Tag Hierarchy and the Wild Card (*) Search Character

[Analyst444 182]

I don't want to beat a dead horse and I know that what I offer below has been said in other posts in this forum, but I thought I would just remind people. If you are wishing for a hierarchical function for Tags. the wild card (*) search character can do a pretty good job of that.

 

For example, suppose you have these Tags:

• Animal.Cat.Calico
• Animal.Cat.Cheshire
• Animal.Dog.Collie
• Animal.Dog.Poodle

 

Then, the search Tag:Animal* will produce a list of Notes with any of the above Tags and the search Tag:Animal.D* will produce a list of Notes that have the Dog Tag (pun intended).

 

The dots are not required, but they are helpful for this discussion and, to some degree, when working with hierarchical Tags.

 

This works with the Windows and iOS versions of Evernote. I don't have confirmation that it works on other versions.

 

Of course, as Chirmer has pointed out in another post. if you create/apply some hierarchy on a set of Tags that doesn't exist in the real world (outside Evernote), then you could find at a later point in time that it doesn't handle some situation. - - - However, the names that we give objects in the real world are merely categorizations (there's actually no such thing as a "tree"!) and categorizations always are part of some hierarchy. (I think. I have yet to come across a counter-example.)

 

No doubt, some who read this will point out some benefit of a comprehensive Folder/Notebook hierarchical function that isn't achieved with the above Tagging scheme, but I think it goes along way to getting there.

 

 

[CalS 5,307]

Different dead horse, but you could also create tags for Animal, Cat, Dog, and the list of breeds.  Then a search tag:animal gets all animals, tag:dog gets all dogs, etc.  Slightly fewer tags and maybe a bit quicker in tagging things, but other than that pretty much the same.

Tag inheritance is included in the new Windows beta.  So if you create a tag hierarchy with Animal as the parent and the rest as children, you would be able to do a tag:Animal search and get all the notes even without any of them being tagged with Animal.  Pluses and minuses to that too I suppose.  FWIW

[JMichaelTX 4,118]

47 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Different dead horse, but you could also create tags for Animal, Cat, Dog, and the list of breeds.  Then a search tag:animal gets all animals, tag:dog gets all dogs, etc.  Slightly fewer tags and maybe a bit quicker in tagging things,

How did you determine that your method takes fewer tags and would be quicker in assigning tags?

As I count it:

•  @Analyst444 has 4 tags.
• Your method would require 7 tags:  Animal, Cat, Dog, and 4 breeds.

To assign a tag:

• @Analyst444 requires 1 tag per breed
• Your method would require 3.

@Analyst444's method also has the advantage of providing a nice pick list for tag filter and assigning tags:
Just type "anim" and you see a dropdown list of choices.

[CalS 5,307]

In the specific instance above, sure.  I should have been clearer in my post that I was referring to the process in general, my bad.

For example if I use 5 insurance companies and I want to tag the statements, policies and other stuff I get from them I would create 15 tags with the above method.  Not a bad thing, better drop downs and the like.  I can also create Insurance, Statement and 5 company tags to get the job done, so 7 in total.  Don't really need to add the Other Stuff tag, company by itself would suffice.  It just fits my brain better.  That and I'm a keyboard tagger and really don't use the drop downs that much, so type a few characters to get to one tag and hit enter.

[JMichaelTX 4,118]

19 minutes ago, csihilling said:

It just fits my brain better. 

OK, then, that explains everything.  LOL

Sort of a limited use case though.  AFAIK, only one person has Cal's brain.  

[CalS 5,307]

Yeah, I have a third normal form brain.