Reviewing a Commonplace Book of Quotations

[Dan M. 1]

Hi everyone, 

 

Long time Evernote user, first time forum poster. I've got a question/request. One thing I've begun using Evernote for is a dedicated "commonplace book" notebook, essentially nothing but short quotes that I find in my daily readings of books, blogs, and whatever else. I clip or type in the snippets, each to its own note, sequential by date of creation. This is really useful for me. 

 

However, there is no good way (that I am aware of) to review this notebook. Let's say instead of using Evernote, I wrote this out longhand in a physical notebook. I could pick it up and flip to any page and begin reading. In Evernote, I can search or jump around and do plenty of things I couldn't do with a physical notebook, but I can't ever get this kind of "page" view of my individual quotes where I see many at once. I'm always looking at an individual Evernote note, not the kind of "all at once" you'd get looking at a physical notebook page. Using the snippet view helps, but isn't quite what I'm looking for as some quotes are very long. 

 

The ideal thing for me, and I don't think there's a way to do this, would be some sort of merged view of all the notes in this Evernote notebook. It would look similar to how separate notes that have been merged into one looks, but would only be a view and still keep the individual notes separate. Maybe this is a very specific concept (though there are many articles out there about using Evernote as a commonplace book), but I personally think it would be very useful. Am I alone? Anything like this in the works?

Dan

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

One thing you could do would be to select all the notes you want to view, right click, and choose "merge notes". 

 

Keep in mind this will cause the individual notes to disappear and leave you with the single, merged note. 

 

One way to avoid this would be to create a dedicated notebook for merges. This way you would:

Copy desired notes to the "merge" notebook, leaving the originals in their place. 

In the "merge" notebook, select the notes you just copied to it and merge them, producing a single note containing all of the quotes. 

 

This would leave you with all of the quotes in their individual notes, and the merged version. 

 

You could play around with this method as you saw fit, depending on whether you want to keep the originals or not, etc. 

[Dan M. 1]

Thanks for the response, Scott. That's a good workaround, though I'd hate to unwittingly merge without copying first. 

[gazumped 11,652]

...or,  if you're a premium user,  presentation mode may be what you need...

[Dan M. 1]

Wow, I hadn't even thought of using presentation mode. Yeah, I think that would be perfect actually. Many thanks!

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Good thinking Gaz!

[gazumped 11,652]

I'm good at lateral thinking - or at least,  thinking while lying down a lot.. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

or, merge the notes and pull the originals out of the trash (where they go after you merge). or, copy the notes into another notebook and then merge the originals. there are lots of possibilities, but on benefit i see with merge is that you might have an easier time with it on mobile.