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Request: Creating "Notebook stack" is astonishingly very not user friendly


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Hi guys,

I've being using your product for several years and think its a good tool, though i have noticed that every time i want to create a 'Notebook stack' i suffer a terrible brain pain :) 

Why ? Please check below steps ( done on version 4.6.5.8353 )

1. Imagine i want to create Notebook Stack or in common language a "group of notes" , i go to File -> [ And there is no such option there ] :) 

1.jpg

2. Ok, lets imagine this is done not to overhelm users with unneeded? options. Who likes easy ways anyway? Then i try to right click on root entry - there is no such option there as well

 2.jpg

3. Then i think maybe i can just right click on notebook i want to put to stack and that will be it - no, that is impossible to do as well - Add to stack contains only already created stacks..

3.jpg

4. Ok i see Add to stack -> New stack - i think that will be it and i will just need to put new stack name 

 5.jpg

5. NO! You have no possibility to put new stack name at once - some default monstrous stack name is created instead 

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6. What i need now is to rename it to what i want!

7.jpg

7. Finally with blood and honour i have managed to create stack with needed name and put another notebook in it

But it was ony one level "tree", what if i need 2+ levels of stacks?  

8.jpg

Seems this is not available in basic version but frankly saying I dont even want to try to do that... :(

What if i have two notebooks and i want to put one inside another? - Not possible either even if "parent" notebook has no notes, i have to delete one notebook (the "parent" one) and go all over above steps again...

4.jpg

 

Please improve this functionality as it breaks user experience terribly 

 

P.S.

I have found few more UI not friendly scenarios like this just on the surface, tell me if you need those

Cheers.

 

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Hi.  Sadly the way to create a new stack,  is to create a new notebook,  and give it your preferred stack name. Then drag and drop the notebook(s) you want to put into the stack onto that 'top' notebook.  Even more sadly,  stacks don't do more levels - one is what you got.  Stacks contains notebooks / notebooks contain notes.  That's it.  Try checking out Tags though - you can do a lot with titles and tags.

How to organize notebooks into stacks

Organize with notebooks

Tips for organizing notes, notebooks, and tags

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I guess they have implemented creating stacks this way, to prevent people from confusing notebooks with operating system folders.

Evernote notebooks are supposed to be a representation of physical notebooks, and you can't create a stack of physical notebooks if you don't have any notebooks to stack on each other.. And there is no physical way you could have levels of stacks/put stacks in stacks. You also don't put physical notebooks inside other physical notebooks.

The idea is that neither notebooks nor stacks are supposed to be used to filter information, but are supposed to be used as containers for an overarching context, just like books and book shelves. That's why you also have a limit of 250 notebooks in total.

Some people however wish that Evernote would abandon notebooks for an operating system folder system and try to emulate that system as far as possible, and that is of course a fair request. But the need to put files into a folder system can be achieved by using nested tags though. And since Evernote doesn't let you put shortcuts to notes in other notebooks, like Windows allows you to do, I think Evernote nested tags has a lot more in common with windows folders than Evernote notebooks.

I have 14.000 notes, and I if were to recommend a setup for a new Evernote user I would probably recommend using only 2 notebooks. One default "Inbox" and the second for all material once they are "processed". In that way the user wouldn't start by picking a notebook and then create a note, but would start by picking a tag and then create a note with that tag attached (in v6 a tag is automatically attached to a note if it is picked prior to creating a new note - similar to folders), and clipped articles would first go to the inbox.

 

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38 minutes ago, gustavgi said:

I have 14.000 notes, and I if were to recommend a setup for a new Evernote user I would probably recommend using only 2 notebooks. One default "Inbox" and the second for all material once they are "processed". In that way the user wouldn't start by picking a notebook and then create a note, but would start by picking a tag and then create a note with that tag attached (in v6 a tag is automatically attached to a note if it is picked prior to creating a new note - similar to folders), and clipped articles would first go to the inbox.

Agree with @gustavgi to limit the notebooks.  I might add three more for someone just starting, 1) a local notebook for Scans if you use a scanner, 2) a local notebook for any notes you don't want synced to the web, and 3) a second synced notebook if you want a limited number of notes to be fully downloaded to a phone or tablet using the offline notebook capability.   

One may add notebooks later for sharing notes with others or facilitating your workflow.  For example I have a notebook called Quick.  Sometimes if I am working on something which is short term, I move the relevant notes to Quick and then move them back to the primary notebook after the work is done.  Faster for me anyway.  FWIW.

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1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Sadly the way to create a new stack,  is to create a new notebook,  and give it your preferred stack name. Then drag and drop the notebook(s) you want to put into the stack onto that 'top' notebook. 

I don't see the need to create a notebook just to create a stack.  As the Evernote Help states, just drag one notebook on top of another.  A new stack will be created, and and you can rename it just by right-clicking on the stack.

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On 7/23/2016 at 7:37 AM, qwebek said:

What if i have two notebooks and i want to put one inside another?

Providing a hierarchical notebook structure (like folders on Mac/PC) has been requested for many years now.  It is valid request, and would be most helpful in organizing data that is hierarchical in its nature, like projects/sub-projects/tasks/sub-tasks etc.

But, for reasons not really known outside of Evernote management, Evernote has declined to provide hierarchical notebooks, and continues to limit us to a paltry 250 notebooks.  Unfortunately, I have not seen any signs of Evernote changing their position on this.  But who knows?  Lots of changes are happening within Evernote Corp.

So, for now, if you want a hierarchical structure that goes deeper than Stack > Notebooks > Notes, then you will need to use Tags.
I have designed an organization I call pseudo Notebooks, which is working very well.  See Using Tags as Pseudo Notebooks 

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