Search in taglist without reminders

[Lars Kumbier 1]

I am using evernote as a GTD-System with .WHEN tags !Daily, 1-now, 2-this week, 3-this month, etc. I plan certain notes / tasks to be done at a certain time and use the reminder functionality for that.

 

I now need a search to get me all notes from the tags !Daily, 1-now and 2-this week, that do not have a reminder present - in other words, that I did not plan yet.

 

I do find all tags with the following:

notebook:"Action Pending" any: tag:!* tag:1-* tag:2-*

I can find notes without reminder with the following query:

notebook:"Action Pending" -reminderOrder:*

But the combination of both does not produce any results:

notebook:"Action Pending" -reminderOrder:* any: tag:!* tag:1-* tag:2-*

Any hints on that? 

 

[Frank.dg 1,385]

A workaround that I thought would work, but doesn't: It seems like one cannot include the "any:" operator for a set of tags and also exclude a certain tag... so one would not be able to tag notes that currently have reminders and then exclude that tag from your search...

The only thing I can think of is to temporarily tag all the notes in the tag contexts you're filtering for with an additional tag (to get around the "any:" operator), filter for that provisional tag and then include "-reminderOrder:*

A solution on mobile device: Search the tag contexts you need with the "any:" operator within your "Actions Pending" notebook... and then simply scan the the note list for tasks that do not have a reminder attached. Notes with reminders show a conspicuous alarm clock icon in the note list on mobile devices.

[gazumped 11,652]

On desktops you can choose List View and sort by the tags column,  so: do the first search and then sort and scan down the list?

[Frank.dg 1,385]

On desktops you can choose List View and sort by the tags column,  so: do the first search and then sort and scan down the list?

 

Yep... that should work: Filter for "-reminderOrder:*" in the "Action Pending" notebook and then as @Gazumped said, sort by the Tags column in list view (toggle F5 on Windows)... and then scan the list (which is in alphabetical order) for the tags you want. They will be grouped together.

[CalS 5,280]

May not want to do it, but put an ! in front of all of your WHEN tags.  Then the search tag:!* -reminderorder:* should return WHEN tagged notes without reminders.  Side benefit of getting all of your WHEN tags together in the tag drop down.

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Another thing you can do is click on each of those tags individually, in turn, in the tag list in the Left Panel (or select the tag from the tag filtering option in the note list tag-filtering utility on both Mac and Windows) and then use a text expander shortcut to enter "-remindOrder" in the search bar once each tag has been filtered for. Surely doing this would be quicker than typing out the search syntax for multiple tags together with reminder sorting as originally intended (if it were even possible)?

[Lars Kumbier 1]

Thanks for all the possible solutions. I guess I have to use any of the hacks to get around the issue, but I'd really like to see a fix in the search engine. Guess I'll put in a feature request. 

[CalS 5,280]

Boolean search has been requested many times, it certainly doesn't hurt to ask again.

 

To be clear my use of ! in front of my WHEN tags was intentional when I started my GTD process with EN.  At the same time I use = as a leading character for people, . as a leading character for projects, and % as a leading character for context. The ! implementation just happens by accident  to address your search request above, and certainly doesn't replace a Boolean capability.  Some of the reasons I opted for ! as a leading character (and the others except for point 3):

1. When applying tags typing ! creates a drop down of only WHEN tags
2. When searching !* returns all WHEN tags
3. When sorting by tags in list view ! tags are the lead search

This isn't my thinking per se, I copied it from something I read at the time.  FWIW.