(Archived) Negation of notebook searches not working?

[starkos 16]

I opened a bug report for this already, but wanted to ask here in case someone had a workaround: it seems that you can't negate notebook searches in 5.0.4. The query:

-notebook:Logbook

Returns ONLY notes from "Logbook" instead of all notes EXCEPT those in "Logbook".

[jefito 5,589]

You cannot negate notebook searches in any Evernote client. This is not a bug, but by by design. See the Evernote search grammar documentation: http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/cloud/chapters/search_grammar.php. The notebook: scope modifier is non-negatable.

[jbenson2 2,147]

There a few ways to get around the negative notebook search restriction. I have a notebook that only contains political web clippings. I make sure that all those notes are tagged with Z. To suppress those notes, I include -tag:z in my search.

Also, BitQwik recently added Multiple Notebook support.

You can do queries like “Show me notes in my Robotics, Science, or Electronics notebooks.”

You can also exclude notes by the Notebook they’re in. For example “Show me notes I created today. Leave out notes in my Robotics or Science notebooks”.

The only hiccup I have encountered is when I a run a search that results in hundreds of results.

The more precise the search is, the better the results are.

[starkos 16]

You cannot negate notebook searches in any Evernote client. This is not a bug, but by by design. See the Evernote search grammar documentation: http://dev.evernote....rch_grammar.php. The notebook: scope modifier is non-negatable.

Weird, could have sworn I'd done that in the past.

That said, just because it has always been that way doesn't mean that it isn't a bug.

[spg SCOTT 736]

Not quite, multiple notebooks doesn't work either.

From the same page:

Since notebooks have exclusive relationships with notes, at most one notebook can be provided for the search.

[jefito 5,589]

That said, just because it has always been that way doesn't mean that it isn't a bug.

Bugs are variances from the design. But this property of Evernote search is by design as the linked page indicates -- it's explicit in the search grammar that notebooks are not negatable. So it's really not a bug. Now you may disagree with the design (and I have a few issues with the search grammar too), but that's a different matter...

JBenson's tag solution is a good workaround for this issue. BitQwik may or may not support multiple notebooks (I can't remember), but it's definitely worth checking out for Windows users (I realize that you're not).

[starkos 16]

That said, just because it has always been that way doesn't mean that it isn't a bug.

Sorry, I should have put an emoticon after that. Here you go: