Another organizational level, Sublevel to Notes

[ARJester 2]

Evernote is clearly superior to OneNote in the ability to sync across platforms and devices, which is why I use it, but there is one major difference that I wish Evernote would adopt, besides being able to be pretty and colorful instead of drab gray, and that is the sublevel within the notes.  OneNote has the Notebook, then Sections (and even Section Groups which is really great), then Pages.  This was great for what I need it for in my work.  I can create the Notebook as the Organization with which I communicate/have meetings with etc, the individual person as the Section and then a different page for each topic we discuss and keep a running record of how an issue is progressing that is easy to locate.

 

Evernote has a different hierarchy structure that is not as helpful.  Evernote has Notebook Stacks, then Notebooks, then Notes which isn't the same type of organization because it creates a more cumbersome visual in the left sidebar.  I would have to make the Organization the Stack, then give each person their own Notebook, then create a new Note for each topic discussed.  That's chaos on the left side when it's all said and done when you meet with hundreds of people over nine organizations any given year.  So now, I just have the Organization as the Notebook.  Each person and topic together are a new note which means everything is just thrown together in the same window which puts the chaos in the main window which is not ideal but better than putting it all on the left.  This means every time I talk to someone about an issue, have a meeting etc, even if it is the same person I've spoken with before about something else, it's a new note and there is no way to group similar notes under one heading in the main window without making a new notebook.

 

All of this to say that I would love Evernote to add another organizational layer under the Note

[CalS 5,280]

In the meantime, not so much a workaround, but some might use a tag  for each organization, person, and topic (or perhaps a note per topic) and then tag notes appropriately.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Everyone has different needs (And we are all surprisingly flexible!). After working for a long time with Evernote, I found myself very happy with the tools on offer with Evernote. I use VERY few notebooks and tag and title extensively. Having now moved most of my work out of Evernote to DEVONThink, while DEVONThink offers tagging, it does have a bit more of a traditional hierarchal mutually-exclusive design. This actually has me LESS organized, and struggling more with organization, than with Evernote's very straightforward flatness. I'm working to get DT to work as well as Evernote did in this respect, but it's a bit of an adjustment. 

 

The gist: Maintaining a very minimalist and flat taxonomy in Evernote  worked so well for me, having more options in other programs has actually proved to be a hinderance to my organization (at least at the outside of adopting it). 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

@ARJester:

 

This topic has been discussed ad nauseam probably since day two of Evernote.

 

See MY Master Note on EN Organization

[ARJester 2]

In the meantime, not so much a workaround, but some might use a tag  for each organization, person, and topic (or perhaps a note per topic) and then tag notes appropriately.

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I tried using the tags feature and did not like it.  Tags do not create the visual organization I'm looking for.  I like the trees.

 

Everyone has different needs (And we are all surprisingly flexible!). After working for a long time with Evernote, I found myself very happy with the tools on offer with Evernote. I use VERY few notebooks and tag and title extensively. Having now moved most of my work out of Evernote to DEVONThink, while DEVONThink offers tagging, it does have a bit more of a traditional hierarchal mutually-exclusive design. This actually has me LESS organized, and struggling more with organization, than with Evernote's very straightforward flatness. I'm working to get DT to work as well as Evernote did in this respect, but it's a bit of an adjustment. 

 

The gist: Maintaining a very minimalist and flat taxonomy in Evernote  worked so well for me, having more options in other programs has actually proved to be a hinderance to my organization (at least at the outside of adopting it). 

 

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I will look into DEVONThink.  I enjoyed the traditional tree hierarchy design in OneNote and would have made the full transition from Evernote, which I've used for years, to OneNote if the syncing function across devices was more reliable.  The online version is passable but the offline apps don't sync well.

 

 

@ARJester:

 

This topic has been discussed ad nauseam probably since day two of Evernote.

 

See MY Master Note on EN Organization

 

I apologize for my redundancy.  If this is something that has been requested "ad nauseam" with no plans to provide it then I will continue my search for the program that fits all of my needs.  Thank you.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I apologize for my redundancy.  If this is something that has been requested "ad nauseam" with no plans to provide it then I will continue my search for the program that fits all of my needs.  Thank you.

 

No apology needed.  I and many others would like to have the option of true hierarchical organization in Evernote (Notebooks, sub-notebooks), but it does not look like this will happen any time soon, if ever.

 

Evernote can still be a great tool.  I use it many times a day.  Tags are not the same as hierarchical organization, but they can still be very useful.  If lack of hierarchical organization is a show-stopper for you, then you will need to look elsewhere. 

 

I have searched exhaustively, and the only thing that provides this AND provides some of the other great features of Evernote is DEVONthink that Scott mentioned.  But it runs only on the Mac, and has a weak iOS app, and is much more complicated to setup and use, IMO.  I have been testing it for about 3 months now.

 

Here is a lengthy, active, thread about searching for Evernote alternatives:

Power User Discontent - Best Alternatives to Evernote?

 

So far, no one has come up with a great alternative.

 

Good luck.  Hope you find what you are looking for.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

 

Everyone has different needs (And we are all surprisingly flexible!). After working for a long time with Evernote, I found myself very happy with the tools on offer with Evernote. I use VERY few notebooks and tag and title extensively. Having now moved most of my work out of Evernote to DEVONThink, while DEVONThink offers tagging, it does have a bit more of a traditional hierarchal mutually-exclusive design. This actually has me LESS organized, and struggling more with organization, than with Evernote's very straightforward flatness. I'm working to get DT to work as well as Evernote did in this respect, but it's a bit of an adjustment. 

 

The gist: Maintaining a very minimalist and flat taxonomy in Evernote  worked so well for me, having more options in other programs has actually proved to be a hinderance to my organization (at least at the outside of adopting it). 

 

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I will look into DEVONThink.  I enjoyed the traditional tree hierarchy design in OneNote and would have made the full transition from Evernote, which I've used for years, to OneNote if the syncing function across devices was more reliable.  The online version is passable but the offline apps don't sync well.

 

 

 

Be aware that DEVONthink is not a cloud service. If sync is important to you, if it is critical to your workflow, DEVONthink will not work for you. Evernote really has sync and sharing (more or less) nailed. Keep that in mind. 

[gustavgi 308]

 

In the meantime, not so much a workaround, but some might use a tag  for each organization, person, and topic (or perhaps a note per topic) and then tag notes appropriately.

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I tried using the tags feature and did not like it.  Tags do not create the visual organization I'm looking for.  I like the trees.

 

Everyone has different needs (And we are all surprisingly flexible!). After working for a long time with Evernote, I found myself very happy with the tools on offer with Evernote. I use VERY few notebooks and tag and title extensively. Having now moved most of my work out of Evernote to DEVONThink, while DEVONThink offers tagging, it does have a bit more of a traditional hierarchal mutually-exclusive design. This actually has me LESS organized, and struggling more with organization, than with Evernote's very straightforward flatness. I'm working to get DT to work as well as Evernote did in this respect, but it's a bit of an adjustment. 

 

The gist: Maintaining a very minimalist and flat taxonomy in Evernote  worked so well for me, having more options in other programs has actually proved to be a hinderance to my organization (at least at the outside of adopting it). 

 

 

Thank you for the suggestion.  I will look into DEVONThink.  I enjoyed the traditional tree hierarchy design in OneNote and would have made the full transition from Evernote, which I've used for years, to OneNote if the syncing function across devices was more reliable.  The online version is passable but the offline apps don't sync well.

 

 

@ARJester:

 

This topic has been discussed ad nauseam probably since day two of Evernote.

 

See MY Master Note on EN Organization

 

I apologize for my redundancy.  If this is something that has been requested "ad nauseam" with no plans to provide it then I will continue my search for the program that fits all of my needs.  Thank you.

 

 

You should know that tags can be sorted into trees by drag-and-drop, and thus function pretty much in the same way as the deep folder structure you are looking for. The only "big" potential problem I see is that you can't have two "folders" with the same name.

 

There are an unlimited number of ways to organize your notes, but an easy system would be that you have three notebooks; one called "untagged" as the default notebook, one notebook called "tagged", and one notebook called "offline" for mobile offline syncing.

 

Then you would create a parent-tag called Organization, with the Person as the child-tag, and the Topic you discussed as the sub-child tag. Inside the sub-child tag you find all the individual notes related to that person and that topic. However, due to the naming, this system means that you have to have a prefix at the start or end of each topic (such as the persons initials) if you discuss the same topic with several persons.

 

An alternate system, which can be a bit more demanding but practical if you say (often) want to get an overview of the notes about the same topic discussed with several people, is to have the Organization tag only include child-tags with the Persons. Then you create a separate tag at the same hierarchial level as Organization, called Topics, and put child-tags and sub-child tags of topics and subtopics in that tag. This means that you can filter among the topics discussed with a person by clicking the Person-tag in the left sidebar and clicking the use the "jump to tags"-feature to show the list of topics discussed with that person,

 

And by clicking a topic in the left sidebar you see all notes about that topic discussed with everybody. And if you want to narrow it to a person, you just Ctrl+click the persons name to the left or use the "jump to tags" feature to show all the persons you have discussed that topic with.

[ARJester 2]

 

 

You should know that tags can be sorted into trees by drag-and-drop, and thus function pretty much in the same way as the deep folder structure you are looking for. The only "big" potential problem I see is that you can't have two "folders" with the same name.

 

There are an unlimited number of ways to organize your notes, but an easy system would be that you have three notebooks; one called "untagged" as the default notebook, one notebook called "tagged", and one notebook called "offline" for mobile offline syncing.

 

Then you would create a parent-tag called Organization, with the Person as the child-tag, and the Topic you discussed as the sub-child tag. Inside the sub-child tag you find all the individual notes related to that person and that topic. However, due to the naming, this system means that you have to have a prefix at the start or end of each topic (such as the persons initials) if you discuss the same topic with several persons.

 

An alternate system, which can be a bit more demanding but practical if you say (often) want to get an overview of the notes about the same topic discussed with several people, is to have the Organization tag only include child-tags with the Persons. Then you create a separate tag at the same hierarchial level as Organization, called Topics, and put child-tags and sub-child tags of topics and subtopics in that tag. This means that you can filter among the topics discussed with a person by clicking the Person-tag in the left sidebar and clicking the use the "jump to tags"-feature to show the list of topics discussed with that person,

 

And by clicking a topic in the left sidebar you see all notes about that topic discussed with everybody. And if you want to narrow it to a person, you just Ctrl+click the persons name to the left or use the "jump to tags" feature to show all the persons you have discussed that topic with.

 

 

Thank you for your suggestion.  I have attempted, yet again, to master tags and have, yet again, failed.  Tags to me are the equivalent of taking a thousand file folders, painstakingly labeling each and every one, in my case with at least three different keywords or titles, and then throwing them all in a giant pile in the middle of the floor.  I recognize I can search for a keyword and pull a single folder out of that file, but I can do that with anything, and I rarely need to perform such an action.  More likely, I would like to see how many issues a certain person has discussed with me which is easily determined by clicking on the plus sign on a tree next to the person's name, as opposed to doing an entire tag search which I have discovered also turns up any discussions during which I used Person A's name while speaking with Person B all of which I would need to mentally weed out in the count.

 

Tags also do nothing when ordering the notes.  I like them from earliest to most recent, bottom to top, and I cannot get the tags to pull up a search in that order without physically changing the created/updated time stamps on everything. I was timestamping everything with the date and time of the conversation but then if I find an error in a note, and correct it, now I have to change the timestamp again to make sure it falls in between 2 other notes.  In OneNote, I can arrange the pages in any order I want and they stay there. Even if I go back to a previous conversation and edit or add to it, the page doesn't move so I determine any trends throughout the year.

 

After much deliberation I have decided that the trees are indeed a deal breaker for me and are more important to me than the sync function after all.  I have begun transferring everything over to OneNote.  After updating all of my machines to the most current version I may have also accidentally fixed my syncing issue as well.

[CalS 5,280]

Thank you for your suggestion.  I have attempted, yet again, to master tags and have, yet again, failed.  Tags to me are the equivalent of taking a thousand file folders, painstakingly labeling each and every one, in my case with at least three different keywords or titles, and then throwing them all in a giant pile in the middle of the floor.  I recognize I can search for a keyword and pull a single folder out of that file, but I can do that with anything, and I rarely need to perform such an action.  More likely, I would like to see how many issues a certain person has discussed with me which is easily determined by clicking on the plus sign on a tree next to the person's name, **1** as opposed to doing an entire tag search which I have discovered also turns up any discussions during which I used Person A's name while speaking with Person B all of which I would need to mentally weed out in the count.

 

**2** Tags also do nothing when ordering the notes.  I like them from earliest to most recent, bottom to top, and I cannot get the tags to pull up a search in that order without physically changing the created/updated time stamps on everything. I was timestamping everything with the date and time of the conversation but then if I find an error in a note, and correct it, now I have to change the timestamp again to make sure it falls in between 2 other notes.  In OneNote, I can arrange the pages in any order I want and they stay there. Even if I go back to a previous conversation and edit or add to it, the page doesn't move so I determine any trends throughout the year.

 

After much deliberation I have decided that the trees are indeed a deal breaker for me and are more important to me than the sync function after all.  I have begun transferring everything over to OneNote.  After updating all of my machines to the most current version I may have also accidentally fixed my syncing issue as well.

 

For accuracy purposes for anyone reading this thread later.

 

**1** I don't think this is accurate.  If you have have created a tag Person.B, when you do a tag search for Person.B you will only get notes tagged with Person.B.  Any notes in which you mention Person.B but are not tagged Person.B will not be in the search results.

 

**2** You are correct tags sort alphabetically.  The Created and Updated fields in EN are used for date ordering.  There have been many requests of EN to add manual sequencing.

 

I hope ON does a better job of addressing your use case.

[gustavgi 308]

 

 

 

You should know that tags can be sorted into trees by drag-and-drop, and thus function pretty much in the same way as the deep folder structure you are looking for. The only "big" potential problem I see is that you can't have two "folders" with the same name.

 

There are an unlimited number of ways to organize your notes, but an easy system would be that you have three notebooks; one called "untagged" as the default notebook, one notebook called "tagged", and one notebook called "offline" for mobile offline syncing.

 

Then you would create a parent-tag called Organization, with the Person as the child-tag, and the Topic you discussed as the sub-child tag. Inside the sub-child tag you find all the individual notes related to that person and that topic. However, due to the naming, this system means that you have to have a prefix at the start or end of each topic (such as the persons initials) if you discuss the same topic with several persons.

 

An alternate system, which can be a bit more demanding but practical if you say (often) want to get an overview of the notes about the same topic discussed with several people, is to have the Organization tag only include child-tags with the Persons. Then you create a separate tag at the same hierarchial level as Organization, called Topics, and put child-tags and sub-child tags of topics and subtopics in that tag. This means that you can filter among the topics discussed with a person by clicking the Person-tag in the left sidebar and clicking the use the "jump to tags"-feature to show the list of topics discussed with that person,

 

And by clicking a topic in the left sidebar you see all notes about that topic discussed with everybody. And if you want to narrow it to a person, you just Ctrl+click the persons name to the left or use the "jump to tags" feature to show all the persons you have discussed that topic with.

 

 

Thank you for your suggestion.  I have attempted, yet again, to master tags and have, yet again, failed.  Tags to me are the equivalent of taking a thousand file folders, painstakingly labeling each and every one, in my case with at least three different keywords or titles, and then throwing them all in a giant pile in the middle of the floor.  I recognize I can search for a keyword and pull a single folder out of that file, but I can do that with anything, and I rarely need to perform such an action.  More likely, I would like to see how many issues a certain person has discussed with me which is easily determined by clicking on the plus sign on a tree next to the person's name, as opposed to doing an entire tag search which I have discovered also turns up any discussions during which I used Person A's name while speaking with Person B all of which I would need to mentally weed out in the count.

 

Tags also do nothing when ordering the notes.  I like them from earliest to most recent, bottom to top, and I cannot get the tags to pull up a search in that order without physically changing the created/updated time stamps on everything. I was timestamping everything with the date and time of the conversation but then if I find an error in a note, and correct it, now I have to change the timestamp again to make sure it falls in between 2 other notes.  In OneNote, I can arrange the pages in any order I want and they stay there. Even if I go back to a previous conversation and edit or add to it, the page doesn't move so I determine any trends throughout the year.

 

After much deliberation I have decided that the trees are indeed a deal breaker for me and are more important to me than the sync function after all.  I have begun transferring everything over to OneNote.  After updating all of my machines to the most current version I may have also accidentally fixed my syncing issue as well.

 

 

 

Like I wrote, tags can be sorted into trees so that you can have a visual organization.

 

 

 

 

The expanded tree on the left shows each topic and subtopic discussed with a person. On the right, the tree is partly collapsed and you can see by the white arrow that there are subtags under Weather ( and Person ©, which means that topics were discussed with Person C and different types of weather were discussed with Person B, as those tags can be expanded.