(Archived) Using evernote without tags, notebooks or any organization at all?

[Chmedly 1]

I'm new to evernote. I signed up a couple years ago when a friend shared a notebook with me but I didn't see it as anything different than google docs or dropbox. I recently found it again when I was looking for a final fix to my receipt management issues. I am blown away with the OCR indexing system. It's awesome. The thing I'm now wondering about is why organize evernote? I've been reading blogs about "spending time when I get home" to organize notes and notebooks and I'm just wondering, why? It seems that everything I put in can be found via a search of some sort. I do understand the use of notebooks for sharing info with others but why can't everything else just go into this wonderful bottom less circular organizer? Any thoughts?

[jbenson2 2,147]

Evernote is very flexibile. You can throw everything into Evernote with no organization and probably find 75% to 80% of the stuff you are looking for.

Or spend some time reviewing the posts on this forum to get a better understanding why Tags, Structured Titles, Notebooks, and keywords all enhance the Evernote experience.

Here are some specific examples that can be applied to other use cases.

Try to search for "Barack Obama" in web clippings. Some will have him listed as Barack Obama, others as President Obama, others as POTUS, or even just the White House. A tag for Obama will bring up all these variations. A raw search will not. And if you try to narrow the choice from the full name to just his last name, you start bringing in search results for Michelle Obama.

Take another politician - the late "Moammar Gaddafi". A raw search for his name will not bring up all the different spellings for his name (depending on the publication's preferred spelling). I have seen 5 different spellings.

"Moammar Gaddafi"

"Muammar Gaddafi"

"Moammar Gadhafi"

"Muammar el-Qaddafi"

"Muammar al-Gaddafi"

Search for one version and miss the other versions.

Search for the tag and nail all the versions.

Or try to find the 6 most recent cell phone bills shown in chronological order

Or try to find Italian restaurants in the North End of Boston.

etc.

It comes down to how much accuracy you want in your searches vs the amount of upfront time required.

[May 268]

You can. In Evernote all notes are searchable, so to some extent everything is always organised for searching by default. Any additional organisation is optional.

Reasons for any additional organisation:

1)to organise for search by adding more content (tags, keywords in title/body, etc.) to your notes to make them easier to find by searching

2)To organise for browsing by manually arranging things into some browsable structure.

That's pretty much it. Everything is just some variation and/or combination of this.

[megsaint 441]

Everyone is different. I think it's really just that simple. Different people like to do things in different ways. The way I see it, one of the really nifty things about Evernote is that it's pretty flexible. It works for you and it works for people who like to tag, arrange their tags in hierarchies, sort their notebooks and so forth.

[May 268]

It comes down to how much accuracy you want in your searches vs the amount of upfront time required.

Well said.

[Chmedly 1]

Ok, I was afraid that there was something about EN that I was missing but based on these responses I think I get it.

I have come to the conclusion (especially after the last decade just snuck right on by) that life is too short and complicated to spend it organizing things that I may or may not ever need. Unless that's what makes you happy.

btw, I suspect I will eventually start to use tags for certain types of content. And I think it may take a few more months to see how I actually use this system.

Thanks.

[roschler 158]

Evernote is very flexibile. You can throw everything into Evernote with no organization and probably find 75% to 80% of the stuff you are looking for.

Or spend some time reviewing the posts on this forum to get a better understanding why Tags, Structured Titles, Notebooks, and keywords all enhance the Evernote experience.

Here are some specific examples that can be applied to other use cases.

Try to search for "Barack Obama" in web clippings. Some will have him listed as Barack Obama, others as President Obama, others as POTUS, or even just the White House. A tag for Obama will bring up all these variations. A raw search will not. And if you try to narrow the choice from the full name to just his last name, you start bringing in search results for Michelle Obama.

Take another politician - the late "Moammar Gaddafi". A raw search for his name will not bring up all the different spellings for his name (depending on the publication's preferred spelling). I have seen 5 different spellings.

"Moammar Gaddafi"

"Muammar Gaddafi"

"Moammar Gadhafi"

"Muammar el-Qaddafi"

"Muammar al-Gaddafi"

Search for one version and miss the other versions.

Search for the tag and nail all the versions.

Or try to find the 6 most recent cell phone bills shown in chronological order

Or try to find Italian restaurants in the North End of Boston.

etc.

It comes down to how much accuracy you want in your searches vs the amount of upfront time required.

Hey John,

Pardon the the thread drive-by, but you've hit upon a topic close to my heart, "fuzzy text matching". You're also the perfect person to ask this since you are a TagHunter user.

Given the pitfalls of phrases like the ones used in your post that are frequently misspelled or phrased improperly, do you think people would be interested in a search in BitQwik that used the fuzzy matching tech that TagHunter has to search the body of notes? I never considered it before because it would be a slow linear search since you can't use Evernote's database indices to do this kind of search.

Asked more concretely, even if it took let's say 5 to 10 minutes to search a note store with thousands of notes, do you think there would be a lot of interest in it? Or would the lengthy time delay in getting search results outweigh the benefits?

Note, if you combined any search conditions at all that restricted the potential scope of the search, by date or tags for example, the search would be drastically faster.

-- roschler

[jbenson2 2,147]

Hey John,

Pardon the the thread drive-by, but you've hit upon a topic close to my heart, "fuzzy text matching". You're also the perfect person to ask this since you are a TagHunter user.

Given the pitfalls of phrases like the ones used in your post that frequently misspelled or phrases improperly, do you think people would be interested in a search in BitQwik that used the fuzzy matching tech that TagHunter has to search the body of notes? I never considered it before because it would be a slow linear search since you can't use Evernote's database indices to do this kind of search.

Asked more concretely, even if it took let's say 5 to 10 minutes to search a note store with thousands of notes, do you think there would be a lot of interest in it? Or would the lengthy time delay in getting search results outweigh the benefits?

Note, if you combined any search conditions at all that restricted the potential scope of the search, by date or tags for example, the search would be drastically faster.

-- roschler

Speaking on a personal level, the most important feature in Evernote is a combination of speed and accuracy. That probably explains why I put more effort into structuring and tagging my notes upfront.

So, I would not be a good candidate for fuzzy logic searches. I'm up to 20,000+ notes now. A 5 to 10 minute search would be too long for me.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Evernote is very flexibile. You can throw everything into Evernote with no organization and probably find 75% to 80% of the stuff you are looking for.

Or spend some time reviewing the posts on this forum to get a better understanding why Tags, Structured Titles, Notebooks, and keywords all enhance the Evernote experience.

Here are some specific examples that can be applied to other use cases.

Try to search for "Barack Obama" in web clippings. Some will have him listed as Barack Obama, others as President Obama, others as POTUS, or even just the White House. A tag for Obama will bring up all these variations. A raw search will not. And if you try to narrow the choice from the full name to just his last name, you start bringing in search results for Michelle Obama.

Take another politician - the late "Moammar Gaddafi". A raw search for his name will not bring up all the different spellings for his name (depending on the publication's preferred spelling). I have seen 5 different spellings.

"Moammar Gaddafi"

"Muammar Gaddafi"

"Moammar Gadhafi"

"Muammar el-Qaddafi"

"Muammar al-Gaddafi"

Search for one version and miss the other versions.

Search for the tag and nail all the versions.

Or try to find the 6 most recent cell phone bills shown in chronological order

Or try to find Italian restaurants in the North End of Boston.

etc.

It comes down to how much accuracy you want in your searches vs the amount of upfront time required.

Hey John,

Pardon the the thread drive-by, but you've hit upon a topic close to my heart, "fuzzy text matching". You're also the perfect person to ask this since you are a TagHunter user.

Given the pitfalls of phrases like the ones used in your post that are frequently misspelled or phrased improperly, do you think people would be interested in a search in BitQwik that used the fuzzy matching tech that TagHunter has to search the body of notes? I never considered it before because it would be a slow linear search since you can't use Evernote's database indices to do this kind of search.

Asked more concretely, even if it took let's say 5 to 10 minutes to search a note store with thousands of notes, do you think there would be a lot of interest in it? Or would the lengthy time delay in getting search results outweigh the benefits?

Note, if you combined any search conditions at all that restricted the potential scope of the search, by date or tags for example, the search would be drastically faster.

-- roschler

It sounds like an interesting idea to me, and one that I imagine would be worth trying out, but I don't know how much it would help me if it took more than a few seconds. If you have an opportunity, you might want to check out HoudahSpot (http://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/), which I use to do fuzzy searches of my Evernote account. It's pretty nice and quite fast, though I don't know enough about the details of how it works.

[roschler 158]

Thank you John and GrumpyMonkey for the feedback and thanks GrumpyMonkey for the HoudahSpot link!

-- roschler