Creating a Project View of Evernote Notes (Index Card View)

[oeralp 1]

One great leap for Evernote would be to enable the user to sort cards in any order he/she wants, the way Scrivner and Index Card do.  That would enable me to start a notebook and create notes  and shuffle them around in order to plot out a project or story board, etc.  This would infinitely increase the productivity of Evernote.  

 

Does anyone agree?

[jefito 5,589]

SO far there is no user-specified order in Evernote; you can only sort by note fields like note title, date fields, etc. This feature has been requested before; please search the forums for more topics on the subject.

[JeanP 0]

I agree. Being able to organize the notes manually from within the notebooks would make story-plotting much simpler since it could sync across all devices. I use Evernote solely for writing projects because of the sync feature. It'd be super helpful not to have to jump across several apps to plot a story using the notes I take via Evernote.

[Deepphil 0]

Yes, I think this would be a very useful feature; I believe it would be particularly popular among the content-development community.  Evernote is spectacular at capturing content - input - but needs development for assisting output.  It's pretty good at discovery, with search, tags and notebooks.  It can't - and shouldn't - be all things to all people, but helping organise and structure output is a good compromise.

 

Having written this, I'm wondering why anyone is keeping all these notes if not to create some output?

 

Philip

[jefito 5,589]

Having written this, I'm wondering why anyone is keeping all these notes if not to create some output?

For me, the answer is generally that I don't make output from my notes particularly often.

[oeralp 1]

 

Having written this, I'm wondering why anyone is keeping all these notes if not to create some output?

For me, the answer is generally that I don't make output from my notes particularly often.

 

I don't think that's the issue here.  The issue is about planning a project using a user-defined sequence of notes.  It should be straightforward for evernote to to allow manual sorting of notes and also notebooks embedded in notebooks.  That would allow for notes to be used as project milestones or chapters, as index cards, etc.  Instead, Evernote peddles accessories no one needs.

[jefito 5,589]

Having written this, I'm wondering why anyone is keeping all these notes if not to create some output?

For me, the answer is generally that I don't make output from my notes particularly often.

I don't think that's the issue here.  The issue is about planning a project using a user-defined sequence of notes.  It should be straightforward for evernote to to allow manual sorting of notes and also notebooks embedded in notebooks.  That would allow for notes to be used as project milestones or chapters, as index cards, etc.  Instead, Evernote peddles accessories no one needs.

It was a direct answer to Deepphil's question, which I excerpted...

[chirmer 567]

...Instead, Evernote peddles accessories no one needs.

As has been brought up plenty of times in the forums, it's not like the Evernote developers are stitching socks instead of building in features. It's generally considered good business practice to expand your market, especially when people can fall in love with an app like Evernote -- having those accessories makes sense.

 

I would support manual sorting of notes, fyi. Ideally, my only item on my Evernote wishlist is expanded note sorting -- manual sort per notebook, sort settings per notebook, and most important of all (to me), setting the note view on a per notebook basis. But I agree, there are many ways manual sorting would be useful for Evernote (a notebook for a term paper can have all sections as individual notes, which could then be rearranged into the order in which the content will appear in the paper, etc.). I just disagree that selling clothing on the side says anything about Evernote's priorities or takes time away from the developers.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I don't think that's the issue here.  The issue is about planning a project using a user-defined sequence of notes.  It should be straightforward for evernote to to allow manual sorting of notes and also notebooks embedded in notebooks.  That would allow for notes to be used as project milestones or chapters, as index cards, etc.  Instead, Evernote peddles accessories no one needs.

It's fine to make claims. But if you want to be taken seriously you need to back them up with objective facts, not your opinion. Clearly, with 80+ (or whatever it is now) million users, Evernote is providing some value to some people.  Evernote is not geared to doing what you are trying to do.  Its focus is to collect, organize & retrieve information.  If you are trying to use a hammer when you need a saw, then maybe you really need to get a saw.  But that doesn't mean a hammer is not a useful tool.

[oeralp 1]

I think all these applications are about ordering projects - whether shopping lists or workflow - so it's quite natural they will evolve to include better file management.  Embedded files and manual ordering are pretty basic.   The improvements i've suggested, which the tech team seems to have taken on board - might even make the job of "evangelizing" or hectoring suggestions easier!

[oeralp 1]

 

Having written this, I'm wondering why anyone is keeping all these notes if not to create some output?

For me, the answer is generally that I don't make output from my notes particularly often.

 

I think the beauty of what i'm proposing is precisely that you would then be able to create an output for your notes in a helpful sequence - say, in a manner similar to powerpoint presentations, which allow slides to be re-ordered.  That way, for example, you could create a notebook called - by way of an example - "best man speech" or "sales presentation notes" or "story outline" and your ever notes would export or print out in a helpful sequence.  That way, you could use the cross-platform note-creation capability of evernote to create lists of notes that can serve as outlines to a speech, a presentation, a story or any project.