Nesting Multiple Notebooks / Creating Sub-Notebooks

cswsteve · August 17, 2008

I think Evernote is a fantastic product, especially with the iPhone integration. I currently use a program called UltraRecall because of it's heavy use of subfolders. This makes organizing my data very logical. I was wondering if Evernotes has a way to create subnotebooks under existing notebooks to help group numerious notebooks together?

Example Notebooks:

Work

Clients

Customer1

Customer2

Customer3

Customer4

Personal

Electronics

Web Clips

JMichaelTX · June 12, 2016

2 hours ago, Crochetgeek2010 said:

I would rather have training --> MCSA server --> 70-410, 70-411 and 70-412. Then have training --> MCSE server/cloud --> 70-413, 70-414, 70-246 and 70-247. Then I could comfortably add other training aka ITIL and product training for work.

Is this the hierarchical organization that you want?

Moolzel · June 21, 2016

On 14.5.2016 at 10:07 AM, magkcbw said:

Hi there. Amazing product you have. Unless I'm missing something, I would love to have the ability to nest multiple notebooks. Like sub-notebooks

For example:

Notebook Stack:
To-Do
   Work
   Job1234
   On-Site Notes
Off-Site Notes
   Manufacturing
      Job4321
   On-Site Notes
Off-Site Notes
   Manufacturing
   Home
   To-Buy
Shoprite
   Costco
Lowes
To-Fix
   Kitchen
   Master Bedroom

Thanks so much. I couldn't live without evernote. I use it on my phone, ipad, laptop, desktop. Truly a terrific product.

Please... I need this, too... I work in Music Production, Graphic Design, Web Design and Photography -among others.

There's no system of tags (as it is actually) that can help me to get my notes properly organized. I just need the ability to nest multiple notebooks. If I would do that with tags, that would be a terrible mess (not to mention that I can't have two tags with the same name!) There is "Noise" in Music Production, and in Photography, too. There is "Composition" in Music, in Design, and in Photography. What can I do, name the tags "Composition Music", "Composition Photography"? No, I won't, because that will make me loose a lot of time.

I need nested notebooks in unlimited levels, or at least five levels, or ten.
OR: The ability to color-code tags, so that I can have two or three "Composition" tags (one red for Photography, one blue for Design, ...)

I hope you can understand what I mean... There are people who just need a Notebook for Math, one for Geography, one for Chemistry... But there are many other people who need deeper, much deeper levels of Organization. Thanks.

DTLow · June 21, 2016

Moved to the feedback forum to be better addressed as a feature request.

Please indicate your support for this request using the voting buttons in the upper left corner

gustavgi · June 21, 2016

2 hours ago, Moolzel said:

Please... I need this, too... I work in Music Production, Graphic Design, Web Design and Photography -among others.

There's no system of tags (as it is actually) that can help me to get my notes properly organized. I just need the ability to nest multiple notebooks. If I would do that with tags, that would be a terrible mess (not to mention that I can't have two tags with the same name!) There is "Noise" in Music Production, and in Photography, too. There is "Composition" in Music, in Design, and in Photography. What can I do, name the tags "Composition Music", "Composition Photography"? No, I won't, because that will make me loose a lot of time.

I need nested notebooks in unlimited levels, or at least five levels, or ten.
OR: The ability to color-code tags, so that I can have two or three "Composition" tags (one red for Photography, one blue for Design, ...)

I hope you can understand what I mean... There are people who just need a Notebook for Math, one for Geography, one for Chemistry... But there are many other people who need deeper, much deeper levels of Organization. Thanks.

You can't have two notebooks with the same name either. Notebooks are not in any way like folders on a PC.

Since v6, tags will be added automatically to a new note if the desired tag is selected (just like if you create a note in a notebook). Therefore the only big sorting issue that separated the two earlier, is no longer an issue. Color coding tags is possible as well.

PS. People need to stop "confusing" notebooks with folders. Like I have written before. When was the last time you put a physical notebook within another physical notebook? It makes no sense.

DTLow · June 21, 2016

3 hours ago, Moolzel said:

There's no system of tags (as it is actually) that can help me to get my notes properly organized

I don't understand that statement. Have you really looked into using tags?

CalS · June 21, 2016

3 hours ago, Moolzel said:

There's no system of tags (as it is actually) that can help me to get my notes properly organized.

Use the same structure for tags as you would for notebooks. And as previously stated, can't have duplicate names - notebooks or tags, may have to do some prefixing. Or make the top two levels be your stacks and notebooks and tag the rest. If your are using the windows version the recently introduced tag inheritance might be a benefit.

kingtrn · June 22, 2016

TL;DR: +1 for this request (I'm willing to pay some more to have this feature)

I've read all the discussion above and completely agreed with everyone who need this feature. There are so much useful contexts to have multiple levels notebook including mine (I've been looking for this feature very long time).

In my humble opinion, and in my point of view and in my cases of use, I found TAG completely useless (for me). Yes it is useful, I may use it in other systems. But with Evernote, I've never used it, I always search my note by its title or the parent notebook, why? because 1.) I've already organize it to the right place (although not completely satisfied because of lacking of this feature); and 2.) If using tag, I have another organizing system in my head to remember (actually I've tried to use it but since then, I completely delete all the tags in my Evernote, they don't fulfill my cases of use)

DTLow · June 22, 2016

12 hours ago, kingtrn said:

In my humble opinion, and in my point of view and in my cases of use, I found TAG completely useless (for me). Yes it is useful, I may use it in other systems. But with Evernote, I've never used it, I always search my note by its title or the parent notebook, why? because 1.) I've already organize it to the right place (although not completely satisfied because of lacking of this feature); and 2.) If using tag, I have another organizing system in my head to remember (actually I've tried to use it but since then, I completely delete all the tags in my Evernote, they don't fulfill my cases of use)

That is really sad.
Supposing instead of TAG, it was called FOLDER.
Would you consider using it then?

Note - This works for the Windows/Mac Tag Hierarchies. On my iPad, there is no hierarchy and the Tag<>Folder analogy fails

CalS · June 22, 2016

11 hours ago, kingtrn said:

I always search my note by its title or the parent notebook, why? because 1.) I've already organize it to the right place

Funny thing, I use tags for just the opposite reason, I don't want to have to remember where I put the note, which is why i use EN in the first place. I can see why some would like deeper nesting of notebooks, just not for me.

gustavgi · June 22, 2016

14 hours ago, kingtrn said:

TL;DR: +1 for this request (I'm willing to pay some more to have this feature)

I've read all the discussion above and completely agreed with everyone who need this feature. There are so much useful contexts to have multiple levels notebook including mine (I've been looking for this feature very long time).

In my humble opinion, and in my point of view and in my cases of use, I found TAG completely useless (for me). Yes it is useful, I may use it in other systems. But with Evernote, I've never used it, I always search my note by its title or the parent notebook, why? because 1.) I've already organize it to the right place (although not completely satisfied because of lacking of this feature); and 2.) If using tag, I have another organizing system in my head to remember (actually I've tried to use it but since then, I completely delete all the tags in my Evernote, they don't fulfill my cases of use)

It sounds to me like you are comparing tags in Evernote with tags in other software, which is unfair since I have yet to come across any other software which has implemented tags in any way similar to the way Evernote does.

The most fair description of tags in Evernote would be "Folders on a PC, except you can also place the same file in more than one folder".

However to mirror folders on a PC you now have to uncheck "automatically select child tags" in options in v6, as this new function makes Evernote behave more similar to how other software uses tags (like labels for filtering).

Take OPs post as an example.

Notebook Stack:
To-Do
   Work
   Job1234
   On-Site Notes
Off-Site Notes
   Manufacturing
      Job4321
   On-Site Notes
Off-Site Notes
   Manufacturing
   Home
   To-Buy
Shoprite
   Costco
Lowes
To-Fix
   Kitchen
   Master Bedroom

This can be solved in many ways but the most easy way would be the following:

1. Have only ONE notebook called "My notes".

2. Create and drag and drop tags in a nest just like above. Done.

Now say I am fixing the kitchen and for that I have to buy a sink. I find a sink online on the Costco website and I clip it. If I am using a folder on a pc or a notebook to store it in, i would be forced to chose between putting the file in Costco under To-buy or in Kitchen under To-fix.

With tags, I put it in both. Now if i want to find it again later, i just navigate the tag nest/tag tree...

And since v6 you don't even have to type the first tag when creating a new note, if it already exists. You just navigate and click the desired tag in the nest and then click new note. The note will then automatically be placed under that tag (like creating a new file in a folder, or a new file in a notebook).

As a side note Evernote is also limited to 250 notebooks, but I have 11.000 tags..

CalS · June 22, 2016

19 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

11.000 tags

Wow. And I thought I had a lot with 400!

gustavgi · June 22, 2016

4 hours ago, csihilling said:

Wow. And I thought I had a lot with 400!

Well, my system is not for everyone that is for sure.

The main reason for why the number is so large is that a lot of my tags are a description of a single note/just a couple of notes, in a complete sentence, which makes tag search work partly like seach suggestions on google, only personalised.

Not that this is the best example, but let me give a fictive example:

Say I have a note about the movie Se7en. I might tag it with "Movies" "Thriller" "Scary" "Morgan Freeman" "Brad Pitt" and "Deadly sins"

My tags would be nested like:

Movies
      Actors^{(empty tag just for sorting)}
                Brad Pitt
                Morgan Freeman
      Movie genres^{(empty tag just for sorting)}
                Thriller
Topics^{(empty tag just for sorting)}
      Deadly sins
Emotion^{(empty tag just for sorting)}
      Scary

But I might also IN ADDITION to those tags, tag it with

"Se7en - Great movie and scary thriller about deadly sins starring Brad Pitt & Morgan Freeman".

In that way I have myself decided that those are the values i consider extra important for that movie/note. Now if I am in the mood for a scary movie, and do a tag search for "scary" - the whole description for Se7en will show up among the tag suggestions.

So why put this description in a tag and not in the note body? Because then that note about Se7en will compete with 200 other notes that are clipped reviews of different movies where the reviewer thought the movie was "scary" (which I may not agree with at all) or "NOT scary" which will still be displayed in the search results. The search result will also show a note containing an interview with a hockey player, that in one of his irrelevant answers mention a scary cat he saw once..

So why not put it in the note title instead and search intitle:? Because if I then were to clip a note called "10 best thrillers of all time", I can still tag it with "Se7en - Great movie and scary thriller about deadly sins starring Brad Pitt & Morgan Freeman" along with a new tag called "Memento - Great movie and weird thriller that deals with amnesia starring Guy Pearce".

s2sailor · June 22, 2016

24 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

Well, my system is not for everyone

That's for sure . I would start with the keyword "movie" and go from there . I don't have the discipline to pull that level of tagging off for the long term, but I do admire those that use very structured tagging methods. It is always interesting to me to see how others use the service.

CalS · June 22, 2016

@gustavgi

Thanks for explanation. I see how it works for you, which is a good lesson for anyone reading the thread. It has to be a special tag to still exist for me if it has less than 10 notes using it.

Totally off topic, I like the two movie examples, how would you tag Blade Runner?

gustavgi · June 22, 2016

24 minutes ago, csihilling said:

@gustavgi

Thanks for explanation. I see how it works for you, which is a good lesson for anyone reading the thread. It has to be a special tag to still exist for me if it has less than 10 notes using it.

Totally off topic, I like the two movie examples, how would you tag Blade Runner?

"Great movie and sci-fi noir thriller where Harrison Ford probably is a robot"

CalS · June 22, 2016

2 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

"Great movie and sci-fi noir thriller where Harrison Ford probably is a robot"

guillermo_cb · June 24, 2016

why do most of you just troll those of us that like nesting more notebooks?? tags might work great for you and that's cool... i'm glad you like it... but your way doesn't work for me!

Evernote PLEASE listen our request... this won't affect the "tag-fans" and will surely benefit the

On 5/14/2016 at 11:24 AM, magkcbw said:

organization freaks

as @magkcbw, myself, and many more!!

On 6/12/2016 at 0:13 PM, Crochetgeek2010 said:

I add to the plea for nested folders on stacks

We have a tree-structured way of thinking and we prefer to work that way...

Expecting to hear good news very soon...

gustavgi · June 25, 2016

19 hours ago, guillermo_cb said:

why do most of you just troll those of us that like nesting more notebooks?? tags might work great for you and that's cool... i'm glad you like it... but your way doesn't work for me!

Evernote PLEASE listen our request... this won't affect the "tag-fans" and will surely benefit the

It's not about trolling or being a fan of tags, but it's about the fact that the request to nest notebooks is basically a request to make notebooks into tags (in the way Evernote has implemented tags).

To give a dumb example, you are basically asking the creator of floppy disks to create a floppy disk with 4,7 gig storage because you prefer floppy disks instead of DVDs.

One of the main problems with making nesting of notebooks possible today, is that you also have a limitation of 250 notebooks and you can't give two notebooks the same name. As a lot of new EN users don't know that there is a 250 notebook limit, I'm pretty sure that EN would receive a lot of complaints from users that start to create a notebook nest system they like, and then would suddenly get the message that you are not allowed to create anymore notebooks at 250.

The funny thing as well is that Evernote notebooks has more in common with tags in other software, than Evernote tags themselves.

DTLow · June 25, 2016

On June 24, 2016 at 4:38 PM, guillermo_cb said:

why do most of you just troll those of us that like nesting more notebooks??

I thought it as offering a solution for users looking for an organization hierarchy

but then, I'm not one of the ???

JMichaelTX · June 26, 2016

On 6/25/2016 at 2:15 PM, gustavgi said:

it's about the fact that the request to nest notebooks is basically a request to make notebooks into tags (in the way Evernote has implemented tags).

Perhaps from your point of view, but I suspect not from that of many others, including the OP and @guillermo_cb. I would guess they are *requesting* that Evernote Notebooks to work like Mac and Windows folders.

On 6/25/2016 at 2:15 PM, gustavgi said:

To give a dumb example, you are basically asking the creator of floppy disks to create a floppy disk with 4,7 gig storage because you prefer floppy disks instead of DVDs.

Well, you said it, it is a "dumb" example, and is not analogous at all to asking for more full featured Notebook capability.

On 6/25/2016 at 2:15 PM, gustavgi said:

One of the main problems with making nesting of notebooks possible today, is that you also have a limitation of 250 notebooks and you can't give two notebooks the same name.

There are numerous changes that would have to be made in concert with providing hierarchical Notebooks, so I don't see the issue here.

On 6/25/2016 at 2:15 PM, gustavgi said:

The funny thing as well is that Evernote notebooks has more in common with tags in other software, than Evernote tags themselves.

That doesn't make any sense to me. Tags, in all apps I know of, including lots of blogs, are designed to cut across the main structure of the app/web site, and to allow multiple tags per topic. This forum is a great example. Each topic can belong to only one sub-forum, but multiple tags can be assigned to the same topic, and the same tag can be assigned to topics in multiple sub-forums. As we all know, each EN Note can belong to one, and only one, Notebooks, just like files and folders.

BTW, my statements have nothing to do with my preference to use tags or notebooks. As some of you may know, earlier in the year I reorganized my Evernote account to primarily use tags, which I call "pseudo Notebooks". But it was not because I wanted to, it was because I had to due to the way Evernote has highly constrained the use of Notebooks.

gustavgi · June 26, 2016

2 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

That doesn't make any sense to me. Tags, in all apps I know of, including lots of blogs, are designed to cut across the main structure of the app/web site, and to allow multiple tags per topic. This forum is a great example. Each topic can belong to only one sub-forum, but multiple tags can be assigned to the same topic, and the same tag can be assigned to topics in multiple sub-forums. As we all know, each EN Note can belong to one, and only one, Notebooks, just like files and folders.

BTW, my statements have nothing to do with my preference to use tags or notebooks. As some of you may know, earlier in the year I reorganized my Evernote account to primarily use tags, which I call "pseudo Notebooks". But it was not because I wanted to, it was because I had to due to the way Evernote has highly constrained the use of Notebooks.

What I meant was that tags in most other software, including this forum, are used only as a keyword to help identify the content that has been tagged and to make collections. The latter is very much the purpose of EN notebooks as the software is today, where you are not allowed to have more than 250 collections/notebooks (a physical notebook is a collection of notes).

Outside of EN they also have a flat structure where every tag has the same visual value, and if you are lucky they will be somewhere sorted in an non-hierarchical alphabetical list similar to EN notebooks or maybe displayed in a tag cloud.

In EN they have been given a locational and navigational function. A tag can be a child-tag to a parent-tag, like a folder can be sub-folder inside another folder. And like folders (and unlike other software where hierarchical tags have been implemented) you can have a file tagged with a child-tag without it also showing up in the parent-tag.

And depending on how picky you are, one could easily say that the first tag a EN note is tagged with is the "actual location" of the note, while the other tags represent Windows folders where you have placed a file-shortcut to the text-file. In EN, there is no similar way to place a shortcut to a file in a different notebook, inside another notebook.

Either way, I will always have a hard time to see why it would be a negative thing to have an OPTION, to also put a note inside more than one location.

JMichaelTX · June 26, 2016

6 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

What I meant was that tags in most other software, including this forum, are used only as a keyword to help identify the content that has been tagged and to make collections. The latter is very much the purpose of EN notebooks as the software is today where you are not allowed to have more than 250 collections/notebooks (a physical notebook is a collection of notes).

Given your view of Notebooks, I now understand your confusion between Notebooks and Tags.

Each person can, of course, use the tools that Evernote provides in whatever way makes sense to that person.

But if Evernote provided Notebooks that fully modeled computer folders, then I would organize my notes in a very different way. Below is a very, very simple, incomplete example, just to illustrate the fundamental difference between Notebooks and Tags:

Notebooks would be broad categories of Notes, with the category (Notebook) being the primary category
Sub-notebooks would work just like subfolders, organizing the info, and breaking it down into subcategories
1. For example, I would file insurance documents in the Notebook the insurance was for, like Home, Auto, Boat (probably in the sub-notebooks for that thing, e.g. "Jeep 2014", or "House Houston", etc)
2. Since we could have duplicate notebook names with different parents, I would have the same set of sub-notebooks for each Auto, so I would probably have a subnotebook named "Insurance"
Tags would be use for cross-cutting categories, where a category might be useful in multiple Notebooks.
1. For example, I would have an "Insurance" tag that allows me to pull all of my insurance documents regardless of its notebook -- or at least that is how I'm doing it now
2. If Notebooks could have subnotbooks with the same name, then maybe I don't need an "Insurance" tag, IF I can just as easily search for all folders named "Insurance". But for this to be useful, I'd need a results display that also showed the parent Notebook, or maybe the whole path.
3. I would have tags for Locations, People, etc
Tags would also be used for utility purposes, for things like "Favorite".

So notebooks would be great for browsing, and for viewing by drill-down of all notes for a particular sub-notebook. For example, I can go to my "Jeep 2014" Notebook to see everything associated with it, including all of its subfolders.

Tags are great when you have a good idea of the keywords for the subject of interest.
Notebooks are much better than tag when you can remember the material, or would just like to browse, kinda like paging through an old scrapbook you made as a kid, or one your grandmother made that you never knew about.

Finally, Notebooks are far superior for things that have a natural hierarchy, like Projects > Sub-Projects > Tasks > Sub-tasks

Let me remind the reader again, all of this is a very, very big IF. It is theoretical. It is how I would organize IF we had full featured Notebooks. But alas, we don't, so I have to resort to using tags as best I can to model Notebooks. Don't bother to tell me that I can to most everything with tags. I already know that, and have done that. But tags and full featured Notebooks are not the same.

DTLow · June 26, 2016

27 minutes ago, JMichaelTX said:

But if Evernote provided Notebooks that fully modeled computer folders, then I would organize my notes in a very different way.

I have the opposite view; but whatever works for you
I happily left the computer folder model years ago, and never looked back.

Even if Evernote opened notebooks for hierarchy;
I would still only use notebooks for their feature of default/sync/local/offline/share

JMichaelTX · June 26, 2016

8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I have the opposite view.

And that is fine. As often stated in these forums, use what works best for you.

gustavgi · June 26, 2016

1 hour ago, JMichaelTX said:

Given your view of Notebooks, I now understand your confusion between Notebooks and Tags.

It's all about perspective I guess.

I see notebooks for what they are, both in the context of EN as well as the physical notebooks they derive from (which are never "nested"). You are saying I'm confused about the difference, when it looks to me like it's you who either wish for or have already made up your mind that EN notebooks are something that they are not, by both ignoring the skeuomorph and the actual implementation.

But like all feature requests, it's a fair request to ask for the replacement of notebooks in favor of a OS folder system. But at the same time I do think it's reasonable to reflect on how likely it is that EN would lift the 250 notebook limit, the ability to nest and the restriction of identical names, while trying to guide frustrated users who think that the pros of folders can't be met with tags (except that two tags can't have the same name just as notebooks).

I also want to mention again that the most important step tags made towards being equal with windows folders was the implementation of automatic tagging of the tag selected, when creating a new note. This mirrors the behavior that when you have opened a folder and create a new note, the note will be placed in that folder. Prior to v6, you had to add the tag manually. Now you can navigate among the nested tags and then create your note.

JMichaelTX · June 26, 2016

4 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

I see notebooks for what they are

I would suggest a better wording would be "as you perceive them to be". This is after all, a feature request, so it is only natural and expected that the requester is asking for something different.

7 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

I do think it's reasonable to reflect on how likely it is that EN would lift the 250 notebook limit, the ability to nest and the restriction of identical names,

I don't think any of us is qualified to provide a reliable projection of what Evernote will or won't do.
Very recently, Evernote made a major change in EN Win as to how tags work, which I think was a big surprise to many people.

I think the issue the requesters perceive is that every time this request is made, people like you repeatedly come out and try to tell them what is wrong with their request, and that they should change to the way you are doing it.

This gets old very fast.

Why not just present your approach, without being critical of the request, as an alternative/workaround until/if Evernote implements the request?

15 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

it looks to me like it's you who either wish for or have already made up your mind that EN notebooks are something that they are not

If you read all of my prior post, then you would realize that I am clear on the limitations of the current Notebook design, and have already developed my own workaround to these limitations. But yes, I would prefer that Evernote provide Notebooks modeled after folders.

18 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

the physical notebooks they derive from (which are never "nested")

Actually, physical notebooks are "nested" all the time -- the "sub-notebooks" are called "dividers".
But the physical notebook metaphor is irrelevant once we get beyond the concept of a collection of notes.

gustavgi · June 26, 2016

28 minutes ago, JMichaelTX said:

I think the issue the requesters perceive is that every time this request is made, people like you repeatedly come out and try to tell them what is wrong with their request, and that they should change to the way you are doing it.

This gets old very fast.

Why not just present your approach, without being critical of the request, as an alternative/workaround until/if Evernote implements the request?

Like I wrote, the request regarding a change of the way notebooks work is totally fair, and I have not told anyone that they are wrong about their request. However I do get the impression that most of the requesters do seem to have a wrong idea about what tags are for, and at that point it is natural to discuss difference in functionality.

I also think I have yet to see an answer to why tags isn't working for them, as the standard answer is usually more along the lines like "I just don't like tags".

28 minutes ago, JMichaelTX said:

Actually, physical notebooks are "nested" all the time -- the "sub-notebooks" are called "dividers".

Yeah, and the borders of those individual "divider" pages, where there usually is some room for writing and that often has some color, are called tags (and/or tabs).

Edited June 26, 2016 by gustavgi

JMichaelTX · June 26, 2016

10 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

Yeah, and the borders of those individual "divider" pages, where there usually is some room for writing and that often has some color, are called tags (and/or tabs).

I've never heard them called anything by "tabs". Even if the term "tags" was used, it would be in a totally different context.
The point is notebooks are subdivided all the time, regardless of what you call the divider. So, in that context, physical notebooks are nested.

I think the point you are missing is that tags generally are not thought of as containers, but as a means to search across a lot of documents regardless of what container they are stored in. Whereas notebooks and folders are clearly containers. Evernote has blurred the line a bit, first with hierarchical tags, and now with the EN Win option to include child tags when the parent tag is used in a search. But that is still not as solid as full-featured notebooks would be.

lastevns · June 27, 2016

Since the "official line" here at EN seems to be "tags rule" and "stackable folders suck" I don't really expect this comment to persist. But, why is this an either/or issue? EN CAN offer both... and they should. People have made it obvious they would pay for this. As I would have. I won't now, of course. There are options out there that already offer this.

DTLow · June 27, 2016

On June 27, 2016 at 5:35 AM, lastevns said:

Since the "official line" here at EN seems to be "tags rule" and "stackable folders suck" I don't really expect this comment to persist. But, why is this an either/or issue? EN CAN offer both... and they should. People have made it obvious they would pay for this. As I would have. I won't now, of course. There are options out there that already offer this.

My understanding of the "official line" at Evernote is
- if you want default/sync/local/offline/shared, there is a notebook feature
- a tag feature has been provided as a further organization tool
- the folder model is not a feature; there's only stacks, notebooks, and tags
I hink this model was rejected from the very beginning
- the software is free

>>tags rule
I'm not sure why you say this, although I do know that a tag hierarchy feature does exist on some platforms

>>There are options out there that already offer this.
Can you provide more details on this. Actually most of the operating systems provide "stackable folders" as their native file organization

qwebek · July 23, 2016

Thanks for your posts guys, and separate thanks to JMichaelTX for giving nice detalization of your idea with tags with illustrated examples!!

I have tested your suggested idea a bit creating sample 2 braches of 3 level depth tags and assigning them to notes

What i can say - on my opinion it solves some part of "problem" indeed,

The search text box for tags helps in this, what i mean is

If you have such tags hierarchy

Home
- Home.furniture
  - , Home.furniture.table
Office
- Office.furniture
  - Office.furniture.table

And then you process some note which by some means relates to your office table and home table

Then your note will have all 6 tags
Your note can be found if you go to tag search and enter text 'table' - tag search will smartly recognize this word in both "Home.furniture.table" and "Office.furniture.table" and outputs both those tags

It solves the problem though you will pay for it:

The most low level tags will be very long named - not too user friendly + will take time to pick them when you have big tree of tags
Each particular note in most cases will contain very many tags, and remember each tag is pretty long named
As mentioned by Flier - this approach (EN team pushes us to use it) is workaround and breaks logical way of things most people stick to, the user should have small pack of simple tags and nicely structured hierarchy of his notes, not vice versa!

I have 'book case' and on first 'shelve' i have section regarding 'world war 2' in which i have 'machinery' book with section regarding 'tanks' which is marked as 'Tanks' in book glossary, i dont have one giant book with all human knowledge and really long named glossary! En team what do you smoke?

And if seriously if your ideology is "we care only about notebooks and notes and EN is quick thing to put a quick note, other things are out of scope" - what can we say? we can not argue with that, each finds its own solution

For now i will try approach suggested by JMichaelTX s for some time but by the look of things will eventually use 2 levels of notebooks untill spot some alternative

Cheers guys.

jefito · July 24, 2016

2 hours ago, qwebek said:

Thanks for your posts guys, and separate thanks to  JMichaelTX for giving nice detalization of your idea with tags with illustrated examples!!

I have tested your suggested idea a bit creating sample 2 braches of 3 level depth tags and assigning them to notes

What i can say - on my opinion it solves some part of "problem" indeed,

The search text box for tags helps in this, what i mean is

If you have such tags hierarchy

Home

Home.furniture

, Home.furniture.table

Office

Office.furniture

Office.furniture.table

And then you process some note which by some means relates to your office table and home table

Then your note will have all 6 tags

Your note can be found if you go to tag search and enter text 'table' - tag search will smartly recognize this word in both "Home.furniture.table" and "Office.furniture.table" and outputs  both those tags

It solves the problem though you will pay for it:

The most low level tags will be very long named - not too user friendly + will take time to pick them when you have big tree of tags

Each particular note in most cases will contain very many tags, and remember each tag is pretty long named

As mentioned by Flier   - this approach (EN team pushes us to use it) is workaround and breaks logical way of things most people stick to, the user should have small pack of simple tags and nicely structured hierarchy of his notes, not vice versa!

I have 'book case' and on first 'shelve' i have section regarding 'world war 2' in which i have 'machinery' book with section regarding 'tanks' which is marked as 'Tanks' in book glossary, i dont have one giant book with all human knowledge and really long named glossary! En team what do you smoke?

And if seriously if your ideology is "we care only about notebooks and notes and EN is quick thing to put a quick note, other things are out of scope" - what can we say? we can not argue with that, each finds its own solution

For now i will try approach suggested by JMichaelTX s for some time but by the look of things will eventually use 2 levels of notebooks untill spot some alternative

Cheers guys.

Let me make a suggestion here, based on the idea that tags are not inherently hierarchical (you you can organize them like that in Evernote if you want), much like words in a language are not inherently hierarchical. Consider that in the English language, for one, the same word can mean different things in different contexts; say for example, the word 'can': it can be a noun, a verb, or a verbal auxiliary. It all depends on the context, and native English speakers rarely get confused (English is rife with examples of words with multiple meanings, particularly since it tends towards being less inflected than more). Now consider that tags can be used as a descriptive vocabulary, rather than a hierarchy, where a tag can mean a different attribute or adjective in different contexts. Let's take your examples:

Home
- Home.furniture
  - , Home.furniture.table
Office
- Office.furniture
  - Office.furniture.table

I would do something like the following. Define four tags: Home, Office, furniture, and table. Then, when I get a new table for my home, I tag it with Home, furniture, and table. Now it's easy to find all furniture via search (search for tag:furniture), or all tables (search for tag:table), as well as all furniture in your home (search for tag:home tag:furniture). Notice that we do this all the time in our everyday use of language: we say "Hey, I just got a new table for my home", we don't say "Hey, I just got a new Home.furniture for my Home; it's a Home.furniture.table" (well, maybe they do in other languages, but I'm an English speaker writing in English, so...). We provide context for understanding what we say by combining simple attributes.

On the other hand, if you're addicted to traversing deep hierarchies to find your stuff, then tags are probably going to be more cumbersome than a true hierarchical storage system (which, by the way doesn't work so well for categorizing human knowledge, at least in my experience, but that's a topic for another day), and Evernote as it stands today may not be best suited for your needs.

Something for you to ponder...

jefito · July 24, 2016

On 4/4/2016 at 9:06 PM, Flier said:

I'm not going to get into an extended debate here but I will tell you what I have learned during a career in engineering and computing: Bad tools are bad. They are bad even if one can figure out how to use them via workarounds. True craftsmen never use such tools willingly and, if they must use them in a limited way, they do not accept them as anything but an interim necessity while waiting for the better tool. Poor craftsmen, OTOH, accept poor tools without even understanding what they are doing.

Wow, this is so contrary to what I understand about tools and craftsmanship, it's hard to know where to begin. With respect to tools, tools typically have a designed use; sometimes tools are good for that use, and sometimes they're not so good. And sometimes they can be good for other uses, and sometimes not. But it's safe to say that the designer has an intended use for a tool that they produce.

Often, if you use a tool for what it's not intended to do, you will not produce a good result. With respect to Evernote, it has a simple design for organizing and sharing notes (which are the fundamental units here). Notebooks offer a simple partitioning of your notes database, and are one of the two fundamental units of note sharing, along with notes themselves. On the other hand, tags are just labels that we can apply to notes, and they comprise a way of building up a vocabulary for describing notes in your database. A simple design that has analogues in the real world, not to mention one that's very similar to the organizational scheme used by GMail.

This tool, Evernote, has proven useful to a fair number of people over time; I find that it has a natural design for my uses, and is in no way a workaround for anything. For example, I don't miss nested hierarchies in the least in Evernote; my use of notebooks mainly tends to model my need to share them. So while you may think it's a bad tool, I believe that it's just bad for your intended use, but that doesn't make it objectively bad. And if it's bad for your intended use, it's most likely not the tool for you.

On the subject of craftsmanship, I would say that true craftsmen tend to not use tools for purposes for which they're not intended. A true craftsman would probably not drive a nail with a screwdriver, no matter how perfectly designed that screwdriver was for driving screws (i.e., a good tool, but just not for driving nails). There are exceptions to this, of course: a great guitarist, say, Leo Kottke is going to sound a whole lot better on a bad guitar than you or I on the most exquisite guitar. Great artistry can overcome poor tools, but that's in the realm of outliers.

But overall, Evernote is not an intrinsically bad tool. It's great for some things, and not great at others, mainly because of its design philosophy.

We the cave men (and women) will not be holding our collective breath for your return; we'll just continue on happily using a tool that works for us.

dmcritchie · July 31, 2016

On 4/23/2016 at 5:22 AM, CreativeSoul said:

Thank you all for your interesting and creative work-arounds. I think table of contents or the workaround with the tags are useful, but I don't know whether I could integrate them into my workflow in EN after 2 years. I barely use tags (i don't feel comfortable with them). Anyways thanks again for your help, I hope that the EN-Team will think about this feature again! Does somebody know, why Evernote is not implementing this feature?

I can certainly understand a disdain for tags, I've seen Firefox destroyed because of tags and a misunderstanding on the part of Firefox developers that keywords were the same as tags.

If I used tags almost all my notes would have useless tags. I make sure that important words are in the Title or at least in the text. I might also point out that in web pages if you have keywords (tags in Evernote context) that are not in the content the Google search extracts a penalty, so if you were to extend the same principle to Evernote -- it should be in the content and would be found anyway. I can't imagine it working faster if I used tags instead of actual words in content.

I also rearrange words in the title so most important word is first, so an alphabetical sort of titles works well when sorted as such. Though I normally use the default -- updated in descending order. A rule of thumb can be to take the original title, place the most important word first followed by remaining words, comma, then the beginning words (the comma indicates a break in arrangement). Anybody familiar with KWIC indexes would recognize the pattern. Actually I see KWOC, which I never heard the term before is more what I am referring to.

I never heard of KWOC before but I guess it is closer to what I mean -- KWIC / KWAC / KWOC. Also see Key Word in Context - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

With embedding folders within folders in Evernote there would be three problems.

1) You have a specification limit of 250 folders total. When I discovered that and that I only had 100 more to go, I virtually stopped making new folders unless they were going to be public.

2) You can only use a folder name once so you cannot use as a folder name within two stacks, nor would you be able to if you could within two different folders.

3) If you make a folder public you specify that folder name in the url, for instance http://www.evernote.com/pub/dmcritchie/foldername1 (l have no such folder) But that means to me that it would be difficult to have a structure of folders within folders.

Of course Evernote uses the term notebook instead of folder.

Interesting point raised that folders may in fact be a tag in database. For a search of a folder you must place the folder at the beginning of the search and you can't for instance restrict to two or more folders, you have a choice search one folder or all folders.

notebook:folder1 Evernote feature request

DTLow · July 31, 2016

11 minutes ago, dmcritchie said:

I make sure that important words are in the Title or at least in the text.

Do you have a master list of these keywords? I like having the taglist to chose from.

>>I virtually stopped making new folders unless they were going to be public.

That's my reason for using notebooks, to identify notes as syncd/local/offline/shared

It does bring up an interesting point. Would a sub-notebook of a Local notebook also be expected to be Local?

JMichaelTX · July 31, 2016

On 4/24/2016 at 9:07 AM, DTLow said:

To all you notebook and folder people
I'm sorry to break this to you - for digital filing, there are no REAL notebooks or folders.

I'm not sure why you continue to repeat something that is incorrect.

In the digital world of Evernote (and some other apps), "Notebooks" are real. They are not labels, they are containers which contain zero or more Notes.

On 4/24/2016 at 9:07 AM, DTLow said:

These are just labels assigned to a note.

These labels go by various names: Notebook, folder, tag, keyword etc.
But the truth is - they are just labels

If there is anything that is not real in the Evernote digital world, it would be "labels". Evernote does NOT any entity or property called "label".

So if you are trying to state the "truth", then you are far from it.

I have no idea what your point is, or why you keep slamming users who would like to have a more capable Notebook feature in Evernote, that behaves much like Mac/PC folders (which are also containers). It seems very natural to me that at least some users would like the "folder" feature in Evernote since from the invention of PCs and Macs, we have had folders (also called "directories" early on).

May I remind you of the title of this topic: "Feature Request: Notebooks within Notebooks".

The operative words here are "feature request", so why not allow users to make a request without berating them?

dmcritchie · July 31, 2016

2 hours ago, DTLow said:

2 hours ago, dmcritchie said:

I make sure that important words are in the Title or at least in the text.

Do you have a master list of these keywords? I like having the taglist to chose from.

I said I avoid using tags. If I did they would be like "Firefox", "Evernote", "Photography" so would be rather useless if everything would be mostly those. I make sure important words are added to title or text if they are not there an don't rely on or use tags.

For the part you quoted here is an example Actual title of an article was
"Video Lessons: Build your Site with Joomla 3" which I keep in my note with the link, but my title in Evernote becomes:
"Joomla, Video Lessons: Build Site" with the most important word first and remainder shortened to fit in Snippet view for list of articles because the title line does not wrap. The text of note is to the article and reads:

Video Lessons: Build your Site with Joomla 3
:: Check out the Brian Teeman's Joomla video course on How to Build a Site. After you watch this video course you'll be able to create a fully-functional Joomla 3 website.
https://www.siteground.com/tutorials/joomla-video/build-joomla3-site/

followed by the outline of the videos (had to use No Style in Firefox or a bookmarklet to be able to extract).

The only use of tags I used was to select articles for presentations with structured tags like en-pr-2014, en-pr-2015 (didn't get that far), en-pr-clip, en-pr-link all could be found in search with tag:en-pr-* (and they aren't within the articles) There was a problem perhaps they did not work in web view at time -- they do work now, for sure.

You can get a list of the tags you use under View > Tags View (toggle).

DTLow · July 31, 2016

10 minutes ago, dmcritchie said:

I said I avoid using tags. If I did they would be like "Firefox", "Evernote", "Photography" so would be rather useless if everything would be mostly those. I make sure important words are added to title or text if they are not there an don't rely on or use tags.

ok, instead of master list of keywords, do you keep a master list of the important words that you add to the title or text

I'd like to make sure that my use was consistent so that a a search would be accurate.

dmcritchie · July 31, 2016

On 4/16/2016 at 9:08 AM, CreativeSoul said:

Sometimes I want to write long texts within Evernote (like Texts for a Blog or even a book), but I want to chop up the scenes in to different notes.

You might consider creating an Outline ahead of time then using that outline for titles beginning with those indexes (03._a) leave some space in between for insertions. Just a thought, I'm not that organized. Someone posted a nice article of what they did but I could not find it. Most people I think just start writing in Word or similar by Chapters, at least the formatting will be consistent.

DTLow · July 31, 2016

18 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

I'm not sure why you continue to repeat something that is incorrect.

In the digital world of Evernote (and some other apps), "Notebooks" are real. They are not labels, they are containers which contain zero or more Notes.

Wow, you actually believe notebooks are real containers, which contain notes.
Thats more of a logical view than reality. Note data is contained in a database table(s).

I know that Evernote uses the notebook field to identify notes that are syncd/local/offline/shared.
I know some people try to use notebooks for organization, but get frustrated by the lack of hierarchy

>>If there is anything that is not real in the Evernote digital world, it would be "labels". Evernote does NOT any entity or property called "label". So if you are trying to state the "truth", then you are far from it

I never said Evernote used the term "labels" The EN terms are Stacks, Notebooks and Tags

>>I have no idea what your point is, or why you keep slamming users who would like to have a more capable Notebook feature in Evernote, that behaves much like Mac/PC folders (which are also containers
>> May I remind you of the title of this topic: "Feature Request: Notebooks within Notebooks". The operative words here are "feature request", so why not allow users to make a request without berating them?

It's not so much as "slamming" or "berating" as trying to present an alternative solution for users frustrated by the lack of hierarchy with notebooks. Like you did with the Pseudo Notebooks you posted above (possibly more diplomatic than my postings)

Yes, this is a request for notebook hierarchy, and there are others, but to date Evernote has not indicated any plans to implement a hierarchy.
We can wait it out, but I think an alternate solution is more realistic.

Gear$Head · August 3, 2016

Is it possible to have multiple levels of stacks? For example, ideally, I will have a root stack named "Audio-Video", which contains stacks "Music" and "Photography". And under "Music", I will have NoteBooks for each genre, e.g. "Jazz", "Classical", etc. Can there be multiple layers of stacks?

I tried dragging my "Music" stack under "Audio-Video" and EverNote won't let me...

DTLow · August 3, 2016

4 hours ago, Gear$Head said:

Is it possible to have multiple levels of stacks?

No, there are no multiple levels for stacks (or notebooks)

For a multi-level hierarchy, you would need to look at tags.

briancaldwell · August 3, 2016

I second @dtlow and also highly recommend that you consider using Tags to create your hierarchy.

My recommended reading on this topic:
https://michaelhyatt.com/evernote-tags.html
https://byrslf.co/using-evernote-the-right-way-ef61f530d1ad#.ow0hprchu

Gear$Head · August 4, 2016

Thanks DTLow ＆ briancaldwell for suggesting hierarchy within Tags. I have tried implementing it in the simple collection of notes that I have and it's working out so far. Thanks again!

xbliss · August 4, 2016

MS One Note has started to encroach upon EverNotes strong areas, it would make sense for them to do so as well. Competition means improvement both sides.

gazumped · August 4, 2016

9 hours ago, xbliss said:

MS One Note has started to encroach upon EverNotes strong areas, it would make sense for them to do so as well. Competition means improvement both sides.

Evernote is constantly (in their view at least) improving, but such a change seems like it would need them to throw away a lot of their current multi-OS multi-platform code, and probably revamp their server farms too. They'd need a very strong incentive to consider such a fundamental architecture change.

JMichaelTX · August 5, 2016

21 hours ago, gazumped said:

but such a change seems like it would need them to throw away a lot of their current multi-OS multi-platform code, and probably revamp their server farms too.

How would you know this? Are you an Evernote employee, or do you have access to Evernote design documents?

If you have done any real programming, you should know it is pointless to guess about someone else's code, particularly putting your guesses (but stated as if you have real knowledge) in a way that could easily mislead those less informed. I see no point, no value in it.

Why don't we just leave it up to Evernote to comment (if they choose to do so) on the difficulty and/or incentive to make any change.

DTLow · August 5, 2016

On August 4, 2016 at 4:35 PM, gazumped said:

Evernote is constantly (in their view at least) improving, but such a change seems like it would need them to throw away a lot of their current multi-OS multi-platform code, and probably revamp their server farms too. They'd need a very strong incentive to consider such a fundamental architecture change.

My thinking is that it could be implemented by adding a parent field to the notebook record, the same way they did the tag hierarchy.

Not a complicated change, but they would have to change the database and UI on all platforms.
I'm still waiting for a view of tag hierarchy on my iPad.

There's also an argument along the lines of a Local notebook having child notebooks that are Syncd.

J Henry · August 8, 2016

I would LOVE to see at least one more level of nesting added as well.

I understand how tags work completely. They do not suite my needs. They are not as prominently featured in the side navigation. There are many valid reasons as discussed here why they do not suite all users.

Does anyone understand Evernote's current reason for only supporting 2-level deep nesting?

jefito · August 9, 2016

On 8/8/2016 at 4:14 PM, J Henry said:

I would LOVE to see at least one more level of nesting added as well.

I understand how tags work completely. They do not suite my needs. They are not as prominently featured in the side navigation. There are many valid reasons as discussed here why they do not suite all users.

Does anyone understand Evernote's current reason for only supporting 2-level deep nesting?

I'm guessing that that's just the organizational system that they want to provide, as being more flexible than strict hierarchies (it's also very similar to the folder/label organization GMail uses). Stacks provide limited nesting; it's more of a grouping feature than an expression of any kind of real hierarchy.

I wouldn't expect full hierarchies to appear in Evernote any time soon; they might, but they might not, and in general, basing your tool choice on expectations rather than actual realities is usually a bad idea.

lucaspicoli7 · September 13, 2016

Prezados,

O Evernote carece de ter mais níveis de cadernos. Seria muito útil se pudessem ser criados mais níveis para melhor organizar os cadernos em

sub-cadernos, como se fosse uma árvore de diretórios.

Matthew Wimer · September 22, 2016

How is it that a thread created in 2008 with 34 pages of responses has yet to actually be acted on by Evernote? It's one my biggest frustrations that I'm limited in the number of folders I can categorize with. Tags are great for linking between notebooks, but they are definitely not notebooks themselves. For instance, I should have a folder with something like:

Research
   Book Highlights
   Book Title 1
   Book Title 2
   Book Title 3
   Personal Thoughts
   Definitions
   Webclippings
   Political
   Scientific

Personal
Notes
   Christmas Presents
   House Projects
  Statements
Bank

Work . . . [you get the idea]

And then my tags become useful as a way of connecting all of the notes together. This way, I'm not forced to have a massive list of stacks to choose from when I'm trying to find that on document or note. Ooooo we should call the next hierarchy "Bookshelf"! In my example, "Research" is one bookshelf with "Book Highlights" as a stack, "Book Title 1" as a notebook, etc.

DTLow · September 22, 2016

8 minutes ago, Matthew Wimer said:

It's one my biggest frustrations that I'm limited in the number of folders I can categorize with. Tags are great for linking between notebooks, but they are definitely not notebooks themselves. For instance, I should have a folder with something like

Yes, another complaint is that Evernote doesn't use a folder methodology, but that's another topic

JMichaelTX · September 27, 2016

Although Evernote does not have an entity named "folder", I think most of us understand that when some person says "folder(s)" they usually mean "notebook(s)".

DTLow · September 27, 2016

1 hour ago, JMichaelTX said:

Although Evernote does not have an entity named "folder", I think most of us understand that when some person says "folder(s)" they usually mean "notebook(s)".

That may be true, but as I said Evernote doesn't use a folder methodology,
I'm referring to folder
> sub-folder
> sub-sub-folder
......

People will be disappointed if they equate folders and notebooks. In addition to the hierarchy issue, notebooks serve a different purpose.

My impression is tha people are using the wrong product if they require a folder structure, although it can be emulated with tags.

gazumped · September 30, 2016

Hi. As you can tell this is a slightly emotive topic. You are completely right in that adding an hierarchical structure to the database wouldn't prevent those who prefer tags or titles (that's me) continuing to use the bits of Evernote that they find most useful and ignoring the rest. (Isn't that always the way..)

These topics - and this ~~argument~~ discussion is just a replay of several preceding l-o-n-g threads around here - tend to spin off from newer users starting from "how can any self-respecting note-taking software not have a folder hierarchy?"

To which the answer is. Along with a bunch of other decisions about note size, upload limits, search grammar and color schemes, Evernote decided to build their app the way it is. If you'd like to use it now, get used to tags. Tags can be your friend because....(see previous discussion).

It is perfectly reasonable to want nestable notebooks. However, in 8 years of arguments, Evernote have not commented (AFAIK) or demonstrated one way or the other any prospect of this ever happening. That said, they worked on a 'common editor' project for a couple of years before mentioning it to users (Macs are just getting this now). Maybe the nestable folders idea is coming, or maybe it's not.

Evernote don't (usually) comment publically on any development one way or the other.

If you'd like to vote for folders, please go ahead - you never know...

Aurora A. · October 4, 2016

On 8/17/2008 at 3:19 PM, cswsteve said:

I think Evernote is a fantastic product, especially with the iPhone integration. I currently use a program called UltraRecall because of it's heavy use of subfolders. This makes organizing my data very logical. I was wondering if Evernotes has a way to create subnotebooks under existing notebooks to help group numerious notebooks together?

Example Notebooks:

Work

Clients

Customer1

Customer2

Customer3

Customer4

Personal

Electronics

Web Clips

The Evernote Business has this feature. They call it the "Notebook Stack"

DTLow · October 4, 2016

5 minutes ago, Aurora A. said:

The Evernote Business has this feature. They call it the "Notebook Stack"

I think all platforms/accounts have Notebook Stacks

However this discussion has evolved into requests for unlimited levels, similar to the tag hierarchy.

Alternatively, there are requests for Evernote to add folders and a folder hierarchy.

jefito · October 4, 2016

55 minutes ago, Aurora A. said:

The Evernote Business has this feature. They call it the "Notebook Stack"

This is available on all platforms, as DTLow notes. This is not, however, a subfolder system; this is just a way to collect notebooks together. A true subfolder system would allow you to put notes into a stack, but that's not allowed here.

Tom Brewer · October 20, 2016

It is disappointing that the request for nesting notebooks has not been implemented after such a long period of time with so many requests. I appreciate the comments concerning the use of tags, etc., but there are many of us who would prefer to have nested notebooks nonetheless. People have different means of organizing and managing their work and the absence of this feature sets limitations for those of us who have long used folder structures as a foundational element of our practice. As I am not willing to take the time to tag every item entered I have either had to create voluminous numbers of folders or limit my use of EVERNOTE. Neither of these makes me more productive.

Please consider this long-standing request for a valuable improvement to EVERNOTE. Thanks.

DTLow · October 20, 2016

49 minutes ago, Tom Brewer said:

there are many of us who would prefer to have nested notebooks nonetheless. People have different means of organizing and managing their work and the absence of this feature sets limitations for those of us who have long used folder structures as a foundational element of our practice.

Please indicate your support for nested notebooks using the voting buttons in the upper left corner.

For sure, people have different methods of organization.
I happen to like the tag methodology. I would not chose to use a product that doesn't support tags
I'm wondering: Why are you using Evernote if you need a folder structure?

>>As I am not willing to take the time to tag every item entered

But you are willing to take the time to search through a folder structure to file every item entered

Tom Brewer · October 20, 2016

2 hours ago, DTLow said:

Please indicate your support for nested notebooks using the voting buttons in the upper left corner.

For sure, people have different methods of organization.
I happen to like the tag methodology. I would not chose to use a product that doesn't support tags
I'm wondering: Why are you using Evernote if you need a folder structure?

>>As I am not willing to take the time to tag every item entered

But you are willing to take the time to search through a folder structure to file every item entered

Thanks for your reply. I respect that you and other folks like the tag method and would not use a product that does not support them. As for myself and the way that I work I agree with one of the earliest posts in this thread that tags are for taxonomy and not organization. A folder structure is a better way to organize (again, in my opinion).

As for why I use Evernote if I need a folder structure, that is a very good question. On the positive side, there are many great features to Evernote that make life easier for me. Among them are the web clipper and the great editing capability. There are certainly others. On the negative side, I end up using Evernote for some things that fit its model but have to depend upon other tools that include a folder structure for a larger portion of my work. If Evernote had a hierarchical folder structure I would gladly abandon the use of the other tools and consolidate everything therein.

As a matter of record, where I am able to use a folder structure it does not take me any time at all to locate what I am looking for. I have worked this way for many years and know how to use such a structure to my advantage. Also, I did indeed try earnestly to use tags for a while in Evernote. I became overwhelmed by the number of items that showed up with a certain tag. I then had to add tags upon tags to simulate a hierarchy to fit may way of thinking and organizing. This became too much effort for me, so that is why I said that "I am not willing to take the time to tag every item entered". I admire the fact that some folks are very proficient with that model, but I am 65 years old and am one of those dogs that cannot seem to learn new tricks very easily.

Again, thanks for your response. Hope to interact with you again.

jefito · October 20, 2016

36 minutes ago, Tom Brewer said:

As for myself and the way that I work I agree with one of the earliest posts in this thread that tags are for taxonomy and not organization. A folder structure is a better way to organize (again, in my opinion).

Tags are useful for describing things (if that's what you mean by 'taxonomy'), and that's how I tend to use them, but because they can be organized hierarchically, they can be used to reflect hierarchical organization as well -- indeed, multiple independent hierarchical organizations -- with some caveats. The big one is that tag names are unique: if you use a, say, 'Language' as a tag name, it can only exist in one location in your tag hierarchy (or hierarchies). If you assign a single tag from your hierarchy to a note, or to reverse that to resemble a folder analogue, put a note into a single tag in your hierarchy, then you can navigate the tag tree in much the same way as you navigate a folder tree (in the Windows client, anyways). And that's across notebooks, if you wish it, or restricted to a single notebook or a single stack if you wish that.

Sure, you need to tag every note if you want them to appear in your tag hierarchy, but you'd need to make sure that you're creating a note in the correct notebook if there were notebook hierarchies. Level of effort seems similar.

Beyond that, I'd suggest that you already know how to operate taxonomically: if you use Google or any other search engine, it's pretty similar, mentally. Or just describing objects in your world of discourse. Mind, that's with or without tags, as you can filter on either tags or text in a note: you add tags or text terms to filter your note database down to a smaller set of results. But getting used to thinking that way with respect to the world of computing seems to be a hurdle (even though I guess we overcame it somewhat when we kicked the Yahoo approach to the curb after Google appeared).

Don't know what to tell you otherwise. It doesn't look as though Evernote is going to change its mind on nested notebooks any time soon, if at all. I find it to be a great tool regardless, but it's certainly understandable that some folks may not be able to do without notebook hierarchies. Good luck...

Pivo · October 29, 2016

I would like to use Evernote ask my "one stop" location to make notes at work. I need to be able to create a stack within a stack...for example

Company Name (notebook stack 1)

> Committee 1 (notebook stack 2)

> meeting 1 (note)

> meeting 2 (note)

> meeting 3 (note)

etc....

>Committee 2 (notebook stack 3)

> meeting 1

> meeting 2

etc...

Is this possible? I have been trying and it doesnt seem to work.

Thanks.

gazumped · October 30, 2016

Hi. Stacks can only contain notebooks, not stacks. Notebooks can only contain notes. But you are able to tag notes, so why not just create "committee 1" and "committee 2" tags, and also "meeting 1/ 2 /3 etc" ?

michael.freidgeim · November 5, 2016

On 30 October 2016 at 2:49 AM, Pivo said:

I would like to use Evernote ask my "one stop" location to make notes at work. I need to be able to create a stack within a stack...for example

Company Name (notebook stack 1)

> Committee 1 (notebook stack 2)

> meeting 1 (note)

> meeting 2 (note)

> meeting 3 (note)

etc....

>Committee 2 (notebook stack 3)

> meeting 1

> meeting 2

etc...

Hopefully Evernote team reads this, it should be considered as beneficial new feature request.

DTLow · November 5, 2016

On 2016-10-29 at 8:49 AM, Pivo said:

I would like to use Evernote ask my "one stop" location to make notes at work. I need to be able to create a stack within a stack...for example

12 minutes ago, michael.freidgeim said:

Hopefully Evernote team reads this, it should be considered as beneficial new feature request.

It would be more productive adding your vote to a feature request
for example go to the request below - voting buttoms are in the upper left corner

As @gazumped said, nested stacks/notebooks isn't Evernote's organization method.
You might want to look at tags

WaffleS_ · November 10, 2016

I have a bunch of notebooks I'd like to throw into a single notebook/folder type thing.

A good example would be having a very large project being broken down into multiple steps, and then those steps could still be large enough to create clutter. Having a single notebook to click into would be very orderly for at least some people(I hope I'm not the only one!)

Think inception; a dream within a dream within a dream.

Lisa Hines · November 28, 2016

The way my brain creates the logic for Evernote is by Notebooks, and creating notebooks within notebooks, as sub-folders is something I've wanted for a long time. It seems maybe there was nestable notebooks once upon a time?? It would be fantastic as a Realtor to have the following hierarchy available to me:

REAL ESTATE (Top level stack name)

CLIENTS

Client_name

Purchase Address

Contracts

Correspondence

Disclosures

Inspection Reports

Title/Escrow

As you can see, this method requires the ability to have nesting notebooks. Pleeeeeaaaase??????

jefito · November 28, 2016

51 minutes ago, Lisa Hines said:

It seems maybe there was nestable notebooks once upon a time

Not in the 8 years since I've been using Evernote, somewhere near the time of the original post in this topic. Look for posts by user 'engberg', he was CTO of Evernote at the time.

JMichaelTX · November 28, 2016

2 hours ago, Lisa Hines said:

It would be fantastic as a Realtor to have the following hierarchy available to me:

REAL ESTATE (Top level stack name)

CLIENTS

Client_name

Purchase Address

Contracts

Correspondence

Disclosures

Inspection Reports

Title/Escrow

As you can see, this method requires the ability to have nesting notebooks.

I agree with you, this is a perfect use case for "nested notebooks", or as some call them "sub-notebooks".

Unfortunately, the prospects of Evernote providing this do not look good, since this has been requested many, many, times, for many years, by many, many users; and still Evernote fails to provide this highly requested feature.

If you really want to use Evernote for your use case, the only workaround I know of is to use tags, which can be setup in a hierarchical order, like nested notebooks. When tags are used like this, I call them "pseudo notebooks". I have actually used tags like this, and, while not perfect, it does work well. For more info see:

Using Tags as Pseudo Notebooks

You would have to make some adjustments, since each tag name must be unique, and cannot be duplicated just because it has a different parent tag. If you'd like to discuss further, feel free to ask any follow-on questions, and I'll try to answer.

DTLow · November 28, 2016

10 hours ago, Lisa Hines said:

As you can see, this method requires the ability to have nesting notebooks. Pleeeeeaaaase??????

Actually I don't see that as a requirement (I obviously know nothing about the Realtor bus)
- I'd want to use Evernote, and could make it work with tags

Maybe Client/Address as a Notebook

I'm not even sure the other items need a separate Notebook/Tag
- Is there a point in having Contract as a separate notebook?
Maybe a tag if you need to retrieve all contracts
- I'd probably just prefix the note title with Contract, Correspondence, .....

So, I would use

Notebook: Client xxxxxx Address xxxx
Note Title: Contract yyyymmdd xxxxxxxxxx
Note Title: Correspondence yyyymmdd xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Note Title: Correspondence yyyymmdd xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Note Title: Correspondence yyyymmdd xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Note Title: Disclosure yyyymmdd
....

gazumped · November 28, 2016

I'd do the same thing with 'smart' titles - my format for both inbound and outbound documentation is: <date> - <type> - <client> - <keywords> where:

<date> = the incoming or outbound date (not the scanned or saved date which might be different)
<type> = letter / receipt / invoice / brochure / clipping / email / etc
<client> = who?
<keywords> = anything else which might help me find this item

So an 'intitle' search for date will find all transactions last Tuesday, or everything for Client Mr Jones, or all incoming emails from him last week...

jefito · November 28, 2016

12 hours ago, Lisa Hines said:

REAL ESTATE (Top level stack name)

CLIENTS

Client_name

Purchase Address

Contracts

Correspondence

Disclosures

Inspection Reports

Title/Escrow

Not being in the Real Estate business (but having moved twice in the past five years = 2 buys and 2 sells, using the same broker ), I'd aim to map this into Evernote something like the following:

REAL ESTATE : A notebook containing all current real estate related notes.

Each CLIENT is represented by a single master note that contains contact information plus a list of note links to relevant other notes. Tag with "Client" (so you can see a list of all of your current clients). The idea here is that the Client master note is the map to all relevant information and documents for that client. I'd also recommend having a tag for each client, so you can tag all relevant notes and be able to display them all quickly.

Each Purchase Address (Property?) is represented by a single master note that contains relevant information about the property: address, MLS listing #/web link, etc. Should also have information about the property's status (Available, Under Contract, Sold, etc -- these could be tags) This assumes that you might have multiple clients interested in the same property. Tag with "Property" (so you can see a list of all of your current properties). Note title should probably contain address information. The idea here is that the Client master note is the map to all relevant information and documents for that property.

Contracts: relevant contract information: PDF copy, status ("waiting for signature", "signed", etc.). Tag with "Contract". Note title should contain Client name and Contract title, at least. Relevant Client master not should link to this, possibly also relevant Property master note.

Correspondence: Copies of correspondence (ail, email, SMS messages, etc.) with various parties (clients, contractors, owners). Tag with "Correspondence" Relevant Client master not should link to this, possibly also relevant Property master note.

Disclosures, Inspection Reports, Title/Escrow: similar to Contracts and Correspondence above.

Other stuff:

I'm assuming that you have a roster of other businesses that do inspections, contracting, title search, etc.; those would seem to be ripe for inclusion in your system as well. Also, other documents you maintain (boiler-plate documents, checklists, information about your business, contact information for other brokers, etc...)

Also, you might want to have separate notebooks to keep old clients and old properties (or maybe one Archive notebook), so they're still available (I'm sure that you get repeat business, right? ), but out of the way of your current set of clients and properties in your active notebook.

You should probably have well-defined formats for certain items like clients and properties; you'd probably want to have note templates for these to make it easier to add new clients and properties.

DTLow · November 28, 2016

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

I'd do the same thing with 'smart' titles - my format for both inbound and outbound documentation is: <date> - <type> - <client> - <keywords> where: ,,,

I'm just wondering about having <date> as the first entry in the title
This will allow you to sort your notes into data sequence, but you already have the create/update sequence
My preference is to have a keyword as the first entry
- this gives the option of having a third sort sequence

The trick is to chose the correct keyword
In the above example, Contract/../Escrow seemed a logical choice

gazumped · November 28, 2016

I can only fall back on - it works for me. In my constant striving to be the world's laziest person I tend to grow a pile of work to be scanned, which gets processed when it gets done. Unhelpfully the documents don't pile up in date-of-receipt order - and they get messed up from time to time when I have to search for something; so they're scanned in pretty random order. (That reads a lot messier and more casual than it actually is...)

The created date records the scanned date and I add the actual date of the document - which like a receipt I found a few days ago might be from weeks months or years in the past. My four title elements are interchangeable though - if a keyword works better...

CreativeSoul · December 1, 2016

I had the same request couple of months ago. Maybe some of you also want to read the discussion from then:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/95503-feature-request-notebooks-within-notebooks

jefito · December 2, 2016

On 12/1/2016 at 0:45 PM, CreativeSoul said:

I had the same request couple of months ago. Maybe some of you also want to read the discussion from then:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/95503-feature-request-notebooks-within-notebooks

Does it add anything to the 800+ posts in the current topic?

CreativeSoul · December 2, 2016

4 hours ago, jefito said:

Does it add anything to the 800+ posts in the current topic?

Probably not, but maybe someone wants to make a research about this issue and publish a doctor thesis regarding this request

JMichaelTX · December 2, 2016

On 7/31/2016 at 0:23 AM, DTLow said:

Wow, you actually believe notebooks are real containers, which contain notes.
Thats more of a logical view than reality. Note data is contained in a database table(s).

I thought since you claim to be a software developer, you would understand that all software uses logic to emulate real world objects. How the data is actually stored internally is an implementation detail. The notion of a "container" comes from how the information is presented to the user in the UI. The Evernote Notebook meets the usual definition of a software "container" because each Note belongs to, or is contained by, one and only one Notebook.

IAC, you are, again, incorrect, at least for Evernote Mac. The note data is NOT stored/contained in a database. It is stored in macOS folders and files. The EN Mac SQLite database stores only the metadata for Notes, and other objects.

DTLow · December 2, 2016

On 2016-12-02 at 2:14 PM, JMichaelTX said:

IAC, you are, again, incorrect, at least for Evernote Mac. The note data is NOT stored/contained in a database. It is stored in macOS folders and files. The EN Mac SQLite database stores only the metadata for Notes, and other objects.

Agreed, on a Mac
- the note content is stored in individual files; html, image, pdf ... A folder for each note
- the note metadata is stored in a database file ( LocalNoteStore.sqlite) ; title, notebook, tags ...
A note's notebook/tag info is stored in the database

>>The notion of a "container" comes from how the information is presented to the user in the UI. The Evernote Notebook meets the usual definition of a software "container" because each Note belongs to, or is contained by, one and only one Notebook.

We've gone off topic, but I understand the perception of containers
- Even the perception of a stack of containers
- Its another thing with containers within containers; the analogy suffers
As I said, its more a logical view of the data than the actual data

>>all software uses logic to emulate real world objects.

My objective with Evernote is to stash my data and retrieve it when needed
I'm not into emulating real world objects; but tag/notebook works for me; some users prefer the term "folder" (a rose by any other name)
Whatever the name, it's a column in the database

jefito · December 3, 2016

16 hours ago, CreativeSoul said:

Probably not, but maybe someone wants to make a research about this issue and publish a doctor thesis regarding this request

Not particularly thesis worthy. This is just ordinary software development stuff. Company has one vision, users have another. Free market decides.

CreativeSoul · December 13, 2016

On 3.12.2016 at 3:29 PM, jefito said:

Not particularly thesis worthy. This is just ordinary software development stuff. Company has one vision, users have another. Free market decides.

The thesis was more an ironic joke. I agree with the mostly different vision of the company and the users, but this company has a discussion forum, so I assume that they are interested in the opinion of their users. Only this topic is 35 pages long, more then 8 years old and its still being discussed. Let the people discuss, maybe the EN Team wants to stop this discussion, by "just" introducing the future. But maybe I could write a poem about the pain I am going through being a premium user for more then 2 years and not being able to have subfolders in Evernote.

Here are spontaneous song lyrics about my wish to have subfolders in Evernote:

"The Elephant is green,

I am looking at my screen,

I am getting older,

but still no subfolder,

This topic is 35 pages long,

i am writing this song,

about my desire,

to have a subfolder empire.

But I will hold on,

keep writing on,

for the Evernote Staff

so they work on this stuff."

Lisa Hines · December 13, 2016

Apparently, the voices of customers don't carry much weight. #disappointed #stillwaiting

gazumped · December 13, 2016

I've been a premium user for nearly 10 years, and the subject has come up (again, and again...) for all of that time. If you can embrace the non-subfolder environment, it's a good place to be. If you really need hierarchy it might be wise to look elsewhere... It seems highly unlikely Evernote will change anytime soon...

kingtrn · February 21, 2017

On 12/14/2016 at 6:15 AM, Lisa Hines said:

Apparently, the voices of customers don't carry much weight. #disappointed #stillwaiting

Yes, I felt the same when coming to this forum. Some members just impose their opinion to us with their point of view, use cases and alternative way to work around when it comes to a situation the nested notebook is really useful. It's kind of trying to disagree and completely prevent the idea of adding a new different feature despite the fact that adding this feature does NOT create a similar/duplicating functionality or impact on their way of using tag system, and I don't know why? Don't tell me that you want me to use EN the same way like yours, because I don't save the same content as yours and I don't have the same organizing philosophies (rules and conventions that optimized the best for me in case of performance and effectiveness in saving, recalling and searching) as yours.

Just one thing to say to the admins or the product manager I don't know if you read this: Everyone has their own way to organize thing which works best for them and in their own sense. EN is a tool set and it should provide tools for the customers to freely manage their own organizing without the limitation. I think it is the goal of EN, right?.

Thank you very much for this amazing product.

tavor · February 21, 2017

Wow, this thread started in 2008. Nearly a decade later, people are still desperate to replicate deep hierarchies of file folders. Old habits ~~die hard~~ don't die apparently.

I would downvote this thread if I could, but no worries, I am certain that EN will not waste time on this when there are so many more forward looking feature requests.

Forgive me if I'm being a bit salty. Couldn't sleep!

kingtrn · February 21, 2017

1 hour ago, tavor said:

Wow, this thread started in 2008. Nearly a decade later, people are still desperate to replicate deep hierarchies of file folders. Old habits ~~die hard~~ don't die apparently.

I would downvote this thread if I could, but no worries, I am certain that EN will not waste time on this when there are so many more forward looking feature requests.

Forgive me if I'm being a bit salty. Couldn't sleep!

First, I had joined EN community and saw this topic opening for discuss, I really don't care if this thread started in 1998.

Second, what is wrong with "deep hierarchies of file folders", who classified it as an old habit?

Finally, why are you so salty about this idea? Actually I don't really care. What I care about is that will I have an official response from the EN staff who can tell the actual status / decision relating to this feature. If you EN really don't want to do this, then just say a No a close this topic. If you EN accept this task then please say Yes.

I see no reason why we need to debate anymore when there is a vote and currently it is about +50.

CalS · February 21, 2017

13 hours ago, kingtrn said:

What I care about is that will I have an official response from the EN staff who can tell the actual status / decision relating to this feature.

I don't know how official you want it to be, but since this thread is 9 years old one might be able to draw some conclusions. And most of the view imposing you reference in your earlier post has more to do with offering suggestions as to how to navigate and leverage EN without deeply nested notebooks. Since waiting for the feature to arrive might just be folly.

jefito · February 21, 2017

13 hours ago, kingtrn said:

What I care about is that will I have an official response from the EN staff who can tell the actual status / decision relating to this feature.

Look for posts in this topic by 'engberg' (you can use the search box above). He -- Dave Engberg -- was the CTO of Evernote for a long time (gone about a year, I think), and about as official as you're probably going to get here, as Evernote tends not to pre-announce features until they're close to shipping (sometimes you can get clues from following beta releases). I can't remember whether any other Evernote staffer has contributed to this topic or not, but engberg was pretty definitive.

My usual advice is is to use an application if it works for you today, and don't wait and hope on future features.

kingtrn · February 22, 2017

Thank you for the information. Very appreciate. I'm still using the application as the way it provides. But sometime it's better to have some direct feature like nested notebook. And I saw this in the feature suggestion forum, so I just contribute one more vote.

jeffsf · February 24, 2017

The answer to ask these problems is for Evernote just to allow more levels of nesting in the notebook area, like the Mac OS has had since, let me see, 1984?

DTLow · February 24, 2017

6 minutes ago, jeffsf said:

The answer to ask these problems is for Evernote just to allow more levels of nesting in the notebook area, like the Mac OS has had since, let me see, 1984?

There isn't a problem; This is a request for a feature

Never say never, but it does seem clear that this feature is not available in Evernote.

Instead, Evernote has a Tag feature with unlimited hierarchy

jefito · February 24, 2017

7 minutes ago, jeffsf said:

The answer to ask these problems is for Evernote just to allow more levels of nesting in the notebook area, like the Mac OS has had since, let me see, 1984?

Whoa, that might just do it. I don't think anyone's tried sarcasm before...

jeffsf · February 26, 2017

On 2/24/2017 at 2:20 PM, DTLow said:

There isn't a problem; This is a request for a feature

Never say never, but it does seem clear that this feature is not available in Evernote.

Instead, Evernote has a Tag feature with unlimited hierarchy

Perhaps you don't find this a problem for the way you like to work, but it is a problem for me and others. Tags are a wonderful tool, but they are not a substitute for a structured system where one can group items in browsable sets and see the structure as one searches. With tags you have to recall the specific tag from memory, or go to a separate place to remember the tag structure, then go back and do a search. It is enormously cumbersome for searching that involves browsing related items to rediscover what's there or to find something for which you do not recall the exact title or tag. Hierarchical file systems have their weaknesses, which tags have done a lot to fix (such as being able to tie an item to more than one category), but they also possess enormous strengths. Find commands, whether using tags or some other mechanism are one good tool, but they are not always the right one.

tavor · February 26, 2017

3 minutes ago, jeffsf said:

Perhaps you don't find this a problem for the way you like to work, but it is a problem for me and others. Tags are a wonderful tool, but they are not a substitute for a structured system where one can group items in browsable sets and see the structure as one searches. With tags you have to recall the specific tag from memory, or go to a separate place to remember the tag structure, then go back and do a search. It is enormously cumbersome for searching that involves browsing related items to rediscover what's there or to find something for which you do not recall the exact title or tag. Hierarchical file systems have their weaknesses, which tags have done a lot to fix (such as being able to tie an item to more than one category), but they also possess enormous strengths. Find commands, whether using tags or some other mechanism are one good tool, but they are not always the right one.

Tags have you covered there, too. See pseudo-notebooks - I couldn't find @JMichaelTX's original thread on this, but this discussion covers it pretty well:

As you can see, pseudo-notebooks, i.e., nested tags as notebooks or folders or whatever you want to call the hierarchical structure, addresses the concerns your post raises.

DTLow · February 26, 2017

7 hours ago, tavor said:

With tags you have to recall the specific tag from memory....

I didn't mean to reopen the tag vs notebook debate.
The fact is, you've selected a product that uses nested tags for organization

But getting into it, I can turn your Tag comments around and say the same thing about Notebooks.
- you have to recall your specific notebook from memory
- or go to a specific place to remember the notebook structure
....

You could also mention a notebook is a container and a tag is a label
but the reality is that both are just fields assigned to a note

My comments do not invalidate the posting of a Nesting Notebook Request
I just mean to counter your Tag response

jeffsf · February 26, 2017

7 hours ago, DTLow said:

I didn't mean to reopen the tag vs notebook debate.
The fact is, you've selected a product that uses nested tags for organization

But getting into it, I can turn your Tag comments around and say the same thing about Notebooks.
- you have to recall your specific notebook from memory
- or go to a specific place to remember the notebook structure
....

You could also mention a notebook is a container and a tag is a label
but the reality is that both are just fields assigned to a note

My comments do not invalidate the posting of a Nesting Notebook Request
I just mean to counter your Tag response

I get your idea about recall, but in fact that is the genius of nested file structures (notebooks, folders, directories, etc.). You only have to remember the broad general category, or find it in a short list of folders at the top level. Then you navigate through easily browsable lists at each level, so precise recall is not in the least the issue. Some proponents of tags suggest nested tags as a substitute, and that's just fine on a computer, where you can see the tags in their hierarchical structure, but on the iPhone you can't see tags as a hierarchy. You can work around that, but the list is still visible only deep in the account tab (under settings), completely separate from the ability to see the notes that are under the tags. It's completely unworkable as a browsing mechanism. Hence the desire for nested notebooks, since the notebook pull-down is right there in the notes section of the app.

jeffsf · February 26, 2017

14 hours ago, tavor said:

Tags have you covered there, too. See pseudo-notebooks - I couldn't find @JMichaelTX's original thread on this, but this discussion covers it pretty well:

As you can see, pseudo-notebooks, i.e., nested tags as notebooks or folders or whatever you want to call the hierarchical structure, addresses the concerns your post raises.

Many thanks for the suggestion. I had already read it, and admire the creativity. It's very practical for my computer, but I haven't figured out how to use it easily on the iPhone. To see the tag hierarchy on the phone, one has to go into settings, inside the account tab. Stacks and notebooks, are immediately available in a pull-down right in the notes area. So while I'm continuing to try to make tags work, in combo with notebooks, I would pay a good deal to have a more robust notebook function, though Evernote, with their fixation on search terms rather than hierarchy, seem fairly deaf to the entreaties of folks who prefer to work with hierarchies.

JMichaelTX · February 26, 2017

6 minutes ago, jeffsf said:

Many thanks for the suggestion. I had already read it, and admire the creativity. It's very practical for my computer, but I haven't figured out how to use it easily on the iPhone.

You have hit on a major limitation of tags in general, and pseudo notebooks specifically, when used on mobile devices.

Because of this, I have minimized my use of EN iOS, rarely creating or editing Notes there (all done on EN Mac).
As I stated in this link:

On 1/5/2016 at 3:20 PM, JMichaelTX said:

I use tags in two fundamentally different ways:

Pseudo Notebooks -- use in place of where you would normally use a notebook. This includes sub-notebooks.

Note Categorization -- traditional use of tags to categorize the entity, which can have multiple tags. Can be used across Notebooks, or in this case, across pseudo NBs.

For most of my use of EN iOS, I make use of:

Tags used as Categories
Saved Searches
EN Shortcuts
General Search

For example, I have a tag named "HC.Medical", which is for Health Care Medical (doctors, clinics, hospitals, medications, etc) that I use.
So, when I am at a doctor's visit, I simply use the tag filter for "HC.Medical" to bring my medical notes, with the most recent sorted on top.
I also have a saved search and shortcut for this search: "tag:hc.medical tag:masternote" which show the primary notes (one note for each major category) for all of my medical stuff (Doctor, Insurance, etc).

So, I rarely use pseudo notebooks on my EN iOS devices. I just don't have the need to browse notes there like I do on my Macs (or Windows PCs).
Even if we had unlimited, hierarchical Notebooks, I don't think I would really use them that much on my mobile devices.
But that's just me. YMMV.

BTW, just to be clear, I would very much like to have unlimited, hierarchical Notebooks in Evernote. Then, I would have no need for pseudo notebooks. I see good use for both hierarchical Notebooks and Tags.

Nesting Multiple Notebooks / Creating Sub-Notebooks

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