(Archived) The limitation of evernote

[Bojain 0]

I am a premium account user.
I love this service very much except the limitation of notes(250 note books).

I have 2325 notes now.

In order to reduce use the total number of notebooks,I try to use tags.

Now I have 129 notebooks and 198 tags.

Try to tag one note is a hard work in your software (198 tags and increasing @@)

I am also a pro user of Wiznote,tagging  is easier in their software.

It need no scrolling and try to find out correct tags of a note.
Can developer improve it?
Change the limitations or change the interface,please!

Can you imagine try to scrolling 10000 tags for correct tagging?

It is surely a nightmare!

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I am a premium account user.

I love this service very much except the limitation of notes(250 note books).

I have 2325 notes now.

In order to reduce use the total number of notebooks,I try to use tags.

Now I have 129 notebooks and 198 tags.

Try to tag one note is a hard work in your software (198 tags and increasing @@)

I am also a pro user of Wiznote,tagging  is easier in their software.

It need no scrolling and try to find out correct tags of a note.

Can developer improve it?

Change the limitations or change the interface,please!

Can you imagine try to scrolling 10000 tags for correct tagging?

It is surely a nightmare!

 

IMO, you're overtagging.  IMO, some folks "overtag".  Often, tags are not needed if you use descriptive titles, some tags, some notebooks/stacks & keywords.  I have over 62,000 notes & have never reached the 250 notebook limit.  I'd guess less than half my notes have any tags at all.  Probably only about 1/3 of my notes have tags.  Those that do have tags normally have only 1-3 tags.  IE, all my bills are in Evernote.  Although they are in a "bills" notebook, I can quickly & easily find my Cox cable bill from June 2009 by searching ALL notes because the title of that note includes the vendor (Cox) and the date of the bill in YYYYMMDD format.  So a simple search of

 

intitle:cox intitle:200906*

 

will quickly find the ONE note which is the bill I'm looking for from over 62,000+ notes.  And I didn't even use a tag.

 

You can also net the tags for organizational purposes only.  This allows you to collapse the top tier so the nested tags do not show up.  Or even the "hide unassigned" tags may be helpful.

[Bojain 0]

 

I am a premium account user.

I love this service very much except the limitation of notes(250 note books).

I have 2325 notes now.

In order to reduce use the total number of notebooks,I try to use tags.

Now I have 129 notebooks and 198 tags.

Try to tag one note is a hard work in your software (198 tags and increasing @@)

I am also a pro user of Wiznote,tagging  is easier in their software.

It need no scrolling and try to find out correct tags of a note.

Can developer improve it?

Change the limitations or change the interface,please!

Can you imagine try to scrolling 10000 tags for correct tagging?

It is surely a nightmare!

 

IMO, you're overtagging.  IMO, some folks "overtag".  Often, tags are not needed if you use descriptive titles, some tags, some notebooks/stacks & keywords.  I have over 62,000 notes & have never reached the 250 notebook limit.  I'd guess less than half my notes have any tags at all.  Probably only about 1/3 of my notes have tags.  Those that do have tags normally have only 1-3 tags.  IE, all my bills are in Evernote.  Although they are in a "bills" notebook, I can quickly & easily find my Cox cable bill from June 2009 by searching ALL notes because the title of that note includes the vendor (Cox) and the date of the bill in YYYYMMDD format.  So a simple search of

 

intitle:cox intitle:200906*

 

will quickly find the ONE note which is the bill I'm looking for from over 62,000+ notes.  And I didn't even use a tag.

 

You can also net the tags for organizational purposes only.  This allows you to collapse the top tier so the nested tags do not show up.  Or even the "hide unassigned" tags may be helpful.

 

It's a quit smart way to use evernote!

Thanks for your teaching.

I am a orthopaedic doctor and there are many complex information in my data base!

I will try in your way and avoid overtaging.

Thanks!

[jontyc 12]

IE, all my bills are in Evernote.  Although they are in a "bills" notebook, I can quickly & easily find my Cox cable bill from June 2009 by searching ALL notes because the title of that note includes the vendor (Cox) and the date of the bill in YYYYMMDD format.  So a simple search of

 

intitle:cox intitle:200906*

 

will quickly find the ONE note which is the bill I'm looking for from over 62,000+ notes.  And I didn't even use a tag.

Do you find it worth the effort to add the YYYYMMDD suffix to the note and 'intitle:200906*' to the search over just searching for 'intitle:cox' and picking the bill from the returned list according to creation date?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

IE, all my bills are in Evernote.  Although they are in a "bills" notebook, I can quickly & easily find my Cox cable bill from June 2009 by searching ALL notes because the title of that note includes the vendor (Cox) and the date of the bill in YYYYMMDD format.  So a simple search of intitle:cox intitle:200906* will quickly find the ONE note which is the bill I'm looking for from over 62,000+ notes.  And I didn't even use a tag.

Do you find it worth the effort to add the YYYYMMDD suffix to the note and 'intitle:200906*' to the search over just searching for 'intitle:cox' and picking the bill from the returned list according to creation date?

Yes.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=367

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Do you find it worth the effort to add the YYYYMMDD suffix to the note and 'intitle:200906*' to the search over just searching for 'intitle:cox' and picking the bill from the returned list according to creation date?

Yes b/c the note creation date normally is not the same as the billing date.  IMO, it's easier to add the billing date in the title than changing the creation date of the note to match the billing date. It also provides a level of help in case I accidentally type in the wrong date.  IE, in Jan/Feb when I'm still adjusting to the new year, I may type January's bill as the previous year.  If I look for it later & can't find it, I can then search on creation date.  IE:

 

intitle:cox created:20130101 -created:20130301

 

to find any notes created in Jan or Feb of 2013 that have Cox in the title.

[jontyc 12]

Do you find you often have to search for old statements/receipts though, to warrant the overhead of putting a date in the title? In practice, I never found it a trivial exercise:

• Some statements I found myself spending 10 seconds odd looking for the damn date.
• Others I would find myself consulting previous statements from the same company to see if I'd named them using the statement end period or the due date (due date I could reconcile with bank statements easier).
• Others only the month was important or year was important, so I'd just do 2013 or  201309 to save having to actually look at the statement to find a day. Then I'd find I'd forget how many significant places I was using. 

I definitely found making the filing stage as quick as possible was key to keeping an empty inbox/intray. Relying on note creation date actually forced me to handle things once, as soon as they came in. Taking extra time to locate didn't bother me as it's rare I have to consult an old statement. 

[jontyc 12]

129 notebooks!  I didn't even contemplate there was a limit. Surely you find yourself spending ages selecting notebooks?

 

Using Evernote as my sole software development issue tracker, project manager, a GTD system and business and personal filer, the only reasons I've found to use separate notebooks are for:

• Isolating what you share with others
• When a third-party app requires them
• An inbox to accept notes from places that don't making naming/tagging easy or possible, keeping them out of the main notebook until handled properly.
• Making use of the fact that new notes will go into the selected notebook, but there is no default tag. I find it easier to have my current project as a notebook as I'm making notes in it every 10 minutes or so, rather than slapping on a project tag.

Tags I only use when I feel I may wish to list a category (e.g., see receipts to claim for tax, outstanding bugs in a project). Search handles everything else.

 

I actually wish Evernote didn't allow tag creation when creating a note (as I often find myself creating incomplete tags instead of selecting existing ones). I feel this would discourage overtagging somewhat.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Do you find you often have to search for old statements/receipts though, to warrant the overhead of putting a date in the title? In practice, I never found it a trivial exercise:

• Some statements I found myself spending 10 seconds odd looking for the damn date.
• Others I would find myself consulting previous statements from the same company to see if I'd named them using the statement end period or the due date (due date I could reconcile with bank statements easier).
• Others only the month was important or year was important, so I'd just do 2013 or  201309 to save having to actually look at the statement to find a day. Then I'd find I'd forget how many significant places I was using. 

I definitely found making the filing stage as quick as possible was key to keeping an empty inbox/intray. Relying on note creation date actually forced me to handle things once, as soon as they came in. Taking extra time to locate didn't bother me as it's rare I have to consult an old statement. 

 

I rarely need to pull an old statement.  And yeah, sometimes finding the date I'm looking for takes a few seconds.  But I'm pretty good at keyboarding & you have to give a file a name anyway.  (I even have ActiveWords (text expander) set up so I can use shortcuts when naming the files.  But I find I usually just end up typing them. )   Plus, because I hate having all my eggs in one basket, I save copies to my hard drive.  If for any reason, I am not able to use Evernote for whatever reason, I have a copy on my hard drive & can use Locate32 to quickly find the file.  It's not as powerful as Evernote, but beats having to dig around on the hard drive.  So my workflow is scan the document, give it a descriptive file name.  Then store a copy on my hard drive & move the original to an Evernote import folder.  When it's imported into Evernote, the note name is defaulted to the file name & I don't need to change anything.  The process takes probably takes 30 seconds or less. 

 

And yeah, you do have to be diligent about what date to use on bills & some formats.  I prefer to use the ending period date b/c it's helpful finding the right credit card statement if I need to find a particular transaction.  (As long as I know the approximate transaction date.)  One thing Evernote has simplified for me is whether I put the date first or the company first or the owner of the card.  My husband & I each have our own Chase Visa & AMEX.  So I use the period ending date, the card name (Chase Visa/AMEX) and his initials for his card & my initials for my card.  Prior to using Evernote, I could never remember what order I put those in.  So looking for a particular statement on the hard drive could be a bit of a bear, when they're not in the same naming format, even if you have them very organized by sub folders, which I do.  (bills --> 2013 --> cc (for credit cards) --> AMEX --> his )  So I'd either have to go to the folder first & find out how I named them or renaming the file.  But the great thing with Evernote is...IT DOESN'T MATTER!  (YAY!)  As long as I have all three things in the note title, it doesn't matter which order.  I can just search on:

 

intitle:201309* amex his

 

and chances are the only result will be the bill I'm looking for.

 

And while I don't usually spend a lot of time organizing my notes, I do try to anticipate what I may search on should I ever need to find that note later.  I try to add any "keywords" that are not already in the note.  I figure that often saves me time later, when I'm trying to find a note. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

A truly minimalist system would throw everything into Evernote without a care. Ideally, you'd be using Windows, which even lets you title a note using the first line of the note body, so you save more time. Evernote's search works really well, and so does the OCR, so this might be perfectly adequate.

As for the creation date, it rarely has anything to do with the actual date of the bill anyhow, so I don't see how that is any more efficient or useful than the title. I use the iPad a lot, and we can't change the creation date anyhow, so it is a moot point for me in my workflow.

For me, whatever time is lost by having to put a title (I've never found it to be especially burdensome) is made up for by the fact that everything is in order for me on every Evernote client, on my hard drive, and even in other applications if I have to migrate out of Evernote someday. I'll never be "disorganized" again, so it is worth the effort.

And, as BNF said, the PDF gets named and stored on your hard drive, named and stored in your account, and the name of the file becomes the name of the note. Naming gives you a great return on your investment of time, and it seems better (to me) than using the metadata. At least, I think I'd use titling as the "base" and recommend adding the metadata options (tags, created date, author, etc.) as a kind of plus alpha if you have the time and energy.

[ab1kenobee 105]

Thank you, BNF and GM for taking the time to lay-out practical details and the nuances of your thinking processes!

 

Appreciate much! 

 

Alan