(Archived) Feature Request: Expiring Notes

[mrfjong 3]

I am missing a feature in Evernote that addresses temporary engagements when it comes to notetaking;

In my work I jot down info all the time and it is only interesting for me to keep this information in a shorter timeframe.

 

So I am missing a feature where I can set a "Lifespan" on a note (i.e. 1month, 1year,5years)

[Metrodon 2,184]

This has come up before and I think the consensus was that Evernote won't 'auto-delete' your content.

[mrfjong 3]

While I don't know the contents of the previous discussion I believe this isn't really an auto-delete feature.  It is a scheduled delete where the user has specified a controlled delete. 

Additionally, the notes would not have to be completely deleted;

It is sufficient for them to be moved to a different location or to change the status in a way the make them not show up in search results/all notes category/clutter the views and so on.  

 

So for example a fixed category called "Dead Notes" or whatever that is no longer indexed or searchable globally.

However, one would be able to find old notes manually by looking through the folder and one could also delete the notes forever from inside the folder. 

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/33572-auto-expired-notes-if-not-suggest-to-add/

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/15352-new-feature-request-auto-delete-option-on-notes/

[Amie Harpe Longstreet 12]

Hi mrjfong,

 

I personally do not have a need for this functionality.  I agree with the comments of others, and those in the posts shared by BurgersNFries that an automated delete would be dangerous.  However, I have an idea.  I work in the pharmaceutical industry and records management is an important compliance requirement.  After records (including hard copy and electronic data) reach a certain date, they need to be physically destroyed unless there is a legal or tax hold on the documents, in which case it would be a criminal offense to destroy the documents. 
Every year in February we have a "records retention day" and we have to sign a statement confirming that we have reviewed all of our records and destroyed those that are eligible for destruction. 

 

This is just an idea to consider if you are concerned about deleting temporary documents to unclutter your Evernote repository.  Define categories for how long you want to retain certain documents (i.e. a retention schedule); based on your requirements description might be 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 3 years, etc.  You could assign these tags to documents that you only needed temporarily.  Then you could create saved search for each of the retention schedules such as tag:30days,-updated:30-days.  I believe this search would find any notes tagged with "30days" and the updated field more that 30 days ago.  Then you could review each note to confirm if you want to delete it or not. 

 

This is not automated and would require your periodic review, but I personally think this would be better than an automated deletion of documents.  I hope this gives you some ideas to consider.

 

Amie

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Great idea Amie! Or, at the end of the title just put xweek, xmonth, xyear. Every once in a while do a search for intitle:xweek to see notes marked this way, and delete them if they are past their due date, or drag them into an archive folder.

In my case, I don't even bother. Unimportant notes will gradually make their way down the list, and there is no benefit to deleting them, so I just let them hang around.

[mrfjong 3]

(Hello Amie, and thank you for the constructive thinking Your work-around suggestion would probably work I think)

 

However: 

I am not sure why a feature that simply moves notes that has expired (after a user-specified timeframe)

into a folder where they are left out of global searches and the 'All Notes'-folder view would be so "dangerous"?

 

They would not be truly lost and you could still have a separate search field within the folder containing the expired notes.

This way you could retrieve info from expired notes if you really needed to, but at the same time these expired notes would not turn up in global searches or in the 'All Notes'-view. 

 

I don't really want personal notes from 10 years back that are now irrelevant or maybe even compromising to my friends or myself (for the sake of the argument)

to be quickly accessible and viewable in my current everyday searches or in the 'All Notes' folder which one frequently traverses in day-to-day usage at work

(where many people more often than not shares their screen with others via projectors in meeting rooms etc). 

 

Another point is - cleaning up my notes a long time after they were created is really difficult because I have notes that I don't even know why I created, what they are for, or even what they mean. 

The argument here is that it is much easier to evaluate a notes relevancy and time of validity at creation than it is to make this evaluation in hindsight.  

If I periodically can look superficially and briefly through an 'Expired Notes' folder and then just flush it, it saves me ALOT of time.   

 

So if no-one can come up with a real and valid concern, I think such a feature at least deserves a new chance and being discussed further.  

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

(Hello Amie, and thank you for the constructive thinking Your work-around suggestion would probably work I think)

 

However: 

I am not sure why a feature that simply moves notes that has expired (after a user-specified timeframe)

into a folder where they are left out of global searches and the 'All Notes'-folder view would be so "dangerous"?

 

They would not be truly lost and you could still have a separate search field within the folder containing the expired notes.

This way you could retrieve info from expired notes if you really needed to, but at the same time these expired notes would not turn up in global searches or in the 'All Notes'-view. 

 

I don't really want personal notes from 10 years back that are now irrelevant or maybe even compromising to my friends or myself (for the sake of the argument)

to be quickly accessible and viewable in my current everyday searches or in the 'All Notes' folder which one frequently traverses in day-to-day usage at work

(where many people more often than not shares their screen with others via projectors in meeting rooms etc). 

 

Another point is - cleaning up my notes a long time after they were created is really difficult because I have notes that I don't even know why I created, what they are for, or even what they mean. 

The argument here is that it is much easier to evaluate a notes relevancy and time of validity at creation than it is to make this evaluation in hindsight.  

If I periodically can look superficially and briefly through an 'Expired Notes' folder and then just flush it, it saves me ALOT of time.   

 

So if no-one can come up with a real and valid concern, I think such a feature at least deserves a new chance and being discussed further.  

 

Hi. I don't have any valid concerns. If Evernote implement this, then that is perfectly fine with me. My main point is that Evernote does pretty well without these automated features, and it does not seem worthwhile for Evernote to devote its resources to something unnecessary (in my opinion). After all, how many people do you know who want things automatically moved around their account?

 

It is kind of like your email account -- you rarely delete stuff (if you are me). At best, you might archive it. After all, it doesn't hurt anything for it to be there, and it will move out of view on its own accord. The main difference here is that Evernote has an incredible search, so you can filter out everything if you would like. 

 

For example, you could tag everything "private" or "public". Put -tag:private into the search and no one will see your private notes. Alternatively, you could have "private" as a default notebook (this is what I do). Put -notebook:private into the search and everything in that notebook will be filtered out. This is pretty simple stuff, and in the case of the last suggestion, it requires 0 effort. 

 

Feel free to discuss it further! That is what the discussion forum is here for, right? But, in the discussion, you might find curmudgeons like myself who do not agree

[Metrodon 2,184]

I've been around here for quite a while and I think I have a reasonable understanding of what Evernote are trying to do - in my opinion there is more chance of a brussels sprout becoming the most desirable foodstuff on the planet than there is of this type of functionality being implemented.

[jefito 5,589]

So if no-one can come up with a real and valid concern, I think such a feature at least deserves a new chance and being discussed further.  

Nobody is blocking discussion here; people are offering their opinions (i.e., a discussion is already happening). But asking people to discuss your pet feature doesn't make that feature de facto a good candidate for discussion. If it's interesting to other people, they'll discuss it without anybody asking.

Ultimately, you still need to depend on Evernote (or third-party developers) to implement such a feature.

[mrfjong 3]

So if no-one can come up with a real and valid concern, I think such a feature at least deserves a new chance and being discussed further.  

Nobody is blocking discussion here; people are offering their opinions (i.e., a discussion is already happening). But asking people to discuss your pet feature doesn't make that feature de facto a good candidate for discussion. If it's interesting to other people, they'll discuss it without anybody asking.

Ultimately, you still need to depend on Evernote (or third-party developers) to implement such a feature.

 

@Jefito: I haven't asked anyone to discuss this or said that it's being blocked, I just said I believe it deserves a discussion (which is why everyone posts their opinions in here - they are engaged in something they believe in or want to learn more about). Platitudes around who implements the features into Evernote or lecturing around the social dynamics of a web forum is quite frankly a little bit condescending and off-point... However, no hard feelings

 

@Metrodon: What is Evernote trying to do that conflicts with the concept feature (where nothing is ever truly deleted) I have drafted in this thread?

I am genuinly interested and not trying to be sarcastic.

 

@Grumpmonkey: thanks for a straight out friendly answer

BTW - just a sidenote: when e-mails are deleted from the Archive folder in Gmail they are only really moved to the Trash-folder instead where they no longer show up in searches. So only when you delete them from Trash the second time around they are deleted for real. Not that comparing e-mail services to Evernote has anything going for it... But the way this works in gmail follows the same train of thoughts as the feature request in this thread when it comes to visibility 

[Martin Packer 162]

All data has a lifecycle: I'd hope data didn't linger in zombie status, cluttering up users' accounts uselessly or perhaps worse, but rather could be archived.

 

I would hope such data could be 1) deleted, or 2) moved to an archive (which probably wouldn't be propagated to eg mobile devices), or 3) tagged "obsolete".

[Metrodon 2,184]

I'm just giving you my opinion, if they ever implement it (which they won't) then I'll happily put my hands up and admit I'm wrong.

[jefito 5,589]

@Jefito: I haven't asked anyone to discuss this or said that it's being blocked, I just said I believe it deserves a discussion (which is why everyone posts their opinions in here - they are engaged in something they believe in or want to learn more about). Platitudes around who implements the features into Evernote or lecturing around the social dynamics of a web forum is quite frankly a little bit condescending and off-point... However, no hard feelings

Claiming that your idea is worthy of discussion is probably both off-point and redundant. I can't help it if you feel condescended to -- the users here are quite varied in terms of their understanding of software development, social dynamics, and sense of Evernote philosophy and history -- and you're not the only reader. By saying things that may seem obvious to some, you hit a wider audience.

Anyways, the point about feature implementation is this: discussion in the forums only goes so far; it's only when someone with the tools and time to make an implementation does it become more than just discussion. As it is, your idea doesn't actually go far enough, in my opinion, and if Evernote implemented it on its own, I'd be pretty surprised and possibly disappointed. What would be *really* useful is a general capability to trigger actions based on note attributes (a la Outlook or GMail). Right now, the only action that you can do is "filter the note list". Other useful actions could be things like "move note to a particular notebook", "apply a particular tag", "Send note to an email recipient", and yes, "delete note".

[jefito 5,589]

there is more chance of a brussels sprout Marmite becoming the most desirable foodstuff on the planet than there is of this type of functionality being implemented.

[Metrodon 2,184]

there is more chance of a brussels sprout Marmite becoming the most desirable foodstuff on the planet than there is of this type of functionality being implemented.

I am sooooooo angry right now

[Martin Packer 162]

So it would be feasible to construct a utility that spots a certain tag, compares today's date to the created or updated date and then moves all notes with that tag to a specific notebook if it's been, say, 30 days since either date. (Or perhaps deletes them.)

 

The purpose of the tag would be to label the note with some archiving attributes. e.g the tag "arch30old" says "archive after 30 days" whereas "arch30jan2014" specifies a date.

 

The trouble with this is that it's platform-dependent but a Mac one and a Windows one probably suffice - though that doesn't help anyone who doesn't have either of those.

 

It's also possible to adopt such a tagging convention and "Do It Yerself". :-)

[mrfjong 3]

@Jefito: I haven't asked anyone to discuss this or said that it's being blocked, I just said I believe it deserves a discussion (which is why everyone posts their opinions in here - they are engaged in something they believe in or want to learn more about). Platitudes around who implements the features into Evernote or lecturing around the social dynamics of a web forum is quite frankly a little bit condescending and off-point... However, no hard feelings

Claiming that your idea is worthy of discussion is probably both off-point and redundant. I can't help it if you feel condescended to -- the users here are quite varied in terms of their understanding of software development, social dynamics, and sense of Evernote philosophy and history -- and you're not the only reader. By saying things that may seem obvious to some, you hit a wider audience.

Anyways, the point about feature implementation is this: discussion in the forums only goes so far; it's only when someone with the tools and time to make an implementation does it become more than just discussion. As it is, your idea doesn't actually go far enough, in my opinion, and if Evernote implemented it on its own, I'd be pretty surprised and possibly disappointed. What would be *really* useful is a general capability to trigger actions based on note attributes (a la Outlook or GMail). Right now, the only action that you can do is "filter the note list". Other useful actions could be things like "move note to a particular notebook", "apply a particular tag", "Send note to an email recipient", and yes, "delete note".

 

Stating the belief that a subject matter is worthy of discussion in a discussion-forum is not off-point socially speaking. If no one cares for the opinions of the other parties in a conversation then per definiton it is not a discussion and not a forum. 

And It is not superfluous as the statement is used in a communicative sense as an instrument to get across how important that particular feature is to me. I didn't necessarily write it because it is true.

How could I possibly know what is worthy of discussion to you or anyone else for that matter before talking to you about it? But by stating it you and everyone else do get a drift of how important it is to me. 

About the wider audience - I guess I have to commend you for being so thoughtful.

I agree that my idea may be too simple and I actually really like your idea even better! It goes much further and achieves the functionality I originally wanted (action: when notes time attribute reaches 3 weeks move to...) and much, much more.

So it seems this discussion went further (after all) as a continuation of us talking which is the point of a forum. 

So +1 to your feature suggestion from me - I really hope it is backed by more people in here and ultimately is picked up by the developers. I really agree that such a feature should exist. 

 

 

 

I'm just giving you my opinion, if they ever implement it (which they won't) then I'll happily put my hands up and admit I'm wrong.

I understood the first time around that this was your opinion, but I was curious as to what in Evernotes philosophy (which you are claiming to have experience in) conflicts with the feature I described. 

What is the reasoning behind the opinion you have formed in context of the Evernote teams philosophy? 

 

 

 

there is more chance of a brussels sprout Marmite becoming the most desirable foodstuff on the planet than there is of this type of functionality being implemented.

I am sooooooo angry right now

 

I really love Marmite

 

[Metrodon 2,184]

Remember Everything.

[Martin Packer 162]

@Metrodon Well quite - but not necessarily in prime real estate. :-)

[mrfjong 3]

Remember Everything.

 

Nothing is deleted and everything is remembered and retrievable so there is no conflict here. 

Only there is some differentiation taking place when it comes to actuality, availability, and visibility of the notes in question

(based on action triggers or expiry value set by the user at note creation or after). 

[jefito 5,589]

 

there is more chance of a brussels sprout Marmite becoming the most desirable foodstuff on the planet than there is of this type of functionality being implemented.

I am sooooooo angry right now

The Truth hurts, doesn't it? On the other hand, more Marmite for you, eh?