What's the fastest way to apply tags to a large number of notes?

[IncrediMetaBeta 22]

My goal is speed while maintaining clarity of focus.  Assume that you have e.g. 1,000 to 3,000 notes for which you want to enter one or more tags apiece.  It would be ideal to right click to enter tags after selecting a note in the "All my notes" view (on the Mac client).  Unfortunately, this is not a feature.

 

For some notes, you would know what the tag(s) should be, whereas for other notes, you would not know.  Some of the tags to be applied you have already created, some must be created.

 

I'd appreciate suggestions that address

 

1 - which Evernote software client tool and which client tool functions to use (I'm not limited to Mac)

 

2 - what defined, repeatable, scalable process to use

 

3 - avoiding having to go individually into each and every note to apply the tags

 

4 - leveraging search and saved searches

 

5 - possible use of some mac-based macro app/utility that leverages keystrokes

 

I use the Mac client and Evernote on the web.  I already have a large collection of tags which I've arranged hierarchically in the Mac client.

 

If I've failed to mention anything that would help you frame a response, please let me know.

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  If you have a large number of notes that require one or more tags,  then selecting these notes - with 'select all' in List view should bring up a small menu which invites you to add the tag(s).  My suggestion for the process would be:  search for note(s) / tag notes / repeat search.  

 

At some point you will get to notes which are individually different so cannot reliably be found in searches - newspaper cuttings say on general topics like 'marketing'. Then you have a choice.  Untagged notes cab be found (search - "-tag:*") and viewed / tagged individually;  or as a matter of general curation of your notes,  each time you complete a search and have a list of hits you can check for those notes which could or should have additional tags.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Assume that you have e.g. 1,000 to 3,000 notes for which you want to enter one or more tags apiece.

. . .

 

For some notes, you would know what the tag(s) should be, whereas for other notes, you would not know.  Some of the tags to be applied you have already created, some must be created.

 

I'd appreciate suggestions that address

 

1 - which Evernote software client tool and which client tool functions to use (I'm not limited to Mac)

 

2 - what defined, repeatable, scalable process to use

 

. . .

 

Since EN Mac seems to be your primary EN client, I'd suggest that you can easily get everything done using it.

Having said that, EN Win does have a very powerful tool to assign tags, activated by CTRL+ALT+T (if memory serves).

 

Using EN Mac, for each set of Tags that you want to apply to a group of Notes:

1. Search using the Search box using the specific search terms (text, tag:, intitle:, etc) to identify the Notes of interest
   1. Note that you can add/remove Search terms to easily fine-tune the Search to get the results you want.
2. If you think you might want to use this Search in the future, create a Saved Search from it (EN Menu > Edit > Find > Save Search)
3. Click in the resultant Note list, and select all (CMD+A), or use SHIFT-Click and CMD-Click to select specific Notes of interest.
4. Add the Tags for this group of Notes in the Tags field in the Multi-Note dialog that appears
   1. You can add one or more existing Tags, and create/add new Tags, just by typing the Tag name
   2. Just type the Tag name (which will autocomplete for existing tags), and the press RETURN to assign that tag (will be created if it doesn't exist), and allow you to continue assigning more tags if needed.
5. When finished, you can just click on one Note in the Note list to return to the normal view
6. I would do a manual sync at this point so that you don't build up a big backlog of changes that need to be sync'd.

You might also find it helpful to use the exclude tag qualifier in the Search box (-tag:TagName).

This would allow you to identify Notes that meet your main Search criteria but have NOT been tagged.

One other idea is to assign a tag to all Notes that you are processing with this that indicates the Note has been processed.  For example, "TaggingDone" or whatever keyword is meaningful to you.  This would allow you to quick search for all Notes that you have tagged using this process.

 

I recommend that you start out slow, assigning tags to just a small number of Notes until you get a feel for things and make sure it is working as you expect.