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Nesting Multiple Notebooks / Creating Sub-Notebooks


cswsteve

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Thanks, as you can see I was frustrated :).  I did see that individual users can have nested notebooks, but that's really no different than a bunch of people having individual accounts in the first place.  I was expecting that the business product would allow a company to set up a shared set of notebooks with a nested structure.

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To make matters worse, the "business library" is nothing but a "phony" link to a shared folder that just shows up under each employees notebook.  What I was hoping for was a simple non-confusing metaphor for employees, "personal notebooks" and "business library".  As it is, there is no clear differentiation for the employee between that which is private and that which is shared, because they all show up under their name either way.

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Maybe I misunderstand your meaning regarding personal and business notebooks, because I can see a very clear demarcation within my EN. For me this is one of the great successes of EN, providing business users with a private personal section which helps to integrate them into EN life.

Don't get me wrong there are still many features which I perceive as essential for business which are not currently available in EN. However my business is small enough to adapt for now whilst EN evolves. Of course the basic features for project control have to be there, and the principal of sharing is one of these. We now have suppliers and customers contributing to projects with direct input into EN, including uploading large files. Yes I have a wish list for improvements, like the ability to make a notes private so only company employees can see, but maybe this will happen one day.

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Maybe I misunderstand your meaning regarding personal and business notebooks, because I can see a very clear demarcation within my EN. For me this is one of the great successes of EN, providing business users with a private personal section which helps to integrate them into EN life.

Don't get me wrong there are still many features which I perceive as essential for business which are not currently available in EN. However my business is small enough to adapt for now whilst EN evolves. Of course the basic features for project control have to be there, and the principal of sharing is one of these. We now have suppliers and customers contributing to projects with direct input into EN, including uploading large files. Yes I have a wish list for improvements, like the ability to make a notes private so only company employees can see, but maybe this will happen one day.

 

Paulelias, have you looked at a web based project management system like TeamworksPM?  We use it for sharing projects, assigning tasks, attaching documents to projects, time tracking, billing, etc.  It also has features to allow clients outside of your company to access parts of projects that you give them access to.  It isn't a replacement for EN, but based on your comments you may find it useful.  If someone could merge the functionality of a TeamWorksPM with a truly business class EM, they would have a very useful product indeed.

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Hi everyone,

 

This is my first post, so please bear with me.

 

I'm using Evernote 4.6.1 on Windows 7 64 bit. I'm trying to create nested notebook stacks, but I haven't found any menu option that enables that function. Is it possible to do what I want to accomplish?

 

Thanks

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Hi Duane, welcome to the forums. Stacks are already 'enabled' in that all you have to do is drag one notebook on top of another in the left panel. Create a new notebook to be the stack parent if necessary and either drag and drop other notebooks into it, or right-click the notebook name and use 'add to stack'.

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Hi and welcome to the forums !

 

Yes, STACKS can be a bit confusing at first. As Gaz wrote, "they are already there".

To clarify: Go to "Notebooks" (left panel), right click and choose "create notebook".

Give it a name. Drag another of your notebooks onto it and voilà, you created a STACK.

Wern

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Hi everyone,

 

This is my first post, so please bear with me.

 

I'm using Evernote 4.6.1 on Windows 7 64 bit. I'm trying to create nested notebook stacks, but I haven't found any menu option that enables that function. Is it possible to do what I want to accomplish?

 

Thanks

Stacks cannot be nested & notebooks canot be nested. Stacks can contain notebooks but not other stacks. Notebooks cannot contain other notebooks or stacks. For more intricate organizing, you can use tags, descriptive titles and "keywords".

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Once again,  I am reminded - read the question with the grey cells switched on.  Burgers is (of course) absolutely right - birds nest,  but stacks don't!

I only added my post b/c I think it's unclear if OP is trying to make a stack or nest them. So I think your answer was very good & I only added mine in case OP is trying to make nested stacks. ;-)

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I agree. I would really like the ability to create several notebooks and then be able to put them within another notebook. It would help me tremendously.

There are no sub notebooks in EN. You can group notebooks by putting them into a stack.

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I would also like to request this feature. I am aware of using tags instead of folders, but folders work more naturaly for me and quicker.

I use EN A LOT, especialy for screen grabs. Having the ability to just put them in a folder would make life very easy!

It does not have to be a seperate notebook, just a folder will do.

From a development perspective, I am sure it cannot be too much effort.

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I would also like to request this feature. I am aware of using tags instead of folders, but folders work more naturaly for me and quicker.

I use EN A LOT, especialy for screen grabs. Having the ability to just put them in a folder would make life very easy!

It does not have to be a seperate notebook, just a folder will do.

How is any of what a "folder" gives you any different from what an Evernote notebook gives you, except for the fact that they are not arbitrarily nestable?

From a development perspective, I am sure it cannot be too much effort.

What makes you say this?
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Nested stacks would be AWESOME. I am a graduate student, and many of my colleagues agree, and would be far more apt to use evernote if this were an option. 

 

Acclaimed author, blogger, and businessman Michael Hyatt also advocates for nested stacks when he writes, "Note that I had to divide Work into several stacks, all with the prefix “Work.” This is simply because Evernote doesn’t currently allow the nesting of stacks. (Note to Evernote developers: please consider this as a feature request.)" http://michaelhyatt.com/how-to-use-evernote-if-you-are-a-speaker-or-writer.html

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Nested stacks would be AWESOME. I am a graduate student, and many of my colleagues agree, and would be far more apt to use evernote if this were an option. 

 

Acclaimed author, blogger, and businessman Michael Hyatt also advocates for nested stacks when he writes, "Note that I had to divide Work into several stacks, all with the prefix “Work.” This is simply because Evernote doesn’t currently allow the nesting of stacks. (Note to Evernote developers: please consider this as a feature request.)" http://michaelhyatt.com/how-to-use-evernote-if-you-are-a-speaker-or-writer.html

Given that nested stacks don't exist, and may never exist in Evernote (trust me, the Evernote folks do know that there are people who want them, but there's been no sign that they're interested in providing them; see Jacob Miller's posts above), I'd suggest that you try to come to some accommodation with tags. Tags are just like keywords for notes, and offer a fair amount of flexibility for organizing your notes. Even Michael Hyatt uses them: http://michaelhyatt.com/how-to-organize-evernote-for-maximum-efficiency.html.  Personally, I'd say that he's a little over-notebooked, but then again, he's famous, and I'm not. :)

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Fair. I'm trying that, but it's not the same--I like how Hyatt explains tags vs. notebooks as vertical vs. horizontal organization, and I guess it just makes more sense to me to nest vertically as opposed to horizontally, if that makes any sense. I am playing around with nesting my tags, though.... 

 

I guess I also am just curious about WHY evernote has no inclination to provide the capability to nest notebook stacks?! 

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I guess I also am just curious about WHY evernote has no inclination to provide the capability to nest notebook stacks?!

 

 

I don't know that they've stated 'why'.  But my guess is that it probably has at least a little bit to do with the fact that EN lives on so many platforms & devices.  First, there's the stability/compatibility issue.  Second, many times, folders are nested a lot of levels deep.  It's often a PITA to drill down to the folder you want.  OTOH, when you can just select a tag, it's much easier.  That's on a desktop computer.  It would be at least as problematic on a smaller device like a phone, if not more so. 

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I'm not sure that his conceptualization would work for everyone -- it's not how I do it anyways, though it might be useful to you.

 

Here are the salient details of the Evernote organizational structure:

 

Notebooks contain notes, and only notes. An Evernote note resides in exactly one notebook, so we'd say that notebooks partition your note database into discrete sets of notes. Notebooks are the primary structure for sharing, and the only organizational structure for local notes (non-synced notes on the desktop clients) and offline notes (notes that are cached on mobile devices for offline access).

 

Stacks are used to organize notebooks -- they are really intended to allow some structure for managing the 250 max number of notebooks. One other thing about stacks; while you cannot search more than one notebook at a time using the Evernote "notebook:" search term, you can search all of the notebooks in a stack by using the "stack:" search term.

 

Tags can apply to multiple notes, and a note may have multiple tags. Tags can be used to categorize notes across notebooks (hence across stacks as well), and across other tag classifications. That's what gives them a lot of flexibility. I don't think of them as vertical or horizontal. I think of them as keywords, or adjectives. 

 

I can't guess at Evernote's motivation (though obviously some Evernote employees want this type of facility) -- I can't remember them actually commenting about it here -- but it might be with an eye towards usability on mobile devices? Regardless, I tend to be pragmatic about it -- a nested notebook system just doesn't exist, and tags are flexible enough for me.

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Is it just me that finds the notebook layout page a bit hard to navigate?  It seems that I spend a lot of time searching for a specific folder (without using the search function).  When a master notebook is open, the gray sub notebooks blend in with the other notebooks that do not belong with a master notebook. A slight indent is the only differentiator. maybe there is a way to color code the folders to make it a bit easier to navigate. Just curious

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Strictly speaking there are no "folders" or Master Notebooks - there are just notebooks,  which can contain notes,  and for your convenience can be grouped in 'stacks' to make the notebooks easier to navigate around if you have several.  It should be possible to collapse stacks to hide notebooks,  but it's not possible (yet) to colour code them or change the font or style.

 

It would be a good option to have in due course...

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I use both nested folders and tags for different reasons. I'd love to have the ability to nest more than one. If there's a good reason not to, then why is there the ability to nest one?

There are no nested notebooks in Evernote. Notes reside in notebooks. Notes cannot reside in stacks. Stacks simply group notebooks. That's why stacks are called stacks instead of notebooks. ;-)

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Sorry, I guess I meant stacks then.

 

I think of tags as keywords to help find my notes (topic, category, author, geography, etc.), not a way to organize them. Here's how I think (and apparently many others who are requesting this):

 

a file cabinet (level 1) with

drawers (level 2 - notebooks) that contain

hanging folders (level 3 - stacks) and

folders inside those (what EN is missing) that contain

paper (notes)

 

I'd have the choice and ability to thumb through my drawers and folders to find what I need, or with the magic of tags or searching, I could find things that way.

 

A physical file cabinet is more limiting because in an electronic filing system you can normally nest to your hearts content. But for some reason, Evernote seems to be more limited than a physical file cabinet (except for tagging and searching, of course).

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But for some reason, Evernote seems to be more limited than a physical file cabinet (except for tagging and searching, of course).

Do you really not see the irony of this??? That is the strength of Evernote. And it's why descriptive titles, tags, keywords & notebooks are far better than restrictive nested folders/notebooks. Especially when you have a lot of notes.

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Nope. I don't see why it has to be one or the other when both would work even better. I don't see folders/notebooks as restrictive. Don't get me wrong, I love tags, but I can't rely on tags only to keep me organized. Why then do notebooks and stacks even exist then? If there's a hierarchy, why not extend it another level (or two, or ?). 

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Nope. I don't see why it has to be one or the other when both would work even better. I don't see folders/notebooks as restrictive. Don't get me wrong, I love tags, but I can't rely on tags only to keep me organized. Why then do notebooks and stacks even exist then? If there's a hierarchy, why not extend it another level (or two, or ?). 

 

Hi. I don't know why we can't have nested notebooks, but that is just how the system is set up. Look for posts by Dave (http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/1801-feature-request-nested-notebooks/?p=9002) for some of the thinking behind this. I am afraid I can only offer advice on the app that is, and not the app that could/should be. 

 

Tags, for most purposes, function exactly the same way as notebooks, so I don't see why organizing by tags is difficult. A search for tag:evernote or notebook:evernote will show you exactly the same notes, in exactly the same order. The only thing missing from tags is non-organizational stuff like the ability to share them, make them local, etc. 

 

In the end, though, if you are into hierarchies of information with lots of nested folders/notebooks or tags, then Evernote is probably not well-suited to your methodology. Evernote just isn't built for that kind of a system. Personally, I prefer the more "brain" like structure, but it probably isn't for everyone. 

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Look for posts by Dave (http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/1801-feature-request-nested-notebooks/?p=9002) for some of the thinking behind this.

Thanks for posting that link, GM. I don't recall ever seeing that & have Evernoted it for future reference.

I don't believe you BNF. I don't think it is possible for me to uncover something you haven't Evernoted already. Check your notes again :)

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I don't believe you BNF. I don't think it is possible for me to uncover something you haven't Evernoted already. Check your notes again :)

LOL!!! That was posted after I'd trialed the beta & decided EN was not for me. But before I'd returned to EN in Oct 2008. And apparently it was never linked to, in all the subsequent nested notebook threads. Or at least I don't recall seeing it, if it was.

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I don't believe you BNF. I don't think it is possible for me to uncover something you haven't Evernoted already. Check your notes again :)

LOL!!! That was posted after I'd trialed the beta & decided EN was not for me. But before I'd returned to EN in Oct 2008. And apparently it was never linked to, in all the subsequent nested notebook threads. Or at least I don't recall seeing it, if it was.

 

I will Evernote the fact that I found something on the forum that you did not know about. There is a first for everything!

 

By the way, I first joined Evernote in Oct. 2008 as well. My "Welcome to Evernote!" note is still there dated 10/28/2008. Fun fact: click on the girl wearing the "triple nerd score" t-shirt and you get taken to bustedtees (http://www.bustedtees.com/triplenerdscore#female). I wonder how much bustedtees paid to get an ad like this into everyone's notes, and I wonder when these ads stopped getting included in the first note.

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I am such a noob. My Welcome to Evernote is 10/28/2008. Looks like I was was experimenting with my new Dell Mini at the time. Mostly work stuff at the beginning, though within 3 weeks I had a LOLCAT, several XKCDs and some Rands In Repose columns. Plus ça change...

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I am such a noob. My Welcome to Evernote is 10/28/2008. Looks like I was was experimenting with my new Dell Mini at the time. Mostly work stuff at the beginning, though within 3 weeks I had a LOLCAT, several XKCDs and some Rands In Repose columns. Plus ça change...

 

Are you saying we joined the same day?

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I feel old now, looked back and I was on the beta program - got my account on March 16 2008, guess that explains why I am on shard 1.

 

Really I should get some sort of gift for having been a user for 5 years, something small like a Porsche. Where is that gbarry fella?

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I feel old now, looked back and I was on the beta program - got my account on March 16 2008, guess that explains why I am on shard 1.

 

Really I should get some sort of gift for having been a user for 5 years, something small like a Porsche. Where is that gbarry fella?

That trumps me. My account was created April 15, 2008. My fifth anniversary will be Monday!

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I think it's clear from this lengthy discussion that some folks think and would like to organize more in hierarchical (outline format) ways, some folks not.  One way is not right and the other wrong, just different ways of organizing and visualizing data.

 

I'm one of those who prefers a hierarchical outliner approach and believes it has value, and for that reason, there is TuskTools Treeliner, now in beta. 

 

And yes, I'm currently dealing with the exact issue Dave mentioned in that 2008 post, i.e. the complications of shared vs. non-shared data in an outline.  It's solvable, but not easy or straightforward, and I think Evernote is in many ways right to keep their design focused on being easy and straightforward.  It's one of the reasons that they are now at 50 million users and growing, whereas other products like Ecco Pro (IMO the best PIM ever created), which tackled the complexity of outlining, did not succeed.  There were other reasons as well for Ecco's failure - this isn't the place to get into that discussion - but one of them was its relatively steep learning curve (as compared to Evernote).  Every time you add a feature to a software application - even if you make it an optional feature, like Evernote could do with more of a hierarchy - you increase the amount of potential factors that a new user must mentally consider in learning the application.  The simplicity of Evernote is one reason they have been so successful.

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Hey, and everything that Evernote lacks provides a market opportunity, right? Anyways, thanks, Phil, for helping to make Evernote a stronger candidate for those who want more than the Evernote product itself provides. Hope that it works out well for you.

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Hey, and everything that Evernote lacks provides a market opportunity, right?

 

Yup, definitely!  (Wait till you see what TuskTools will be doing with reminders and due dates :)

 

On that note, what's so great about Evernote the company is their commitment to third-party development.  It's a lot stronger than many software companies.

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Hi there,

 

Is it possible to nest notebooks more than one level deep?

 

I'd like to create a folder withing a folder structure, but it szeems I can only stack notebooks one level deep.

 

Rob

Hi Rob. Welcome to the forums. You can only have stacks, and notebooks within those. There is a lot of discussion on the forums about how to handle the organizational tools available. These might give you some ideas.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/22415-how-i-use-tags-to-replicate-nested-folders/

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/33175-organizational-structure-in-the-stacknotebooktag-ecosystem/

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Not having stacks of stacks is why I did not go with Evernote... I really wanted to go with Evernote, but I need a rigid hierarchy to organize my notes. 

Me sad panda. I went with MS Onenote, which only has 4 hierarchical levels and that is still not enough. I need about 5 or 6 levels to get as organized as I would like.

 

Having a hierarchy of tags does not work so well especially if I have multiple projects which would span similar tags. The info from multiple projects would get all jumbled up if this is the primary method of hierarchical organization. =(

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Not having stacks of stacks is why I did not go with Evernote... I really wanted to go with Evernote, but I need a rigid hierarchy to organize my notes. 

Me sad panda. I went with MS Onenote, which only has 4 hierarchical levels and that is still not enough. I need about 5 or 6 levels to get as organized as I would like.

 

Having a hierarchy of tags does not work so well especially if I have multiple projects which would span similar tags. The info from multiple projects would get all jumbled up if this is the primary method of hierarchical organization. =(

Really? I find that tags that span projects (or other areas of interest) work just fine. So long as there's a single tag for each project (you can do this with notebooks, too), there's an easy way to distinguish them.

For example: tag:project1 tag:Todo --> all todo notes in Project 1. (or tag:project1 todo:true, I suppose)

Ultimately, though, it's finding a system that works for you. Sorry that Evernote doesn't work for you.

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I am sure this has been asked before but wanted to pass along my opinion also. I really struggle with the fact that both tags and notebook stacks have a depth limit of only 1. Maybe I am missing a critical part of how to best utilize the evernote label system but this seems like a silly limitation to me. I'll provide an example of how I have utilized other note systems in the past which I have personally found very useful. I like to categorize my notes into various subjects of which some categories I may refine those subjects into further sub-categories down to the grand-child or beyond if necessary. I fully understand that labels can replace these names but as far as I can tell I see no way to relate or group labels to other labels (other than 1 level deep limit) the way a normal parent - child structure can descend into. For example I have a folder called Tech of which there are sub-folders called Windows, Linux, Mac, etc... in the past I would create sub-folders in Linux called programs and even another sub-folder for each program I wanted to keep notes on. Now some of these programs may have further sub-categories that are appropriate to that specific program. Of course I can label each level but if a person has tons of notes in which each may have custom categories other than maintaining an amazing memory of which labels were used where I don't see any way to dig down to a subject level and see what groups were built originally and view just those notes. The evernote search system is great and labels are a nice plus but in some cases a simple global search across all notebooks or working on guessing what groups of labels where used in old notes ends up not being the quickest way to find a specific note.

 

 

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This really has been discussed an awful lot on here, if you search you will find a number of threads.

 

The basic facts appear to be that Evernote do not currently wish to offer any further depth in hierarchy for notes, notebooks and stacks. Given that there have recently been major releases across a number of platforms it doesn't appear that this is going to change. So without meaning to sound harsh, if you want to use Evernote then you have to learn to deal with this paradigm, otherwise there may be a better app out there for you.

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One point: the lack of arbitrarily nestable notebooks may seem silly to you, but note that GMail (a popular email client) also does not offer this kind of facility either. Instead, they offer hierarchically organizable labels, very similar to what Evernote offers with tags. Tags can, in some ways, serve as a way to organize your notes hierarchically, but they can also afford a flexible way of cross-categorizing your notes into more than one classification scheme, making tags potentially more flexible than rigid hierarchies. Given that Evernote doesn't appear to want to offer arbitrarily nestable notebooks, you should come to terms with tags if you need that kind of facility and want to continue to use Evernote. If you have questions as to how to organize your notes, including using tags, please feel free to ask.

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I'm new to Evernote and have been using it for a couple of months. The reason I came across this post is because I began to think that maybe I could have an "ultimate stack" filled with stacks and notebooks of this year. I have many notebooks that may not be used next year, but would like to save them for memories. This is what I thought I'd be able to do, turns out unfortunately I can't. Why have a cluster of stacks and notebooks that are not being used and get in the way of ones that are used on a constant day to day basis? Sub-stacks would resolve this issue. I plan on using EN for years to come and would hope to get this feature implemented sooner or later.

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It would be great if EN had the ability to create some kind of organizational hierarchy beyond the klutzy and limited stack concept.

>>That's unfortunate. I assumed that EN addressed these limitations with the business edition. I think it's going to be a hard sell for all but the smallest and simplest business groups.

As someone who has used EN for over four years, has accumulated over 56,000 notes & uses EN in one form of another pretty much every waking hour (certainly every hour I'm on a computer), I find it odd (and naive) that some people refer to this as "klutzy" & "limited". The traditional nested folder concept is truly klutzy & limiting, especially the more files/notes you accumulate.

 

 

The needs of business users are much different than the needs of personal users.  A business needs to create a structure for multiple users to work with, or you have absolute chaos.  Business document management systems can also use metadata (think tags in EN), but they usually enforce that metadata in a consistent way.  For instance, they might require that a document be associated with an account and/or project and/or department (metadata).  But you can't require tags in EN.

 

So with EN, for a business, the easiest and only defined structure that is practical to implement is a folder structure, but since nested folders can't be shared that makes it unusable for a lot of business.  So fine you might think, why not use tags instead, which give even more power?  Well, the problem is that even if you try to define a tag structure for everyone to use, a user can't just click on a tag and create a note there.  Instead they have to create a note in a notebook, and then add tags to it.  And as anyone that runs a business can tell you, good luck achieving that with any consistency when you've got a bunch of people working on something, and the software can't require it.  If everyone was a disciplined geek that would be fine, but most people just need to know where to go to enter a note and be done with it.  So most businesses are going to want to be able to create a folder hiearchy.  Or in this case, at least be able to share a nested folder.

 

p.s. and it's been a while since I tested EN for business, but I just read you also lose the ability to nest tags with the business edition.  So I guess you couldn't even try to implement a weak workaround using nested tags.

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I am a tree user. My mind organizes data in a tree fashion and Evernote is extremely limiting my searches.

Allow me to explain and maybe there is a method to doing this that I am not aware of:

 

1) Searching through my stack called "Dev" contains all my development notes and notebooks. However, the tree hierarchy is limited to a depth of 2, so when I sort my notes by languages, I can't divide my Dev/C# notebook into smaller sections.

 

2) Tagging is a great remedy for that. The nested structure allows for great organization and I love it. One fatal problem is that if I search a parent tag, the search results will not contain any notes in the child tags.

 

I guess to get to the root of my purpose, it is to be able to have notes in a tree hierarchy in such a way that a search term of any parent nodes will encompass all descendants of that node. Gmail's tag concept is pretty much a picture perfect manifestation of the way that I would like to organize my data.

 

If there's a function of Evernote that allows me to do that please let me know as this is pretty much a deal breaker for me. Thanks!

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Yes, but I don't like them. I am using Tags as much as possible but find them less useful than nested folders. All I am asking for is one, just one, more level of nested folders. It will make EN so much more useful. Pleeease can I have them.. Pretty please... I am begging here..

Asked & answered many times over. Advice is...

Nested notebooks is a long-standing request. Evernote has chosen not to offer it as a feature (though you can put multiple notebooks into stacks). For the time being at least, it would probably be better to try to come to terms with tagging as an organization tool.

Of course my bigger gripe is the lack of image editing. I am saving huge scanned images totally unnecessarily. It eats my expensive bandwidth, consumes my EN allowance and simply means that synching takes longer. It takes a long time anyway. I really have no need for 2Mb snap shots of things filling up my account. I would have through EN would be happy to have less server space taken up with redundant data.. This has surprised me from the start.

Thomas

Also asked & answered many times over. There are many workarounds so your huge images don't need to chew up your upload limit. (In a nutshell - edit before uploading.) Evernote is a cloud service. They really don't care if you add five copies of a huge photo of your dog. (It's not their job to care what you upload.) Their job is to store all five copies, if that's what you elect to do.

Nothing new to see here.

 

Your responses read like a smug Apple forum fanatic. I'm sorry this topic burns your soul, but it's a legitimate request. Your attitude is unwelcome.

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Your responses read like a smug Apple forum fanatic. I'm sorry this topic burns your soul, but it's a legitimate request. Your attitude is unwelcome.

 

I never said it wasn't a legitimate request.  Sorry if you don't like my answer.  But I post accurate & valid answers.  Not just an answer that you want to hear.

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Your responses read like a smug Apple forum fanatic. I'm sorry this topic burns your soul, but it's a legitimate request. Your attitude is unwelcome.

Actually, her answer is correct, in lieu of any definitive response from Evernote on the topic (other than what they've already said, essentially, "we have no plans to offer subnotebooks"). Her attitude of providing help to other users here on the forums (on her own, unpaid time) for their problems with using Evernote is actually *very* welcome, and one that would be useful for more forum-goers to exhibit.
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Nested stacks are absolutely needed. The Evernote team should seriously consider this issue, this is very important.

I've got used to Chrome style bookmarks: I store my bookmarks in multi-level nested structure. Although I use Xmarks to sync my bookmarks across different browsers, I use Chrome for organizing them because it has a very intuitive and efficient bookmark manager which lets you manage bookmarks and bookmark folders like regular files and folders with the same shortcuts and mouse operations you use in your OS (Windows shortcuts are the de facto among OSes) like holding down Shift or Ctrl, multi select, drag and drop, easily rename, even Ctrl+Z to undo your actions, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V. I think notebooks should be considered as folders rather than notebooks, then you don't need stacks anymore, you can put your notes in these folders, and of course you can have multiple folders inside each other (as many hierarchical levels as you need). Stacks are not the best concept for organizing notes, you cannot put single notes in them. If you consider folders you can have both folders and notes inside another folder (again like bookmarks), which is needed most of the times. And of course, we should be able to use regular desktop interactions with them, like using the same keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop, and so on.

 

Does it have any impact to request this feature here?

 

Thank you in advance.

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Nested stacks are absolutely needed. The Evernote team should seriously consider this issue, this is very important.

I've got used to Chrome style bookmarks: I store my bookmarks in multi-level nested structure. Although I use Xmarks to sync my bookmarks across different browsers, I use Chrome for organizing them because it has a very intuitive and efficient bookmark manager which lets you manage bookmarks and bookmark folders like regular files and folders with the same shortcuts and mouse operations you use in your OS (Windows shortcuts are the de facto among OSes) like holding down Shift or Ctrl, multi select, drag and drop, easily rename, even Ctrl+Z to undo your actions, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V. I think Evrnote notebooks should be considered as folders rather than notebooks, then you can put your notes in these folders, and of course you can have multiple folders inside each other (as many hierarchical levels as you need). Stacks are the best concept for organizing, you cannot put single notes in them, but when you consider folders you can have both folders and notes inside another folder (again like bookmarks), which is needed in my opinion. And of course, we should be able to use regular desktop interactions with them, like using the same keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop, and so on.

 

Does it have any impact to request this feature here? Or should we write directly to the Evernote team?

 

Thank you in advance.

 

EN is fully aware that many users want nested notebooks and/or stacks.  It's doubtful they will appear any time soon, if ever.  Options (tags, keywords, etc) have been discussed at great length already on the board. 

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Does it have any impact to request this feature here?

Yes, it does. Evernote staff do read and evaluate every post. But some features are just not in line with the Evernote vision of what their product is, so they may not implement any given requested feature at all, or they may not implement it in the way requested.

In this case, the model is:

Stacks are used to organize notebooks.

Notebooks are used to organize notes.

Notes contain the stuff that you want to remember.

Changing how these concepts are considered still means large changes to the Evernote architecture, from the servers that hold notes to all of the various clients. Not so sure that this is in the cards any time soon.

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I have several Stacks for previous projects that I am no longer working on and I would like to create a new Stack and drag all of those other stacks inside of it, however, I am unable to do this. Is there some other way to achieve what I am trying to accomplish?

 

Thanks.

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Sorry, STACKS is the top level in EN.

STACKS can have notebooks but not stacks.

 

There are workarounds: You could re-name your old stacks, something like "X-name" and the stack will move down in the list.

If you don't have too many notebooks in your stacks, you can create an "Archive-stack" and move all your notebooks into that one.

Hope this helps.

Wern

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I created a new Prior Projects Stack and moved Notebooks from my other Stacks into it. I would like to make a new Notebook inside of this Stack for each of my prior projects that would contain all of the Notebooks from the previous Stacks. Can you not have Notebooks inside of Notebooks either?


 


Thanks.


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I created a new Prior Projects Stack and moved Notebooks from my other Stacks into it. I would like to make a new Notebook inside of this Stack for each of my prior projects that would contain all of the Notebooks from the previous Stacks. Can you not have Notebooks inside of Notebooks either?

 

Thanks.

You cannot have notebooks inside of other notebooks:

* Notes contain only text, attachments and tags.

* Notebooks contain only notes.

* Stacks contain only Notebooks.

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No, sorry. No notebooks inside notebooks either. You can move a notebook into a notebook but EN will then create a STACK automatically.

The hierarchy from bottom to top is:

  • notes
  • notebooks
  • stacks
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Why can't we have both nested notebooks and tags? Is there a technical reason? The ability to organise files into a hierarchy of folders (notebooks) and sub folders (sub notebooks) is a reasonable request, isn't it? Why can't we stack notebooks?

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Why can't we have both nested notebooks and tags? Is there a technical reason? The ability to organise files into a hierarchy of folders (notebooks) and sub folders (sub notebooks) is a reasonable request, isn't it? Why can't we stack notebooks?

Sure, its a reasonable request. However, software architectures are the results of choices that the developers make. Evernote could do this if they chose. They've chosen not to, at least at this time.

Thant being said, you *can* stack notebooks. That's why they added stacks. But stacks only add one level of hierarchy: stacks only contain notebooks, notebooks only contain notes. That's it.

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Some of my old files are stored in a complex folder structure on my external archival drive. Earlier this week, I had a bear of a time locating one specific file due the labyrinth of folders, subfolders, and nested folders. It is so, so much easier to find stuff in Evernote using tags and structured titles. Even though I've got 20,000+ notes, I try to keep the number of notebooks down to just 7.

 

Hi. I don't know if this will help you with locating a specific file, but for me this freeware program has been a life saver:  http://www.snapfiles.com/get/everything.html.

I hope this proves helpful.

Alan.

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Why can't we have both nested notebooks and tags? Is there a technical reason? The ability to organise files into a hierarchy of folders (notebooks) and sub folders (sub notebooks) is a reasonable request, isn't it? Why can't we stack notebooks?

We are users of Evernote so we don't know what is the mind of Evernote developers, but putting a few pieces of the puzzle together - here is my assumption:

 

Several of the power users on this forum have run into problems with large numbers of notes. Some people have solved the problem by off-loading their larger notes or switching to text based notes. Other people have resorted to running multiple accounts of Evernote thereby reducing the number of notes in each account.

 

If the Evernote database has difficulty with large numbers of individual notes, then the problem managing multiple levels of notebooks could just make this scaling problem worse.

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The context:

many users are used to being limited by physical reality and so don't really 'get' tags, search and other evernote features - they understand a notebook and that if something is in a notebook it's in a notebook.

 

My suggestion is for the following purpose:

 

1 allow new users to quickly pick up and 'get' evernote, and to be able to use it to do what they need it for effectively

(using evernote effectively can feel more like a mindset than a skill sometimes)

 

2 futureproof said new users from being stuck in an old way that no longer works for them once they 'get' evernote and want to change

 

aka reduce the learning curve whilst maintaining the features

 

The suggestion:

turn notebooks into 'notebook tags'

 

essentially the interface would remain the same in that 'notebook tags' would be located where notebooks are now and they would be a different 'class' of tag (i.e can't nest them together)

you could drag and drop notes from one 'notebook tag' to another (this would 'remove' the old notebook tag and 'add' the new notebook tag to the note)

you can nest notebook tags as deeply as you like

you can have the same note 'in' multiple 'notebook tags' 

 

why?

new users can use them as notebooks

it allows all users to have a primary division of notes (whilst still allowing some notes to be in multiple notebook tags) and still having normal tags to tag everything else with.

in the future if they decide they'd rather have the notebook tag as a tag they can convert it to a 'normal tag'

if the user starts to get the power of tags they can use their notebook tags in a more tag-like way, 'tagging' notes in other notebook tags or converting their notebook tags to regular tags

if you never want to have notes in multiple 'notebook tags' you don't have to

 

 

 

I haven't read every single post in the forum, far from it

If I've repeated something someone else has said feel free to ignore me, link to another post or delete this thread.

 

Let me know what you think..

 

Thanks.

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The context:

many users are used to being limited by physical reality and so don't really 'get' tags, search and other evernote features - they understand a notebook and that if something is in a notebook it's in a notebook.

Notebooks are not, and should not be 'tags'. That just confuses the differences between their individual concepts:

* Notebooks are used to partition your notes into separate sets of notes; tags do no such partitioning: a note belongs to a single notebook, but can have multiple tags.

* Notebooks are the basis for sharing of groups of notes, offline note storage on mobile devices, and local note storage on desktop clients. You cannot perform these useful functions with tags at this point.

* Because you can apply multiple tags to a note, you can do cross-categorization that is just not possible with notebooks.

* Notebooks contain; tags describe.

Tags are not conceptually that difficult to understand, given good description and ties to, yes, 'physical reality'. In the realm of physical reality, we have and use tag-like concept all the times. Do your physical notebooks have labels? Those are tags. Do your users use adjectives? Those are tags.

Tags are tags. Notebooks are notebooks. They do different things. Let's not conflate them into some confusing blob concept/facility (that really isn't because they are, in this proposal, secretly and magically, convertible back and forth).

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It's OK -- I have strong feelings about this stuff. :) And it's good to think about things and make suggestions, too.

I understand the desire for nested notebooks, I'm just not sure how feasible it would be with Evernote's underlying storage architecture (I'm not saying it's impossible, though). The more I think about it, the more I think that the path to nestable note organization might be via notebook stacks rather than nestable notebooks. I have no external evidence that Evernote is thinking any such thing, but it just seems as though that would be a more natural step.

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i dont mean to be a  necromancer but i really would like this feature as well.. A way to have a notebook within a notebook. Eg, i have stuff im working on for a class, i keep most of the information in one notebook, id like to be able to have script snipplets and assignment information in their own notebook within the one i have for class, like someone easily could in real life..

 

My class is online, and spread across multiple devices, evernote is perfect..but id like a bit more orgnaization. Tags are for twitter.

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i dont mean to be a  necromancer but i really would like this feature as well.. A way to have a notebook within a notebook. Eg, i have stuff im working on for a class, i keep most of the information in one notebook, id like to be able to have script snipplets and assignment information in their own notebook within the one i have for class, like someone easily could in real life..

 

My class is online, and spread across multiple devices, evernote is perfect..but id like a bit more orgnaization. Tags are for twitter.

 

Tags are for Evernote also.

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I know that the EverNote team is pushing very hard to have people use the tags system.

And tags are great! But it doesn't always work.

 

Tags are cumbersome and require time and diligence to apply them.

 

I use EN for work and personal affairs.

For personal affairs, I have (most of the time) plenty of time. I use it to organise a trip, create a to do list, have some documents in there. Tags are great!

For work however, I do not have time to apply tags, I want to just add a note for a certain customer's project, I quickly want my stuff in EN. Tags are too time consuming!

 

For work I have multiple customers with multiple projects spanning accross multiple software products. 2 levels of folders are not enough! It becomes way too messy.

 

I see the use of tags and I use it when I can. But I also want to be able to use some sort of structure whenever I need to.

I can't see why the two cannot live together...

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Well,  tags aren't always necessary - search by customer and sort by created date to get a list of all actions on all projects;  search by customer and project reference / sort by created date to see actions on that project.  I don't use tags that much - it's easier to rely on smart searching.

 

Plus tags are more efficient and effective - one email covering two projects can be tagged (or searched) to be findable in connection with both.  In a folder structure you'd need to remember to copy that email to all affected folders..

 

Oh - and I think a major redesign of the fundamental structure of 50M+ databases might be a factor too...

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My baseline opinion is that tags are no more nor less difficult to apply than a location in a folder tree, and in many cases they're more flexible. I think that there are usability improvements that could be made for tags with respect to search, and I think that stacks could serve the purpose of bringing some useful hierarchical organization to Evernote, but overall, I don't look at the absence of nested folders with much regret, if any.

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I tend to try and think of a tag as a type of folder. EG. I store my expenses in EN so to add a receipt in a normal hierarchical system I would need to open :

 

Expenses --> 2013 --> September

 

Instead I have a main Archive notebook that holds everything and just tag the receipt September 2013. If I want to view all expenses for that month I can just click on the tag.

 

One point - not sure if its the same on the desktop clients, but in the web interface you can nest tags many levels deep, not sure if this is a new feature but only noticed it recently. 

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I know that the EverNote team is pushing very hard to have people use the tags system.

And tags are great! But it doesn't always work.

 

Tags are cumbersome and require time and diligence to apply them.

 

I use EN for work and personal affairs.

For personal affairs, I have (most of the time) plenty of time. I use it to organise a trip, create a to do list, have some documents in there. Tags are great!

For work however, I do not have time to apply tags, I want to just add a note for a certain customer's project, I quickly want my stuff in EN. Tags are too time consuming!

 

For work I have multiple customers with multiple projects spanning accross multiple software products. 2 levels of folders are not enough! It becomes way too messy.

 

I see the use of tags and I use it when I can. But I also want to be able to use some sort of structure whenever I need to.

I can't see why the two cannot live together...

It seems like a fair request to me, and I'd prefer it if Evernote had more notebook options, because that would likely increase its appeal. Personally, though, I don't use notebooks or tags for organization, and I've been getting along just fine.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=367

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I tend to try and think of a tag as a type of folder. EG. I store my expenses in EN so to add a receipt in a normal hierarchical system I would need to open :

In my experience, it's not really useful to view a tag as a folder. Folders imply ownership (a note belongs to exactly one folder), while tags imply description (a note can have multiple tags). So you can then combine separate tags, which allows for multiple ways of organization. Anyway...

 

Expenses --> 2013 --> September

 

Instead I have a main Archive notebook that holds everything and just tag the receipt September 2013. If I want to view all expenses for that month I can just click on the tag.

Sure, you can do that. But then the question is how does that scale over time? Will you have tags "September 2013", as well as "January 2013", "February 2013", etc., in addition to "September 2014", as well as "January 2014", "February 2014", etc., etc.??

Instead, you could have something like tags for each month ("January", "February"...) and for each year ("2013", "2014"...), and apply as needed.

So you can do tag searches for "September" and "2013" (and "Expenses" perhaps, or search in a separate "Expenses" notebook; whatever) and see all of those notes. Or look for all expenses in 2013 using the "2013" tag. Or all September expenses across all years using the "September" tag. Etc.

Of course, it all depends on what works for you.

One point - not sure if its the same on the desktop clients, but in the web interface you can nest tags many levels deep, not sure if this is a new feature but only noticed it recently.

Yes, you can do that on the desktop clients, usually with more ease than on the mobile clients.

As GrumpyMonkey says, adding more hierarchy is a fair request (perhaps via subnotebooks or via stacks (which already allow you to organize -- and search -- multiple notebooks), but my take is that it's probably not going to happen any time soon if at all, so if you want to use Evernote, you'll need to stick with what they have now.

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I tend to try and think of a tag as a type of folder. EG. I store my expenses in EN so to add a receipt in a normal hierarchical system I would need to open :

 

Expenses --> 2013 --> September

 

Instead I have a main Archive notebook that holds everything and just tag the receipt September 2013. If I want to view all expenses for that month I can just click on the tag.

 

One point - not sure if its the same on the desktop clients, but in the web interface you can nest tags many levels deep, not sure if this is a new feature but only noticed it recently.

 

I am a premium account user.

I love this service very much except the limitation of notes(250 note books).

I have 2325 notes now.

In order to reduce use the total number of notebooks,I try to use tags.

Now I have 129 notebooks and 198 tags.

Try to tag one note is a hard work in your software (198 tags and increasing @@)

I am also a pro user of Wiznote,tagging is easier in their software.

It need no scrolling and try to find out correct tags of a note.

Can developer improve it?

Change the limitations or change the interface,please!

Can you imagine try to scrolling 10000 tags for correct tagging?

It is surely a nightmare!

IMO, you're overtagging. IMO, some folks "overtag". Often, tags are not needed if you use descriptive titles, some tags, some notebooks/stacks & keywords. I have over 62,000 notes & have never reached the 250 notebook limit. I'd guess less than half my notes have any tags at all. Probably only about 1/3 of my notes have tags. Those that do have tags normally have only 1-3 tags. IE, all my bills are in Evernote. Although they are in a "bills" notebook, I can quickly & easily find my Cox cable bill from June 2009 by searching ALL notes because the title of that note includes the vendor (Cox) and the date of the bill in YYYYMMDD format. So a simple search of

intitle:cox intitle:200906*

will quickly find the ONE note which is the bill I'm looking for from over 62,000+ notes. And I didn't even use a tag.

You can also net the tags for organizational purposes only. This allows you to collapse the top tier so the nested tags do not show up. Or even the "hide unassigned" tags may be helpful.

 

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Instead, you could have something like tags for each month ("January", "February"...) and for each year ("2013", "2014"...), and apply as needed.

So you can do tag searches for "September" and "2013" (and "Expenses" perhaps, or search in a separate "Expenses" notebook; whatever) and see all of those notes. Or look for all expenses in 2013 using the "2013" tag. Or all September expenses across all years using the "September" tag. Etc.

 

That's a good way of looking at it and I do have the tags for 2013 nested under "2013" but don't apply the tag as there's no need to see all receipts for a whole year. I used to have an expenses notebook but have recently tried to keep notebooks to a minimum and use tags and search more. Its also easy to go month by month when putting things together for the accountant.

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I agree with Tomass that we need  an improved approach to Nesting.  I also tend to agree with Jefito that we should keep Notebooks and Tags separate.  What Tomass is describing is essentially a Nested Tag solution which I believe EN could benefit immensely from.  See my reply on:

Feature request: Autotag notes with tag hierarchy of nested tags

 

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/37385-feature-request-autotag-notes-with-tag-hierarchy-of-nested-tags/

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I am new to Evernote and still learning the ropes.  Can you make nested Notebook Stacks?  Or does Evernote only go one stack deep?

 

For example, I am working on a research project.  I create a Notebook Stack called "Project A", but then I need 4 more Notebook Stacks under that, i.e.:

 

  • Project A
    • Images
    • Plan
    • Research
      • Articles
      • Websites
      • Interviews
      • Papers
    • Supporting Docs

 

Can I create a hierarchy like this?  Or does tagging serve this function and everything just gets lumped under Project A with the tags Research, Plan, etc.

 

Thank you!

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The current canon:

 

* A Note contains content (text, attachments, etc.). A note belongs to exactly one notebook, and can be labelled by multiple tags.

 

* A Notebook contains only notes (not other notebooks, and not stacks). A notebook belongs to either one or zero stacks. You are allowed a maximum of 250 notebooks at present.

 

* A Stack contains only notebooks (not other stacks and not notes). 

 

* Tags can only label notes, and not other tags, notebooks or stacks. Tags can be nested for purposes of organization, but are otherwise semantically and functionally distinct, meaning that searches do not pay attention to tag hierarchies.

 

So in a word, no, you cannot make a hierarchy quite like that. You could make a project notebook ("Project A"), and add notes for supporting docs, images, plans, etc. Tag the notes accordingly ("Plan", "Research", etc.). There are other ways of organizing projects.

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Thx Mashugana raising this question, I had the same in my mind this morning :-) .


 

So in a word, no, you cannot make a hierarchy quite like that. You could make a project notebook ("Project A"), and add notes for supporting docs, images, plans, etc. Tag the notes accordingly ("Plan", "Research", etc.). There are other ways of organizing projects.

 

Jefito,

any ideas or reference suggestion about different ways of organizing projects in Evernote. Any source that helps to find a way is appreciated.

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A lot depends on what you're trying to do; I think the best way to find references like this would be to just search the web for "organizing evernote projects" or just "organizing evernote". There are plenty of articles, and you'll also find posts here in these forums in the results (I usually use Google rather than the actual forum search here).

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Hello Dev's,

 

Could you add another level to the Notebook hierarchy. Right now when you create notebooks they are all sitting under "Notebooks". It would be great to be able to create sub catagories (collapsible) to better organize them.

 

Example:

 

Notebooks

    +[Level 1]

         Notebook1

         Notebook2

         Notebook3

   +[Level 2]

         Notebook1

         Notebook2

         etc....

 

 

Thanks,

 

Vince

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Hello Dev's,

 

Could you add another level to the Notebook hierarchy. Right now when you create notebooks they are all sitting under "Notebooks". It would be great to be able to create sub catagories (collapsible) to better organize them.

 

Example:

 

Notebooks

    +[Level 1]

         Notebook1

         Notebook2

         Notebook3

   +[Level 2]

         Notebook1

         Notebook2

         etc....

 

 

Thanks,

 

Vince

 

This has been discussed already a lot on the board.  Please search the board for more info.  In a nutshell, EN uses notebooks, stacks (groups of notebooks), tags, descriptive titles & "keywords" to organize your notes.  This is a much more flexible method than nested notebooks, IMO & IME, especially the more notes you have.

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