(Archived) Searching in a Specific Stack

[Josh WCSP 6]

I have my notes divided into three stacks that represent different areas of research I'm conducting. I'm able to filter individual stacks with tags but searching for a phrase always returns results from all three stacks.

In version five is there a way to search an individual stack?

Alternately is there a saved search syntax that will allow the searching of multiple notebooks?

Thanks for helping!

[jefito 5,598]

Yes. Use the stack: search term in your search (should appear at the beginning of your search string; works the same way as notebook:), e.g. "stack:MyStack"

[Josh WCSP 6]

Yes. Use the stack: search term in your search (should appear at the beginning of your search string; works the same way as notebook:), e.g. "stack:MyStack"

Thank you for your prompt reply! That was exactly what I was looking for.

Side note to anyone else having issues with this. My stack is titled "North America"

Searching for stack:North America didn't return results but stack:"North America" with quotes did. I suspect the space between North and America is why the search wasn't working earlier.

[jefito 5,598]

I suspect the space between North and America is why the search wasn't working earlier.

Correct. The Knowledge Base article (http://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#/article/23245321) doesn't cover such niceties; you might be interested in seeing the full search grammar documention in all its glory: http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/cloud/chapters/search_grammar.php

[jbenson2 2,149]

Side note to anyone else having issues with this. My stack is titled "North America"

Searching for stack:North America didn't return results but stack:"North America" with quotes did. I suspect the space between North and America is why the search wasn't working earlier.

To avoid this issue, all of my multi-word notebooks and stacks have a hyphen to fool Evernote into thinking it is just one word.

Example: North-America

That allows me to search more easily without the quote marks. And it makes my naming convention more consistent and easier to remember.

[jbushnell1 15]

Am I wrong in remembering that in Evernote 3.x (for Mac at least) that Evernote would default to searching a specific stack if you had selected it in the left-hand pane (which listed all the notebooks and stacks)? I'm going to miss that functionality as it's tedious to type stack:"name of stack" every time. I might feel differently if you could access individual stacks from the "Add Search Option" dropdown in the Search menu...

[jefito 5,598]

You can typically filter by stack via the UI, dunno if it's in the latest Mac version, but on the Windows side, you just click on the stack in the notebook list of the left-hand pane.

[Mike Wood 139]

@jbushnell1 It certainly does this in the Windows client and I consider this as one of the key powers of EN. What it actually does, when you click in the list on the left, is start building a search string and you see it forming below the search box. Which you can then save in the syntax described above.

[jbushnell1 15]

As of 5.0 (for Mac), the notebook list on the left is now converted to "Shortcuts" and "Recent Notes." I have a mix of notebooks and stacks in the Shortcuts list, which is fine. And if I'm clicked on a notebook ("Debt" in this case) I can begin to build a search string where I have an option to search "Everything" or just that notebook (it defaults to Everything, which would not be my preference, but whatever):

...but if I'm clicked on the stack ("Index" in this case), it again searches everything by default and gives me no clickable option to search only that stack.

Sad!

[jbushnell1 15]

As a kludge I created a saved search ("stack:index") which appears in the search drop-down now, more-or-less solving my problem, but I still miss the old functionality, which allowed you to search in the stack (or notebook) you were in just by default, without having to do any additional clicking. Maybe in the future we'll have the option to control the default behavior in Preferences?

[Mike Wood 139]

I believe drill down using multiple TAGs is similarly affected. It seems to have been rewritten by someone who didn't recognise/see the previous functionality.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

As a kludge I created a saved search ("stack:index") which appears in the search drop-down now, more-or-less solving my problem, but I still miss the old functionality, which allowed you to search in the stack (or notebook) you were in just by default, without having to do any additional clicking. Maybe in the future we'll have the option to control the default behavior in Preferences?

You can also use a text expander. I'm PC, but find it more handy to use a text expander than saved searches.