Suggestions Requested: Sorting by Date or Doc number

[Tim Kowal 22]

I have a scenario and I'm trying to find the best way Evernote can help me.

I am preparing for a trial and I plan to put all the trial exhibits in a notebook in Evernote so I can quickly bring them up during trial. (The tagging, searching, and note-taking features in Evernote are valuable for this.)

I typically name my notes "YYYY-MM-DD <title>" so I can view them chronologically.

But the exhibit numbers (the number by which the court will refer to the documents) are not ordered chronologically.

My question is: once I have my exhibits in Evernote arranged chronologically, is there a way I could also search by their given exhibit numbers?

For example:

3. 2000-12-31 Email
1. 2001-01-01 Agreement
2. 2001-01-02 Note

I'd like to be able to alternately see this list in order of their exhibit numbers and in chronological order.

Seems I would need to add a new field for this, but it does not seem this option is available. I've heard someone mention the possibility of editing the "Created Date" but I don't know if or how that's possible. Best I've come up with is to generate a Table of Contents and manually sort it by exhibit number and maintain it separate from the main list, which is an extra layer of ongoing document management I'd like to avoid.

Any ideas?

[DTLow 5,736]

11 minutes ago, Tim Kowal said:

I have a scenario and I'm trying to find the best way Evernote can help me.

I am preparing for a trial and I plan to put all the trial exhibits in a notebook in Evernote so I can quickly bring them up during trial. (The tagging, searching, and note-taking features in Evernote are valuable for this.)

I typically name my notes "YYYY-MM-DD <title>" so I can view them chronologically.

But the exhibit numbers (the number by which the court will refer to the documents) are not ordered chronologically.

My question is: once I have my exhibits in Evernote arranged chronologically, is there a way I could also search by their given exhibit numbers?

For example:

3. 2000-12-31 Email
1. 2001-01-01 Agreement
2. 2001-01-02 Note

I'd like to be able to alternately see this list in order of their exhibit numbers and in chronological order.

Seems I would need to add a new field for this, but it does not seem this option is available. I've heard someone mention the possibility of editing the "Created Date" but I don't know if or how that's possible. Best I've come up with is to generate a Table of Contents and manually sort it by exhibit number and maintain it separate from the main list, which is an extra layer of ongoing document management I'd like to avoid.

Any ideas?

In most cases, I find putting the date into the title is redundant;
- you have sort options for the list of notes (title, created, updated)

For specific searches (notebook, tag etc), I prefer to sort by title

I would use a prefix so my notes are ordered into sections
For example      -emails
                          +agreements
                          !exhibits

So, exhibits would be shown as     !01 xxxxxxx
                                                       !02 xxxxxxxx
Of course, this could easily have been     Exhibit 01 xxxxxxxx
 

[Tim Kowal 22]

6 minutes ago, DTLow said:

In most cases, I find putting the date into the title is redundant;

Redundant? How? Where else would it appear such that the date in the title would be "redundant"? Are you assuming the "Created Date" may be manipulated? How?

[DTLow 5,736]

8 minutes ago, Tim Kowal said:

Redundant? How? Where else would it appear such that the date in the title would be "redundant"? Are you assuming the "Created Date" may be manipulated? How?

Created Date is stored as metadata in the note.
I am able to update it on my Mac

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I wanted to sort my notes by Created Date, I would set the sort options as per

 

 

 

 

[CalS 5,280]

19 minutes ago, Tim Kowal said:

Seems I would need to add a new field for this, but it does not seem this option is available. I've heard someone mention the possibility of editing the "Created Date" but I don't know if or how that's possible. Best I've come up with is to generate a Table of Contents and manually sort it by exhibit number and maintain it separate from the main list, which is an extra layer of ongoing document management I'd like to avoid.

Any ideas?

Depending upon how many exhibits, you could consider adding a set of tags to find and sequence the notes.  For example if you have matter on each of the notes,you could create a series of tags !010, !020, !030..... (gaps for all the obvious reasons) and then a search of tag:matter tag:!* would return all exhibits for the matter, sort by tag and you have your list.  You could use the same sequence of tags for other matters in the future.

[Tim Kowal 22]

12 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I am able to update it on my Mac

I am using PC/Windows 10, Evernote release 6.2.4.3244. I don't see a way to get to that properties screen you shared. Pity.

[CalS 5,280]

3 minutes ago, Tim Kowal said:

I am using PC/Windows 10, Evernote release 6.2.4.3244. I don't see a way to get to that properties screen you shared. Pity.

Click on the info icon in the note panel header area and then click on created date..

[Tim Kowal 22]

11 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Depending upon how many exhibits, you could consider adding a set of tags to find and sequence the notes.  For example if you have matter on each of the notes,you could create a series of tags !010, !020, !030..... (gaps for all the obvious reasons) and then a search of tag:matter tag:!* would return all exhibits for the matter, sort by tag and you have your list.  You could use the same sequence of tags for other matters in the future.

Thinking through this, I worry I'd hit a limitation when it came to sorting the results. For this to be effective, my tag has to be alphabetically prior to all other tags. Otherwise, sorting by tag will sort by the prior tags, and effectively ignore the tag designated for exhibit number. This is a downside to the other part of our office workflow, as I've sorted our more common, day-to-day tags to show up at the top of the alphabetical list for ease of use. I'll have to consider whether the trade off is worth it.

Thanks.

[Tim Kowal 22]

4 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Click on the info icon in the note panel header area and then click on created date..

Hidden in plain sight! I use this screen to find the URL for webclips, but it never occurred to me I could edit the Created field. Thanks.

[CalS 5,280]

You are welcome.

[CalS 5,280]

59 minutes ago, Tim Kowal said:

Thinking through this, I worry I'd hit a limitation when it came to sorting the results. For this to be effective, my tag has to be alphabetically prior to all other tags. Otherwise, sorting by tag will sort by the prior tags, and effectively ignore the tag designated for exhibit number. This is a downside to the other part of our office workflow, as I've sorted our more common, day-to-day tags to show up at the top of the alphabetical list for ease of use. I'll have to consider whether the trade off is worth it.

Thanks.

Exclamation sorts to the front of the tag list, hence the suggestion to precede the sequence number with the !.  

[Tim Kowal 22]

1 hour ago, csihilling said:

Exclamation sorts to the front of the tag list, hence the suggestion to precede the sequence number with the !.  

I gathered that. My concern is for the other, basic users in our firm. They use the Filter By Tag button, and I've named the existing tags in such a way that the most common ones appear on top. This keeps the users from getting frustrated at having to navigate a long list of seldom-used tags. That's what would happen if I had dozens of exhibit numbers floating to the top of the list.

[CalS 5,280]

9 minutes ago, Tim Kowal said:

I gathered that. My concern is for the other, basic users in our firm. They use the Filter By Tag button, and I've named the existing tags in such a way that the most common ones appear on top. This keeps the users from getting frustrated at having to navigate a long list of seldom-used tags. That's what would happen if I had dozens of exhibit numbers floating to the top of the list.

I should have been clearer, I was reacting to the sort comment, not the workflow comment.  For sure more than 20 exhibit sequence tags at the top of a drop down list will force a scroll or the keying of the first character of a tag.  

Can always start a search with -tag:!* but that's so ugly I wouldn't recommend it to an enemy!    Sounds like creation date may be the least inelegant.  

[Tim Kowal 22]

2 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Sounds like creation date may be the least inelegant.  

To save keystrokes, I'm going a slightly different way -- I'm using the "Author" field to reflect the exhibit number. (We don't use that field anyway.) Seems to work so far.

[DTLow 5,736]

On August 22, 2016 at 11:05 AM, Tim Kowal said:

I'd like to be able to alternately see this list in order of their exhibit numbers and in chronological order.

 

On August 22, 2016 at 3:11 PM, Tim Kowal said:

To save keystrokes, I'm going a slightly different way -- I'm using the "Author" field to reflect the exhibit number. (We don't use that field anyway.) Seems to work so far.

Can you sort on the Author field?

edited: On my Mac, I added the Author field as a column in top list view, and I can sort on the Author field

[Tim Kowal 22]

1 minute ago, DTLow said:

Can you sort on the Author field?

Yes. Would've been a pointless exercise if not.

[CalS 5,280]

Very nice.  In my experience EN populates the field for notes that I create or I email to EN.  Not so much with web clips or downloaded PDFs.  I don't think EN ever changes it after that.  You may have to clean up notes with the same tag that aren't exhibits if your author field is populated as mine..

[Tim Kowal 22]

1 minute ago, csihilling said:

In my experience EN populates the field for notes that I create or I email to EN.  

I noticed that when I did a folder import (the tool I use to get the dozens or hundreds of exhibits at a time into EN) EN listed the author as me ("Tim Kowal"). I renamed each with the appropriate exhibit number. I don't anticipate problems, and like I said, I've never used the Author field for anything obviously useful.

Thanks,
Tim

[CalS 5,280]

1 minute ago, Tim Kowal said:

I noticed that when I did a folder import (the tool I use to get the dozens or hundreds of exhibits at a time into EN) EN listed the author as me ("Tim Kowal"). I renamed each with the appropriate exhibit number. I don't anticipate problems, and like I said, I've never used the Author field for anything obviously useful.

Thanks,
Tim

Excellent.  Sounds like you have it sorted.