(Archived) Masking certain notes in certain contexts

[Extropy 68]

This has come up before in several different contexts. As people use Evernote more and more, I suspect that others may have a similar problem to this one:

 

I use Evernote to research everything. I clip information and tag it and then go back and refer to it all the time. I suppose this is one of the primary use cases.

 

I also collaborate directly with others, on iPad, iPhone, beamer – showing people things I have collected in Evernote, taking notes in a group with Evernote on the beamer, etc.

 

I would prefer that some of the things I research remain private, while still synchronising across all devices, etc. This is mainly so that I can have my "full" view while I am researching, and restrict it a bit while I am collaborating.

 

A solution that would work right now would be a tag for "private" and I could search for -tag:private. Unfortunately, the collaboration often also involves searching, and it would be easy to forget or miss this criteria for the search.

 

So, my suggestion: A flag in the note metadata called "private", and a global settings switch to turn viewing of those notes so marked on or off.

 

An example: Going in to a meeting with a new customer – I will have looked them up, may have some notes containing their bio's, I might have some notes on our situation, with details on our business strategy, etc. in which even the titles may convey information that I would rather not divulge. But – when working with the customer, I may want to call up things in Evernote that I do want to collaborate on with them, but without them seeing the "private" things. If I know that they will not show up without going into settings and changing the setting, I can confidently collaborate without having to turn away from them for a minute to hide something I might not want them to see, which could be considered a bit creepy.

 

Maybe there is a better way to achieve the same result. If anyone has a good workaround, I would be interested in hearing it.

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

This has come up before in several different contexts. As people use Evernote more and more, I suspect that others may have a similar problem to this one:

 

I use Evernote to research everything. I clip information and tag it and then go back and refer to it all the time. I suppose this is one of the primary use cases.

 

I also collaborate directly with others, on iPad, iPhone, beamer – showing people things I have collected in Evernote, taking notes in a group with Evernote on the beamer, etc.

 

I would prefer that some of the things I research remain private, while still synchronising across all devices, etc. This is mainly so that I can have my "full" view while I am researching, and restrict it a bit while I am collaborating.

 

A solution that would work right now would be a tag for "private" and I could search for -tag:private. Unfortunately, the collaboration often also involves searching, and it would be easy to forget or miss this criteria for the search.

 

So, my suggestion: A flag in the note metadata called "private", and a global settings switch to turn viewing of those notes so marked on or off.

 

An example: Going in to a meeting with a new customer – I will have looked them up, may have some notes containing their bio's, I might have some notes on our situation, with details on our business strategy, etc. in which even the titles may convey information that I would rather not divulge. But – when working with the customer, I may want to call up things in Evernote that I do want to collaborate on with them, but without them seeing the "private" things. If I know that they will not show up without going into settings and changing the setting, I can confidently collaborate without having to turn away from them for a minute to hide something I might not want them to see, which could be considered a bit creepy.

 

Maybe there is a better way to achieve the same result. If anyone has a good workaround, I would be interested in hearing it.

 

Hi. I agree. I have often wanted the same thing. I don't expect we'll see anything soon like this, though. More generally speaking, I think we need more tools to put up a firewall between what we consider to be private and public in our accounts, not just for situations when someone else might be looking into our account, but even for daily use (I explain what I mean below).

 

The best solution that I have found is to have two accounts. One that you use for your work, and the other you use when doing presentations or some other "public" activity. In my case, I have two notebooks: "PUBLIC" is the one I share with that second "public" account and "PRIVATE" contains all of my other notes. This guarantees that even if I forget to type in that -tag:private search (easily done when standing in front of a room full of people) that there is no way you will inadvertently pull up your diary, or your personal notes on the client. 

 

In fact, because the Mac client mixes shared and joined notes together in search results and even regular navigation of your account (something I have wanted for a long time, but with a slightly different implementation) it is now possible (as I found out) to accidentally create a very private note in a very public notebook you have shared with people. It is quite embarrassing and frustrating to have your "memories" leak out like that! I have found it useful to keep all of my shared / joined notebooks in that "public" account as well in order to avoid this dilemma. 

 

Obviously, it is far from ideal to have two accounts, and there are problems with this (for example, you cannot easily switch between accounts on mobile), but in my case, this workaround solves more problems than it creates. 

[gazumped 12,074]

In addition to the above..

 

If you preselect a specific notebook/ stack,  AFAIK your searches are limited to that area.  I use one called 'showreel' (although there are no moving images -yet) to hold my demo stuff.  I have some copied notes there,  plus anything related to a specific client/ project that I might want to share.  It saves being embarassed by any other of my dubious clients or interests...

[Extropy 68]

Thanks for the ideas. Both are interesting solutions, but require a lot of work. I think my main aversion to them is the positive selection required – that is, decide beforehand what you want to share. Also, a lot of the things I look for privately and the things I want to look for when collaborating will match on many searches. The best example is the one above, where I research the company and the people, but don't want them to see just how nosy I have been.

 

It is much easier to decide which notes you would rather not have pop-up in front of someone else. I'm thinking mainly of the ones with a title like "Elmer Fudd - VP of company XYZ, head of project A", and a text snippet that says "Favours contractor C because his brother in law owns the company". I will have a lot of notes on project A and company XYZ that I will want to work on with Elmer, but don't want this one to pop up.

 

On a Mac, it would be easier to handle, but on the iPad its a bit more difficult. I also tend to use tags a lot more than notebooks, so all the good stuff is in one big notebook.