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Making notes via email #tags not working


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I am an early user of Evernote returning to use it again. I am able to create notes by sending to my evernote email address, but unfortunately creating tags in the subject with #tag does not work.

 

After my first attempt at creating a note via email, Evernote sent me an email with some tips, including an example. It seems that @[notebook] and ![date] work, but not #[tag] ... Try it for yourself (let me know if it does not work for you either or if I am doing something wrong).

 

 

 

You successfully sent an email to Evernote!

 

Make emailing into Evernote even more useful for you by sending emails straight to a notebook, automatically setting reminders, and more.

Here's how it works:

 

 

Edit the email subject to change your note title

 

 

Add @[notebook] to send it to a specific notebook

 

 

Add ![date] to set a reminder on the note

 

 

Add #[tag] to organize the note with a tag

 

For example, to forward boarding passes to your account, put it in your 'Travel' notebook, add an 'Itinerary' tag, and set a reminder to check into your flight, you would add this to the subject:

 

Email Subject: Boarding Passes !2014/06/05 @Travel #Itinerary

 

Try it with your own flight confirmation, a receipt, or anything else that you want to set aside from your endless inbox!

– The Evernote Team

 

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  • Level 5*

Hi - were you creating new tags,  or using existing ones?  #[tag] only works (AFAIK) at the end of a subject line and with a tag which already exists in the account.

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  • Level 5*

Agreed the user guides sometimes miss out on important detail,  though I think most of the material is pretty clear on this point - see http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2010/03/16/emailing-into-evernote-just-got-better/

 

These posts are read by Evernote developers,  so your suggestion is already made - you could reinforce it by using the feedback and support link (see below) if you wish.

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  • 6 months later...

Apologies for bringing up an old topic, but I have the same issue as the original poster and the advice here still hasn't fixed the problem.

 

I'm using my Outlook client as I'm finding it annoying in Evernote for Window to have to click 'New Note' (or use Ctrl-N), then click again to move the cursor to the Title. As I use Evernote as a place to capture all my ToDos, I generally just use the Title line and add any notes to the body (rare). So I've set up an Outlook Quick Step to send a New email to my m.evernote.com address with the following in the subject line: "Title @Fresh !20150101 #4work"

 

The hashtag '4work' already exists, 'Fresh' is the existing notebook I collect any new tasks, and I can amend the title and reminder date as I see fit. It's easier to add notes this way as I then don't have to tag them as work-related tasks, just amend the title.

 

The @notebook and !reminder are both working fine, but my hashtag #4work doesn't.

 

I've just tested it with another hashtag and that DOES work - it doesn't start with a number, but I can't see why that would make any difference to Evernote recognising #4work as a tag, seeing as it only contains alphanumeric and they don't say you can't use numbers in your tags!!

 

Any ideas?

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  • Level 5*

Hi

 

Haven't tested anything out,  but the Evernote official KB page http://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23480523 says the title order should be 

 

Email Subject: [Title of note] ![optional date for Reminder] @[notebook] #[tag]

 

-which is slightly different from yours.

 

If fixing the order doesn't work,  Evernote can be a little - eccentric - sometimes when it comes to tags.  Try putting a '4' in front of the tag that works to see if it still does...  If so,  removing and recreating the original tag might help - replace it with a temporary tag and then re-apply the correct one...

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Thanks - have tried rejigging the order, but unfortunately to no effect... adding a digit before a working tag makes it cease to work. 

 

Very frustrating, I use numbers to help organise my tags .... I guess I'll have to change them all *AGAIN*

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  • Level 5*

Hmmn.  Tag search did change recently,  I recall - it was annoying people that it found parts of tags as well as the initial characters,  and Evernote changed it back.  They apparently forgot that numbers are characters too...

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  • 4 weeks later...

Ok, can my last email. It was that issue of a tag I used not being present. In my case it appended the missing tag, complete with the # symbol, to the end of the subject line when it added the noteto Evernote.

 

Actually, even though the extra tags won't appear in my tags list, I can still search on the new tag with the #symbol in front of it.

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  • Level 5*

See - that's why I keep coming back here.  I saw the email creation of notes as a limited benefit since tags had to exist before they could be assigned.  I didn't think to test out what happened if you included a new tag in the subject line anyway.  The fact that a tag is appended to the subject line is fine for me - the subject becomes the note title and I use "smart" titles for my main searches anyway.  (That's <date> - <type> - <source> - <keyword(s)>)

 

The only caveat is that if the tag comes up as "#yourtag",  Evernote search will ignore the "#" in searches.  If your tag is a common word that might spark a lot of ghost hits in another notes.  Using "intitle:yourtag" should cut those down,  or you could use a standard 'other' character prefix and create,  say "#Xyourtag" since "intitle:Xyour*" will be a unique string to look for...

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@gazumped

Thanks for the insight. Very helpful.

 

I would suggest using a leading character such as an underscore rather than another letter to facilitate uniqueness. For example, for the tag #_testing, an Evernote search for "testing" will locate instances of "testing" as well as "_testing" but a search for "_testing" will only locate that unique string. Just a thought.

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I'm having the same issue with tagging posts sent via email. The tag already exists in my Evernote notebook. The tag identifier "#tag" is in the right order in the subject line. And there are no digits in the tag. Any ideas besides the work arounds discussed above?

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Yes. Emails make it to my account. I can get them to land in the right Notebook, but I can't get the tags to consistently show up and usually not at all. I was able to get the tag into Evernote when I sent an email with only a tag. 

 

I just tried again several times (with both a tag I had created a couple of hours ago and a new tag I just created), and it was working with both tags.  Maybe it was just a small, temporary glitch that just affected my emailed notes.

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I'd say it was a server glitch as I sometimes have an issue with my Sync failing and believe this to be a server issue at the time syncing was running as there is no other explanation for it.

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  • 4 months later...

Emailing in with qualifiers is not working for me at all. It never has. I sent an email with the subject line:

 

Test @work #june

 

where "work" and "june" are an existing notebook and tag, respectively.

 

I got a note with this title in my default inbox:

 

Test @work #june

 

I also tried doing it with just the notebook; same result.

 

Any ideas?

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  • Level 5*

@P.A.K.:

 
Your test case should have worked.
Try sending the same email to Evernote and to yourself, just to confirm that it is being sent/received as expected.
Also note that very shortly, you will need a Plus, Premium, or Business account to send email to your account.
 
If you are unable to resolve your issue, then I'd suggest that you
Submit a BUG report via an EN Support Ticket. In the Support Form, select "Report a bug", and start the Ticket Title with "BUG:  " to make it clear.  Reporting a bug should be available to all users, including Free Account owners.  Other Ticket types available to Free users are "Data Loss", "Crash", & "Sync Issue".
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  • Level 5*

@P.A.K - if you check the thread here, you'll see that having the tag in the title isn't necessarily a bad thing - it will still come up in searches though Evernote doesn't test for the '#' - use "intitle:<#yourtag>" and you'll get fewer false positives.  I'd also suggest that you test (if you haven't already done so) mailing into your account from different locations and email clients.  If all of them fail to assign an existing tag to the account,  it would seem to be an account issue.  If one or more work,  then it's the email client or the format from that client that's the issue.

 

Reporting a bug as JMichael suggests won't necessarily get you any response - it just means that Evernote will look into this at some point and a future update might fix it - if EN can work out what the problem is.  The more help you can give,  the more likely that will be sooner rather than later...

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  • Level 5*

@P.A.K - if you check the thread here, you'll see that having the tag in the title isn't necessarily a bad thing - it will still come up in searches though Evernote doesn't test for the '#' - use "intitle:<#yourtag>" and you'll get fewer false positives.

 

Amazing perspective!!?!?!  :(

 

It is a BAD thing if what you want is to assign a tag to the Note so that it will show up in Tag searches along with your other tagged Notes.

 

@P.A.K:

 

Of course you should do as much self-diagnosis as you can to resolve the issue.

But if you are unable to resolve the issue, the I do recommend that you submit a bug report.

This bug may or may not affect all users, but it a very serious bug that needs to be fixed.

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Gazumped -- thanks for the input, but I agree with JMichael -- I actually want this feature to work. If I have forwarded a bunch of emails and tagged them with "preschool", I want to be able to just pull up everything tagged "preschool", and not have to additionally search for everything with "#preschool" in the title. That may be an effective workaround, but I don't want a workaround, i want the actual feature.

 

Luckily, I now have it! I was emailing from an old version of Internet Explorer (why? I don't know!) and something was getting lost. I tried emailing from my email app on my phone, and then from a different desktop browser, and both worked. I still can't say for sure why it wasn't working before, but I am more than happy to blame it on Microsoft intsead of Evernote ;)

 

Thanks all!

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  • Level 5*

I'm glad you investigated further and found the email client issue - and as for tags vs titles,  I'm not suggesting that's the 'correct' behaviour,  but if the feature doesn't work,  then all you have left is workarounds...  anyway:  glad it works!

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  • Level 5*

I'm glad you investigated further and found the email client issue - and as for tags vs titles,  I'm not suggesting that's the 'correct' behaviour,  but if the feature doesn't work,  then all you have left is workarounds...  anyway:  glad it works!

 

@Gaz:

 

You suggestion to basically ignore the real issue (tags not being recognized via email) and accept a work-around is very flawed logic.

Especially when the feature is working for most other users.

 

As the OP stated, the issue turned out to be with the browser he was using.  Had he stopped trying to resolve the issue, he would have failed to find the real problem, and would have been unable to take advantage of the benefit of using Tags.

 

Using a work-around is not indicated unless you are sure there is a bug preventing the use of the desired feature for most users.  May I suggest that you first try to help the user resolve the issue at hand.  After all reasonable efforts are expended and the issue is still not resolved, then it would be appropriate to suggest work-arounds.

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  • Level 5*

@JM - with respect;  your post is off-topic and abusive.  The matter is now closed.

 

@Gaz:  with respect, my post was neither off-topic nor abusive.  IMO, you gave flawed advice, which the OP should be aware of.

Whenever you post incorrect information or, IMO, flawed advice, then be prepared for clarification.  The reader can decide which advice to follow.

 

Furthermore, it is not up to you to determine when a matter is closed.

 

However, I would like us to get back to the main topic of this thread.

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*she

 

gazumped: JMichael's post was not abusive. Saying someone is abusive just because they suggested that your advice was less than helpful diminshes the seriousness of that term, and makes it harder for people facing actual online abuse to be taken seriously. Also, JMichael was right insofar as your advice was not actually helpful since I had not reached the point of giving up on the feature and seeking a workaround; and it was honestly annoying that you suggested it might not be so bad for the feature to not work for me.

 

JMichael: gazumped is right to point out that if there is advice I don't like, I can simply not take it, and there is no need for other posters to start banging on about how unhelpful or irrelevant the advice in question is. This is especially true after the OP (me) has already indicated that the advice was not helpful and moved on. Also, the issue clearly was resolved, as gazumped noted.

 

Thank you both for your responses, and please take it easy.

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  • 4 months later...

Hi all,
thanks for discussion, it helped me to understand why #tags sent by email in the subject field are not acknowledged by evernote when these tags are not already existing.
 
Nevertheless, I practice often this process: I've got a new email with new "idea" to send to evernote so I want to send it to evernote and add a new tag (because that topic is just something new "in the air"). I find it anoying that I shall FIRST log into my evernote and add the new tag in order for my email new tag in subject field to be taken in account !.... Could new tags in email subject field simply be "ADDED" to evernote tags list ? (finally what is the basic reason for this feature not to exist yet ?)
 
Thank you for replying and sorry if I may have misread a few posts in this long conversation topic.
 
Additionnally I would have another question related to tags, that may already have a solution: When using "categories" in MS outlook, can an email sent to evernote, which has linked outlook categories has them automatically transfered to evernote tags ?...
I am just doing twice the job of "categorizing" in outlook and "re-tagging" in the subject field of my emails to evernote (actually I have to tag them first in evernote before to write the tag in the subject field, which is even more anoying).
 
thank you for support.
Pier

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  • Level 5*

Hi.  At the risk of reigniting the earlier argument - I agree it would be good if this worked,  but as it currently doesn't,  and there's no immediate prospect of a change being made (unless Evernote have been working on this feature for a while...) - why not change your workflow slightly to include the category name in the heading -or the body- of your email,  and simply do searches for both the tag (if you have existing ones,  but this discussion is specifically about new tags) and/ or the actual word? 

 

If you're likely to have lots of hits,  add your initials to the tag word,  or in some other way make it unique (using searchable characters)?

 

This is different from using tags,  and you can ensure the tagging system is complete at any stage by doing a (saved) search for <your initials>+ " * " to catch any of the emailed 'tags'.  You could then add the new words as real tags.

 

Just a suggestion...

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