(Archived) Why should I use multiple notebooks?

[kiwox 1]

Why should I use multiple notebooks with Evernote? Since I always use the search functionality and tags to find the note I want, using multiple notebooks doesn't seem to offer any advantage. Am I missing something?

Addendum: With a Premium account I agree it makes sense to have multiple notebooks, as if you have only one it could fast become too big to sync to a mobile device...

Thanks!

Chris

[kiwox 1]

Some reading around just now clarified a lot for me. Particularly:

• http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/21166-how-do-you-organize-your-notebooks/
  
• http://nerdgap.com/31-evernote-tricks-for-newbies-who-want-to-be-ninjas/
  

I've now updated my Evernote to have the following notebooks:

• @Inbox - the default, so that any unfinished go here and I know where to look to add keywords, tags or check the OCR
  
• Main - everything else
  
• Shared - a publically available notebook for sharing with others
  
• Offline - crucial information for syncing to my mobile devices (e.g. passport number etc)
  

Thoughts?

Chris

[jefito 5,589]

At least one other case, for Evernote desktop clients (Mac and Windows): if you want to have a collection of notes that are not synced to the Evernote servers, Premium users can create "local" notebooks for this purpose.

[May 268]

I got a similar setup as well. I also have Notebook "Attachments" for notes with large files, large images etc. it's basically the same concept as "offline" notebook, only the other way around, I.e. all my notebooks are offline notebooks on mobile, except the "attachments" one.

[brentbs 7]

I have 20 or so notebooks, they all have their different purpose. My default notebook is one I use for work, I have one for personal stuff, a notebook for interesting stuff I find on the internet that I want to keep, a notebook for Evernote Food and food related things, I have a "Filing Cabinet" Notebook stack where I scanned and digitized my entire filing cabinet there are multiple notebooks for the different things I had in there. I then use tags for things such as projects or topics in those projects. This way I can quickly find a collection of notes within a notebook (For example- the work notebook has over 1200 notes in it. I use tags to take 20 notes and assign them to a specific project/task I was working on)

It's just a way to keep things split up, I don't want my personal notes in my work notes. At work I can leave only the work notebook open and so if anyone were to come across my screen with EN open, they wouldn't see anything personal mixed in there.

[kiwox 1]

Nice, thanks for your thoughts - I hadn't considered the desktop client situation, or flipping the attachments/offline around

[Candid 167]

For syncing to mobile device, I have a notebook called "mobile." I rarely keep more than 20 notes in it and it contains those in all 3 mobile devices I use. Obviously if your job requires you to have 100s of notes on call all the time, my solution won't work for you. But for me having that one notebook that I can move things into and out of that I must have on my mobile devices is pretty workable.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Why should you use multiple notebooks?

There isn't a whole lot you should / shouldn't do in Evernote, but you *can* do just fine with one notebook and no tags (http://www.princeton.edu/~cmayo/evernote-organization.html). And, if you want to do some of the stuff mentioned by previous posters, then you can add notebooks for those.