(Archived) Fastest way to tag 3000+ notes

[alp2 0]

What's the fastest way to tag 3000+ notes?

1. Doing them one by one is way too slow. (plus I don't have time to tag them at the point of clipping)

2. Multi select is clunky as similar notes are not in sequence (plus evernote seems to jump around with multi-select and scrolling).

3. I can search for keywords and tag the search results (but this only works well where clippings have common search terms).

Any there any other faster ways?

Thanks in advance for your tips!

[jefito 5,589]

First, it's helpful to tell us which Evernote client (Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, etc.) you are using. They differ.

Second, you haven't said what anything about your note databae, its content type, whether notes are tagged at all yet, or what your tagging scheme entails.

There is no magical automatic way to tag any number of notes. You're going to have to work at it a bit. You're probably going to need to do it in segments, trying to get big chunks tagged in one shot by using keyword search, and working towards smaller subsets. Multi-select is almost certainly going to be a part of that process, but you can cut down your note lists using search; for example, if I am trying to tag a bunch of notes using tag "X", you can cut down the number of notes you are looking at using the search "-tag:X", which will filter out notes previous tagged with "X".

[alp2 0]

(i) I'm using the desktop, android (tablet and phone) and web clients - but desktop seems to be the fastest way. (Though I'd love a tablet-based desktop/surface style sorting mechanism to quickly 'flick' items into categories.)

(ii) The notes are on quite a few projects, plus home paperwork. I've got about 60 tags. I am balancing the time spent sorting versus the value of retrieval. The saved searches are very useful.

Many thanks for your answer and the '-tag' tip. In part my question is a check to see if I am missing any other tricks to make it a less onerous task.

[jefito 5,589]

Don't know any other tips off the top of my head; it's hard to know what might be handy -- it'd be more of a whatever seems to fit a specific question for me. So if you can ask specific questions, that's probably help lead to better answers. And, yeah, it's a pain to have to get everything organized, but hopefully once you've done that, you'll have a good frame work in which to add new content, and most importantly... find your stuff! There are some folks who have some good ideas for organization scheme that might be helpful, too -- my organization tends to be more informal, though it works for me.

This page from the Knowledge Base on advanced search operators might be helpful: https://support.evernote.com/link/portal/16051/16058/Article/535/Using-Evernote-s-advanced-search-operators

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Another method several of us use is temporary/work notebooks. If I'm working on or researching a topic, I'll create a new notebook for that topic/project. IE, I recently upgraded the OS on my main computer. So I create a new notebook for that & plop all my notes regarding the upgrade such as a screen cap of installed apps on my old computer (so I can have a quick reminder what I need to install on the upgraded OS), settings of programs on the old OS (backup settings - which folders, the drive letters assigned to all my physical drives & encrypted containers, etc). Then when I'm done, I can create the tag to replace the notebook name (IE "201209xx - upgrading computer OS"), select all the notes in the notebook, apply the tag, move the notes to the "Computer notebook" & then delete the temporary/work notebook that is no longer needed.

[gazumped 11,667]

We've said before that 'gardening' your database is more or less a full-time job - it's impossible to get everything right first time, or even the second time; and I find tags get added to or changed every time I search for something.

The one thing I can suggest (but check that this still works first - I haven't used it for a while) is to enter several tags into one field. If you're batch tagging, keep a note open with any multiple tags you're using as single-line entries - "level1,level2,level3" (without the quotes) for example. When you copy and paste the three CSV tags into one box Evernote will magically create three tags for the price of one.

[jefito 5,589]

@gazumped: re 'gardening': Don't you know that 'curating' is the hot buzzword of the day?

[gazumped 11,667]

@gazumped: re 'gardening': Don't you know that 'curating' is the hot buzzword of the day?

Sorry. Missed that memo. Evernoted!

[alp2 0]

I will give the approaches a try and report back. Many thanks for all your help!