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When are you going to make tabs work properly? :-)


soundsgoodtome

Idea

Today I launched Evernote on a secondary Mac, and while it was updating and migrating notes to the new version, I created my document temporarily in TextEdit. It's a simple list with two columns, separated by tabs, and I was able to create it effortlessly. Then, after Evernote was finished updating, I copied the text from TextEdit and pasted it into Evernote. And anarchy ensued.  :-/  And yes, both apps were using the same font: Helvetica Regular, size 13. But...anarchy!

 

(Please see attached screenshot, showing the difference between TextEdit and Evernote.)

 

So, I began positioning my cursor in front of the 2nd-column lines and hitting Tab to correct the discrepancies. But that doesn't work either -- because in Evernote, tabs are not really tabs. It's difficult to describe Evernote's implementation of tabs: Sometimes, tab aligns the cursor with previous columns, but often it does not. So, the user is then forced to experiment with various combinations of tab, plus-or-minus a few spaces, in an attempt to get items to sorta line up. I say "sorta," because it's often simply impossible in Evernote to get tabbed columns to align perfectly at all.

 

Why, after all these years, hasn't this been addressed?

 

Sure, I'll admit I don't use tabs every day. I probably use them once a month or so. Perhaps most users don't need tabs frequently. But is infrequency of use a reason for a feature not to work properly at all?  :-)

 

post-47726-0-87375200-1409775752_thumb.j

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Or Courier fonts....

Inconsolata, please. Or Consolas.

 

Even so, Evernote just inserts 5 spaces in the current font, so there are no actual tabstops. But yes, you can make things line up with them.

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It's been nearly two years since I started this thread. Yet, not one change to tabs—a fundamental feature.

The Evernote team doesn't care about user requests nor does it care about fixing long-standing bugs.

But remember: They're raising prices!

Enjoy!

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As noted any number of times in the forums, Evernote does not support tab characters in note content. Best guess is that that's because tabs are just whitespace with no intrinsic meaning in HTML, which underlies the Evernote format. In HTML, tabs are not tabs either, not in the same way as they are in a text editor.

 

If you want things to line up in Evernote, you use indent/outdent, lists (bulleted or numbered), or tables.

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I'm not able to find it at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I saw something on the forum in the last couple days stating that the Table function on the Mac client had vastly improved in the latest Beta version. I *could* be wrong so please don't quote me on that, but it might be worth investigating.

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Or Courier fonts....

Inconsolata, please. Or Consolas.

 

Even so, Evernote just inserts 5 spaces in the current font, so there are no actual tabstops. But yes, you can make things line up with them.

It is not pretty, I agree. But if one is compelled to align things....

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It's 2016… I don't think we really need to hear from apologists on this issue.

Google Docs is able to implement Indents/Tab just fine.

Evernote SHOULD support indent/tabs in the manner of traditional text/word processing.

I don't believe this is beyond the means of human ability.

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Yeah. Just got back to evernote as trying it as alternative to Apple Notes. Got all excited of how nice it was again, and then, as I write notes, hit tab, hit it once too many, hit backspace and NO, I have to press backspace multiple times to get back roughly where it was. As keeping notes go, I indent a lot. And I expect it to work from keyboard, prefferably with tab and back-space.  I'm not going to change my writing flow to suit the program, rather go to google docs or some other alternative.

I can't see how the user benefits from the program behaving like it does.  As I have history with it, I'm going to look at shortcuts and see if I can map sensible indenting to the tab-button, but this is really streching it. Dear developers, this is a deal-breaker for me. I assume that I'm not within your intended target audiences. Shame, as I've liked evernote throughout the years.

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Please support tabs and tab stops properly. It's preposterous to pretend that spaces serve the same purpose, and equally absurd to suggest tables as the alternative. The whole point of taking notes is to have it be very easy to create content--and counting spaces to align text with at best half-character accuracy is antediluvian.

I am hard-pressed to find ANY modern word processor without this feature.

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On 2016-10-04 at 6:53 AM, msitarzewski said:

I'm a pro user, just reiterating this as a need.

 

On 2016-12-10 at 2:31 AM, Bakkes said:

Any update around this ? Feature we need asap. 

 

2 hours ago, user126 said:

Please support tabs and tab stops properly.

 

1 hour ago, jameskachan said:

 

This is a posted feature request - please indicate your support using the voting buttons in the upper left corner of the discussion. Currently there are 3 votes

There are work-arounds; for example the bullet list feature

Personally, if I have serious word processing to do I switch to a dedicated app
The Evernote editor / format works well for me with basic notes

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On 9/3/2014 at 8:33 PM, Wordsgood said:

I'm not able to find it at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I saw something on the forum in the last couple days stating that the Table function on the Mac client had vastly improved in the latest Beta version. I *could* be wrong so please don't quote me on that, but it might be worth investigating.

Yes, Tables have improved, here is a link to a Help document about the new features:  http://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208314638-How-to-create-and-customize-tables

Unfortunately, I ended up on this thread, because I wanted to be able to align text within a table cell, so I wanted to press <Ctrl><Tab> as I'm used to doing in other apps when in a table, but unfortunately, nothing. I even tried adding another column to the table to use for the content I wanted lined up at a tab, but learned that we can't change the color of individual borders within the table—it is the entire table borders or none. :(  The content wasn't going to look right with a vertical line between the text to the left and the text to the right.

So seems that we still have very limited options for lining up text. Indents only work if what you want to line up is at the beginning of the line. You can't type a few words and then indent, as it will indent at the beginning of the line, not where your cursor is.

Also, just up-voted! +1

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I am a paying customer of Evernote and I cannot understand how such a basic text formatting feature as tab stops is not supported.

The funny thing though is that they actually are. If I copy a tab character from Mac OS textedit and paste it into Evernote for Mac, it words just like it should be but for some reason pressing the tab key inserts four spaces instead. WHY???  

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Upvoted. Please please please implement this. It's very frustrating not to be able to do such a simple thing. 

On 12/14/2016 at 4:03 PM, DTLow said:

There are work-arounds; for example the bullet list feature

Personally, if I have serious word processing to do I switch to a dedicated app
The Evernote editor / format works well for me with basic notes

Bullet lists are not at all like tabs.

It isn't just for long documents. Even simple, short notes like the one OP posted benefit from the use of tabs.

 

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It is now 2020 and still, the basic "tab" character is not implemented. 

That would be the same as developing a text editor that doesn't print a specific character. Would exist a work around? of course, just don't use words that require such character, but this is absurd for a text editor. 

"Tab" is not for serious work, this is the basic of the basic, it is visceral. 

It is a shame! 

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As of Evernote 10.2.4 and almost 2021 this is still broken. Pressing TAB inserts four spaces instead of the TAB character. WHY EVERNOTE? WHY, WHY, WHY? It's been 6 (SIX!) years since this was first reported. This is basic text formatting. Even TextEdit.app or notepad.exe can do this, why can't you?

What is even more mind boggling is that if you press TAB at the beginning of a line it works perfectly fine but if you do it let's say after typing a word or a character it inserts four whitespaces. This is so confusing.

I ended my premium subscription with Evernote because of the focus on advanced features and constantly replacing the app/s with "a new layout" rather than focussing on basic functionality.

A disgruntled Evernote user. 

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I'd add my voice to those requesting this feature.

The frustration with this is what led me to use OneNote as the formatting in the editor was just so much better). I still use Evernote as a digital filing cabinet, but not as a note taking tool. I periodically give Evernote another go, and while some things are improving (Formatting styles! At last!), the broken implementation of tab to indent remains a deal breaker.

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