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Nesting Multiple Notebooks / Creating Sub-Notebooks


cswsteve

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Candid's point about tags running through multiple notebooks is important.

I should say that Brett Kelly's book and the posts on this forum by longtime members helped me in the transition. Now, I have a system that doesn't rely on notebooks and tags. It is a bit unconventional, but it works for me.

http://www.princeton.edu/~cmayo/evernote-organization.html

However, I think for most people, a mix of tags and notebooks will be the best solution.

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It's doubtful EN will implement nested notebooks any time soon, if ever. As GM & Candid pointed out, you should learn to use tags. There are already plenty of threads on the board on the topic. Please use the search function. IMO, tags are much better than nested notebooks, especially when you have very many notes.

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Scott's right -- tags are it, for now and the foreseeable future. There is no function "Create notebook in tag" because tags are only applied to notes, and not notebooks (or stacks); not sure what the use case for this would be. If you feel that tags are too much to handle in addition to notebooks and stacks, I'd suggest that you consider using fewer notebooks and use tags to do your main organizing. There are any number of people who use mainly tags to organize their 1000s of notes.

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It's kind of aragant if Evernote ignores users. This is the way I think. May not be ideal way, or same way, but hard to change. Perhaps this can be accommodated wi tags? Other creative approaches. Getting philosophical about user experience will kill the product. A good designer can accommodate.

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EN does not ignore users, quite the contrary. This forum is an active community and EN employees read what is posted here. Many design features were proposed here first and got implemented.

It is impossible to accommodate all wishes of all users. EN has to make some basic design decisions which suit the average user well.

Multiple levels of notebooks does not seem to be one of those.

Wern

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Having multiple levels of notebooks seems contrary to Evernote's ethos and has been discussed many many times on here. I think it is extremely unlikely that it will ever be implemented.

My point is that if it has been discussed "many many times" (and it has been for YEARS.) then I would challenge the assumption that it does not "suit the average user well." Obviously, it is an important issue. It is the basis of Onenote and all traditional outlining tools. I learned outlining in school and have been doing it for years. Tags are relatively new. The idea of seeing your actual content in a hiachrchy, rather than meta-information (ie. tags) is not intuitive for a lot of people (perhaps there is a generational bias here.) I see three approach

1. ignore / dismiss them and have them adapt

2. create features to map to their mental model, at the risk of compromising design principle

3. Acknowledge the dissidence the product creates, and look for CREATIVE ways to address this that do not compromise design principals.

What I keep hearing is that this philosophical issue is getting a #1 response (read YOUR own response -- its right there!) , but I am confident that bright people could deliver #3. I think a simple, additional view, might solve this, but if we can't get past #1, then #3 will NEVER happen.

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Very senior Evernote employees have made it very clear that adding levels of notebooks simply isn't going to happen so I guess it's number 1. Now it's up to you whether you want to play by Evernotes's rules or go use Onenote or something else.

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Search the forum for Dave Engberg, I'm sure some of his posts came over from the old forum, Dave is the CTO.

Sticking to a design choice isn't arrogant, it's a choice.

There are many examples of Evernote listening to users, however, Evernote is a commercial organisation not a community built application so it makes choices for itself. You might not like all of them, but that's the way it is.

By the way, I like many prefer tags as an organisational system and I don't want them to waste time and money changing the data model, the service, the clients to introduce nested notebooks.

Kind for arrogant of you not to listen to users like me? :)

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I don't think you are hearing me. Sorry if I'm not being clear. I just found a "locked thread" on this: http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/25690-request-improve-the-tree-of-notebooks-and-stacks/page__st__20.

I've been a product manager for 15 years. I really understand these issues and definitely understand development costs. My point is that creative solutions CAN often be achieved when the problem is not looked at as positional (ie. Either A or B). A review of these threads (and your comments) keep indicating that it is an A or B choice and you have to take it or leave it, my way or the highway,etc. That is axiomatic of arrogance. I will search for Dave and perhaps direct my comments to him. Thanks for the reference.

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I'm not an evangelist and it's less a case of squashing the issue and more one of just pointing out what is known having been around here for a long time and read threads like this before.

Dave used to post a lot, but as the company grew that reduced and then ended before the forum migrated and so it may be difficult to find his posts.

With all your experience, I'm sure you can understand the major work that would have to be undertaken to implement nested notebooks.

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You may not be an official evangelist, but with over 3000 posts, you should be :).

I've seen development estimates of 10,000 Man hours slashed to less than 500 with some creative approaches to satisfying what the user really wants without major cost. In fact, i've seen this scale of change happen at least 10 times in my career. I think users want to see information in a hierarchy, not just the tags. That does not necessarily mean sub-notebooks as a data structure - it could mean a view that uses tags to display as a nested structure. There are many possibilities, but if the discussion becomes A vs. B / positional, dismissive and arrogant, then a creative solution will never be achieved. From my forum searching, there is a tremendous dissidence with some user base and that probably does not even represent the number of silent users. I'm hoping the team really tries to understand the user issue and spends some time to creatively address it.

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Tags are already displayed hierarchically.

If you have all this experience you will understand that a significant structural change comes at significant cost. Evernote is a service with 12 (14?) clients plus I don't know how many apps that use it's APIs, what you are describing is not just a simple UI improvement it is to all intensive purposes a complete re-design of the underlying data structure which would then require major updates to all clients, APIs and thiird party clients

I really suggest you spend a little more time with the product and understand how it works before you decide to become the voice of the silent displeased.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/14214-can-stacks-contain-stacks/

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Metrodon, do not post that picture again, I beg you. You know which one. :)

@shawnholt: it's not arrogant for Evernote to make choices about the software and services that they make and sell. Yes, it's true that some people who have tried Evernote want true hierarchies. But Evernote doesn't need to cater to every user's desires in order to be a success. Doesn't mean that they're not listening; it just means that they are choosing: every day in fact, the choices that they make are tantamount to making a bet that their software is good enough to be useful to enough people so that Evernote can continue to stay in business. You, the consumer, are faced with a choice of many different services; if you don't like Evernote, there are others competing for your dollars. Again, this is not arrogance, it's just a fact of business. In the meantime, tags are what are on offer, and they work fine for many users.

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@jefito: Of course software companies need to make difficult choices. Users are the WORST people to define features. they are great at helping product teams develop insights about users needs. Understanding users is critical to effective software development. Ignoring users is (perhaps there is a better word, but it resonates to me as ...) arrogance.

Products need to be built for markets which have segments of users. I'm making the observation that there is a LARGE segment of users who are used to working with content structured in outline form. This is very different than tags which are meta information, an abstraction that is not easy for many people to get. I have no idea what the answer is (subnotebooks, new views, etc.) but I'm certain there is a problem for a sizable market. I've reviewed several threads on this topic and my conclusion (hypotheses really) are:

1. There are a large number (perhaps 5% ???) of the existing evernote community that would prefer a different abstraction.

2. I think it is reasonable to presume there is a large number of people who have tried to use evernote but stopped becuase of this issue (perhaps 10% of the existing user base - note its the dominant abstraction in outlook, onenote, etc.)

3. The discussions I have seen are all incredibly polarized about the ANSWER - changing the architecture or philosophical. I've seen a LOT of real hostility around this issue, as if it is an either/ or A/B right or wrong solution.

4. Since none of the proposed solutions seem to work the issue is dismissed (no published roadmap so all speculation) and there has been NOTHING presented to address or even acknowledge the underlying problem. my conclusion is that there is an arrogance on the part of Evernote or perhaps it's just a forum filled with uninformed voices, because they are assuming that potentially 15% of their users should change their behavior.

5. I like to think of myself as a pragmatist. I really really want to be able to use this tool. I think there are others like me. Changing a users behavior is possible, but hard. I think there should be an open and inclusive discussion to see if this large group of users needs can be accommodated with modest effort and without disrupting the architecture or workflow of current users. Who knows, this might lead to a much larger market share.....

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More notebook hierarchies is a reasonable suggestion. I think it is great that people take time to offer their opinions. Evernote staff are listening. They comment in these threads. And, they have responded (here is one from the CTO http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/14214-can-stacks-contain-stacks/#entry68438). By definition, I think they cannot be said to be ignoring the request, and just because they disagree about the vision for how the app should be structured doesn't mean they are arrogant.

You never know. They may change their minds. It's worth a try! But, if they don't, I doubt accusing them of arrogance is going to help your case :)

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Products need to be built for markets which have segments of users. I'm making the observation that there is a LARGE segment of users who are used to working with content structured in outline form.

Products do not "need" to be built for any and all markets that exist, just for some identifiable market segments. This is demonstrably true. There is a "LARGE" segment of users whose needs are met by the structure that Evernote provides today.

This is very different than tags which are meta information, an abstraction that is not easy for many people to get.

People don't understand adjectives? Really? Because that's all that tags are, when it comes right down to it. Maybe that's why both GMail and Outlook provide similar facilities (labels and categories, respectively). Though to be fair, both of those products also provide for nested structure as well.

I have no idea what the answer is (subnotebooks, new views, etc.) but I'm certain there is a problem for a sizable market. I've reviewed several threads on this topic and my conclusion (hypotheses really) are:

1. There are a large number (perhaps 5% ???) of the existing evernote community that would prefer a different abstraction.

2. I think it is reasonable to presume there is a large number of people who have tried to use evernote but stopped becuase of this issue (perhaps 10% of the existing user base - note its the dominant abstraction in outlook, onenote, etc.)

Sheer guesswork on your part ("I have no idea" is the telling quote). No real relevance to the discussion. BTW, I used Outlook for a lot of years, and found nested folder structures more trouble than they were worth -- by the time that I stumbled across Evernote, I had already settled on what is essentially a one-level deep folder structure in Outlook, using categories for sorting. Evernote just made sense

3. The discussions I have seen are all incredibly polarized about the ANSWER - changing the architecture or philosophical. I've seen a LOT of real hostility around this issue, as if it is an either/ or A/B right or wrong solution.

I think that the discussions are more generally along the lines of: "I need arbitrarily nested folders" (sometimes followed by "it's unbeliieeevable that Evernote doesn't have them; how could they have missed that?"). "OK, that's a fair request, but Evernote doesn't provide them and doesn't seemed particularly interested in providing them, so tell us what you are trying to do, and we'll try to see how we can make Evernote work for you". And if pressed, we can go 'round the barn (again) on why tags are generally more flexible than folders and how tags might be improved to make them have folder-like behaviors. As far as I am concerned, there is no 'ANSWER' required, except for "it works for me".

4. Since none of the proposed solutions seem to work the issue is dismissed (no published roadmap so all speculation) and there has been NOTHING presented to address or even acknowledge the underlying problem. my conclusion is that there is an arrogance on the part of Evernote or perhaps it's just a forum filled with uninformed voices, because they are assuming that potentially 15% of their users should change their behavior.

There is no real problem here, just a difference of opinion that Evernote needs to include a facility for arbitrarily nested folders, which I would call a perceived problem. It's is a design issue, really (what Evernote chooses to provide), not an issue of bugs (flaws in the execution of a design). They've talked about it some in the past; folders are not part of their public roadmap, plain and simple. You can call it arrogance if it pleases you to; I just think it's making a reasonable choice and sticking to it. Their results seem to be pretty good so far.

5. I like to think of myself as a pragmatist. I really really want to be able to use this tool. I think there are others like me. Changing a users behavior is possible, but hard. I think there should be an open and inclusive discussion to see if this large group of users needs can be accommodated with modest effort and without disrupting the architecture or workflow of current users. Who knows, this might lead to a much larger market share.....

This is akin to saying: I really want to be able to use this hammer to cut this tree down, i.e., not very pragmatic at all. The pragmatist in me says "hey, Evernote has tag things, maybe I don't really need folders to make Evernote be useful to me". Sounds like you don't actually want to use Evernote as it is, you want to use some Evernote-like tool doesn't exist, and may never be made by Evernote.

Obviously, you are welcome to discuss this stuff all you like -- it's a user forum, after all -- and you'll likely get some response that agrees with you, and even people who disagree with you but think that your asking the question is valid (like me), but you may not get Evernote folks too deeply into the discussion, if at all. I'm pretty sure that the notion of how folders might interact with tags in Evernote is not unfamiliar to them.

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@jefito: Thanks for taking the time to respond so thoroughly. After 5,000+ posts, you are obviously very passionate about Evernote. Unfortunately, the fact that you keep talking about nested folders leads me to believe that you don't really understand what I'm trying to convey. In fact, by referring to nested folders you are making my point. I'm talking about how many people are accustomed to outlining content - sure nested folders are one way to do it, but I'm trying to point out there is a gap in the product,. I believe it applies to a large group of people - which you can estimate at whatever size you want - but judging from the number of people raising the issue and the many product that use that framework I'm confident that it is a significant market.

While I applaud your zealous commitment to Evernote and your contributions to the forums, I'd encourage you to try and understand what i'm trying to convey before jumping all each premise with argumentative conjecture. It's not just you - I see a lot of this in the evernote forum, where "I'm right and your wrong." I'ts a shame because this energy could be spent trying to collaboratively solve problems. If your open to that sort of discussion, I'd welcome the dialog.

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It's not just you - I see a lot of this in the evernote forum, where "I'm right and your wrong." I'ts a shame because this energy could be spent trying to collaboratively solve problems. If your open to that sort of discussion, I'd welcome the dialog.

Actually, there is not a lot of "I'm right and [you're] wrong" around here - at least by most of the regulars. What is basically reiteration of what Evernote has stated in the past does seem to be taken by some (you?) that way, though. However, if you truly read the posts, you'll see we are not saying feature ___ is bad - just that EN is probably not going to incorporate it soon, if ever. And as has been stated countless times in this thread & others, it's doubtful EN will add nested notebooks (there are no folders in Evernote) anytime soon, if ever, it's best to just bite the bullet & learn to use tags instead of nested notebooks. It's doable. Really. And once you get a huge number of notes, you'll likely find tags much more flexible. However, if nested notebooks is a deal breaker for you, then EN is not the product for you.

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@shawnholt: It's up to you to start the discussion that you want to have (though participants may not always keep to a narrowly defined focus; witness this current thread, which indeed started out with a call for nested folders). Whether or not such discussion will actually solve any problems -- however collaboratively people join in -- is another matter altogether. Typically, user problems here tend to be lack of knowledge of how Evernote works, in general or with respect to a particular client -- that's what I prefer to the focus on here, regardless of how you think my energy ought to be spent. Meanwhile, you seem to persist in missing my point, and that of other commenters : it's not Evernote's responsibility to cater to every user's desires. It's a good trait for them to listen (they do) and engage (they do, though I'd prefer more), but ultimately it's their own business that lives or dies according to their choices.

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@jefito: Thanks for taking the time to respond so thoroughly. After 5,000+ posts, you are obviously very passionate about Evernote. Unfortunately, the fact that you keep talking about nested folders leads me to believe that you don't really understand what I'm trying to convey. In fact, by referring to nested folders you are making my point. I'm talking about how many people are accustomed to outlining content - sure nested folders are one way to do it, but I'm trying to point out there is a gap in the product,. I believe it applies to a large group of people - which you can estimate at whatever size you want - but judging from the number of people raising the issue and the many product that use that framework I'm confident that it is a significant market.

While I applaud your zealous commitment to Evernote and your contributions to the forums, I'd encourage you to try and understand what i'm trying to convey before jumping all each premise with argumentative conjecture. It's not just you - I see a lot of this in the evernote forum, where "I'm right and your wrong." I'ts a shame because this energy could be spent trying to collaboratively solve problems. If your open to that sort of discussion, I'd welcome the dialog.

I suppose it depends on where you look. If you read my post, I think you'll see that I didn't say you were "wrong" about notebook hierarchies (that is the topic of this thread), but I do think you are wrong in your accusations about Evernote. Perhaps we need to agree to disagree on this one.

As for a dialogue about entirely redesigning the app and presenting information in an outline form (however that is achieved), that sounds interesting to me, but may be beyond the scope of this particular thread (a more modest request for deeper hierarchies) and I think it may need to be fleshed out more so we have something specific to discuss. Feel free to start a thread on it!

Personally, I think it is unlikely that Evernote will go that direction (I have no idea what this would mean for third-party integrations, server loads, re-training of employees, or possible defection by current members who are satisfied with the current structure), but I guess that you never know.

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I have come across more than one instance where it would be beneficial to my organization of my evernote to be able to have nested notebook stacks. As an example, I've attended more than one college / university and i'd like to keep the notebooks for the two different colleges separate. Nested stacks would allow this to be possible since currently i have a notebook for each subject, but the classes for both schools are mixed together in a single "college" stack.

Thank you,

Kris

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Valid request (and not unique), but no signs that it's going to happen any time soon (not that Evernote gives out its feature roadmaps that often).

As it stands, your college notebooks are already separate (they're different notebooks already). You can search notebooks separately (using the notebook: scope modifier) or search an entire stack (using the stack: scope modifier). I'm not sure that I see the problem. You might also investigate using tags for distinguishing your college notes: you can use the same subjects, but use different tags for each college.

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Yeah, and wait until the 36 million existing Evernote users stumble over the review, decide that it matters to them, and switch to OneNote or whatever. Sure, so very simple.

As I said -- valid request, maybe they'll do it, maybe not, but there are certainly ways to do without, in many cases.

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Need a hierarchical notebook/folder structure which provides structure for saving new items

Hi. Evernote only has stacks and notebooks available (a two level hierarchy). I think the service is designed to rely more on tags than notebooks for organization, so I think that even if it is not necessarily comfortable at first, you'll be better off in the long run using tags. With a few exceptions, I use neither notebooks nor tags myself (http://www.princeton.edu/~cmayo/evernote-organization.html) for organizational purposes.

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I am a relatively new Evernote user and I must agree with people making the argument for sub-notebooks. Evernote is a great tool, but the programmers need to realize that people think differently. I own/run car dealerships and there are some great products out there but the ones that stand out are the ones where the users tell the programmers how we work versus the programmers telling the users HOW WE SHOULD WORK.

Here's an example: I want to create a Notebook named 'Travel', with sub-notebooks with Hotels and Restaurants. In 'Hotels' and 'Restaurants' sub-folders I would like to create sub-folders with countries, cities, states, whatever and then if I read an article about a restaurant or a hotel in say Paris, France I can send to that sub-folder and then if I have a trip planned to Paris, France I can open up the sub-notebook(s) about Hotels and Restaurants in those sub-folders and make reservations or whatever.

Having to create a notebook for Paris, France hotels and another for Paris, France restaurants and then having to create keywords seems an inelegant solution for people that think like me; it seems like needless steps to create a notebook and then have to ALSO create key words seems like extra work. Extra needless steps, extra needless notebooks listed out without being able to collapse the original Notebook 'Travel' to just disappear as one Notebook until needed.

As much as I travel there are many, many, many hotels and restaurants I want to visit and have data on. So the Evernote programmers are telling me I need potentially 100's of hotel notebooks and 100's of restaurant notebooks versus just nesting them? I'd tell my programmers to figure it out.

This seems to be a clear case of "The Programmers" telling "The Users" how they have to think versus "The Programmers" listening to "The Users" and creating multiple ways to achieve the same desired outcome based upon how their users THINK. I don't understand the pushback on this issue and I can find no clear explanation as to the logic behind Evernote's ownership's ruling on this.

I am a fair and reasonable man. If Evernote can provide a clear and reasonable explanation as to why they want their users to create a notebook AND tags versus just creating nested/sub-notebooks I am open to listening....

thx.

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As much as I travel there are many, many, many hotels and restaurants I want to visit and have data on. So the Evernote programmers are telling me I need potentially 100's of hotel notebooks and 100's of restaurant notebooks versus just nesting them? I'd tell my programmers to figure it out.

I'd steer away from the multiple notebook issue entirely.

Just one notebook named Travel

All my travel notes for 50+ countries are thrown into a single notebook: Travel plans, Hotel info, Restaurant info, flight details, directions, cost, etc.

Just use a consistent well structured title.

For instance, I use the structure YYYY-MM-DD Country State/City Company Description Person

Here are some random notes from my own Travel notebook (with tags)

2004-11-13 Germany Munich Holiday Inn City Centre JLB (tag:hotel)

2000-06-14 Costa Rica Santa Ana Biker's Bar cervesas w/ Marino Chavez JLB (tag:restaurant)

1998-06-14 USA MA Boston London Amsterdam BA flt JLB DLB (tag:flight)

1997-05-11 India Delhi Oberoi Maidens Hotel JLB (tag:hotel)

If I wanted to find hotels in India, I would search for:

intitle:India tag:hotel

.

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This seems to be a clear case of "The Programmers" telling "The Users" how they have to think versus "The Programmers" listening to "The Users" and creating multiple ways to achieve the same desired outcome based upon how their users THINK.

They are not telling you how to think. They have a product & it works a certain way. If this doesn't work for you, you're free to use another app. No one is forcing you to use EN.

I'd guess the tag vs sub notebook system has something to do with making the app function well across all the platforms EN lives on. But I don't know & it really doesn't matter. It's their company & their decision & I'm sure there's a good reason they've chosen to implement it this way. Tags provide the same functionality. If sub notebooks are a deal breaker for you, then you will need to find another app.

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I am a relatively new Evernote user and I must agree with people making the argument for sub-notebooks. Evernote is a great tool, but the programmers need to realize that people think differently. I own/run car dealerships and there are some great products out there but the ones that stand out are the ones where the users tell the programmers how we work versus the programmers telling the users HOW WE SHOULD WORK.

Here's an example: I want to create a Notebook named 'Travel', with sub-notebooks with Hotels and Restaurants. In 'Hotels' and 'Restaurants' sub-folders I would like to create sub-folders with countries, cities, states, whatever and then if I read an article about a restaurant or a hotel in say Paris, France I can send to that sub-folder and then if I have a trip planned to Paris, France I can open up the sub-notebook(s) about Hotels and Restaurants in those sub-folders and make reservations or whatever.

Having to create a notebook for Paris, France hotels and another for Paris, France restaurants and then having to create keywords seems an inelegant solution for people that think like me; it seems like needless steps to create a notebook and then have to ALSO create key words seems like extra work. Extra needless steps, extra needless notebooks listed out without being able to collapse the original Notebook 'Travel' to just disappear as one Notebook until needed.

As much as I travel there are many, many, many hotels and restaurants I want to visit and have data on. So the Evernote programmers are telling me I need potentially 100's of hotel notebooks and 100's of restaurant notebooks versus just nesting them? I'd tell my programmers to figure it out.

This seems to be a clear case of "The Programmers" telling "The Users" how they have to think versus "The Programmers" listening to "The Users" and creating multiple ways to achieve the same desired outcome based upon how their users THINK. I don't understand the pushback on this issue and I can find no clear explanation as to the logic behind Evernote's ownership's ruling on this.

I am a fair and reasonable man. If Evernote can provide a clear and reasonable explanation as to why they want their users to create a notebook AND tags versus just creating nested/sub-notebooks I am open to listening....

thx.

Hi. Welcome to the forums!

In an ideal world, I bet the Evernote developers would agree: let's have an app that does anything you want, totally customizable for your needs, and available that way on any operating system / device. However, that isn't how things work with cars, software, or any other product. Designers have to make decisions about what to put into a product based on available resources (capabilities of devices and operating systems, time, money, manpower, expertise, etc.). From the early days, Evernote decided tags would be a better way of organizing notes than notebooks. Personally, I think they ought to have both systems in place, but that would mean we'd have nothing to grouse about in the forums, and this place would get shut down :)

Seriously, though, I don't know why they made this decision. My guess would have to be that they saw folder hierarchies and complicated organizational systems as antithetical to an "external brain." Our meat brains don't organize things into yellow manilla folders, so why should our silicon ones? Instead, we associate items with other ones similar to tags -- a memory of our mom could link to delicious home cooking just as easily as it could to a family trip, so why would we try and force things into this folder or that one?

That is just a guess, but it makes sense to me, and is certainly an approach that resonates with me. I've written a bit about my Evernote use case on my website (http://www.princeton.edu/~cmayo/notebook.html). My use case might be too minimalistic for most people, but the general principle of associating things with one another instead of organizing them into categories is the same.

More broadly speaking, I think Phil and his team are a little more ambitous than just giving customers what they want. Like Apple under Jobs, I think they see their mission as one of creating a new way of living that will appeal to people, rather than giving people the supercharged TO DO list and task manager that everyone says they want. Evernote Hello (in my opinion) is something along these lines, because it challenges us to totally rethink how we do a fundamental ritual that we have all performed at one time or another; namely, meeting people. Because it is so radical in some ways, it probably hasn't been adopted as widely as something like Food or (soon) Penultimate. However, in the end, it may take us to a better place than a more conventional contact manager would have.

I think that is pretty cool, and along the lines of the company's less well-known goal to make people smarter. They say they want to help you remember stuff, but I think that is only the first step. Yellow manilla folders don't seem to fit very well into my vision of a smarter me :)

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If Evernote would just integrate tags better,in fact all of data accessability better I'd use it as a standalone.

In most all tag centric apps the good ones have all notebooks tags listed with it (in various ways)...and theyre clickable...so they can actually function much more like subnotebooks. Many position their tags much like hashmarks at the bottom of every note in a Notebook.

Additionally,being able to put notes in multiple notebooks also greatly helps cross UI connections of data. The network of connected data isnt connected very well to me in Evernote.. Note links are great but not economical like tags...nor are they available awith the Mobile clients.

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I use notelinks in index notes(Wiki-like) instead of heirarchy notes. Index note might help you if you need multiple note levels.

But the problem is that you can only do this with desktop version of EN.

It does break your workflow if you move to mobile. I'm hoping that note links will come sometime soon to mobile, because (like the complaints about missing stacks on the iPad) if an organizational tool is missing in one place, it might as well be missing in them all.

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I am a fair and reasonable man. If Evernote can provide a clear and reasonable explanation as to why they want their users to create a notebook AND tags versus just creating nested/sub-notebooks I am open to listening....

I find hierarchical systems cumbersome, difficult to maintain and almost impossible to ever find things in again. I end up spending to much time trying to figure out the right place to put things or remember what I thought was the right place a year ago. Notebooks and tags are simple, and allow multiple ways of cataloging the same item. I spend much less time filing and more time using my information. I could probably ditch notebooks entirely and go with tags. I get the impression the people who designed Evernote have a similar take on the matter. This view point is precisely why I use Evernote. I chose not to use programs the force me in to what is for me an artificial outline format. I don't spend time trying to get the developers of those programs to emulate Evernote.

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I find hierarchical systems cumbersome, difficult to maintain and almost impossible to ever find things in again. I end up spending to much time trying to figure out the right place to put things or remember what I thought was the right place a year ago. Notebooks and tags are simple, and allow multiple ways of cataloging the same item. I spend much less time filing and more time using my information. I could probably ditch notebooks entirely and go with tags. I get the impression the people who designed Evernote have a similar take on the matter. This view point is precisely why I use Evernote. I chose not to use programs the force me in to what is for me an artificial outline format. I don't spend time trying to get the developers of those programs to emulate Evernote.

Excellent response. A clear explanation of why the current Evernote program is so powerful. Well done!

Evernoted for future reference.

.

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I find hierarchical systems cumbersome, difficult to maintain and almost impossible to ever find things in again.

This is a very old debate within the Evernote community.

Suffice it to say both hierarchical and flat (tags) systems have their advantages.

Perhaps more important is that different people can think very differently. What is difficult to some is easy and logical to others.

Personally I find the combination of hierarchical organization and cross-cutting tags to be the most powerful approach.

If Evernote would just add a minor enhancement to their search engine to include child tags in a search for a parent tag, then the Evernote hierarchical tags would be extremely powerful.

For example: adding a plus symbol to a parent tag name would tell Evernote to include any of the sub-tags in the search:

tag:HW+

would mean the same as:

any: tag:HW tag:Computer tag:Router tag:hub

where "Computer", "Router", and "Hub" are sub-tags to "HW".

Currently we have to apply both the parent tag and the child tag to a Note in order to find all notes whose child tag is a sub-tag of the parent.

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Currently we have to apply both the parent tag and the child tag to a Note in order to find all notes whose child tag is a sub-tag of the parent.

The Plus sign is an interesting concept. With the way Evernote search logic works, the plus might have to be in front of the Parent tag.

Here is the work around I use to find all the Children tags

Hardware

Hdw-Computer

Hdw-Router

Hdw-Hub

To find all the notes tagged with the children of Hardware, I search for

tag:Hdw-*

.

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I find hierarchical systems cumbersome, difficult to maintain and almost impossible to ever find things in again.

This is a very old debate within the Evernote community.

Suffice it to say both hierarchical and flat (tags) systems have their advantages.

Perhaps more important is that different people can think very differently. What is difficult to some is easy and logical to others.

Personally I find the combination of hierarchical organization and cross-cutting tags to be the most powerful approach.

I use hierarchical system too.

For me, I don't use the system to "find". I use it to "remember".

I use Evernote to memorize things and organize my thoughts.

Without hierarchical system, I might only note the details but not the overall picture.

So I need it.

If I only want to find things, I can search it by typing keywords.

But I have to not only find things, but also knowing where things should be in an organized structure.

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If I only want to find things, I can search it by typing keywords.

But I have to not only find things, but also knowing where things should be in an organized structure.

It's apparently a little known fact that tags do form an organized structure, albeit not necessarily hierarchical. Of course, if you want to organize your notes into a hierarchy using tags, there are techniques that allow you to do so (see jbenson's system, for one), and they can actually convey some benefits in note filtering: by reflecting hierarchy position in a tag name, you can use wildcards to locate notes in a specific branch of your hierarchy. And tags do this today, which obviates the need to try to bet whether Evernote will ever provide arbitrarily nested notebooks any time in the future.

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If I only want to find things, I can search it by typing keywords.

But I have to not only find things, but also knowing where things should be in an organized structure.

It's apparently a little known fact that tags do form an organized structure, albeit not necessarily hierarchical. Of course, if you want to organize your notes into a hierarchy using tags, there are techniques that allow you to do so (see jbenson's system, for one), and they can actually convey some benefits in note filtering: by reflecting hierarchy position in a tag name, you can use wildcards to locate notes in a specific branch of your hierarchy. And tags do this today, which obviates the need to try to bet whether Evernote will ever provide arbitrarily nested notebooks any time in the future.

Thank you, I know the tags do form an organized structure and I'm using it.

And I use index note with note links to organize my notes too because I'm in need of multi-structure system which tags can't do.

I just don't think "hierarchical system is cumbersome", so I replied.

In fact, hierarchical system is necessary. Just look at your computer's file structure.

DId they put all the things together?

And unfortunately, structured tags are not available on iOS yet.

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In fact, hierarchical system is necessary. Just look at your computer's file structure.

A hierarchical foundation is not necessary to present a file system to the user. There's no theoretical or mathematical reason why hierarchies are the sole best organizing scheme for content, or that their use is required. That being said, hierarchy is a useful tool in the organizing toolbox, and it's all the more important because it's familiar (then again, Kim Kardashian seems to be famous because she's famous -- go figure). Bottom line for me is that tags theoretically have the power to express hierarchies, but not the converse. It's one of the reasons that I prefer tagged organization. The flip side in this instance is that Evernote has not really provided support for more fully realizing tag expressiveness, so we can't quite do all of the hierarchical operations as we might like -- for example, the ability to organize tags hierarchically is useful, but the inability of search to understand that hierarchy is an impediment.

Suck to live in an imperfect world, right? :)

And unfortunately, structured tags are not available on iOS yet.

I certainly accept that this is unfortunate. I think it will be remedied, sooner rather than later, or at least should be.

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then again, Kim Kardashian seems to be famous because she's famous -- go figure

A pun? You know, she is famous for her figure, among other things.

Anyhow, my brain seems to work pretty well without a hierarchical organizational system, but I think it is true that stuff outside of my brain don't tend to do as well. Evernote's tags, especially if they become "smarter" by getting applied automatically (with an option not to do it, of course) might help us make the leap to an external brain that works more like our internal one.

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For once, there was no pun intended. And there's plenty of people with nice figures who ain't famous, I reckon.

I've advocated -- in my way -- for smart tagging since, well, basically since not long after I started on the forums... :)

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For once, there was no pun intended. And there's plenty of people with nice figures who ain't famous, I reckon.

I've advocated -- in my way -- for smart tagging since, well, basically since not long after I started on the forums... :)

Oh, I know that. Look at my figure, and I am still not famous! I was just trying to help explain Kim. Actually, I think she has a colorful history, connections, marketing acumen, and lots of other attributes as well. Who knows what the formula for success is, though? Heck, in this day and age cute animals outperform political and business leaders in terms of popularity. It seems a little easier to wrap my head around tags and notebooks than the mysteries of fame and notoriety.

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In fact, hierarchical system is necessary. Just look at your computer's file structure.

A hierarchical foundation is not necessary to present a file system to the user. There's no theoretical or mathematical reason why hierarchies are the sole best organizing scheme for content, or that their use is required. That being said, hierarchy is a useful tool in the organizing toolbox, and it's all the more important because it's familiar (then again, Kim Kardashian seems to be famous because she's famous -- go figure). Bottom line for me is that tags theoretically have the power to express hierarchies, but not the converse. It's one of the reasons that I prefer tagged organization. The flip side in this instance is that Evernote has not really provided support for more fully realizing tag expressiveness, so we can't quite do all of the hierarchical operations as we might like -- for example, the ability to organize tags hierarchically is useful, but the inability of search to understand that hierarchy is an impediment.

Suck to live in an imperfect world, right? :)

And unfortunately, structured tags are not available on iOS yet.

I certainly accept that this is unfortunate. I think it will be remedied, sooner rather than later, or at least should be.

Well, I was trained to think with a hierarchical system. So maybe it's my blind spot. But I still think hierarchical system is the most efficient way to process massive data. Essays, books, libraries, computer files, and hard drive clusters all uses hierarchical system. It's not easy to make people like me to arrange their thoughts in another way. Without a proper structure, things look like a mess to me.

Before EN's note linking feature was out, I had a very hard time to arrange all my notes. I wanted to make all my notes be my Wikipedia, but it turned out to be my Google. It could help me find things but I couldn't see the whole picture of them. Maybe hierarchical system is cubersome for some people. But it's not cumbersome for all people.

By the way, Kim Kardashian was hot. But in my hometown, 8 (maybe 9) out of 10 persons don't know who she is. You are lucky that I heard of her. (grin)

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In fact, hierarchical system is necessary. Just look at your computer's file structure.

A hierarchical foundation is not necessary to present a file system to the user. There's no theoretical or mathematical reason why hierarchies are the sole best organizing scheme for content, or that their use is required. That being said, hierarchy is a useful tool in the organizing toolbox, and it's all the more important because it's familiar (then again, Kim Kardashian seems to be famous because she's famous -- go figure). Bottom line for me is that tags theoretically have the power to express hierarchies, but not the converse. It's one of the reasons that I prefer tagged organization. The flip side in this instance is that Evernote has not really provided support for more fully realizing tag expressiveness, so we can't quite do all of the hierarchical operations as we might like -- for example, the ability to organize tags hierarchically is useful, but the inability of search to understand that hierarchy is an impediment.

Suck to live in an imperfect world, right? :)

And unfortunately, structured tags are not available on iOS yet.

I certainly accept that this is unfortunate. I think it will be remedied, sooner rather than later, or at least should be.

Before EN's note linking feature was out, I had a very hard time to arrange all my notes. I wanted to make all my notes be my Wikipedia, but it turned out to be my Google. I could help me find things but I couldn't see the whole picture of them. Maybe hierarchical system is cubersome for some people. But it's not cumbersome for all people.

This is a great analogy, and I have to agree that the note link feature has been crucial for me as well. It has its issues and limitations, most notably the feature missing from mobile devices, but it is an improvement.

By the way, Kim Kardashian was hot. But in my hometown, 8 (maybe 9) out of 10 persons don't know who she is. You are lucky that I heard of her.

Surely, she is a household word!

Just kidding, after cutting the cord a few years ago (no more cable tv) it seems that my time on this earth has included a lot less inane blather, though I am surely suffering in some way without being jacked into the Jersey Shore. I only really know about her through word of mouth, clicking on articles I come across in Google News, and my general interest in the phenomenon of monetizing your public persona.

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Well, I was trained to think with a hierarchical system. So maybe it's my blind spot. But I still think hierarchical system is the most efficient way to process massive data. Essays, books, libraries, computer files, and hard drive clusters all uses hierarchical system. It's not easy to make people like me to arrange their thoughts in another way. Without a proper structure, things look like a mess to me.

The reality is that the more data you have, the less efficient a strict hierarchical system becomes. I learned this before even using Evernote b/c I have so much data spread across so many hard drives. I was often having to look through a few Windows folders in order to find a file. I finally started using Locate32 which allows me to quickly find a file, regardless which drive & folder it's in.

A simple example is images/photos. If I'm looking for a photo of Uncle Joe in San Diego, is it in the "family" folder? Or the "San Diego vacation 1999" folder? Or the "San Diego vacation 1997" folder? Or the "San Diego marathon" folder?

What a pain it would be to locate an ebook if it was only in one category? Is it filed under "fiction"? "Best sellers?" By title? By author?

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I've been a big outliner forever...and still have trouble thinking outside of that organizational box.

Now I know its been discussed extensively here and the case for non hierarchic/tag centric based organization has been put well...intriguingly well. But I wonder if someone passionate about it could write up a definitive description/case for that model..from an Evernote standpoint of course....one that has the best chance of changing the hard driven hierarchic paradigm...contrasting the two.

Using visuals...graphics..mindmaps etc...are always helpful when changing ways of looking at things.

I'm sure there's plenty out there on this but from an Evernote context I'd love to see some of the eloquent posts here fleshed out a bit into what might be the definitive Evernote model..maybe comprising a sticky for a while.

Cheers

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Well, I was trained to think with a hierarchical system. So maybe it's my blind spot. But I still think hierarchical system is the most efficient way to process massive data. Essays, books, libraries, computer files, and hard drive clusters all uses hierarchical system. It's not easy to make people like me to arrange their thoughts in another way. Without a proper structure, things look like a mess to me.

The reality is that the more data you have, the less efficient a strict hierarchical system becomes. I learned this before even using Evernote b/c I have so much data spread across so many hard drives. I was often having to look through a few Windows folders in order to find a file. I finally started using Locate32 which allows me to quickly find a file, regardless which drive & folder it's in.

A simple example is images/photos. If I'm looking for a photo of Uncle Joe in San Diego, is it in the "family" folder? Or the "San Diego vacation 1999" folder? Or the "San Diego vacation 1997" folder? Or the "San Diego marathon" folder?

What a pain it would be to locate an ebook if it was only in one category? Is it filed under "fiction"? "Best sellers?" By title? By author?

You mixed several hierarchical system. In fact, you can find them if you put them right there.

Your problem is on classification, not on the system.

Besides, I use hierarchical system but I don't use it alone.

I use search box to find what I need, then I use hierarchical system to see what's relative.

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You mixed several hierarchical system. In fact, you can find them if you put them right there.

Your problem is on classification, not on the system.

Besides, I use hierarchical system but I don't use it alone.

I use search box to find what I need, then I use hierarchical system to see what's relative.

I gave different examples. I don't understand your concept of "mixing several hierarchical systems". Nor do I understand your statement "then I use hierarchical system to see what's relative". The more data you have, the more places you have to dig around to find the data. And you've pretty much agreed with that when you say you use a search box to find what you need. Unless you dump them into one big folder/notebook & use tags to find the data. Oh wait, that's what Evernote's all about!

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Well, I was trained to think with a hierarchical system. So maybe it's my blind spot. But I still think hierarchical system is the most efficient way to process massive data. Essays, books, libraries, computer files, and hard drive clusters all uses hierarchical system. It's not easy to make people like me to arrange their thoughts in another way. Without a proper structure, things look like a mess to me.

The reality is that the more data you have, the less efficient a strict hierarchical system becomes. I learned this before even using Evernote b/c I have so much data spread across so many hard drives. I was often having to look through a few Windows folders in order to find a file. I finally started using Locate32 which allows me to quickly find a file, regardless which drive & folder it's in.

A simple example is images/photos. If I'm looking for a photo of Uncle Joe in San Diego, is it in the "family" folder? Or the "San Diego vacation 1999" folder? Or the "San Diego vacation 1997" folder? Or the "San Diego marathon" folder?

What a pain it would be to locate an ebook if it was only in one category? Is it filed under "fiction"? "Best sellers?" By title? By author?

You mixed several hierarchical system. In fact, you can find them if you put them right there.

Your problem is on classification, not on the system.

Besides, I use hierarchical system but I don't use it alone.

I use search box to find what I need, then I use hierarchical system to see what's relative.

I'm not terribly invested in this argument, and even though I left the "Yahoo! Portal" (hierarchical / categorized model of information management) for the "Google Search" (flat model of information management) camp a long time ago, I do recognize the value of having multiple ways to structure data. Evernote (in my opinion) works better for the Google one. Personally, I'd like to see both made stronger in order to pull in more users, but there may be design decisions involved behind the scenes.

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You mixed several hierarchical system. In fact, you can find them if you put them right there.

Your problem is on classification, not on the system.

Besides, I use hierarchical system but I don't use it alone.

I use search box to find what I need, then I use hierarchical system to see what's relative.

I gave different examples. I don't understand your concept of "mixing several hierarchical systems". Nor do I understand your statement "then I use hierarchical system to see what's relative". The more data you have, the more places you have to dig around to find the data. And you've pretty much agreed with that when you say you use a search box to find what you need. Unless you dump them into one big folder/notebook & use tags to find the data. Oh wait, that's what Evernote's all about!

Sorry, English is not my first language, so I couldn't express my thoughts very well. But I'll try.

The first thing to build an hierachical system, is to unify the classification method.

For example, I want to find John Irving's Life according to Garp in a library. I have several ways to find it. I can find it by author, by title, by category.

And every way I can use it fo find the book is a single hierarchical system.

I can find it by author, first letter of surname "I", second letter "R", and so on. This is an hierarchical system.

I can find it by title, first letter "L", second letter "I", and so on. This is another hierarchical system.

So if the classification has no problem, and the library put it in the right place, I can find the book.

Take your example, you want to find photo of Uncle Joe in San Diego.

You can find it in "family" folder if you did build a hierarchical system classified with "family and relatives"

Or in the "San Diego" if you did build a system classified with "locations".

So I said the problem is not on the hierarchical system but on your classfication.

And if you put the photo in the right place of every hierachical systems, you can find it in "family" folder, the "San Diego vacation 1999" folder, and the "San Diego vacation 1997", even the "San Diego marathon".

I used several heirachical systems with my notes, I use stacks to build one, structured tags for another, and index notes with note link for the others.

So I can easily found out the relations of my notes.

It's hard to see the relations of notes with unstructured tags and search box, isn't it?

And there's another good example of how the hierachical system works-you can draw a mindmap.

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@yikeouch and @rekko - keep expressing your viewpoints - your doing a great job. There seem to be loud voices who drown everyone else out with statements like "if you don't like tags find another product ... " or "Evernote will never change that ...". These people really have no idea - they are users, just like you. The product team (if indeed they are listening) should be smart and creative enough to glean from your feedback a solution to accommodate your need. Many of us are wired to write outlines in a heiarchy and I'm sure if Evernote feels this is important they can figure out a way to allow the current users to do what they are doing and new users can be accommodated. Unfortunately, there are very narrow thinkers here who are not able to abstract your challenges. Many users have presented awkward workarounds - naming conventions, links, etc, but those are not the way the workflow is optimized, so it may be a fix, but not a solution. Keep expressing your selves and kudos to @grumpymonkey who may not agree that it suits him, but there are others who think differently.

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@yikeouch and @rekko - keep expressing your viewpoints - your doing a great job. There seem to be loud voices who drown everyone else out with statements like "if you don't like tags find another product ... " or "Evernote will never change that ...". These people really have no idea - they are users, just like you. The product team (if indeed they are listening) should be smart and creative enough to glean from your feedback a solution to accommodate your need. Many of us are wired to write outlines in a heiarchy and I'm sure if Evernote feels this is important they can figure out a way to allow the current users to do what they are doing and new users can be accommodated. Unfortunately, there are very narrow thinkers here who are not able to abstract your challenges. Many users have presented awkward workarounds - naming conventions, links, etc, but those are not the way the workflow is optimized, so it may be a fix, but not a solution. Keep expressing your selves and kudos to @grumpymonkey who may not agree that it suits him, but there are others who think differently.

It's always cool when users chime in to support one another's viewpoints. I don't think other users are drowning anyone out, but there are people with strong opinions on this issue, and they tend to post frequently, because they are passionate about the product. A genuine difference of opinion seems healthy to me, so I hope that people will continue to argue for their positions on both sides. In the end, we don't get to make policy, but the developers are reading these posts, so you might be able to influence them. I believe care packages might help your case as well :)

Thanks for the kind words. I guess that in this case I get off easy, because I lack passion for the issue. I win either way! I am also the least helpful, because I won't be able to argue forcefully for either side. Strong opinions are good, because they draw out the issues for discussion.

For this one, I am mainly concerned about attracting and keeping new users, and I do worry that a lack of notebooks / hierarchical organization discourages people. There are workarounds, of course, but any workaround requires adapting yourself to an app and a fair bit of patience. If I knew the reason for a lack of notebook levels, it might seem more justified, but I'd just as soon see Evernote remove this as a potential obstacle -- assuming, of course, that design challenges are not too significant.

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Thanks, @shawnholt.

In fact, although I prefer hierarchical system, I'm quite adapted with current EN with my workaround.

I think a little enhancement of EN will solve most of problems out. I'm fond of @JMichael's idea:

1. Combination of hierarchical organization and cross-cutting tags. ( I'm using index notes with note links as the hierarchical organization tool to do so.)

2. To make search engine to include child tags. ( or auto-tag with "mother tags" when move a tag to be a child tag).

@jbenson2's workaround isn't very useful. Because it's hard to remember the whole hierarchical system when the system has several stratification. For example, if I have to tag München, I have to tag "Europe-Germany-Bayern-München". I will be really annoyed by tags while tagging if I adapt jbenson2's workaround. His workaround is nice when you finish all the tagging and have to arrange the tags, but is not nice when tagging.

My current workarond is:

Use index notes with note link, and put all the index note in a stack to organize a hierarchical system.

And build organized tag systems for cross-cutting. This works very well for me.

So, if EN add note link feature to all the platform and optimize the tag system, I will be a satisfied customer.

Of course, if the team make hierarchical system available, I'll be more satisfied.

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There seem to be loud voices who drown everyone else out with statements like "if you don't like tags find another product ... " or "Evernote will never change that ...". These people really have no idea - they are users, just like you.

If you're referring to specific people, please quote them directly, rather than paraphrasing them anonymously, and incorrectly.

The plain and simple truth of it is that the for some of of use who have been participating in the discussion, the stance is this:

1) Suggestions are welcome, however...

2) ...while Evernote may change in the future, right now all we have is the Evernote that exists, not the Evernote of your dreams, so therefore...

3) ,,,advice is usually given for solving problems based on Evernote's current capabilities, but...

4) ...if all workarounds suggested are not sufficient, then advice to seek out another product is reasonable.

Note: everyone's voice is as loud as any others here.

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I think where the issue of hierarchical notebooks vs tags will come back to bite Evernote is as they introduce Evernote Business. Because I think EN Business is a great idea I have been trying to introduce EN to others in our architectural firm. I run into two problems. First is demonstrating EN on an ipad is not good if, like me, you have lots of notebooks organized with a custom naming work around. The ipad is practically unusable with a notebook based system. The iphone version is workable but the screen is too small. I find many people walk away unimpressed. This is so frustrating since I have been an EN user and fanboy for years.

I think most of the people commenting on this forum are fairly sophisticated EN users who are willing to spend some time organizing their EN workflow. The next level of users that EN needs to attract are not going to spend a lot of time understanding EN. I would argue that EVERY ONE understands hierarchichal systems (folders or notebooks) and can pick up a system like that and go. I think the competition for EN Business is going to come from cloud systems like DropBox (who are introducing their own "business" version). I know this topic will continue. I have been one of the voices pleading for multiple notebook levels since EN was introduced and I will continue to plead. I think that as EN tries to move further into corporate markets they should consider this question again. Regardless of what they do they have to fix the ipad version first.

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The next level of users that EN needs to attract are not going to spend a lot of time understanding EN. I would argue that EVERY ONE understands hierarchichal systems (folders or notebooks) and can pick up a system like that and go. I think the competition for EN Business is going to come from cloud systems like DropBox (who are introducing their own "business" version). I know this topic will continue. I have been one of the voices pleading for multiple notebook levels since EN was introduced and I will continue to plead. I think that as EN tries to move further into corporate markets they should consider this question again. Regardless of what they do they have to fix the ipad version first.

"If you build it, he will come"

Field of Dreams, 1989

:lol:

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I think what needs to be understood is that Evernote is still a growing and expanding product and solution. I know for a fact that the folks at Evernote work hard to adapt to the growing needs and organization models their customers seek to implement. While informational science is no new subject, I think it is safe to assume that Evernote, along with the rest of the Internet are still seeking to find new ways to both preserve and retrieve data.

I don't see a solution coming overnight, and much less a universal one--and that's even on the front-end of things. I think it's a little unfair to say Evernote is acting arrogant, when they have and are pioneering an innovative model. I mean prior to Evernote, I had only heard of companies "renting" data storage. That said, I think you are correct in believing that new ways need to be analyzed, so that Evernote is able to organize and retrieve your growing amounts of data in a useful way.

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Once again, Dropbox and Evernote solve different problems. I use them both, every day.

Read my comments a little more carefully. I am looking beyond Evernote to Evernote Business. You seem to think that the way YOU use Evernote is the way evernote is supposed to work. The real power of evernote is that there are LOTS of ways to use it. I am commenting on the way I use it and the way I hope to continue using it into the future.

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i'd bet 3 of my favourite notes that multiple notebook levels are not implemented in the next 2 years if ever. No inside information, but it's clearly not the way that the app is architected and the cost of changing that architecture and implementing across all the clients would be very very high. The existing model is proving phenomenally successful, in their shoes I wouldn't change it either.

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i'd bet 3 of my favourite notes that multiple notebook levels are not implemented in the next 2 years if ever. No inside information, but it's clearly not the way that the app is architected and the cost of changing that architecture and implementing across all the clients would be very very high. The existing model is proving phenomenally successful, in their shoes I wouldn't change it either.

I agree. IMO, stacks were the answer to sub-notebooks. I'd guess most coders who've been coding for very many years have been in a situation where Bossman says "can you do X?" and they say, "not without a new team and a year or two of restructuring". So Bossman says "give me a Plan B". IMO, stacks were Plan B. And if sub-stacks or sub-notebooks were easy/fairly easy/somewhat easy to implement across all the platforms, with all the clamoring, I think they would have been implemented by now. Case in point...the infamous & elusive "due date". That's surely got to be easier to implement across all platforms than sub/nested stacks/notebooks...??? And yet... Personally, I think someone at EN anticipated problems with nested/sub notebooks from the get go when they were migrating from EN the Windows payware to EN the cloud service that will live on many OSs & that's why they focused on tags. (Very forward thinking for that time, too, when pretty much anytime you moved to a new device, you had to get new apps & export/import existing notes/data/contacts, unless you stuck with say, Palm..) IME tags definitely serve the purpose. People are just reluctant to change. (Just like my mom never adapted to cooking fresh green beans in a microwave & continued to cook them to death on the stove.)

Or it could be as simple as priorities... We just don't know.

In the end, speculation by any of us is futile. EN is what it is & they don't post roadmaps or ETAs. So deal with it or find another app. Simple as that.

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Now I am dying to know what Metrodon's three favorite notes really are... is one of them the one with the encrypted Swiss bank account code? The secret formula for Coca-Cola? Aimee Mann's phone number? The location of the last city of Atlantis? The secret of the Thirty-Nine Steps?

Evernote, give over. The world is dying to know.... what's in Metrodon's Evernote???

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Read my comments a little more carefully. I am looking beyond Evernote to Evernote Business.

I didn't notice that you added any details about why you think that DropBox's business solution would make it into a big competitor to Evernote For Business. Is it solely because they have a hierarchical storage system, and Evernote has a very shallow one?

You seem to think that the way YOU use Evernote is the way evernote is supposed to work.

Kindly read *my* comments a little more carefully. I think no such thing, though you're welcome to go ahead and point out where I say anything like it. My baseline opinion has been and continues to be that Evernote is the entity that determines how Evernote should work, not me (and that doesn't mean that they shouldn't take suggestions, they should and do; the trouble is that there are a lot of suggestions, and finite development resources). As it happens, it works pretty well for my usage, and although I can think of several features that I think would make it better for me, and have written about them in the forums, I maintain no expectations that Evernote will ever fulfill them. To wit:

The plain and simple truth of it is that the for some of of use who have been participating in the discussion, the stance is this:

1) Suggestions are welcome, however...

2) ...while Evernote may change in the future, right now all we have is the Evernote that exists, not the Evernote of your dreams, so therefore...

3) ,,,advice is usually given for solving problems based on Evernote's current capabilities, but...

4) ...if all workarounds suggested are not sufficient, then advice to seek out another product is reasonable.

So, yes, dream on (and I'm not being flippant about that). Keep advocating for hierarchical notebooks, you're not alone, and I do not, nor have I ever actually said that they'd be a bad thing. But I find it hard to believe that people are not sophisticated enough to learn how to use tags as organizational tools. Most people I know can already use multiple adjectives to describe an object, and that's really not too far from what tags are. Hey, in the battle of organizing the Internet, Yahoo (hierarchical search) lost, and Google won (associative search). Something to think about.

The real power of evernote is that there are LOTS of ways to use it.

Never disagreed with that. But you can't use it as if it has arbitrarily nested notebooks, because it just doesn't. At least at this time...

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i'd bet 3 of my favourite notes that multiple notebook levels are not implemented in the next 2 years if ever. No inside information, but it's clearly not the way that the app is architected and the cost of changing that architecture and implementing across all the clients would be very very high. The existing model is proving phenomenally successful, in their shoes I wouldn't change it either.

I agree. IMO, stacks were the answer to sub-notebooks. ...

Or it could be as simple as priorities... We just don't know.

In the end, speculation by any of us is futile. EN is what it is & they don't post roadmaps or ETAs. So deal with it or find another app. Simple as that.

I'm going to continue asking for hierarchical folders just the same. IME tags don't work for me. I don't fear change and I'm smart enough to understand tags. They just don't work for what I do. I also think if EN thinks the way you suggest they never should have introduced stacks (or even multiple notebooks for that matter). I think the web clipper feature of guessing what notebook you want to put an article into (not which tag) also is a tease to us multiple notebook users.

I hope EN eventually moves to add the functions that people keep asking for. I know its hard and I know it won't happen overnight but I think we should keep asking if we think it will make EN better. Once again, I hope if EN does add sub notebooks they are not mandatory and the tag users can continue unhindered. I do not criticize EN over this but I will not stop asking for it. I will also not stop using EN and find another app...

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i'd bet 3 of my favourite notes that multiple notebook levels are not implemented in the next 2 years if ever. No inside information, but it's clearly not the way that the app is architected and the cost of changing that architecture and implementing across all the clients would be very very high. The existing model is proving phenomenally successful, in their shoes I wouldn't change it either.

I agree. IMO, stacks were the answer to sub-notebooks. ...

Or it could be as simple as priorities... We just don't know.

In the end, speculation by any of us is futile. EN is what it is & they don't post roadmaps or ETAs. So deal with it or find another app. Simple as that.

I'm going to continue asking for hierarchical folders just the same. IME tags don't work for me. I don't fear change and I'm smart enough to understand tags. They just don't work for what I do. I also think if EN thinks the way you suggest they never should have introduced stacks (or even multiple notebooks for that matter). I think the web clipper feature of guessing what notebook you want to put an article into (not which tag) also is a tease to us multiple notebook users.

I hope EN eventually moves to add the functions that people keep asking for. I know its hard and I know it won't happen overnight but I think we should keep asking if we think it will make EN better. Once again, I hope if EN does add sub notebooks they are not mandatory and the tag users can continue unhindered. I do not criticize EN over this but I will not stop asking for it. I will also not stop using EN and find another app...

Good on you. I think voicing your opinions is the way to go, because developers are reading this, and they pay attention.

With the exception of the Windows client, where my only complaint at the moment is the inability to search the database from outside the app, I feel like every platform is missing some feature I'd really like to see, so I have plenty of posts all over the forums asking for this or that. Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I don't. But, it doesn't hurt to ask.

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i'd bet 3 of my favourite notes that multiple notebook levels are not implemented in the next 2 years if ever. No inside information, but it's clearly not the way that the app is architected and the cost of changing that architecture and implementing across all the clients would be very very high. The existing model is proving phenomenally successful, in their shoes I wouldn't change it either.

IME tags definitely serve the purpose. People are just reluctant to change. (Just like my mom never adapted to cooking fresh green beans in a microwave & continued to cook them to death on the stove.)

Or it could be as simple as priorities... We just don't know.

In the end, speculation by any of us is futile. EN is what it is & they don't post roadmaps or ETAs. So deal with it or find another app. Simple as that.

I don't know if you guys have cognitive dissonance or not.

We tried to make it very clear:

We ( who use hierarchical system ) are aware that multiple notebook levels are not implemented in near future.

We are just expressing our need.

The current system just does not meet our needs. I made my points in last few replies.

I'm not very in need of multiple notebook levels because I have some workarounds. But the system can't suit all my need now.

So I hope EN will add some features afterward.

And none of you propose a better solution and you call tag system "serve the purpose"? Well, it's serving your purpose not ours.

And you were saying that we are reluctant and not sophisticated enough to learn how to use tags as organizational tools.

By what eye did you see that? Remember one thing, people have different need.

We are not saying tags are bad, it just don't serve our purpose.

@jefito

Yes, Evernote is the entity that determines how Evernote should work. But if evernote doesn't meet my need, I'll change to another.

I was using Onenote and jumped to Evernote years ago because Onenote doesn't do well on multi-platform.

But I'm not saying Onenote are bad, it does better than Evernote in some way. It just don't meet my need.

EN does very well for now, but if there's other note-taking app works better than Evernote. I might switch there.

And about Dropbox, I think its business solution have a potential to make it into a big competitor to Evernote.

Also, EN is a potential competitor to Dropbox on file-storage too.

Try a software named Epistle on Android. It has a very interesting concept in using Dropbox as a note-strorage.

I'm an almost satisfied customer of Evernote, but I'm still finding others to replace Evernote.

About "On the battle of organizing the Internet, Yahoo (hierarchical search) lost, and Google won (associative search). Something to think about."

Well, you can not compare an apple with an orange. Did you learn your lessons all by associative links in school? No, I think there must be hierarchical system participate in. A single tree does not make a forest. Hierarchical system is still useful in some way and it can not be abandoned.

Although you denied the accusation of "seems to think that the way YOU use Evernote is the way evernote is supposed to work." But what you said like "I find it hard to believe that people are not sophisticated enough to learn how to use tags as organizational tools", gave us a feeling that you do think so.

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i'd bet 3 of my favourite notes that multiple notebook levels are not implemented in the next 2 years if ever. No inside information, but it's clearly not the way that the app is architected and the cost of changing that architecture and implementing across all the clients would be very very high. The existing model is proving phenomenally successful, in their shoes I wouldn't change it either.

I agree. IMO, stacks were the answer to sub-notebooks. ...

Or it could be as simple as priorities... We just don't know.

In the end, speculation by any of us is futile. EN is what it is & they don't post roadmaps or ETAs. So deal with it or find another app. Simple as that.

I'm going to continue asking for hierarchical folders just the same. IME tags don't work for me. I don't fear change and I'm smart enough to understand tags. They just don't work for what I do. I also think if EN thinks the way you suggest they never should have introduced stacks (or even multiple notebooks for that matter). I think the web clipper feature of guessing what notebook you want to put an article into (not which tag) also is a tease to us multiple notebook users.

I hope EN eventually moves to add the functions that people keep asking for. I know its hard and I know it won't happen overnight but I think we should keep asking if we think it will make EN better. Once again, I hope if EN does add sub notebooks they are not mandatory and the tag users can continue unhindered. I do not criticize EN over this but I will not stop asking for it. I will also not stop using EN and find another app...

Good on you. I think voicing your opinions is the way to go, because developers are reading this, and they pay attention.

With the exception of the Windows client, where my only complaint at the moment is the inability to search the database from outside the app, I feel like every platform is missing some feature I'd really like to see, so I have plenty of posts all over the forums asking for this or that. Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I don't. But, it doesn't hurt to ask.

I hope others' replies are like yours.Their "you should do it this way" really make me upset sometimes.

I'm not a person who don't accept advises. I appreciate people like @jbenson2 and @JMichael who try to gave us a workaround.

Although their workarounds sometimes does not meet my need, I still thank them.

I already changed my way of arranging notes a lot and I spent hours on it.

Sometimes it's really a pain to make my notes suit for my workflow.

And lack of feature on some platform made it worse.

I just come to asking for what I need and keep seeing people says " You are wrong, you are reluctant to change, you are not not sophisticated enough to learn how to use tags". It's like pouring oil on the flame.

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Now I am dying to know what Metrodon's three favorite notes really are... is one of them the one with the encrypted Swiss bank account code? The secret formula for Coca-Cola? Aimee Mann's phone number? The location of the last city of Atlantis? The secret of the Thirty-Nine Steps?

Evernote, give over. The world is dying to know.... what's in Metrodon's Evernote???

I don't think I'm giving too much away if I tell you that at least one is marmite based.

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Try a software named Epistle on Android. It has a very interesting concept in using Dropbox as a note-strorage.

Epistle...? Well, that brings up some interesting points worth thinking about when choosing a notetaking app.

(1) How do you feel about giving Matteo (the developer) your Dropbox username and password?

(2) How do you feel about having no control over the sync folder, and no subfolders?

(3) How do you feel about a simple search (compared to Evernote's advanced search)?

(4) How do you feel about having no tags (as far as I know)?

(5) How do you feel about no search within notes (as far as I know)?

(6) How do you feel about losing data? You have to be very careful with the syncing, and you don't have much control over it...

On iOS, notetaking programs that sync with Dropbox are legion. I think a few like notesy stand out from the rest, but this concept is nothing new. For some reason, though, the Android marketplace is a barren wasteland, and there are very few good text editors. It is quite sad. There is a lot of potential with the model, but potential is not terribly practical.

Evernote isn't perfect, and I certainly think there is more room for improvement, but it really is doing something unique, especially if you are concerned about data security / integrity / stability.

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Epistle...? Well, that brings up some interesting points worth thinking about when choosing a notetaking app.

(1) How do you feel about giving Matteo (the developer) your Dropbox username and password?

(2) How do you feel about having no control over the sync folder, and no subfolders?

(3) How do you feel about a simple search (compared to Evernote's advanced search)?

(4) How do you feel about having no tags (as far as I know)?

(5) How do you feel about no search within notes (as far as I know)?

(6) How do you feel about losing data? You have to be very careful with the syncing, and you don't have much control over it...

On iOS, notetaking programs that sync with Dropbox are legion. I think a few like notesy stand out from the rest, but this concept is nothing new. For some reason, though, the Android marketplace is a barren wasteland, and there are very few good text editors. It is quite sad. There is a lot of potential with the model, but potential is not terribly practical.

Evernote isn't perfect, and I certainly think there is more room for improvement, but it really is doing something unique, especially if you are concerned about data security / integrity / stability.

Yes, I know. So I'm still using evernote. I download Epistle and haven't sync it to my dropbox. Just keep it and wait to see how far it can go.

As to iOS apps, some of its best can be export to evernote too, so I don't quite use its feature to export to dropbox.

And I don't take my notes on iPad often, its Traditional Chinese keyboard is terribly awful compare to android's.

And its sandbox has too much limitation in doing things. (Like you can't edit images in Evernote directly by Skitch in iOS while you can do that in android. ) I just want to say dropbox has a potential for note-taking apps. Although there're no good apps for now.

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Epistle...? Well, that brings up some interesting points worth thinking about when choosing a notetaking app.

(1) How do you feel about giving Matteo (the developer) your Dropbox username and password?

(2) How do you feel about having no control over the sync folder, and no subfolders?

(3) How do you feel about a simple search (compared to Evernote's advanced search)?

(4) How do you feel about having no tags (as far as I know)?

(5) How do you feel about no search within notes (as far as I know)?

(6) How do you feel about losing data? You have to be very careful with the syncing, and you don't have much control over it...

On iOS, notetaking programs that sync with Dropbox are legion. I think a few like notesy stand out from the rest, but this concept is nothing new. For some reason, though, the Android marketplace is a barren wasteland, and there are very few good text editors. It is quite sad. There is a lot of potential with the model, but potential is not terribly practical.

Evernote isn't perfect, and I certainly think there is more room for improvement, but it really is doing something unique, especially if you are concerned about data security / integrity / stability.

Yes, I know. So I'm still using evernote. I download Epistle and haven't sync it to my dropbox. Just keep it and wait to see how far it can go.

As to iOS apps, some of its best can be export to evernote too, so I don't quite use its feature to export to dropbox.

And I don't take my notes on iPad often, its Traditional Chinese keyboard is terribly awful compare to android's.

And its sandbox has too much limitation in doing things. (Like you can't edit images in Evernote directly by Skitch in iOS while you can do that in android. ) I just want to say dropbox has a potential for note-taking apps. Although there're no good apps for now.

Yep. Dropbox and Google Drive have plenty of potential to enable other apps to shine, but weirdly, no one has managed to do it. You would think it would be easy, but I think it is telling that no one can manage it.

To give a concrete example, notesy is a great notetaking app on the ipad that has several features which make it far superior to the Evernote app (sorry Evernote guys and gals!), even though it is a lot simpler: list view, reverse title sort, adjustable note previews, etc. Yet, it falls flat on its face with searches. It is totally incapable of handling a large number of notes (about 10,000). It simply doesn't scale up. Anyone can make a notetaking app that handles a few dozen notes. Only Evernote has managed to go beyond that.

For all of my complaints about the mobile app, Evernote is (as far as I can tell) the only app that has decent searches (some apps will do a single word well, but no more). It is incredible to me that we haven't advanced terribly far since my days tapping with a stylus on the Sony Clie. I think Evernote is quite possibly the only company that takes searches seriously on mobile. The lack of stackable notebooks seems (in my opinion) to be such a laughably minor thing it is almost not worth mentioning. But, that just goes to show why we need lots of options, because I know they matter a lot to some people. Others (developers of notetaking apps) probably think search isn't worth thinking about.

As for traditional Chinese on the iPad, what's the problem? How are you inputting the characters? Pinyin entry brings up the characters and you choose them just as you would on the Mac, for example. The handwriting seems to work fine. I don't see how Android is superior in this respect.

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As for traditional Chinese on the iPad, what's the problem? How are you inputting the characters? Pinyin entry brings up the characters and you choose them just as you would on the Mac, for example. The handwriting seems to work fine. I don't see how Android is superior in this respect.

I don't quite familiar with Pinyin, which is the most used in mainland China.

We were taught to use ZhuYin in Taiwan. It's an antique that were used in China before 1949. You can look it up here.

I know Pinyin but I type faster with ZhuYin for I still have to "think" while typing with Pinyin.

The ZhuYin on iOS is very problematic.

For example, I want to type the two character word "海浪".

With PinYin, I need to type "Hai lan", or only "HL" then choose from words.

With ZhuYin on Android, I can type "ㄏㄞㄌㄤ"( without tonal marks and the system will choose the word for me) or only "ㄏㄌ" then choose from words.

But on iOS, sorry, I must type "ㄏㄞˇㄌㄤˋ"(including the tonal marks) to get the right word.

On android I can only hit my keyboard three or four times to get a two characters word I want, and on iOS I have to hit at least 6 times, up to 9 times to get it.

Besides, android's input method is customizable. I can choose Swype of Swiftkey to type. And on iOS I have to stuck on the input method of iOS' itsown IM.

Handwriting? You must be kidding. You know how complex Chinese characters are, especially Traditional Chinese.

That would be very very slow.

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As for traditional Chinese on the iPad, what's the problem? How are you inputting the characters? Pinyin entry brings up the characters and you choose them just as you would on the Mac, for example. The handwriting seems to work fine. I don't see how Android is superior in this respect.

I don't quite familiar with Pinyin, which is the most used in mainland China.

We were taught to use ZhuYin in Taiwan. It's an antique that were used in China before 1949. You can look it up here.

I know Pinyin but I type faster with ZhuYin for I still have to "think" while typing with Pinyin.

The ZhuYin on iOS is very problematic.

For example, I want to type the two character word "海浪".

With PinYin, I need to type "Hai lan", or only "HL" then choose from words.

With ZhuYin on Android, I can type "ㄏㄞㄌㄤ"( without tonal marks and the system will choose the word for me) or only "ㄏㄌ" then choose from words.

But on iOS, sorry, I must type "ㄏㄞˇㄌㄤˋ"(including the tonal marks) to get the right word.

On android I can only hit my keyboard three or four times to get a two characters word I want, and on iOS I have to hit at least 6 times, up to 9 times to get it.

Besides, android's input method is customizable. I can choose Swype of Swiftkey to type. And on iOS I have to stuck on the input method of iOS' itsown IM.

Handwriting? You must be kidding. You know how complex Chinese characters are, especially Traditional Chinese.

That would be very very slow.

I find pinyin to be a lot faster, and zhu yin to be a little painful, mainly because I don't use it on a regular basis. The lack of customizable keyboards in iOS is a pain, but on the other hand, there are no keyboards I really like in Android! As for handwriting, I thought that might be what you meant when you said "trouble," because there is a mix of characters that appear -- only one character recognition program for traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and Japanese.

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I hope others' replies are like yours.Their "you should do it this way" really make me upset sometimes.

I'm not a person who don't accept advises. I appreciate people like @jbenson2 and @JMichael who try to gave us a workaround.

Although their workarounds sometimes does not meet my need, I still thank them.

I already changed my way of arranging notes a lot and I spent hours on it.

Sometimes it's really a pain to make my notes suit for my workflow.

And lack of feature on some platform made it worse.

I just come to asking for what I need and keep seeing people says " You are wrong, you are reluctant to change, you are not not sophisticated enough to learn how to use tags". It's like pouring oil on the flame.

Please stop "quoting" generically (and incorrectly, I might add). The bottom line, as I said above is...

Or it could be as simple as priorities... We just don't know.

In the end, speculation by any of us is futile. EN is what it is & they don't post roadmaps or ETAs. So deal with it or find another app. Simple as that.

Those are cold, hard facts. I'm sorry if the facts make you upset. But it would seem it's best to face them rather than for other board users to lead people on by saying, "yes, I'm sure someday that EN will add feature X so just stick with them.", which would also be untruthful, since none of us (users) know what will or will not be added.

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I hope others' replies are like yours.Their "you should do it this way" really make me upset sometimes.

I'm not a person who don't accept advises. I appreciate people like @jbenson2 and @JMichael who try to gave us a workaround.

Although their workarounds sometimes does not meet my need, I still thank them.

I already changed my way of arranging notes a lot and I spent hours on it.

Sometimes it's really a pain to make my notes suit for my workflow.

And lack of feature on some platform made it worse.

I just come to asking for what I need and keep seeing people says " You are wrong, you are reluctant to change, you are not not sophisticated enough to learn how to use tags". It's like pouring oil on the flame.

Please stop "quoting" generically (and incorrectly, I might add). The bottom line, as i said above is...

Or it could be as simple as priorities... We just don't know.

In the end, speculation by any of us is futile. EN is what it is & they don't post roadmaps or ETAs. So deal with it or find another app. Simple as that.

Those are cold, hard facts. I'm sorry if the facts make you upset. But it would seem it's best to face them rather than for other board users to lead people on by saying, "yes, I'm sure someday that EN will add feature X so just stick with them.".

I think BNF is saying something important here. We ought to raise issues, voice our opinions, and discuss the merits/demerits of ideas. However, in the end, no one here knows what in the world Evernote is going to do beyond doing more great things (we hope) :)

So, we have to work with the application / platform we have, and modify our usage to conform to its strengths and weaknesses on each client. For example, if you work on the iPad (as I do) you probably shouldn't bother relying stacks, tag hierarchies, modification of metadata, or the creation of note links (speaking only about some of the main organizational strategies) because they don't work on that client. They might someday, but we don't live in the future, so there is no use (today) in trying to force Evernote to fit into an organizational scheme designed for an entirely different environment (folders and sub folders).

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@jefito

Yes, Evernote is the entity that determines how Evernote should work. But if evernote doesn't meet my need, I'll change to another.

Right. I understand that, and I believe that Evernote understands that. The difficulty is that you may never find a perfect solution, and may need to compromise on one or more of your requirements, as you imply in what I snipped.

I'm an almost satisfied customer of Evernote, but I'm still finding others to replace Evernote.

It's not for everyone, I agree.

About "On the battle of organizing the Internet, Yahoo (hierarchical search) lost, and Google won (associative search). Something to think about."

Well, you can not compare an apple with an orange. Did you learn your lessons all by associative links in school? No, I think there must be hierarchical system participate in. A single tree does not make a forest. Hierarchical system is still useful in some way and it can not be abandoned.

That was, as I said, something to think about, not a definitive argument. However: let's face it, I use hierarchies all the time, every day. I've probably traipsed up and down more file directory folders than you've had breakfasts (meaning a lot). I'm not unaware of their utility. However, with Evernote, I am almost completely free of them, and blissfully so. And I understand that the internet is built on hierarchies, too (though it is, as its name implies, actually a network, aka a graph). But most of the time, I am happy to let associative search find things for me.

I'm not sure where you're going with the bit about how I learned my lessons in school; it seems clear to me that we actually do learn associatively, on some level at least. So I'm not sure what your point was.

On the other hand, you *can* compare apples and oranges: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2010/11/comparing-apples-and-oranges/ :)

Although you denied the accusation of "seems to think that the way YOU use Evernote is the way evernote is supposed to work." But what you said like "I find it hard to believe that people are not sophisticated enough to learn how to use tags as organizational tools", gave us a feeling that you do think so.

Two different statements. Evernote works the way it works, and that's as it was designed and implemented by Evernote. That it works in a way that makes sense for me is great, but I consider that to be a happy coincidence, and if they changed for some reason that doesn't work for me (not that I think they will), I'd just go and find something else. In that, I'm no different than anyone else: I'm just looking for a solution that works the way I want it to, to within some tolerance, as most software requires some compromise.

That's independent of the idea that tags (or labels a la GMail, or categories a la Outlook, or other similar constructs) are somehow conceptually difficult for human beings to understand. I don't believe that. Because they do it all the time -- we refer to items by listing their properties rather than their location in some hierarchy (or some collection of hierarchies). To me, it's as easy as understanding that tags are like language, the noun and adjective part, anyways: you come up with a vocabulary that describes the sorts of things that you store in Evernote, and you apply some subset of it to each note. And to find notes, you do the reverse: describe, in terms of your vocabulary (and possibly some search text) what you are looking for. And this will work whether you store notes hierarchically or in separate non-hierarchical notebooks or even all in one big notebook.

Now, there's one interesting part of the above that isn't strictly relevant to this topic (which is about hierarchical note storage, and which I don't particularly need), but rather about hierarchical tag storage, which already exists in Evernote. The interesting thing to me is that we could really could have more useful search by taking advantage of the existing tag tree structure. Right now, tags are independent of each other with regards to search. For example, if you ave a tag A with a subtags A1, then a tag search on A will not return could return a note tagged with A1 unless it was also explicitly tagged with A. But suppose the Evernote extended the search capability to return such notes -- would that be useful? I think so.

Something to think about...

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Evernote's biggest failing here is not being more directly communicative here, not frequently, but with the issues that keep returning with lengthy 'discussions' like these.

If I'm 'director of user relations' and see continued festering around a topic the company has made a decision on I'm going to make sure a definitive statement is made regarding that decision....probably have it as a sticky somewhere...period.

If it's a topic they've closehe door on and aren't fielding discussion on it, fine ,state that. Discussion over.

Evernote doesn't do well in this area.

Too many users here speaking on behalf of Evernote and thats poor relations behaviour and frustrating for especially new forums users.

Want nested notebooks? Your directed to Evernotes statement on it.

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Too many users here speaking on behalf of Evernote and thats poor relations behaviour and frustrating for especially new forums users.

Who are these users speaking on behalf of Evernote?

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Evernote's biggest failing here is not being more directly communicative here, not frequently, but with the issues that keep returning with lengthy 'discussions' like these.

If I'm 'director of user relations' and see continued festering around a topic the company has made a decision on I'm going to make sure a definitive statement is made regarding that decision....probably have it as a sticky somewhere...period.

If it's a topic they've closehe door on and aren't fielding discussion on it, fine ,state that. Discussion over.

Evernote doesn't do well in this area.

Too many users here speaking on behalf of Evernote and thats poor relations behaviour and frustrating for especially new forums users.

Want nested notebooks? Your directed to Evernotes statement on it. Done

on or now fine,state that.

It's a user forum. We are not speaking on behalf of Evernote. I suppose it would be nice if developers would jump in and justify each design decision. Sometimes they do, but we rarely agree :)

I think that it takes a lot of work to respond to users, and I suspect they haven't hired a person to take care of customer relations, so that developers can develop. In the end, that may be a wise decision, because users helping out users can be an effective way of "outsourcing" work, and generate a lively community. I am sure they have spoken more about nested notebooks somewhere, but not so much recently. Here is something I dug up in the forums.

http://discussion.ev...ooks/#entry9002

Stacks were introduced a couple of years ago to meet user requests for hierarchies. You can listen to a short discussion of it in the Evernote podcast (Evernote Podcast #24 – The Body Episode. December 27, 2010). Here is a complete list of the podcasts (http://www.princeton...multimedia.html).

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Too many users here speaking on behalf of Evernote and thats poor relations behaviour and frustrating for especially new forums users.

Who are these users speaking on behalf of Evernote?

Not officially on behalf of, but those in this thread (and I've done it myself...cause we're not likely to have evernote pop in here) who explain what Evernote's alluded-to position is on issues ..like nested notes. And saying: 'Evernote is unlikely to ever support nested notes...blah blah) is very true. But it should be backed up with: 'Here is Evernote's statement to date on nested notes'.

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Evernote's biggest failing here is not being more directly communicative here, not frequently, but with the issues that keep returning with lengthy 'discussions' like these.

If I'm 'director of user relations' and see continued festering around a topic the company has made a decision on I'm going to make sure a definitive statement is made regarding that decision....probably have it as a sticky somewhere...period.

If it's a topic they've closehe door on and aren't fielding discussion on it, fine ,state that. Discussion over.

Evernote doesn't do well in this area.

Too many users here speaking on behalf of Evernote and thats poor relations behaviour and frustrating for especially new forums users.

Want nested notebooks? Your directed to Evernotes statement on it. Done

on or now fine,state that.

It's a user forum. We are not speaking on behalf of Evernote. I suppose it would be nice if developers would jump in and justify each design decision. Sometimes they do, but we rarely agree :)

I think that it takes a lot of work to respond to users, and I suspect they haven't hired a person to take care of customer relations, so that developers can develop. In the end, that may be a wise decision, because users helping out users can be an effective way of "outsourcing" work, and generate a lively community. I am sure they have spoken more about nested notebooks somewhere, but not so much recently. Here is something I dug up in the forums.

http://discussion.ev...ooks/#entry9002

Stacks were introduced a couple of years ago to meet user requests for hierarchies. You can listen to a short discussion of it in the Evernote podcast (Evernote Podcast #24 – The Body Episode. December 27, 2010). Here is a complete list of the podcasts (http://www.princeton...multimedia.html).

Not officially on behalf of I know, ....but trying to give to newer users an understanding of where Evernote is positioned regarding an issue.

That's a part of any (wise) company's job who want satisfied users and seem responsive to their want's.

It's not a lot of work...at least in the way I described it. Even if it was, is it not prudent to do so?

A vehicle like 'Get Satisfaction', for example polls the most indemand requests and make statements regarding where they are or aren't with regard to their developmental roadmap usually followed by discussion.

There need not even be discussion on customer sites like that. Evernote can say, the only issues we ever discuss are the features we're developing on our open beta's, but also provide statements regarding those top requested features.

If it's ' Sorry but we have no plan's to incorporate nested notebooks at this time". Fine. Thank you. Done.

It's not rocket science, just simple user relations practice.

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And saying: 'Evernote is unlikely to ever support nested notes...blah blah) is very true. But it should be backed up with: 'Here is Evernote's statement to date on nested notes'.

Or....if users want to see the "official" replies from EN, THEY can just search the board, just like GM did... But...they usually don't.

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Just to clarify, Evernote have never said that are going to implement any further depth in their notebook hierarchy.

Given that they don't discuss their roadmap, I don't see any reason why they should comment on this specific issue.

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