(Archived) HOWTO: Filter two create saved search filter only two notebooks

[metroside 18]

Hi All,

Hopefully someone can assist. I currently have three notebooks setup. One is my main one and default notebook called "Personal", one is "Shared" so I can share my notes (shopping lists etc) and one called "Archive" which is a local notebook where i add notes that I can retrieve later if needed, but don't want to sync to avoid cluttering my syncronised notebooks, especially if I am accessing them on the go via a mobile.

What i am trying to do is setup a saved search which will allow me to only filter out the notes in the syncronised "Personal" and "Shared" notebooks. I know that you can used the -Tag:"name" to display all notes with a tag with the exception of the one called "name" for example. Can a similar saved search be created for notebooks?

[jbenson2 2,149]

No, Evernote does not allow a negative search for notebooks.

To get around this, you could tag all of your notes in the archived notebook with a tag called archive.

Easy to do - just select all the notes and assign the tag in bulk.

Then when you need to see the non-archived notes, run a search that includes -tag:archive

And every so often, (once a week or two), run a housecleaning search to be sure all the archive notes are tagged with archive.

notebook:Archive -tag:archive

[metroside 18]

Thanks @jbenson2. Implemented. I'll see how it goes. Thanks for your help.

[peterfmartin 221]

Why is it impossible to search "any: notebook:A notebook:B" to get all notes in either of those notebooks? Jefito, can you help me out here?

[jbenson2 2,149]

Why is it impossible to search "any: notebook:A notebook:B" to get all notes in either of those notebooks? Jefito, can you help me out here?

According to the Evernote API search grammar, the "any:" term has to be after the notebook selection.

Scope modifiers

First the notebook:[nb name], then

any: - If this expression is found at the beginning of the search (after the "notebook", if present), then the search will return a note that matches any of the other search terms. If this is not found, then the default behavior will be used: a note must match all of the search terms. This expression cannot be negated.

[spg SCOTT 736]

Why is it impossible to search "any: notebook:A notebook:B" to get all notes in either of those notebooks? Jefito, can you help me out here?

According to the Evernote API search grammar, the "any:" term has to be after the notebook selection.

Scope modifiers

First the notebook:[nb name], then

any: - If this expression is found at the beginning of the search (after the "notebook", if present), then the search will return a note that matches any of the other search terms. If this is not found, then the default behavior will be used: a note must match all of the search terms. This expression cannot be negated.

Also, another thing is that you can only use notebook: once.

notebook:[nb name] - will match notes in a notebook with the provided name. This must be the first term in the search. Name matching is case-insensitive. Since notebooks have exclusive relationships with notes, at most one notebook can be provided for the search.

[jefito 5,598]

Why is it impossible to search "any: notebook:A notebook:B" to get all notes in either of those notebooks? Jefito, can you help me out here?

jb and Scott are correct. Per the search grammar, a scope modifier (i.e. notebook:<notebook name>) may appear only at the beginning of a search, and there can only be one of them. There is a workaround, though: a stack name can be used for a notebook name in a "notebook:" term, so you can put notebooks into a stack and search all of them together. But that's probably not very convenient if you're going to need to do ad hoc multi-notebook searches.

Edit: correct way to search a stack is using the undocumented (to date) "stack:" search term.

[Kacey 3]

I also want the functionality wherein we can perform a search which shows up notes from two or more notebooks that we select.

[jefito 5,598]

If you are on Windows, you might want to try out the third-party BitQwik program, which can search multiple notebooks with a single query: http://www.bitqwik.com/. Its author, roschler, is also active in the forums here.