess my frustration stems from the fact that despite reading numerous threads, I have never found a single good reason for this change. It just seems arbitrary and silly. And then coupled with the inability to edit or see the criteria for saved searches, it really does cripple an important aspect of EN.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Have any of you noticed how a blue "Search:" shows up in the favourites menu when you search in Evernote? Maybe that's where a search explanation will show up in the future ... It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for this odd appearance to make any sense.

GOOD EYES! Let's hope so

Although, if it is like anything else on that bar, and if it follows the pattern in other parts of the new UI, it will be hidden and need a click to reveal it. It's better than nothing, but not as nice as the Windows UI.

[tardis 87]

Have any of you noticed how a blue "Search:" shows up in the favourites menu when you search in Evernote? Maybe that's where a search explanation will show up in the future ... It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for this odd appearance to make any sense.

Don't tease us.

[pgdahl 133]

Have any of you noticed how a blue "Search:" shows up in the favourites menu when you search in Evernote? Maybe that's where a search explanation will show up in the future ... It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of for this odd appearance to make any sense.

[Jon123 9]

EN noob here. I never even knew this existed, but it would certainly be helpful. Add my voice to the chorus.

[jefito 5,589]

Yeah, I got the joke. The "squirrely changes" might have been a tip-off that I was responding in kind, though it was a little subtler than a smiley. I rely n the search info, and yes, I think that there was mention made of it going away altogether (that bit was informational). I would prefer to keep it, myself.

The folks at Evernote are pretty thick-skinned in my experience; they get a lot of criticism, some of it note particularly nicely put. I do think that they do appreciate honest and well thought-out criticism, even when it's strongly put, no worries there. You're free to post what you want on the topic, and I hope you'll continue...

[sschertz 29]

Then you'll know that the developers are not actually necessarily the ones who make the decisions, anyways. How many times have you made squirrelly changes that you disagree with because someone outside the development group made a decision. I'm not saying that that's what happened, but it's a common enough case.

Also, I HAVE certainly seen this happen. And then support gets frustrated calls and emails. And they go to the development team / the design team/ the product management team / whoever made the decision in the first place and they say "look, this isn't working for our users. This is a usability problem. What can we do to fix this?" And the decision makers figure out how to solve the customers' problem and fix it. Often in the next release. Or maybe another release further down the road. Yes, sometimes it does indeed take a long time, but they do get the fix to the customers eventually.

I guess that is why I keep harping on this. I want EN to know that they created a problem here with this design decision. So that they know that users do indeed need this feature, and they find some way to bring it back into the product. Again, it doesn't have to be exactly as it was. Just bring back the functionality.

How will they know that they need to fix things if users don't point it out?

I mean no disrespect. I simply want to be able to search my huge EN db easily, as I could before this change. Searching on the mac platform has had a lot of issues lately in addition to this (the inability to search on date ranges as documented elsewhere in the forums for one), so that leads to a lot of frustration.

[sschertz 29]

Then you'll know that the developers are not actually necessarily the ones who make the decisions, anyways. How many times have you made squirrelly changes that you disagree with because someone outside the development group made a decision. I'm not saying that that's what happened, but it's a common enough case.

Well, my beef was with whoever made the design decision. i realize that might not be a programmer; I would expect it to be a designer.

It is amusing to think of what would happen if they yanked away the search bar for Windows users as well.

I seem to recall it being mentioned once; it might be amusing to think of, but it would be another nail in the coffin of a feature you would prefer was available...

I was trying to make a joke here. I really do not want them to remove the feature for Windows users (I do use EN on Windows as well). I was trying to make a good-natured joke; hence the smiley face.

Sigh. Honestly, I'm sure the people at Evernote can take a little criticism and don't need to be defended whenever anyone points out a flaw in their product. And forcing me to guess at what I'm looking at when I see my search results is a design flaw. My previous post contained tons of praise for Evernote and evernote developers; why can't we be honest about FLAWS as well??

[jefito 5,589]

I work in software myself. And my company has had its share of angry users wondering why we made a change that screws up their workflow. Our support team hates it when things like that happen, because they are the ones who bear the brunt of it, while the programmers only hear about it second hand.

Then you'll know that the developers are not actually necessarily the ones who make the decisions, anyways. How many times have you made squirrelly changes that you disagree with because someone outside the development group made a decision. I'm not saying that that's what happened, but it's a common enough case.

It is amusing to think of what would happen if they yanked away the search bar for Windows users as well.

I seem to recall it being mentioned once; it might be amusing to think of, but it would be another nail in the coffin of a feature you would prefer was available...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

It's probably best not to call a decision idiotic. I think we can come up with a way to criticize the decision while remaining respectful to the developers, who are, after all, trying to improve the product.

anyhow, I suppose another solution would be to take it away from Windows users and make them share in our suffering

[sschertz 29]

The loss of the search bar is huge and really upsets me. I honestly cannot understand the rationale behind this design decision. I wish whoever came up with this idea would come here and explain how taking away vital information and making me have to GUESS at what I am viewing is "good design". I am trying to moderate my language here, but frankly this was an idiotic decision.

I have saved searches I created many months ago that I can't really use, because I can't remember what criteria I originally set up in them. So I see results but I'm not sure if it is really what I'm looking for or not. Evernote is supposed to be about preserving your memories and finding them when you need them; crippling the ability to search effectively seriously detracts from that mission. I supposed when I created those searches I should have somehow predicted this ridiculous change and named the search in some better way that would explain the criteria, but still...bad design to force the user to come up with code words to make up for the fact that you took away vital information.

Searching is one of the reasons I've used Evernote all these years...I am just baffled that they have ruined it and offered no explanation.

To add insult to injury, they added the Favorites bar to the Windows client but did NOT take away their search information bar. Why the discrepancy? Why cripple search on the Mac platform but keep it intact on Windows? The original reason for taking away the bar was the addition of the Favorites bar after all...once Windows got that as well, why the inconsistency?

They really need to bring this back. It is asinine to have a product with "search" where you cannot see exactly what you are searching for!!!!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I'm using Mac OS X Snow Leopard still (10.6). I didn't know that the Lion version doesn't have the search explanation bar. I use it all the time to tweak search criteria and to make sure my saved searches are still valid or if they need any changes. I hope the search bar makes a reappearance before I upgrade to Lion

some of us are pushing for it!

i know there are a lot of factors involved in any design decision, and i am sure i will not agree with everything, but in this case evernote has removed a feature they developed to fit their environment, which amazingly retains search queries as you navigate around your account.

the loss of the explanation bar to the favorites bar means that the left hand (search) is writing shakespeare, and the right (favorites bar) is drawing stick figures, and all Evernote is letting us see is the second one. very, very sad. and, it had a dramatic impact on me when i "upgraded" to lion. ouch.

the blow has been softened by the ipad 3, because i have moved most of my work to it

[peterfmartin 221]

I was also slow to upgrade to Lion, and when Evernote removed the search bar I decided to stick with Snow Leopard. Evernote makes up a ton of my computer usage, so whatever benefits I'd get to the rest of my system from upgrading, I thought and think, easily may not be outweighed by losing the search explanation bar. I'm going to stay with Snow Leopard until Evernote puts the search explanation bar in the Lion UI.

[joomux 14]

I'm using Mac OS X Snow Leopard still (10.6). I didn't know that the Lion version doesn't have the search explanation bar. I use it all the time to tweak search criteria and to make sure my saved searches are still valid or if they need any changes. I hope the search bar makes a reappearance before I upgrade to Lion

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Alas, I am afraid the search feature you show, though, in the Any and All section no longer exists on Mac if you have Lion or above. I believe you took the screenshots with Mac, right? Maybe someone else can confirm that it is indeed gone. I hope that Evernote brings it back, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

GM, you are correct. You are referring to the Search Explanation Bar (shown below), which was removed from EN Mac well over a year ago when Evernote updated EN Mac to run on the Mac OS X Lion.

Search Explanation Bar

As has been discussed in many other threads, this Bar is NOT shown when running EN Mac on the Lion OS.

Without the Search Explanation Bar, we have no way of knowing whether or not the Search engine has intrepreted our Search Expression as we expect. It also makes changing the Search more difficult since we can't modify the Search criteria on this Bar.

Fortunately, the Search Explanation Bar is still available in EN Win.

It does not make any sense why Evernote removed this from EN Mac, nor has Evernote offered any explanation.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi. Thanks joomux. That is a really nice looking page.

Alas, I am afraid the search feature you show, though, in the Any and All section no longer exists on Mac if you have Lion or above. I believe you took the screenshots with Mac, right? Maybe someone else can confirm that it is indeed gone. I hope that Evernote brings it back, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.