(Archived) Search Question: Any / All / And / Or / Not + Tags

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

Here is a question I think I know the answer to, but I thought I'd poke the collective New Year's Eve addled brain to confirm.

Let's say I want to find all notes that have both tag 1 and tag 2. This is impossible to do, right? Within Evernote, I would have to do a search for all notes that have tag 1 OR tag 2, right?

"tag:1 tag:2"

And, the obverse should see the same behavior. I cannot filter out notes that have both tag 1 and tag 2, but I can filter out notes with either tag 1 OR tag 2, right?

"-tag:1 -tag:2"

[gazumped 9,568]

Just ran a quick test which seemed to confirm your expectation - though look out for multi-character tags like "! today" and your placement of quotation marks.. not sure of my addle-factor today, but it's pretty high

[spg SCOTT 736]

tag:1 tag:2 should result in tag 1 and tag 2

For an OR search, you use the Any: operator.

SO, as I understand it, it defaults to AND searches. OR searches can be obtained with Any:

any: - If this expression is found at the beginning of the search (after the "notebook", if present), then the search will return a note that matches any of the other search terms. If this is not found, then the default behavior will be used: a note must match all of the search terms. This expression cannot be negated.

http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/local/chapters/search_grammar.php

[gazumped 9,568]

(Sigh) Yep, as expected addle-factor is pretty good; I missed the OR. FWIW an AND search or* exclusion works fine.

*techy pun intended...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

tag:1 tag:2 should result in tag 1 and tag 2

For an OR search, you use the Any: operator.

SO, as I understand it, it defaults to AND searches. OR searches can be obtained with Any:

any: - If this expression is found at the beginning of the search (after the "notebook", if present), then the search will return a note that matches any of the other search terms. If this is not found, then the default behavior will be used: a note must match all of the search terms. This expression cannot be negated.

http://dev.evernote....rch_grammar.php

I must admit, I am a little confused. Sorry. I am working with note content here instead of tags to make this easier for me. I have a notebook with four notes (https://www.evernote.com/pub/mayochristopher/search-test). Wouldn't an "any" search of qiang and ting turn up all 4? In my searches, I only get 2 results for "any" and a search for "all" is 0.

notebook:search-test any: qiang ting

[spg SCOTT 736]

It may be that I can only offer more confusion I'm afraid. It works as expected for me.

http://www.evernote.com/shard/s26/sh/89f7ac57-3621-4925-b5b1-f488d2bf930b/7b3a087324652fe22bba835fa02a532f

[GrumpyMonkey 4,314]

It may be that I can only offer more confusion I'm afraid. It works as expected for me.

http://www.evernote....bba835fa02a532f

I don't know what I was doing wrong... OK. It looks fine now. Let me mull this one over a bit more. Thanks for the advice!

[roschler 158]

Ah, sorry GrumpyMonkey. I didn't realize you had gone ahead and posted a thread on my question. I looked in the Dictionary (Wikipedia?) for the word "Proactive" and they had your picture.

I came to the same conclusion as Scott. The "any:" keyword does the job to find Notes that carry multiple tags (or other multiple constraints) and exclude only those notes that have the multiple constraints as opposed to only those notes that have only one constraint or the other. The fascinating thing about negation is that a search condition with multiple constraints that is bound logically by AND, inverts to OR when used as a filter.

Also, I was about to feel awkward about expressing such an arcane sentiment as that but I believe everyone on this thread, not just myself, has officially earned the title of "search nerd" so I am not alone.

Hopefully as George Carlin said, no club, or worse funny hats, are too follow!

-- roschler