(Archived) Rethinking My EN/Dropbox Philosophy & An EN Search Question

[TechBarber 99]

We've all seen this posted on here a hundred (okay, a thousand) times before.What is better or what's the difference between Evernote and Dropbox?

The general consensus is that they both do different things, which I agree with - but here's the problem. When I look back at the past year's activity, I can't recall the last time I used Dropbox for anything, aside from using it to store my entire iPhoto library. Everything else has been going into Evernote; PDF's, Excel & Word documents etc.

This leads me to two questions:

1) I'm curious to know if there are any large files (say > 15 or 20MB) in my Evernote account that should really be in Dropbox. I've gone through all the Evernote search operators that I can find and I don't see anything that let's you find notes with files over a certain size. Is this possible?

2) I personally agree with the "Evernote is for notes, and Dropbox is for larger files" philosophy. Having said that, where do you draw the line between the two? Let's say you get a PDF that's 2MB. Dropbox or Evernote? My thought at the moment is to put that file into EN because Evernote searches the body of the PDF and it's a bit easier to find quickly with my filing system. The trouble with this philosophy is, what becomes of a 10MB or 20MB PDF when you get one. Using the "big files go into Dropbox" idea, it would go there, but after a few months with this system you'd get to the point where you're not sure where you saved a particular PDF --> Evernote or Dropbox.

I struggle with the fine line between the two services sometimes.

[Mike Wood 139]

@TechBarber just switch to list view and sort by note size?

[TechBarber 99]

But of course! I never use list view so that never crossed my mind.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

We've all seen this posted on here a hundred (okay, a thousand) times before.What is better or what's the difference between Evernote and Dropbox?

The general consensus is that they both do different things, which I agree with - but here's the problem. When I look back at the past year's activity, I can't recall the last time I used Dropbox for anything, aside from using it to store my entire iPhoto library. Everything else has been going into Evernote; PDF's, Excel & Word documents etc.

This leads me to two questions:

1) I'm curious to know if there are any large files (say > 15 or 20MB) in my Evernote account that should really be in Dropbox. I've gone through all the Evernote search operators that I can find and I don't see anything that let's you find notes with files over a certain size. Is this possible?

2) I personally agree with the "Evernote is for notes, and Dropbox is for larger files" philosophy. Having said that, where do you draw the line between the two? Let's say you get a PDF that's 2MB. Dropbox or Evernote? My thought at the moment is to put that file into EN because Evernote searches the body of the PDF and it's a bit easier to find quickly with my filing system. The trouble with this philosophy is, what becomes of a 10MB or 20MB PDF when you get one. Using the "big files go into Dropbox" idea, it would go there, but after a few months with this system you'd get to the point where you're not sure where you saved a particular PDF --> Evernote or Dropbox.

I struggle with the fine line between the two services sometimes.

Hi.

(1) List View > click on the Size column to arrange by size.

(2) Text = Evernote. All attachments go in Dropbox. I OCR PDFs myself, and strip out the text from PDFs (Automator helps here) so that the content of PDF files still gets searched in Evernote. If I have to view it in PDF form, I can easily find it in Dropbox. I have only a handful of attachments in Evernote right now, and those will be removed sometime next month. I recently "textified" my Evernote account and went from a 25 GB database to one under 100MB. Here are my thoughts about this ( ).

[TechBarber 99]

We've all seen this posted on here a hundred (okay, a thousand) times before.What is better or what's the difference between Evernote and Dropbox?

The general consensus is that they both do different things, which I agree with - but here's the problem. When I look back at the past year's activity, I can't recall the last time I used Dropbox for anything, aside from using it to store my entire iPhoto library. Everything else has been going into Evernote; PDF's, Excel & Word documents etc.

This leads me to two questions:

1) I'm curious to know if there are any large files (say > 15 or 20MB) in my Evernote account that should really be in Dropbox. I've gone through all the Evernote search operators that I can find and I don't see anything that let's you find notes with files over a certain size. Is this possible?

2) I personally agree with the "Evernote is for notes, and Dropbox is for larger files" philosophy. Having said that, where do you draw the line between the two? Let's say you get a PDF that's 2MB. Dropbox or Evernote? My thought at the moment is to put that file into EN because Evernote searches the body of the PDF and it's a bit easier to find quickly with my filing system. The trouble with this philosophy is, what becomes of a 10MB or 20MB PDF when you get one. Using the "big files go into Dropbox" idea, it would go there, but after a few months with this system you'd get to the point where you're not sure where you saved a particular PDF --> Evernote or Dropbox.

I struggle with the fine line between the two services sometimes.

Hi.

(1) List View > click on the Size column to arrange by size.

(2) Text = Evernote. All attachments go in Dropbox. I OCR PDFs myself, and strip out the text from PDFs (Automator helps here) so that the content of PDF files still gets searched in Evernote. If I have to view it in PDF form, I can easily find it in Dropbox. I have only a handful of attachments in Evernote right now, and those will be removed sometime next month. I recently "textified" my Evernote account and went from a 25 GB database to one under 100MB. Here are my thoughts about this (http://discussion.ev...ote-experience/ ).

Good post GM. One thing I'm proud to say - I've never been an EN "completist". I don't have a lot of stuff that MUST be scanned. I sometimes get the impression there are people on this forum who's scan-to-use ratio is a little high which is to say, I get the feeling some people scan EVERYTHING just in case they might someday, maybe, possibly need it. I don't bother.

ANYWAY - so let's entertain your "no attachment" idea for EN. I don't quite understand what you mean by "stripping text" from PDF's and how you make the PDF content searchable in Dropbox. Can you elaborate a bit?

[TechBarber 99]

I also like the idea in EN that when you select a file (e.g. PDF) you can quickly see a preview of the contents. In Dropbox you have to open the file to see the contents.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

We've all seen this posted on here a hundred (okay, a thousand) times before.What is better or what's the difference between Evernote and Dropbox?

The general consensus is that they both do different things, which I agree with - but here's the problem. When I look back at the past year's activity, I can't recall the last time I used Dropbox for anything, aside from using it to store my entire iPhoto library. Everything else has been going into Evernote; PDF's, Excel & Word documents etc.

This leads me to two questions:

1) I'm curious to know if there are any large files (say > 15 or 20MB) in my Evernote account that should really be in Dropbox. I've gone through all the Evernote search operators that I can find and I don't see anything that let's you find notes with files over a certain size. Is this possible?

2) I personally agree with the "Evernote is for notes, and Dropbox is for larger files" philosophy. Having said that, where do you draw the line between the two? Let's say you get a PDF that's 2MB. Dropbox or Evernote? My thought at the moment is to put that file into EN because Evernote searches the body of the PDF and it's a bit easier to find quickly with my filing system. The trouble with this philosophy is, what becomes of a 10MB or 20MB PDF when you get one. Using the "big files go into Dropbox" idea, it would go there, but after a few months with this system you'd get to the point where you're not sure where you saved a particular PDF --> Evernote or Dropbox.

I struggle with the fine line between the two services sometimes.

Hi.

(1) List View > click on the Size column to arrange by size.

(2) Text = Evernote. All attachments go in Dropbox. I OCR PDFs myself, and strip out the text from PDFs (Automator helps here) so that the content of PDF files still gets searched in Evernote. If I have to view it in PDF form, I can easily find it in Dropbox. I have only a handful of attachments in Evernote right now, and those will be removed sometime next month. I recently "textified" my Evernote account and went from a 25 GB database to one under 100MB. Here are my thoughts about this (http://discussion.ev...ote-experience/ ).

Good post GM. One thing I'm proud to say - I've never been an EN "completist". I don't have a lot of stuff that MUST be scanned. I sometimes get the impression there are people on this forum who's scan-to-use ratio is a little high which is to say, I get the feeling some people scan EVERYTHING just in case they might someday, maybe, possibly need it. I don't bother.

ANYWAY - so let's entertain your "no attachment" idea for EN. I don't quite understand what you mean by "stripping text" from PDF's and how you make the PDF content searchable in Dropbox. Can you elaborate a bit?

I am still a completist. All of my PDFs (receipts, etc.) go into Dropbox, though.

As for the PDFs. First, OCR the PDF. Then, use Automator to extract the text from the PDF into a text file. Finally, drag this text file into the Evernote icon. Done!

Dropbox cannot search the content of files. However, the text you put into Evernote is searchable. Let's say you have a PDF for the lease to an apartment. You OCR that, extract the text, and put that into Evernote. Then, whenever you run a search in Evernote, the note containing the text from this PDF will appear. Usually, this is sufficient -- you don't need the original formatting, letterhead, etc. However, if there is a word that didn't get OCR'd correctly, or you want to see the signature, you can go to Dropbox, locate the original PDF there, and open it.

For all of this, it helps to have a consistent naming method (http://www.princeton...ganization.html).

This method of only using text in Evernote has a couple of other nice benefits. Offline searches on the iPad of offline notebooks turn up the correct results. And, the location of the words in the notes is conveniently highlighted on the iPad. You cannot do this with PDFs. In my case, I have a couple thousand books and journal articles "textified" and in my Evernote account. Hundreds of thousands of pages of text, but I can find exactly the words I want inside of them.

[TechBarber 99]

I see. It's basically creating a "note-link" between EN and DB.

So I assume if a PDF is text and images you'd just find the file in EN and if needed, open it in Dropbox?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

I see. It's basically creating a "note-link" between EN and DB.

So I assume if a PDF is text and images you'd just find the file in EN and if needed, open it in Dropbox?

In my case, there is no note link. Just two versions of the same file. The massive PDF original in Dropbox, and the tiny text copy in EN. They have the same name, so finding their doppelgangers is no big deal.

Yes. If a PDF has photographs without text (so there is nothing to OCR), then I would have to open the PDF to view the images.

[TechBarber 99]

I see. It's basically creating a "note-link" between EN and DB.

So I assume if a PDF is text and images you'd just find the file in EN and if needed, open it in Dropbox?

In my case, there is no note link. Just two versions of the same file. The massive PDF original in Dropbox, and the tiny text copy in EN. They have the same name, so finding their dopplegangers is no big deal.

Yes. If a PDF has photographs without text (so there is nothing to OCR), then I would have to open the PDF to view the images.

Right - no actual link, but a way of finding the two files quickly.

I'm going to have to take a close look at this. For example, let's say I have an eBook about blogging. Right now it's in EN and it's tagged with two tags:

1) eBooks

2) Blog Tips

If I decide to move this eBook into Dropbox, I'd probably put it in a folder called "eBooks". However, it's easy to see how a system like this could get away from me. In two years time I'd probably go into my "Blog" folder in Dropbox and start looking for that eBook, but it won't be there - it would be in the "eBooks" folder. EN allows me to tag that file with both "blog" and "eBook", and quickly view the contents of multiple files without having to open them.

Your solution of stripping the text out of a PDF would help because I could find the note in EN and then grab it in DB, but it seems like a lot of work keeping the two files (EN and DB) in check. I'm far too lazy

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

I see. It's basically creating a "note-link" between EN and DB.

So I assume if a PDF is text and images you'd just find the file in EN and if needed, open it in Dropbox?

In my case, there is no note link. Just two versions of the same file. The massive PDF original in Dropbox, and the tiny text copy in EN. They have the same name, so finding their dopplegangers is no big deal.

Yes. If a PDF has photographs without text (so there is nothing to OCR), then I would have to open the PDF to view the images.

Right - no actual link, but a way of finding the two files quickly.

I'm going to have to take a close look at this. For example, let's say I have an eBook about blogging. Right now it's in EN and it's tagged with two tags:

1) eBooks

2) Blog Tips

If I decide to move this eBook into Dropbox, I'd probably put it in a folder called "eBooks". However, it's easy to see how a system like this could get away from me. In two years time I'd probably go into my "Blog" folder in Dropbox and start looking for that eBook, but it won't be there - it would be in the "eBooks" folder. EN allows me to tag that file with both "blog" and "eBook", and quickly view the contents of multiple files without having to open them.

Your solution of stripping the text out of a PDF would help because I could find the note in EN and then grab it in DB, but it seems like a lot of work keeping the two files (EN and DB) in check. I'm far too lazy

If EN had offline/online syncing for notebooks on the desktop, it would be a no-brainer. However, it doesn't have this, and may never get it, so I decided that rather than buying a computer I don't need just to handle my ever-expanding Evernote database (at the rate I was going, I would already be past 30 GB by now -- more than 1/3 of my entire local drive), it made more sense (for me) to just textify everything. So far, the transition has been a smooth one, because I only use a few folders in Dropbox.

I have kind of a simple system. "Archives" for completed projects of my own, "Documents" for current ones, and "Library" for stuff written by other people. The Archives has no subfolders, documents has subfolders for each month (I am currently working in 121101) and subfolders within it as needed., and Library has no sub folders. If the Evernote note I find is labeled 121009, then I first look in archives for it, and go to documents (inside the 121001 folder) if I don't find it there.