Nesting Multiple Notebooks / Creating Sub-Notebooks

[cswsteve 85]

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

[spirit 0]

Is subNotebook the same thing as folders?

What I would really like to see is the ability to group notebooks into folders. Tagging's great and has it's place, but it can be a bit of a hassle to tag everything and like the user above, I think a simple folder structure for organising notes is an absolutely basic essential feature.

I love Evernote. It is exactly what I was looking for and have upgraded to premium. But this lack of folders really should be addressed as a No.1 priority in IMO.

[maxaitken 0]

I'd really, really like to see sub-notebooks or something that makes using tags easier. I love EN, particuarly the Mac version. But I miss the easy hierarchical grouping of notes that OneNote allows through sub-notebooks. It's more logical for my rather limited mind that still thinks in terms of paper.

[evernoteuser 0]

It's interesting how different people think. The one great thing Evernote does for me is to provide one 'box' for everything. I don't need to think about the correct place to put a note I just dump it in with a few key words and forget it. That's why an acurate search is so important to me. I'm one of those guys who dumps everything on his desk and then struggles to find it afterwards. It's not that I don't like to be organised it's just that I can't remeber all the place that I organise to- lol! I end up losing something because I might file a legal accounting document in the legal folder or in the accounting folder depending how my brain is functioning (or not) at the time!

- Not really sure why I needed to share my two penneth lol !!!- I guess it's because that is why I'm so taken with Evernote. It promises to allow me to dump it and forget it until I need it next without any structure. - Totally understand that well-organised folks would like more structure though and I agree that having both would appeal to a more diverse userbase.

[Orian1701 0]

I have been searching for a replacement for Google Notebook (RIP...) and have started using evernote. I LOVE the integration across platforms and cloud. However one thing i really miss from Google Notebook is the ability to add note sections within notebooks.

Although Evernote appears to be search heavy, i like to browse my notes sometimes when I am not looking for something specific. Sections helped me keep a visual organization and my notes neat. Ideally I would want to add sections and move notes into them, as well as leave notes, in a notebook without having to put them in a section (one thing onenote won't let you do). Perhaps the best way to allow users to organize their notes is make notebooks like system folders (ie. they could contain notes, folders or sections, and shortcuts to other locations).

Anyone agree?

- Orian

[crane 40]

Welcome to the board. If you do any searching through the forum, you'll find several discussions on this topic, e.g., subnotebooks, hierarchy of notebooks, etc. etc.

Bottom line: several of us have asked for it quite vehemently. And have been told in no uncertain terms "no, use the damn tags", or something to that effect. If you can't deal with a flat (alphabetical) list of notebooks, you'd be better off finding another product. Sigh.

[Orian1701 0]

Then could someone enlighten me as to why tags are "better"? :-/

[terriblue 0]

I don't think it is that they are "better", but they are probably easier to program. Aside from that, tags are more flexible because if you put something in a folder it can only physically BE in one folder. But if you tag something you can tag it with many tags which overlap like venn diagrams. I guess it is just a different way of thinking about things. I like the idea of sub folders too, but I am going to do my best to find the good in the organizational system I am presented with here.

Maybe a way to handle it would be to do an outline of the types of folders you would put things into if you were going to give them a physical "home" folder. You could create titles for those folders, which would then become tags.

You could keep the outline in one Note and adjust it as you find the need to create additional "folder tags" You could even make each of these tags begin with the letters "FT" to distinguish them from regular tags. An example would be "FT-Taxes" Then any of your notes within that folder could also be tagged with additional tags that could be used across any of your "folders".

This way you could have a virtual folder system using tags.

Just an idea.

Terri

[Orian1701 0]

I was thinking about using the nesting of tags to accomplish what I did with subsections. I could have a tag called travel with subtags of locations. I think I could then filter by tags and see all travel with a particular location. Which is basically the functionalty I wanted anyway.

[crane 40]

Just bear in mind that the hierarchy you see on the screen has no meaning. For example, if you have a tag hierarchy like this:

-location

...-paris

...-rome

...-sydney

You're good if you just want to see the notes from paris - you could do a search like tag:paris. But if you want to see all travel notes, you cannot do tag:location, because that will just find you the notes in the location tag, not in any of its children. There is no automatic way to get a note categorized with its parent or child tags either.

I can't remember who, but someone on the board has a good system for dealing with this lack of semantics in the tag hierarchy by naming his tags like this:

-location

...-location.paris

...-loation.rome

...-location.sydney

Then, you could search for tag:location.paris or tag:location.* and find either paris or all travel notes. It's a good hack, but it's ugly, and it requires you to remember how you named stuff. I try it for a couple of my tags, but it hasn't really caught on for me yet.

[legomaniac 0]

I too am feeling a bit left out when I realized Evernote did not have subnotebooks/subfolders. I sincerely hope this feature is bumped way up in the priority level for the developers. To me Folders and Tags server 2 very different purposes in information architecture. Tags describe the content of an object individually. Folders describe the grouping of an object with its peers. While folder groupings can and often need to be hierarchical, tag vocabularies are almost always unordered. Both organizational systems can be used individually and complimentary, and both will lose their usefulness if not maintained (bit rot).

To put it simply: Tags let me Filter, Folders let me browse.

[stevenrt 11]

The lack of subnotebooks continues to be my biggest disappointment in Evernote. I've been following this program since it first came out, and have tried to make it my primary note taking program. However, the lack of a multi-layer organizational system (folders/sub-notebooks/sub-notes) is a big enough problem for me that I keep going back to OneNote.

I do love this program. The ability to use it on multiple platforms (windows, mac, iphone) and automatically sync your notes between them is fantastic. I believe this is Evernote's strongest feature. Furthermore, I'm a firm believer in the need for a tagging system and good searching capabilities in a note program. However, I find searching and the use of tags to only be useful some of the time. Other times, you just need the ability to organize all of your notes in something other than a simple one-level structure.

Looking at all the requests for folders/sub-notebooks on this forum, and the admins' responses, it appears that this is a relatively low priority feature, which is too bad, because I would be more than willing to spend some money on Evernote if such a feature would be implemented. Until then, I'm stuck with OneNote (which I've already spent a lot of money on for 2003 then the 2007 version) and its inability to easily sync and use across different platforms (it's possible, just not nearly as easy and elegant as Evernote). On the plus side, a couple of days ago it was announced that someone is working on a OneNote application for the iphone (not just concept, they are supposedly soliciting beta testers in the next couple of days), which would definitely help on the sync aspect.

My plea to Evernote - please seriously consider implementing folders/sub-notebooks.

Thanks

[sergiomiranda 0]

I also need this feature. Desperately. Tags alone don't work for me.

I think tags don't give the kind of organizing that folders provide.

When you search by tags, you know the tag you are searching for...because you know what kind of content you need, and the tags describe it. but what if you don't know what content you want?

Sometimes you navigate a hierarchy of subjects you previous entered and you end up finding what you want. You go by levels of a reduced number of options and that makes it fast to browse.

Currently, if I tag all my notes I will end up with so many, but so many different tags on the list on the sidebar that I'll be scrolling forever to find what I want sometimes.

One thing that might be easy to do and could REALLY help people who want folders would be an option to restrict the tags available in the tags list of the sidebar to those that exist in the currently visible notes.

For example, if I select notebook "Personal", the list of tags would only display the tags used in personal notes, hiding all the tags used in my other notes in the notebooks "Work A", "Work B", etc.

Then, if i add the tag [Home], it would only display the tags used in notes inside the notebook Home and with the tag [Home].

That will help all users navigate using tags, and provides kind of a tags/foldering hybrid system to those who prefer the folder hierarchy, if they want.

[bkbiggs 0]

Guy's I use One Note, and like alot of other folks, am looking to move completely off to Evernote. And, I too use the section/subsection model that I learned way back in school (while dodging dinosaurs) and would like to have that model availble to me in Evernote. The hierarchies are important to me, and I could use tags to handle this -- but it would be nice if the tag hiearchies would expand and collapse...

[pope22192 0]

I echo this request, I can give several examples of why it would be useful to me:

Example 1: School

I would like to have a folder called School, a subfolder called Accounting, and then I could have 5 notebooks in that folder...one for Chapter/homework notes, One for Syllabus/Misc. course Info, One for Misc. web clippings and other information that relate to my subject.

Example 2: Work

I would want on Notebook to be just for meeting notes, and each note would be a different meeting. Another folder would be for Deliverables or actions still needed, another would be for general notes, etc.

Example 3: Receipts.

I scan every receipt and then throw the hard copy away. I moved to Evernote because I love the idea of OCR being done automatically and no mater what platform I'm on, or browser, I have access to everything. But when I'm on my iPhone, I do not want to see the thousands of receipts I might have in my account. I don't want to archive this folder, because again, I love the idea of having access to this information from anywhere.

I came across an article from another Evernote user named Kent Newsome with the same request as ours in this forum, so I copied his URL below. I think the article really hits home for what we would like to see.

http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:o- ... clnk&gl=us

Thank you Evernote for such a wonderful product!

John Pope

[Visor 0]

pope22192,

Your link is bad. Can you fix it please? Or just paste the URL?

Thanks

[pope22192 0]

Thanks Visor, I just fixed the link and tested it.

[neuronick 0]

This is the most important feature that absolutely HAS to be implemented! Time and time again I try to use Evernote 3 to do my GTD and keep snippets/notes but the lack of sub-folders or hierarchical notebooks is driving me crazy as a lot of info I collect is project based and I like to keep my projects and supporting materials in separate folders for easy browsing. Tags a great for search and filtering but I never liked them as a primary means of organization.

Evernote 2 was almost perfect regarding these aspects. We didn't have online version and other features. But it was a pleasure to work with and you could organize content in a ways that were very flexible...

[teriaki 0]

Time and time again I try to use Evernote 3 to do my GTD and keep snippets/notes but the lack of sub-folders or hierarchical notebooks is driving me crazy as a lot of info I collect is project based and I like to keep my projects and supporting materials in separate folders for easy browsing.

...and I use Evernote for GTD and find it perfect. I fail to see where sub-folders or sub-notebooks would be useful to me. I use Evernote because it's simple. It reminds me a lot of 37signals and their products. More features and complexity isn't necessarily better.

[wendyo 0]

Hi

You guys have done some wonderful improvements to all platforms lately...(I use Mac, windows, web, iphone)...kudos!

I would like to stoke the fire so to speak about sub-notebooks, or merging 2 notebooks keeping them differentiated within one main notebook. I use Evernote for school, work, inspirations, personal reminders, etc...When I first started using Evernote one notebook worked for each school term. As time progresses, I am relying more and more on the cross platform usage of Evernote. Now it is only 1 month into the term and my notebook labeled Fall 2009 is a jumbled mess. If I split it up, I've got notebooks spanning the left side of my screen. Then I can't see the tags. I am an architecture student and have found Evernote fabulous for cross referencing research I have done in prior school terms (work smarter not harder). However, my mind has its own system which includes sub notebooks not tags (well most of the time). It would be a huge HUGE HUGE improvement/help to add sub notebooks.

Thank you for the new addition of Reqall - that rocks!

Also an idea for your feature month series in the blog: how students really use Evernote. Maybe other students have figured out something I could put into use )

Thanks for a great service and constant attention to making it over and above!

Wendy

[sallz0r 0]

I'll add to that.

Subnotebooks is the only thing stopping me from paying for the service; as soon as that's implemented, bam, I'll be a paying subscriber. But as it is now, it's not useful enough for me to use.

[neuronick 0]

...and I use Evernote for GTD and find it perfect. I fail to see where sub-folders or sub-notebooks would be useful to me. I use Evernote because it's simple. It reminds me a lot of 37signals and their products. More features and complexity isn't necessarily better.

I'm not advocating for sub-folders or sub-notebooks against tags. I think they are complimentary. Tags are fantastic for topics, but sometimes information needs more structure (think of libraries - they use tagging AND categorization).

Featurewise, sub-folders or sub-notebooks will not result in added complexity, as people who only use tags and finds them sufficient can continue to use their Evenote this way and it will still be simple (just forget about folders). E.g. we now have sub-tags. Does it result in more complexity? BUT for people who prefer to use only folders/subfolders or a combination of tagging and folders/subfolders it would be very important.

Regarding GTD, a simple example, for every project I like to have my supported materials ready and accessible with just a couple of clicks. In Evernote 2 I had a sub-folder Support materials for each of my projects, containing notes and stuff for the project. You can do it with tags, of course, but if you have 30 projects or more, and just want to see support materials for a certain project, you will either have LOTS of tags or LOTS of notebooks or just complete mess of everything... And, believe me, deciding which tags and notebooks to select to be able to see you next actions in a certain context for a certain project, based on the present system of tags is everything but simple (the same goes for the saved searches, which can help to make a process faster, but result in more clutter).

[kgtband 0]

I agree that sub-notebooks would be a great plus. I don't have much more to say than what has already been said. I just wanted to add my vote to the tally.

p.s. make sure you make the notebooks and sub-notebooks available on the Window's Mobile version!!

[cutterbl 0]

I want to throw in another vote for having folders/subfolders. Let me give you a use case that might explain one need:

Say the user is using Evernote to track daily tasks. Not as a task list, but a listing of what they've done all day, every day. A running diary of office conversations, work tickets worked on, project tasks worked on, meeting notes, etc. And, say the user is trying to organize these by having a separate notebook for each week. Basically each week's notebook might contain 5+ notes (one for each day).

After 20-30 weeks the number of notebooks gets quite long. So, why not have the ability to, say, place each weeks notebook into a folder for that month. Going further, the user might then place those monthly folders into a quarterly folder, with the quarterly folders being placed inside a yearly folder. This keeps the notebook list from getting overly cluttered, and the search function, or tagging, could still be utilized for finding notes on specific things.

Scenario B:

You are organizing a development project, with a root project folder. You could then have a subfolder for 'requirements' containing notes for focus groups, usability studies, diagrams, etc. You could have a subfolder for code snippets and blog urls relating to the project. You could have a subfolder with notebooks for each QA team member, collecting notes on testing.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

iEach of your scenarios can be easily accomplished by using the tools currently in EN (notebooks, tags, keywords, creation dates, titles, etc.) If I want to insure I'll be able to sort notes by a date, I'll preface the title with YYYYMMDD of the significant date. IE I keep entries that are tagged "Journal" and the title starts out YYYYMMDD. I may also tag the note work, family, personal, etc. If I want to look at all journal entries, I do search on the tag Journal & sort by title. If I want to reduce those entries to those strictly related to work, I can add in the tag "work" and sort by title. If it's a search you do often, you can make it a saved search.

Once you have very many notes (I currently have over 9800), folders & sub folders only make it more difficult to find things. Tags give you greater flexibility.

[dmee 3]

I have started using ScanSnap to digitise all my work paperwork. My accounts run 1st September to 31st August. Without subfolders how do I organise things so I can point the accountant at just the relevant paperwork for the business? Early days with scansnap so wanna get things right from the start ;-)

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I have started using ScanSnap to digitise all my work paperwork. My accounts run 1st September to 31st August. Without subfolders how do I organise things so I can point the accountant at just the relevant paperwork for the business? Early days with scansnap so wanna get things right from the start ;-)

I don't use Scansnap, so can't speak directly to it. But if it were me, I'd create a notebook for "current bills". All my scans (of bills) for the current month would go into that notebook. I would also preface each note title with the date the expense was incurred in YYYYMMDD format. I like this format b/c when you sort on title, notes show up chronologically. Once you close the month, you could then assign a tag (IE 200912) by selecting all the notes for that period & adding that tag & possibly a tag for 2009QTR01 so you could search on the expenses for a particular quarter. Then I would move them to the "general" notebook. And of course, there are a few days each month where you're receiving bills from the current month as well as the month before. Again, this is when the YYYYMMDD format of "date expense incurred" is helpful, when you want to move the prior month's expenses from the current month's folder & assign whatever tags you want to assign to them.

Another option may be to have 12 notebooks. One for each month of your current fiscal year. You could even set up another 12 for prior fiscal year. Eventually, (if it were me), I'd move everything into a single notebook with tags to be able to find the expenses incurred in the various fiscal periods/years. Since I've never done this, I'd start out this way & see how it worked for me. You may find that another option works better for you.

[jtjohnson 0]

I agree. We really, really need a way to create subfolders (so I can move away from OneNote).

[chasemann 0]

While I see the points made here about being able to use tags instead of sub-notebooks/folders ... it does seem more logical to use sub-notebooks/folders when you have very specific items you want to group together.

Here is my example.

I am a graphic and web designer and I have multiple clients.

I have a very organized system on my PC of folders segmented into subfolders.

i.e. = X:/Aim/Clients/ClientName/.Notes

/Final

/WIP (works in progress)

I would prefer the ability to organize my Evernotes the same way.

I don't see why Evernote wants to force me to adapt to THEIR system of organization if my system works well for me.

It's MY product and I'm a Premium member ... it should do what I want it to, the way I want it to.

It shouldn't be too difficult to program for sub-notebooks (sub-folders) since I believe every computer system on the planet organizes that way.

[mishii1776 16]

"To put it simply: Tags let me Filter, Folders let me browse." -- this is good.

Yes give us folders - preferably asap.

[bradwww 2]

i agree - please add folders. everything works with folders - windows, DOS, FTP, info select, microsoft project, iPhone except the stupid ipod section) - please allow us to organize in a tree structure so i can put things where they belong - why do i need to see my list of contacts at the same level as my todo list all mixed together? i understand tags but why tag when you don't need to search all the time? i want to browse to my sections and update my notes, being search centric is sometimes a liability - like for people who can't spell! thanks

brad

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

why do i need to see my list of contacts at the same level as my todo list all mixed together?

You don't. Use tags & saved searches.

[bradwww 2]

give me an example of how tags emulate folders to organize items into a hierarchical structure so that when no filters are on i can see my high evel topics displayed on the top level and no others?

heres an example. i download all of my web orders every month and place them in a folder called orders-2009 - how can i do this with tags - keep them separate from other items and show me visually if i am missing a month because they stay in date order while the rest if the database is in item name order?

basically like file folders i need the details to hide away in their folders until i search for them or navigate to that folder, and this system seems like all of your papers are just in a big pile in the middle of the floor.

this will help me understand - thanks

brad

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

give me an example of how tags emulate folders to organize items into a hierarchical structure so that when no filters are on i can see my high evel topics displayed on the top level and no others?

heres an example. i download all of my web orders every month and place them in a folder called orders-2009 - how can i do this with tags - keep them separate from other items and show me visually if i am missing a month because they stay in date order while the rest if the database is in item name order?

You create a tag called orders-2009. You can even create a temporary notebook like I mentioned here:http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=10057&p=53894&hilit=prior+year#p53894

As I said before, I think you should spend some time reading the threads to familiarize yourself with how EN works.

[bradwww 2]

ok - so you are saying i should create hundreds of notebooks for each need, i'm assuming that will perform ok.

is it possible to nest them inside each other - like

business > product > sales records > 2009 >march

i have been searching the forums as i start but cannot find a tutorial on nested tags for folder junkies - you seem to have mastered it - any advice is appreciated, thanks.

brad

[engberg 89]

You may have up to 10,000 tags in your account, and you may organize them into arbitrary hierarchies.

Ultimately, tags are just a tool to make it easier to find your notes later. I wouldn't spend 20 hours organizing your notes into tag hierarchies just to save 15 minutes later in helping you search for your notes. You may find that a simpler organizational scheme may be enough, given the power of the dynamic searching/filtering tools in Evernote (searching by word, dates, locations, contents, etc.).

The Internet has billions of web pages in it, but I can find the right one pretty quickly via Google's single text box without pre-organizing the web into a hierarchy.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

ok - so you are saying i should create hundreds of notebooks for each need, i'm assuming that will perform ok.

is it possible to nest them inside each other - like

business > product > sales records > 2009 >march

i have been searching the forums as i start but cannot find a tutorial on nested tags for folder junkies - you seem to have mastered it - any advice is appreciated, thanks.

brad

You're limited to 100 notebooks. I often use temporary/work notebooks for research/work in progress. Then when it's complete, I add appropriate tags & move the notes to another (more generic) notebook. IE, when researching a new coffee maker, I'll create a temporary folder named _coffeemaker. (The underscore puts it at the top of the list where it's easier to get to.) I'll add all my notes, webpages, screen caps, etc in the folder. Once I'm done with the research, in this case, since I don't want to create a tag for this, I'll prefix the titles with something like "coffee maker selection", then move all the notes to my "Miscellaneous" notebook & delete the _coffeemaker folder. I know I can then recall these notes by searching on "coffee maker selection." I'll even add other words to facilitate a future search. In this case, I may also add the word "choice" to each note (copy/paste) in case I look for "coffee maker choice."

You say you download your web orders. Not knowing how your downloads look or what format or what data is included (all orders in a single CSV file? One file per order? Multiple products per order so that a single order may need to be split up by product?), it's kind of hard to tell you specifically how I'd do it. But I'm guessing since it's all electronic, the business name & the product name is contained in the file & would be easily found with an EN search. If your downloads contain only orders for a single month, you could change the title to (or prefix it with) Business Name - Product - Sales Records - 200903 (I would use this date format b/c then when you sort by title, it will arrange them chronologically.) BUT...I don't think you'd even have to add the business name & product name, since I'd think that's already included in your download...

If the file contains records for multiple months, you could create a notebook named 200912 and 201001 and a main order notebook simply titled "orders." Put each order in the appropriate notebook. Once you know you've got all of Dec 2009 orders downloaded, tag them as Sales Records 200912 & move them to the "main" order file & delete the 200912 notebook. Keep adding newly downloaded web orders to the 201001 notebook until they are all in & then tag them Sales Records 201001, move them to the "main" order file & delete the 201001 notebook. Then if you want to see the sales records for 200912 in May of 2010, just go to the "orders" notebook & search on the tag of Sales Records 200912. You can then sort by title or date created.

I hope this makes sense. And as I said, not knowing more about what your downloaded info contains or how it's presented, these are just some suggestions.

[bradwww 2]

engberg,

yes it does not pay to organize too much - unless you need the information to make sense while browsing.

it sounds like you are saying that every sentence in a word processing document can be in a random order as long as you have a search engine to help you find the sentence you want.

thats great if you want a sentence, but what if you want to read the entire document start to finish by browsing the heirarchy (table of contents)? what if you don't know exactly what you are looking for? what if you know the general area but not the specific search terms? what if a search comes up with too many matches? subfolders solve all of these issues.

i don't agree on the google/web analogy because the next time you search the information may change - the web is dynamic, my information is personal and only i change it, so i like to know where it is exactly so i can jump right to the proper spot when the time comes. This is why i'm having trouble understanding the rigidness of evernote, and why a simple concept like subfolders to tuck items away in their proper place is so unknown.

seems to me you have not decided if you are random or organized information manager. if you are organized - you need folders so we can organize these notes into places where like things stay together, and then use the powerful search when we are looking across all items. if you are random, let us move items anywhere we want to and don't sort them automatically - and again we can use the search or browse as we choose.

burgers,

so your Miscellaneous notebook contains 100 entries for coffeemaker that you need to scroll thru to look at any one topic. you must also bypass 100 coffeemaker notes to get to the next section under Miscellaneous, correct? so the more items you create, the more unweildy your Miscellaneous folder becomes?

see, i have 7821 notes in probably 300 nested folders currently i am attempting to port to evernote, and i just can't see how randomly throwing them into the pile makes sense when they go together like children.

yes all of my orders each month are in a single CSV file download. items and all that does not matter, as this data is used for searching customer names and order ID's only. however i browse it each month to make sure i have not missed a month.

if you create huge long note titles as you suggest your data gets harder to manage as words fall off the right of the screen and more data equals more matches which compounds the problem.

but i do see how you are trying to make a virtual folder from a tag, i still need to find out more about nested tags however, but thats a seperate post, thanks

brad

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

burgers,

so your Miscellaneous notebook contains 100 entries for coffeemaker that you need to scroll thru to look at any one topic. you must also bypass 100 coffeemaker notes to get to the next section under Miscellaneous, correct?

No. I have over 10,800 notes in EN. I just now selected ALL notebooks (all 10,800+ notes) and did a search on "coffee maker selection" (in quotes, so it only finds notes with the words "coffee maker selection" together rather than the word coffee, the word maker and the word selection) and the results pane showed the TWO (only TWO) notes pertaining to my coffee maker selection.

Another example is that I wanted to find the receipt where I'd purchased Orb for the iPhone. (I archive my emails in EN.) Again, I selected ALL notebooks & searched on the words iTunes and orb (not in quotes.) Only THREE notes showed up in the results pane. So I browsed all three & quickly found the one I needed.

To reiterate, both searches included ALL notes, so I didn't even select a specific notebook. Nor did I even use a tag, in either of the above cases. Both searches quickly found (within seconds) the 2 or 3 notes that matched my search criteria out of the 10,800+ notes in my database. In the case of the receipt, another ~30 second browse through the three resultant notes yielded the ONE note that I was looking for.

Yet another example (when looking for an entry you're not sure about) is my journal/diary entries. I may make a journal/diary entry about looking for furniture for my mother. I may stick that into the "Mother" notebook or the "Journal" notebook. An entry noting that I changed the a/c filters today may go into the "House" notebook. An entry noting I gave the dogs their heartworm medicine may go into the "Pets" notebook. But in all cases, I'll definitely tag the notes with Journal. If I want to browse my journal/diary entries, I search ALL notebooks with the tag of Journal. (I have this as a saved search.) I then will either sort by date created or title and browse away through the numerous entries.

If I wanted to find only journal entries pertaining to Mother, the house or the pets, I can then go to the "Mother", "House" or "Pets" notebook & search on the Journal tag. I could just as easily add a tag to the furniture search note of "Mother" (instead of having a "Mother" notebook), add a tag to the a/c filter note of "House" (instead of having a "House" notebook") and a tag to the heartworm note of "Pets" (instead of having a "Pets" notebook) and plop all three notes into the "Miscellaneous" notebook. Adding the second tag of "Mother", "House" or "pets" to the search on the Journal tag would yield the EXACT SAME RESULTS in the results pane as using the three notebooks and only the journal tag. But I haven't completely gotten away from using notebooks. But guess what, this yields the same results as if I had a parent notebook of "Journal/diary" with sub notebooks of "Mother", "House" & "Pets."

To take it a step further, let's say I wanted a parent notebook of "Journal/diary", a sub notebook of "pets" and pets subdivided by pet name. To do this in EN, in this case, I wouldn't use any additional tags, I'd just make sure the pet's name was in the note. (Which it probably would be anyway, since the note may be "Monty, rabies shot today" or "Monty treated for ear infection.") So if I wanted to find only the journal entries pertaining to our dog Monty, I'd simply search on the tags "Journal/diary" and "Pets" & add a search term of "Monty." I probably don't need to add the tag/notebook of "Pets" in this case unless we knew someone named "Monty" and there were journal entries talking about him. Adding the "Pets" tag/notebook omits the journal entries referring to the person named Monty. And the notes displayed in the results pane are exactly what would be displayed if I were using sub notebooks like this:

Journal/diary --> Pets --> Monty

[bradwww 2]

that helps - so note titles, tags and making multiple notes into a single note are the keys to your organization. i archive my emails as well - is there a tag for incoming email so it goes in it's own notebook?

i'm stating to see how business and personal and email could each be different notebooks and it seems long note names are the key to finding those entries.

still wish it were easier to prioritize items though rather than having to rename them "001 " and such.

thanks

brad

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

that helps - so note titles, tags and making multiple notes into a single note are the keys to your organization. i archive my emails as well - is there a tag for incoming email so it goes in it's own notebook?

i'm stating to see how business and personal and email could each be different notebooks and it seems long note names are the key to finding those entries.

still wish it were easier to prioritize items though rather than having to rename them "001 " and such.

thanks

brad

I do often merge notes into one, but it's not a requirement. The search on "coffee maker selection" only happened to have two results (I was looking at two different models of a Bunn.) But it could just as easily had many results with titles like Bunn BXW, another titled Bunn GRXW, another titled Keurig B40, another titled Keurig B60, another titled Keurig B70, etc.

I don't understand why you think you need to prioritize by naming 001, etc. (Example?) The only time I ever do that is when I have similar notes but the difference between them is so minute, that it's hard to find something significant about each note so I may title them "mattress 01", "mattress 02" and "mattress 03." Most times, I could even combine them into a single note titled "mattress." But if they are images or screen caps & I want to see them on my iPhone (IE, again more shopping research I may want to reference when out shopping for a big ticket item), I like to keep them separate in case calling up a very large note would wig out my iPhone. I can't say it would do this, so this could be an unfounded fear. :?

[bradwww 2]

well how can you have a todo list without high priority items that are at the top of the list? hence the numbering system. so i need a number for each of the high priority todo items and lower numbers for the other items in descending order since i have no folder to put these items in based on how important they are.

brad

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I don't use EN as my to do list. Several people use EN with the Getting Things Done philosophy, so try searching the board on GTD. IIRC, someone worked out a pretty nifty system.

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=8113&start=0&hilit=gtd

[bradwww 2]

odd - never occurred to me the repository where you keep all of your information would not work as your todo list manager - you keep everything else there, why not this? thought that was the main reason for all this sync activity between machines.

brad

[crane 40]

odd - never occurred to me the repository where you keep all of your information would not work as your todo list manager - you keep everything else there, why not this? thought that was the main reason for all this sync activity between machines.

brad

Following the GTD philosophy, I've always found that Evernote was more suited to being my reference system, not my contexts. In other words, I don't think of it as my "todo list", but rather a kick-butt filing cabinet.

[sterlingz 7]

Could not agree with this feature request more. We need subnotebooks yesterday. This is an absolutely baffling omission from an otherwise great product.

I had a whole series of "2009" notebooks that were labeled as such so they would be at the top of my list. Well, now that I've started a series of 2010 notebooks, they fall beneath the 2009 ones. I've had to go and rename all my old notebooks so they're not at the top of the list. I would much rather move them to an "archived 2009" folder, and not have to do that, and be able to keep them grouped together for easy reference. I now have about 25 notebooks, so my list is getting out of control. I need to nest some of those into logical containers to clean up my sidebar.

Tags DO NOT get the job done. We need hierarchy.

Cultured Code, maker of Things has a similar issue with their task management software in that they will not add sub-projects. But they at least added "Areas of Responsibility" as a way to group projects, and this has gone a long way to adding some hierarchy.

[sterlingz 7]

it sounds like you are saying that every sentence in a word processing document can be in a random order as long as you have a search engine to help you find the sentence you want.

thats great if you want a sentence, but what if you want to read the entire document start to finish by browsing the heirarchy (table of contents)? what if you don't know exactly what you are looking for? what if you know the general area but not the specific search terms? what if a search comes up with too many matches? subfolders solve all of these issues.

i don't agree on the google/web analogy because the next time you search the information may change - the web is dynamic, my information is personal and only i change it, so i like to know where it is exactly so i can jump right to the proper spot when the time comes. This is why i'm having trouble understanding the rigidness of evernote, and why a simple concept like subfolders to tuck items away in their proper place is so unknown.

seems to me you have not decided if you are random or organized information manager. if you are organized - you need folders so we can organize these notes into places where like things stay together, and then use the powerful search when we are looking across all items. if you are random, let us move items anywhere we want to and don't sort them automatically - and again we can use the search or browse as we choose.

I couldn't agree more. This whole discussion reminds me of when Steve Jobs proclaimed that folders would be irrelevant after Spotlight was introduced in Tiger, which of course was nonsense.

The bottom line is that we need both - Hierarchy and Search. For the reason well-stated above that we cannot always remember the search terms.

And if there really are no sub-notebooks planned, and tags really are going to be the only way to organize notes, then there should be a new UI for managing them, such as a HUD. Managing them in the sidebar is just awful, especially if you have as many as I do. I am going to try and reduce the number of tags I have as I have been creating them wily-nilly, but again, with sub-folders, it wouldn't be necessary to limit them.

Lack of subfolders seems utterly bizarre to me, and I'm going to reconsider my Premium subscription as I'm not sure how much more data I want to put into a flat system.

[sterlingz 7]

Following the GTD philosophy, I've always found that Evernote was more suited to being my reference system, not my contexts. In other words, I don't think of it as my "todo list", but rather a kick-butt filing cabinet.

Totally agree - I use Evernote to clip all kinds of stuff and even manage some documents. I did try the Evernote GTD pseudo-functionality, but decided it was much too limited. After trying a bunch of different tools, I'm now using Things from Cultured Code. It's not perfect, and the developers are incredibly slow about putting out updates (nothing like the crew at Evernote that is constantly improving the apps for all platforms), but it works much better for GTD.

[dloebs 7]

As a new user, i too am utterly befuddled by the lack of subfolders. You have expressed the usefulness of hierarchical folders very well, and this oversight (though since EN has evidently been aware of the shortcoming for a while, it might be more accurately described as willful blindness to customers' needs) may be a dealbreaker for me.

i can't imagine subfolders represent much of a hurdle technically for EN, and those that insist on a flat structure can simply not use a subfolder feature and live happily ever after. In that light, it would seem some explananation by EN would be in order...

[ronmichael 0]

Another vote for subnotebooks. I am a OneNote fan and I could really live without all the other extras in OneNote if this one feature were present in Evernote. My imports from OneNote become an unmanagable mess without a proper place to put OneNote sections. Tags are useful but they aren't a replacement. If this feature were put in place I'd be buying licenses for Evernote Premium for everyone in my company and uninstalling OneNote!

[philipvroom 0]

Hi,

Have sub-notebooks (subfolders) been part of a discussion of improving Evernote. I have a lot of references and divided and organized these is sub notebooks. I do not like that they are always visible in my notebook list and would like them to fold out when needed under a notebook.

Philip

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

If you search on 'sub folder' or 'sub notebook', you'll find this discussed ad nauseum.

[Julian 40]

Is it possible for a notebook stack to have another stack within it, i.e. is this a single level folder hierarchy or a multi-level structure?

- Julian

[engberg 89]

No, stacks are a single level. If you need a much more complicated hierarchical organizational scheme, we'd recommend using Tags, since you can nest them to any level and have up to 10,000 tags.

[jna 1]

Well, nesting tags is a different thing, because tags don't remember their upper level tag. So you can't have "foobar" inside "foo" and "bar".

[Julian 40]

No, stacks are a single level. If you need a much more complicated hierarchical organizational scheme, we'd recommend using Tags, since you can nest them to any level and have up to 10,000 tags.

Thanks. I was just curious really.

When I first came to EN one of my big issues was some way to implement a proper multi-level hierarchy but I've come up with a new way of organising my data that works for me and removes my need for anything more than a single level tag space so I don't think that I'll even use the single level of stacking when it comes to Windows and iDevices.

As jna said though, the fact that "foobar" can't appear under both "foo" and "bar" makes it ugly to implement a proper tag hierarchy even though it is technically possible. The user is left having to disambiguate any tag names that they want to have appear in multiple places in the hierarchy, e.g. "foobar_foo" and "foobar_bar" and the more levels then the worse it can get, e.g. a tag of the form ___ which soon gets very ugly. Allowing the same tag name to appear in multiple places in the tag tree in the UI would be a big step forward. That still leaves people to make sure that, if they tag a note with "foobar", then they also remember to add either the "foo" or the "bar" tag (and any tags for levels in the hierarchy above that) to give the "foobar" tag its full path/context in the hierarchy but at least that's cleaner than forcing tags to be full pathnames as described above.

Luckily this isn't an issue for me anymore but I do feel some sympathy for others that still want a full hierarchy.

- Julian

[CalS 5,280]

Can't help myself; all the discussion about notebook hierarchies in an unstructured, dynamic storage and retrieval system is interesting. Sometimes less is better than more (general search having to be reliable for sure).

[varpness 0]

** This post has been removed by the original author. **

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

It never ceases to amaze me when people who have no intimate knowledge about a particular piece of software profess to know what's easy to implement.

[varpness 0]

** This post has been removed by the original author. **

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You put yourself in this category no doubt, right?

Indeed. I have no intimate knowledge of EN code. And unless you work for Evernote, neither do you. However, I am not making bold statements about how easy something should be to implement.

Also, I would be interested to know what search engine you're using to determine who has an intimate knowledge of certain software or programming skills and who doesn't.

Please don't modify my statements to suit your own purpose. It's very bad form. My claim wasn't about who has certain programming skills. And as far as knowing who has an intimate knowledge of the EN code, no search engine required. It's pretty darned easy. If you don't work for Evernote, you don't have intimate knowledge of their code.

[varpness 0]

** This post has been removed by the original author. **

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You never mentioned an intimate knowledge of Evernote code. You said, "people who have no intimate knowledge about a particular piece of software."

You're really reaching here. Oh, well, if that's what floats your boat.

i can't imagine subfolders represent much of a hurdle technically for EN, .

when it's so easy to implement.

Neither you or dloebs or me or anyone else who does not work for EN can know what's easy to implement. Period.

[bradwww 2]

can't we just say we would REALLY like to have this feature and leave it at that? they don't seem willing to say if it is a technical or a management decision, until we do we cannot know. I would really like to be able to group my searchable notes in bundles together so i can find them in groups by browsing in addition to the searching method, i hope others would as well.

brad

[karenjs 35]

Thanks to those who posted long examples of how they organize/manage with tags & searches, instead of subfolders. I, too, am craving subfolders and find it very awkward to get going without them. It was hard to wrap my mind around how to organize with tags & use searches, so the detailed extended examples were very helpful.

If the Evernote team is reading, I'd love to see the Tips & Tricks blog (& videos) have articles that focus on how exactly people organize their stuff. I'd also, just for the record, love to see subnotebooks too. :?

Thanks,

Karen

[jefito 5,589]

can't we just say we would REALLY like to have this feature and leave it at that? they don't seem willing to say if it is a technical or a management decision, until we do we cannot know. I would really like to be able to group my searchable notes in bundles together so i can find them in groups by browsing in addition to the searching method, i hope others would as well.

Yes, you can say that, and I believe that your opinion is welcomed by Evernote staff. Me, I don't really care to organize my notes in hierarchical folders, as tags are plenty for me. I understand that others want that, but I've seen no interest in providing that in anything I've read by Evernote staff, so it's a moot point for me.

[jbenson2 2,147]

If the Evernote team is reading, I'd love to see the Tips & Tricks blog (& videos) have articles that focus on how exactly people organize their stuff.

Check out the Evernote Blog (Tips and Stories). There are some interesting tidbids there.

http://blog.evernote.com/
http://blog.evernote.com/category/tips_stories/

[johnyjj2 0]

Hello,

I have just registered and I cannot find option which is necessary for me if I would still be using Evernote.

I'd like to create hierarchical tree (similarly as directories in Windows, Linux or any other operating system) to put my notes to the proper categories, subcategories, sub-subcategories and so on. Is there such a possibility?

Regards!

[jefito 5,589]

Nope. Each note in inside of exactly one notebook. Notebooks can be nested, to one level, inside a Stack, but you cannot nest a notebook inside another notebook. Stacks cannot be nested. Notes can be associated with tags, and tags can be organized in a hierarchical tree, but they are not themselves functionally hierarchical. There's plenty of discussion here on the forums on this topic, if you care to search.

[johnyjj2 0]

Thank you for your answer!

I have tried to find topics on the forum with the word "hierarchical" and found this (viewtopic.php?f=56&t=24233&p=104002&hilit=hierarchical#p104002). It looks like this person does with the tags what I'd like to do with them. That's not intuitive way (maybe better, maybe worse, I don't know - using it will answer me if it is good way) from my point of view but at least it offers the same functionality which I'd like to have (and that's the most important).

However, I have also checked the help to find in the most popular questions how to nest the tags. There was no such a question here (http://www.evernote.com/about/kb/search ... ledge+Base) and the most similar topic was "An Introduction to Tags" (http://www.evernote.com/about/kb/articl ... gs?lang=en). Unfortunately, the picture in that article doesn't look like what I see when I log in to my Evernote account. I see tags at the left of the window. I don't see any picture in that article describing how to nest tags. So - how to nest tags?

I don't quite understand the terms which you use. Is it something like default hierarchy which looks like:

-> stack

-> -> notebook

-> -> -> note

I don't see any need to have more than one, default stack.

In other words, please, tell me how to nest tags as shown on this picture (http://i.imgur.com/TlJKX.png) in this thread (viewtopic.php?f=56&t=24233&p=104002&hilit=hierarchical#p104002). I couldn't find the answer here (http://www.evernote.com/about/kb/search ... ledge+Base).

Regards!

[jbenson2 2,147]

Sorry, I don't understand your question.

Perhaps this weblink might be helpful.

http://blog.evernote.com/2010/12/07/update-evernote-4-1-for-windows/

[jefito 5,589]

Tags are nested by merely dragging and dropping in the tag tree. Drop a tag onto another tag, and the tag (and all of its children) will become nested under the second tag. Drop a tag on the "Tags" label (it's not a real tag) and the tag and its children will become top-level tags.

Stacks are merely collections of notebooks; they're nice because they allow you to organize your notebook list (you have a max of 250 notebooks -- managing them as a flat list can be onerous) and certain operations, like search can be applied on a stack of notebooks. Notebooks are merely flat collections of notes.Notebooks and stacks appear in the Notebooks list. Stacks cannot be nested: if you drag a stack onto another stack, the notebooks will be moved from the first stack into the second stack, and the first stack will be deleted. Notebooks cannot be nested in other notebooks. However, notebooks and stacks coexist in the root of the Notebooks list; stacks are there to allow you to organize that list better.

The Knowledge Base is a work in progress, and more topics are being added.

[johnyjj2 0]

Thank you for your answers!

I have been looking for such a solution for some time and the alternative websites with notes (notebooks) had much lower functionality. I'm glad that I have found this useful website and got good support from the forum. And now I know how to nest the tags.

Now I just wonder if those have to automatically be grouped alphabetically (what I don't want to happen) but perhaps I will check it later. There are two other things which I will check sooner or later, about security of my data (e.g. encryption on server and ability to make backup of the data myself by saving it on the hard disc) and capabilities (limitations in the number of notes, tags etc.). I guess tutorial based on screen shots or, what would be even better, movie on youtube, would be very useful. But for now I know all the things which I need to start using the notebook with hierarchically nested tags. Maybe with exception for alphabetical sorting but I'm going to check it in a moment.

Regards!

[trobinson 0]

I am interested in other people's alternative solutions to hierarchy trees using Evernote. I am new to the software, and am accustomed to the hierarchical approach. How would you approach the following simple example to keep notes organized...

Art Projects

- Current Projects

* Project Name 1

* Project Name 2

- New Ideas

* Idea 1

* Idea 2

Design Projects

- Bidding

- Concepts

- Resources

and so on...

Thanks for your input.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I am interested in other people's alternative solutions to hierarchy trees using Evernote. I am new to the software, and am accustomed to the hierarchical approach. How would you approach the following simple example to keep notes organized...

Art Projects

- Current Projects

* Project Name 1

* Project Name 2

- New Ideas

* Idea 1

* Idea 2

Design Projects

- Bidding

- Concepts

- Resources

and so on...

Thanks for your input.

Tags.

(Search the board, if you need more info. This has been discussed a lot, already.)

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Can't help myself; all the discussion about notebook hierarchies in an unstructured, dynamic storage and retrieval system is interesting. Sometimes less is better than more (general search having to be reliable for sure).

(Resurrecting an old post from an old thread that someone else resurrected.)

If I'm understanding you correctly, I absolutely agree. I have thousands (literally) of notes in EN & rarely have a problem finding the one I'm looking for. I primarily search all notebooks with "keywords" and sometimes tags. I almost never use saved searches.

[jbenson2 2,147]

I am interested in other people's alternative solutions to hierarchy trees using Evernote. I am new to the software, and am accustomed to the hierarchical approach. How would you approach the following simple example to keep notes organized...

I would toss the notes for all these subjects into one single notebook and tag the notes accordingly.

Tag examples:

• Art-current
  Art-job
  Art-idea
  Des-bid
  Des-idea
  Des-ref
  And then some tags to describe the specific jobs or ideas (Metropolitan Museum, Louvre, Tate Museum, etc)
  

[vanjoygree 0]

I'd really love to hear more suggestions on creating "hierarchies". I'm experimenting with Evernote as a permanent solution to my info management project, and not having a fairly intuitive way to build in a structure that mimics an outline format could very well be the showstopper for me. Which I would hate because I really love everything else about Evernote.

And sorry, 10,000 tags is not enough for me IF that is the only way I can create hierarchies. (If Evernote really works for me, I would end up with *at least* 50,000 individual outline elements.) Stacks won't work because I need at least four levels deep for my projects. I have tried the "double naming" concept (Contacts-Work, Contacts-School, etc), but that does not truly express the nuances of why I use hierarchies in my research projects.

I love how OneNote allows for infinite amount of hierarchal organization (which is really the only thing I like about it). Even a free blog on Wordpress allows for very complex hierarchies of "categories", so it's hard for me to believe such a concept is too difficult to do. I'm really surprised and sad that Evernote doesn't have some kind of more robust hierarchy functionality.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I'd really love to hear more suggestions on creating "hierarchies". I'm experimenting with Evernote as a permanent solution to my info management project, and not having a fairly intuitive way to build in a structure that mimics an outline format could very well be the showstopper for me. Which I would hate because I really love everything else about Evernote.

And sorry, 10,000 tags is not enough for me IF that is the only way I can create hierarchies. (If Evernote really works for me, I would end up with 50,000 individual outline elements.) Stacks won't work because I need at least four levels deep for my projects. I have tried the "double naming" concept (Contacts-Work, Contacts-School, etc), but that does not truly express the nuances of why I use hierarchies in my research projects.

I love how OneNote allows for infinite amount of hierarchal organization (which is really the only thing I like about it). Even a free blog on Wordpress allows for very complex hierarchies of "categories", so it's hard for me to believe such a concept is too difficult to do. I'm really surprised and sad that Evernote doesn't have some kind of more robust hierarchy functionality.

I suggest you read some of the existing threads on tags vs sub-folders/sub-notebooks. Many people (including myself) have posted extensive posts about how to use tags. IMO & IME, if you're using anywhere near 10,000 tags (or more), then you're overtagging. (I have just under 40,000 notes & probably only have ~150 tags.)

[vanjoygree 0]

Thank you, I will look at previous posts. If you could, it would help me greatly if you could suggest either some specific threads or good keyword searches to find these posts.

I agree with you that anything over 10,000 in *tags* says that some reanalysis is necessary. However, my scenario assumed I was using tags, in a sense, as a substitute for creating pure hierarchy-based info organization. I would much rather use tags as they are meant to be used in all info management systems.

My project work has been going on for 25 years and truly does require tens of thousands of hierarchal levels because the information itself requires that kind of breakdown. Trust me, I am NOT partial to very complex hierarchies or to breaking down information to insignificant detail; my work actually is trying to pull these details up into less complex models. But I have to start with the details.

Thanks again!

[terheyden 4]

I don't use tags or multiple notebooks at all. Instead I use keywords in the titles of all my notes. Here are some example note titles:

myco - TODO = my TODO list at My Company, where I work.

myco - proj1 - mtg notes = all my meeting notes about Project1 at My Company.

myco - proj1 - work notes = my ongoing work notes about how I'm implementing Project1.

etc...

Then I have a saved search for "intitle:myco". I click on that, then I can do a "intitle:proj1" search to get just myco / proj1 notes. Doing a search after clicking on a saved search will search only within the saved search results so it's kind of like a refined search.

[jefito 5,589]

I don't use tags or multiple notebooks at all. Instead I use keywords in the titles of all my notes. Here are some example note titles:

That's fine, but working with tags is generally better supported in Evernote than is working with free text in titles. For example, in the Windows client, you have an easy way to tag multiple notes, which would be difficult to do with keywords in titles. You must be very disciplined.

[blaster219 18]

Or they could add Stacked Stacks for those people (and this topic keeps coming up enough times to indicate its a not-insignificant number) who want to use "notebook level hierarchy" since adding it shouldn't in any way force anyone to change the way they currently use Enote if they don't want to.

Those who want Stacks within stacks (in other words a Project > Section > Subsection way of organising their notes without resorting to tags) are happy.

Those who just want to use Tags are happy as the change in no way effects them.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Or they could add Stacked Stacks

I'd guess they would have done this from the get go, if it were feasible. As you can see from Dave Engberg's post above, EN has suggested using tags, instead of the "sub notebook" way of organizing notes.

Additonally, stacks currently aren't even rolled out on all platforms. Since the iPhone app has been totally redone since stacks were rolled out on the Windows/Mac desktops and it does not have stacks, I'd guess that stacks aren't that easy to implement on the various platforms that EN supports. I would imagine stacked stacks would be at least as problematic.

As has been said multiple times before on the board, if you plan on using Evernote very much, you need to learn to be comfortable with using notebooks, tags, keywords & stacks (single level) for organizing your notes. Otherwise, you should find another app.

[Richard Feynman 7]

Thank you, I will look at previous posts. If you could, it would help me greatly if you could suggest either some specific threads or good keyword searches to find these posts.

I agree with you that anything over 10,000 in *tags* says that some reanalysis is necessary. However, my scenario assumed I was using tags, in a sense, as a substitute for creating pure hierarchy-based info organization. I would much rather use tags as they are meant to be used in all info management systems.

My project work has been going on for 25 years and truly does require tens of thousands of hierarchal levels because the information itself requires that kind of breakdown. Trust me, I am NOT partial to very complex hierarchies or to breaking down information to insignificant detail; my work actually is trying to pull these details up into less complex models. But I have to start with the details.

I understand where you are coming from. I am in the same boat as you of liking what it does, while being disappointed with what it does not do. My professional work is also very project oriented and personally I would never attempt to use EN for it, but maybe you'll be able to adapt it to your work. I don't know what is driving you to EN but IF you only need a desktop application you may want to take a look at InfoQube. InfoQube has no mobile client of any type though, it is strictly a desktop app. From a power users standpoint it makes EN look like a toy, but like everything it has its own shortcomings, and the GUI is not as beautiful as EN's. OneNote, EN and InfoQube are the three PIM's/info managers I like. IQ is the most powerful by far but also the most obtuse.

[worldwisetrade 0]

Evernote is a very handy tool but to ever gain the corporate market, tags will never suffice for folders & sub-folders. Tags are a great search tool but not an organization structure. Really Evernote boys... how difficult can sub-folders be? So please consider sub-folders or sub-stacks... even Google gave up with tags in email and went imap and the folders route!

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Evernote is a very handy tool but to ever gain the corporate market, tags will never suffice for folders & sub-folders. Tags are a great search tool but not an organization structure. Really Evernote boys... how difficult can sub-folders be? So please consider sub-folders or sub-stacks... even Google gave up with tags in email and went imap and the folders route!

First, Evernote is not trying to be in the corporate market. As an aside, there's no reason the corporate world couldn't adjust to tags, which function pretty much the same way as nested folders do. (shrug)

Second, I don't know how difficult it would be to implement sub-notebooks/stacks, nor do you. However, I think it's safe to assume that if it were all that easy to implement across all the platforms EN lives on, that either they or someone else would have done it.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Evernote is a very handy tool but to ever gain the corporate market...

Some comments from the Evernote CTO about their past experiences with corporate software issues found at this link.

• "Basically, a bunch of the people who built Evernote have a lot of experience in the "Enterprise software sales" business, and it's completely 180-degree different than Evernote's "freemium" personal memory service. It's hard to do both business models under the same roof, in my experience."
  

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=24540&p=105140&hilit=experience#p105140

And Phil Libin, the Evernote CEO said:

• "You're right about corporate being the revenue stream for most tech vendors, but happily that's not the case for us. Our direct consumer revenues from premium subscriptions and partner products are more than enough to make us a profitable and sustainable long-term company. The consumer business is booming for us and we have no financial incentive to switch focus."

[Metrodon 2,184]

Evernote is a very handy tool but to ever gain the corporate market, tags will never suffice for folders & sub-folders.

Interestingly, I'm currently working on some software for a multi-national, multi-billion dollar enterprise customer that is completely tag driven.

[mmaddika 0]

I can create a stack of two notebooks. Is it possible to create a stack of more than two notebooks? Has anyone tried this.

Thanks

Mahesh

[maxikk 17]

Mahesh,

Yes, you can have more than 2 notebooks in a stack. Just right-click on the stack and choose "Create Notebook in ..."

For existing notebooks, just drag the notebook onto the stack.

Thanks,

Max

[mmaddika 0]

Thanks Max.

I'm not sure if I conveyed the message properly. What I meant by 'multiple notebooks in a stack' is having multiple levels of notebooks. When I do 'right click' on a notebook it gives the option of adding the notebook at the top level 'notebook'.

NB1

|

+----NB2

.......|

.......+----NB3

............. |

..............+----NB4

(ignore the dots, I had to insert there to get the right format)

I know following works:

NB1

|

+---- NB2

|

+---- NB3

|

+---- NB4

Thanks

Mahesh

[maxikk 17]

Mahesh,

From what I understand, you are asking for multiple levels of notebook stacks. Evernote does not support it. You can only have notebooks in a stack, you cannot have another stack inside a stack.

Thanks,

Max

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Mahesh, you should use tags to replicate nested notebooks. It works just as well. Really.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Here is a response for a similar issue.

http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=29355#p125388

[mmaddika 0]

Haven't used tags so far, but looks like this will serve my requirement.....Thanks a bunch!

Mahesh

[karatedog 1]

Interestingly, I'm currently working on some software for a multi-national, multi-billion dollar enterprise customer that is completely tag driven.

You forgot to mention what you are working on. A CRM system? Maybe on the LHR? So even it is "enterprise" and "multi-billion dollar" it is not necessarily justifies not having a tree structure in information organizing.

Facts: people usually use computers, and those computer organize information in file-systems, and it is logical. Therefore it is no wonder these people would like to use the same information organizing method they have been used to for ages.

Why these people don't accept the logic behind the "we have only tags instead of notebook hierarchy"? Because Evernote has hierarchy, although it is 1 level deep.

A flat level tag system will never be able to organize information like a file-system or a tree hieararchy would do, because the tags currently used in Evernote have no hierarchy, so you can't reproduce this in Evernote: foo/bar/foo/bar.

Not to mention that small work I have to do when I want to move a bunch of my notes form one place to another. Currently it has to be done by renaming tags (for the missing depth in hieararchy) and moving those notes (because Evernote has that 1 level deep hierarchy).

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

A flat level tag system will never be able to organize information like a file-system or a tree hieararchy would do, because the tags currently used in Evernote have no hierarchy, so you can't reproduce this in Evernote: foo/bar/foo/bar

You can't have that exact wording but you can replicate it enough to be at least as useful while being so more flexible than sub folders, which end up being restrictive when you have thousands of notes. You do have to think outside the box. This has been already discussed in depth many times on the board, so please use the search function for more info.

[blaster219 18]

And yet, the topic of structure (be it sub notebooks or stacked stacks) keeps coming up. That in and of itself says something.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

And yet, the topic of structure (be it sub notebooks or stacked stacks) keeps coming up. That in and of itself says something.

As is the case with so many new ideas, that some people are opposed to change or learning a newer, better way of doing something.

[Metrodon 2,184]

In the end I think you have to accept that Evernote are not going to implement a deeper hierarchy than Stacks and Notebooks. They have been very very clear about this.

If this design doesn't work for you, well then maybe Evernote is not the right application for you.