Increase notebook limit

[Dereck 9]

I've already read the multitude of posts on this topic. I've been an Evernote user since the beginning and I've always thought it was a great product. As soon as I thought of a feature, the Evernote folks have already been cooking it up. Recently I ran up against the notebook limit, I contacted customer support and they gave my the "you should use tags instead" line. I am a Developer myself, and while I do not purport to know how Evernote is built or the whoas of maintaining a system with so many users, I can't imagine any reason why arbitrarily setting a limit of 250 notebooks, improves system performance or usability. It seems that a decision was made that people should use tags rather than notebooks without any regard for how current users prefer to work. In particular, the fact that I choose to be a premium user and and still limited to 250 notebooks seems absurd. At least choose a number that very few people would run up against like 1000, or make the free limit 100 and the premium limit 1000, that way if the limit really bothers someone it will incentivize them to pay for your service. 

[Shane D. 1,809]

Hi All,

I'm officially locking this thread, but I'll leave it here for posterity for the time being.

That being said, it appears that the notebook increase announcement has triggered some good suggestions/feedback/feature requests from you all.

Please create new threads in the appropriate location for those requests so that we can better track and quantify them.

As always, feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions!

[jefito 5,588]

1 hour ago, michaelzapun said:

HI DTLow.  Easier said than done since as I said, I'm heavily invested in the notebook (and notebook stack) hierarchy.  But you are right about using another method.  I'm exploring migrating to OneNote.

If you were to describe your stack/notebook system, someone might be able to help you to reorganize, presumably to some system using tags. But if you're unwilling to try that (I'm guessing that you're using a notebook per client and don't feel certain about how that might work with tags), there are many other products. You mentioned OneNote, and that might suit your needs -- it didn't work for me, and the OneNote import from Evernote was a horrible disaster, so be a little cautious there. Good luck.

[DTLow 5,728]

4 minutes ago, Paul A. said:

They don't have to adjust their method of processing if they're willing to pay $14.99/month for Evernote business. 

This is true.  It's just that I consider the price to high just for the increase in Notebook limit 

I will edit my post to include my explanation

 

[rezecib 98]

@GrumpyMonkey The limit on Business is 10k.

This was a little before my time, but my understanding is the intent of the different limits is definitely not to pressure people into upgrading to business if they hit the limit, it was just that 250 was a much bigger problem for businesses because it uses a different system for accounts-- all content in an Evernote Business is tied to a single pseudo-account, and normal users in the business simply have access to those. So when you have a business with 300+ employees, 250 notebooks in the business isn't even one notebook per user . Even as it stands 10k is only ~33 notebooks per user in that case (although on the flip side the demand for notebooks is a bit lower because more of it is shared).

Both numbers are ultimately arbitrary, it's just a good idea to have a number picked at some point to prevent abuse of the system. I'm not saying 250+ notebooks constitutes abuse, but you could imagine if someone had tens of thousands of notebooks that would be pretty excessive; the line gets drawn somewhere and then if it starts becoming a problem it will get redrawn. I can't guarantee that it will or is getting redrawn in either case (I believe it affects very few users, although I'm actually curious to see if I can get access to some metrics on that and maybe use it to make a stronger case), but it is something we would like to do.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,318]

15 hours ago, rezecib said:

@GrumpyMonkey The limit on Business is 10k.

This was a little before my time, but my understanding is the intent of the different limits is definitely not to pressure people into upgrading to business if they hit the limit, it was just that 250 was a much bigger problem for businesses because it uses a different system for accounts-- all content in an Evernote Business is tied to a single pseudo-account, and normal users in the business simply have access to those. So when you have a business with 300+ employees, 250 notebooks in the business isn't even one notebook per user . Even as it stands 10k is only ~33 notebooks per user in that case (although on the flip side the demand for notebooks is a bit lower because more of it is shared).

Both numbers are ultimately arbitrary, it's just a good idea to have a number picked at some point to prevent abuse of the system. I'm not saying 250+ notebooks constitutes abuse, but you could imagine if someone had tens of thousands of notebooks that would be pretty excessive; the line gets drawn somewhere and then if it starts becoming a problem it will get redrawn. I can't guarantee that it will or is getting redrawn in either case (I believe it affects very few users, although I'm actually curious to see if I can get access to some metrics on that and maybe use it to make a stronger case), but it is something we would like to do.

I didn’t mean to imply the limit was there to upsell folks. I happened to be at the Evernote conference the day they rolled out business, and my general impression was that it was more focused on collaboration and sharing in the early days. The 250 limit has never bothered me. Making the library searchable, though, would really make a difference. That would solve my selective sync issue.

My point is that limits (notebooks, notes, note sizes, etc.) should be relaxed as much as possible as a policy. The policy up until this point seems to have been to wait for users to encounter friction and complain about it. In my opinion, that’s too late. If the limit could be raised (regardless of whether it only affcts a few users), it should be. Obviously, if 251 notebooks would crash the servers, then let’s not go there

[Rey San Pascual 4]

I've been a premium member now for several years. I have resisted moving to OneNote because I'm already familiar with Evernote. I have just bumped against the 250 notebook limit.

I am used to Stacks > Notebooks > Notes. I've reviewed my notebooks and I've deleted a few but it's going to take a big reorganization. I would like to put in my voice to increasing the 250 notebook limit. Even Excel broke their 600,000 row limit.

Otherwise, I'm going to consider the worth of redoing my Evernote organization versus learning OneNote.

[DTLow 5,728]

15 hours ago, Rey San Pascual said:

I would like to put in my voice to increasing the 250 notebook limit.

Please also add your vote to the feature request linked below.  Voting buttons are in the top left corner of the discussion.

>>I am used to Stacks > Notebooks > Notes.

Evernote provides two fields for note organization: Notebook and Tags
Tags can be organized in an unlimited hierarchy (Mac/Win/Web)of the form:  Tag > ChildTag > ChildTag > ..
The tag limit is 100,000

 

[jefito 5,588]

For some perspective on this by an Evernote employee: 

 

 

I seem to recall another post by an Evernote employee that suggested that the notebook limit might be lifted, but couldn't find it. No timeframe on any of this.

[Rey San Pascual 4]

2,500 Notebooks should be a minimum. I suppose Evernote can make it 25,000 and make it a non-issue for just about everyone.

[DTLow 5,728]

2 minutes ago, Rey San Pascual said:

2,500 Notebooks should be a minimum. I suppose Evernote can make it 25,000 and make it a non-issue for just about everyone.

Notes have two attributes; Notebooks and Tags

The limit for Tags is 100,000

[SeanJaySD 0]

I need unlimited notebooks. Use of tags is NOT INTUITIVE. As someone else mentioned in a different post, if Evernote is to become our "brain" (paraphrased), it needs to operate like the way we are mentally wired.

Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci and other greats had left behind a bunch of "tags" (essentially, Post-it Notes), instead of their detailed notebooks.

There are many requests for this. Can someone from Evernote please respond and let us know when this will be implemented?

I have neatly stacked all my notebooks into different Stacks. I don't have any "unStacked" notebooks. This system is working extremely well for me.

Evernote is a great tool and has become my "go-to", more so than  email. I don't want to see the day when I've reached limits, especially in this day and age when cloud services are constantly and seamlessly adding storage and capacity.

Thanks in advance for your response.

[Roman Luks 4]

I have just reached the 250 limit! I also pay for Evernote and this makes me really angry.

[TK0047 411]

26 minutes ago, Roman Luks said:

I have just reached the 250 limit! I also pay for Evernote and this makes me really angry.

You can vote here on the above link.

I can understand people using a lot of notebooks although I don't. But what I don't get the "This makes me really angry" part. The 250 limit was not hidden or unknown. It has been known for a long time. 

So I decide to buy a car and there is a speed limiter on it at 150 mph. They tell me about it, I still buy it and when I try to go 155 mph, I get really mad and I say I paid for it! It does not make sense.

I would agree 100% if this was being misrepresented or Evernote was trying to not make the information accessible to everyone. But again, it has been a known limitation for a while. 

Again, vote for it, voice your opinion why there should be more than 250 and listen to others why they think 250 is more than sufficient, debate, listen, debate and listen....then come up with a solution until (if) the limit is raised.

[gazumped 10,721]

The 250 notebook limit has been a standard for years,  on both paid and free account levels.  There need to be some limits on account size,  as there are for uploads each month,  note size,  and total tags.  Two ways around the limit are - as discussed above;  use tags,  and/ or Local Notebooks which (I don't believe) count toward the total used.  It's also possible to upgrade to a (more expensive) Business account to by more space,  or to archive older existing notebooks to ENEX files or additional free Basic accounts.

I think there's a votable thread somewhere in feature requests asking that Evernote increase this limit,  which AFAIK is completely arbitrary - someone in history just chose a reasonable-sounding number.  Sadly I don't have the link to that post.

[gazumped 10,721]

1 minute ago, TK0047 said:

You can vote here on the above link.

TK'd !! ?

[Rey San Pascual 4]

For those arguing against increasing the maximum notebook count and using some other work around like tags or a second albeit free account, I don't understand why you would argue against it. No one's going to force you to stop using tags or creating a second account or to start having more than 250 notebooks. 

People have different ways to think and organize their thoughts/information and how they wish to see it displayed in an app such as Evernote. I'm not one who creates notebooks willy nilly. As someone pointed, the maximum notebook count used to be 100 before being bumped up to 250. I supposed some "elite" users at the time were harrumphing and arguing they were able to do everything they needed with just 3 notebooks and offering workarounds to address the 100 maximum notebook count issue.

We have some users who are asking for the maximum notebook count to be once again increased. I'll settle for 500 at this point. Unless you're an Evernote employee and the costs to enhance this particular feature will be taken out of your bonus, you have no reason to oppose this request. You can keep your tags. You can keep your multiple Evernote accounts. I just want to have more than 250 notebooks.

[DTLow 5,728]

1 hour ago, Rey San Pascual said:

 For those arguing against increasing the maximum notebook count 

No one is arguing against increasing the notebook limit.  It's a  number arbitrarily set by Evernote.

We are against the concept that Evernote is not useable with this limit. 

[Rey San Pascual 4]

14 minutes ago, DTLow said:

No one is arguing against increasing the notebook limit.  It's a  number arbitrarily set by Evernote.

We are arguing about the concept that Evernote is not useable with this limit.

For those who can live with less than 250 notebooks, it's perfectly usable. For those like me who are needing more than 250 notebooks at this point, Evernote is less than perfectly usable. If the 250 maximum notebook limit is arbitrarily set by Evernote when it was increased from the also presumably arbitrary limit of 100 notebooks, then Evernote can arbitrarily increase it again.

I don't see anyone arguing that that Evernote isn't usable with the 250 notebook limit. I do see people requesting that Evernote's usability be enhanced by increasing the notebook limit.

My other recommendation in the mean time to help users still under 250 notebook limit is to set a flag or warning or message at some arbitrary point when a user has created a certain number of notebooks, perhaps at 125 notebooks and again at 200 notebooks. People have pointed out that the limits are published and available. But either I didn't read that part or glossed over it during my learning curve. I placed a lot of thought in how I arranged and structured my information. A reminder of the limit would have been helpful so that I could have adjusted my information map a lot earlier on to account for the limit than having to deal with the limit at a time when I need to create my 251st notebook. And I'm not going to start a new thread/request on this idea. I'll let an Evernote employee do it if they want to; I'm busy trying to deal with the 250 notebook limit.

[gazumped 10,721]

Part of the current Beta release notes... (my emphasis)  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/113550-evernote-for-windows-613-beta-1/

Note: Version 6.13 is supported in Windows 7 and higher.

Improved (cumulative changes since version 6.12):

• We inform the user if we're unable to continue recording audio (e.g., out of disk space)
• Users are prevented from making content changes when the Evernote client database is locked by another process (e.g., antivirus scanner)
• Evernote client asks once and remembers when you don't want to see a "note move" notification.
• More easily manage and navigate your notebooks from the Notebooks View. You can access this by selecting 'Notebooks' from the left panel.
• Messaging to alert the user when they're approaching their notebook limit

(and I was assured this won't just be 'you just ran out'...)

[Rey San Pascual 4]

12 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Part of the current Beta release notes... (my emphasis)  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/113550-evernote-for-windows-613-beta-1/

Note: Version 6.13 is supported in Windows 7 and higher.

Improved (cumulative changes since version 6.12):

• Messaging to alert the user when they're approaching their notebook limit

(and I was assured this won't just be 'you just ran out'...)

'you just ran out'

Thanks for the chuckle. I think I actually had to contact support when I couldn't add another notebook in conjunction with my separation lines not showing up on the desktop app.

[gazumped 10,721]

Yeah - I complained bitterly when I tripped over the upload limit (back in the bad old days when you had to buy an extension if it went over the -then- much smaller levels that applied) 

I stressed then that I appreciated Evernote had to have limits,  but not to see any warnings on the way to having some (in my case) seriously exciting times because you just fell over one of them was downright unfriendly. 

Support said then that they were looking at ways to make the apps more communicative if users were heading for an issue - looks like they finally got around to it. 

Remains to be seen how effective the warnings are,  though they have said that while some of them will be optional with a 'don't show this warning again' tickbox,  when you get close to the wire the warnings will not be optional - to make the point that "next time you do this it will be a very bad idea..."  

[Don Dz 165]

For me, note links is the best solution, more so than Notebooks or even tags, even though I use all of them.  I have created wiki-like structures in my system that strongly resemble what I used to do before Evernote.

But I have found that sometimes note links can break, under circumstances which I have not been able to recreate yet.

[DTLow 5,728]

3 hours ago, Don Dz said:

For me, note links is the best solution, more so than Notebooks or even tags, even though I use all of them. 

Just wondering what is the issue you're solving with the note links.
edit: Answered - Notebooks are used for active notes; the Notebook is dropped when no longer active

I use notebooks and tags to return a list of notes for a specific criteria.  
An example is to identify notes for a subject like "home insurance".I would be using a notebook or tag.  
I can see using  note links in a Table-of-Contents note; however the list would be static.  I need  a dynamic list.

>>But I have found that sometimes note links can break, under circumstances which I have not been able to recreate yet.

if these are in-app links, they are not random numbers.  The link based on the note id.

[Don Dz 165]

8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Just wondering what is the issue you're solving with the note links.

If i understand your question correctly, I use note links for structure, and to preserve the organization of my notes from a previous platform.

[Rey San Pascual 4]

32 minutes ago, Don Dz said:

For me, note links is the best solution, more so than Notebooks or even tags, even though I use all of them.  I have created wiki-like structures in my system that strongly resemble what I used to do before Evernote.

But I have found that sometimes note links can break, under circumstances which I have not been able to recreate yet.

I use note links also to funnel information/priorities from several notes to a collection note to manage the priorities. I have links on the notes going to the collection note and I have links on the collection note going to the individual notes.

But I disagree that using note links is the best solution to deal with the 250 notebook limit. The best solution at this point is increasing the maximum notebook limit to at least 500 if not more (preferably 5,000 to make a non-issue). And to add warnings/reminders at reasonable points regarding Evernote’s maximum limits.

[Don Dz 165]

22 minutes ago, Rey San Pascual said:

But I disagree that using note links is the best solution to deal with the 250 notebook limit. The best solution at this point is increasing the maximum notebook limit to at least 500 if not more (preferably 5,000 to make a non-issue). And to add warnings/reminders at reasonable points regarding Evernote’s maximum limits.

By all means, the more tools they can give us, the better, I was only sharing what works for me, since it had not been mentioned in the discussion. 

As I mentioned, I use all available solutions as needed, but links just happen to be the most flexible tool for my situation, since a wiki approach makes the most sense to me.

[Don Dz 165]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

An example is to identify notes for a subject like "home insurance".

I would be using a notebook or tag.  The only way I see to use note links is with a Table of Contents; however the list would be static.  I need  a dynamic list.

For that I would use a combination of tags and links, all related notes would share a tag or two, but links would relate the different notes together in more minute detail. 

I generally only use table of contents for brain storming with my tags, because I tend to create links and tags as I create notes, to preserve some GTD logic that makes sense to me (I use a Start note, from which I link notes such as Errands, Calls, Computer/Online, Waiting For, At Home, At Work, Someday/Maybe, Projects, etc, as needed).

I tend to create a new notebook only when dealing with a large or urgent/hot project, and only while working on it (like "Taxes" or "Work Project" or "Overseas Trip"), but once I am done with the project, I delete the notebook, and any notes that remain are moved into one of my preexisting notebooks, like "Cabinet" or "Personal" or "Online Resources", etc. 

For smaller projects I often use a "Temp" notebook, for current but unrelated projects.

I used to have a "Done" notebook, but found a tag a better solution.

[jasecutler 4]

What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

 

•  

[jbenson2 2,146]

1 hour ago, jasecutler said:

What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

 

•  

This is a user forum. It is unlikely Evernote will address your question. It has been asked several times over the years.

My guess is the 250 limit for notebooks is partially designed to keep Evernote customers focused on using a critical part of Evernote. That is the ability to use up to  10,000 tags on notes stored in a variety of notebooks.

There are plenty of programs that offer the ability to create thousands of notebooks (aka folders). 

Evernote created an alternative method to address data control and retrieval. 

 

[DTLow 5,728]

5 hours ago, jasecutler said:

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

From past experience

• Evernote increased the notebook limit from 100 to 250.
• They also added a Business Account tier, with a limit of 100,000 notebooks.

>>What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

The note limit could be resource based; our devices tend to choke at high volumes.

The notebook limit is an arbitrary number.  
The Evernote focus has always been on note retrieval instead of organization. This is tag based instead of folder based,

[jefito 5,588]

4 hours ago, jasecutler said:

What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

It's just an arbitrary number, but if you think about it, you might see that there's an actual practical aspect to this limit. The only way that you have to organize those 250 notebooks is via stacks; there's no notebook nesting at present. So with 250 notebooks, you have 5 stacks of 50 notebooks? 50 stacks of 5 notebooks? Or (the balance point) 15 stacks of ~15 notebooks? These are barely palatable options, in my opinion, with respect to physical (on screen, i.e.) organization/searching, not to mention how it all plays out on screen-size limited mobile devices.. Increase to 500? 23 stacks of 23 notebooks? 1000 notebooks? 32 stacks of 32 notebooks? Now I'm not saying that all users would fall prey to this (I can imagine a user who has a small number of active notebooks and a large number of archived notebooks, leading to two stacks, one manageable, and one ungainly. But just something to think about, given that the original reason for adding stacks was to make management of the (then) limit of 100 notebooks easier...

[iRQ 5]

On 5/30/2018 at 11:38 AM, jefito said:

These are barely palatable options, in my opinion, with respect to physical (on screen, i.e.) organization/searching

FWIW, my interface to finding notes, notebooks, and tags, in Evernote for Mac is Command J and I haven't hit its limits of scalability yet. It works as well with one note and several thousand notes.

The points about UI constraints is well made, just in my case the UI I use scales well filtering down thousands of items.

 

[DTLow 5,728]

39 minutes ago, iRQ said:

FWIW, my interface to finding notes, notebooks, and tags, in Evernote for Mac is Command J

My interface for assigning a tag is to start typing and a filtered list appears. My 300+ list gets chopped down, and with just a few characters typed I pick from a list of 10 or so items.

[Seattlitte 5]

When I started , I used Evernote for myself, synched across multiple machines.  I used  a mixture of tags and notes.  Once I was confident with how useful Evernote was, I started using it will collaborators.  I quickly realized a) Evernote sharing mechanics were horrible b) could only share notebooks, not tags.  Evernote really improved their sharing mechanics, but left us in the lurch with no tag sharing and the 250 notebook limit.  I maxed out three years ago.  

Problems with living with this limit:

a) as someone above wrote, Evernote does not make it clear which were the added notebooks that put you over the limit.  If you deleted notebooks to make room, the synch gets stuck if it you added 1 notebook having deleted 5, but it saw the add as happening first..  And as i synch across multiple machines that I work on simultaneously, , thing can get horrible.

b) I just spent an hour with a colleague trying to figure out why i couldn't see his newly shared notebook.  We're pretty sure now that though I had made room by deleting some notebooks, sync is convinced I'm over limit again again.  But what really bugs me is that he didn't get any message that the Notebook had failed to share, and I got no message that someone had tried to share a notebook with me but couldn't.  He is an older gentleman and assumes that he erred somehow when tech doesn't work.  

I'm assuming that EN wants us to use EN to collaborate.  i've brought them 6 paying customers  over the last 3 years.    Its how you grow a paying network.  But I am now open to new knowledge organizing and sharing products  - i just haven't found one half as good as EN.  OneNote -- ha, ha, ha:-(.

Philip

[DTLow 5,728]

14 minutes ago, Seattlitte said:

Evernote does not make it clear which were the added notebooks that put you over the limit.

The latest release provides a warning when the notebook limit is being reached

 

[Jim Finn 4]

Just a quick Query. 

I know that there is a 250 Notebook limit in Evernote but I am wondering does this limit only apply to Synced Notebooks and are local Notebooks in the Windows client exempt from this. I know that Evernote and many of the blogs really push the Tagging option but I find it does not work for me and prefer Notebooks as a primary organising structure with tags as a secondary consideration.

[s2sailor 1,533]

6 hours ago, Jim Finn said:

I am wondering does this limit only apply to Synced Notebooks and are local Notebooks in the Windows client exempt from this.

I'm pretty sure notebook number and note size restrictions apply to both local and sync'd.

[TK0047 411]

I had a seen a post about Local Notebooks not going towards the quota but he was not certain either. If you are there at the limit, just experiment with it.

Also, without going into Tags vs. Notebooks arguments | discussions, I recommend everybody to evaluate their "thinking" and "habits" as we all are used to the folder structure since Windows 3.1 (if not MS DOS 6.x versions) and our thinking is just mimicking that. I am a firm believer of what works for you is the best system whether notebooks or tags, but if there is a limit by the developer and now it is going to interfere with your workflow | system, it may be time to re-evaluate and maybe try something new. Just a recommendation.

[Jim Finn 4]

58 minutes ago, TK0047 said:

Also, without going into Tags vs. Notebooks arguments | discussions, I recommend everybody to evaluate their "thinking" and "habits" as we all are used to the folder structure since Windows 3.1 (if not MS DOS 6.x versions) and our thinking is just mimicking that. I am a firm believer of what works for you is the best system whether notebooks or tags, but if there is a limit by the developer and now it is going to interfere with your workflow | system, it may be time to re-evaluate and maybe try something new. Just a recommendation.

 I liken it to Drawers in a Filing cabinet with the Notebooks sub-dividers in this drawer which were around long before DOS and Windows and this suits me better. I did experiment with Tagging as an alternative and while it has it's uses I found it cumbersome particularly when it came time to share to share notes with a third party. Tagging becomes useless at this point.

Evernote sells itself as a second/external brain and it is important that we as individual learn what works for us. I know that Evernote are proponents of tagging. Well if that is the case then allow tagged notes to be shared by tags. Otherwise you have to go down the Notebook route at least partially. I agree with you about software limitations and workflow but I have tried other applications and none of them match Evernote features. It has its "quirks" and we have to learn to work around them.

As a teacher I show my student multiple ways of working out things as what works for me will not work for everyone. I tell them there are 4 ways of doing anything, The right way, the wrong way, my way and your way and if 3 of those produce the same result they are the right way. I would encourage everyone to take the time to try new ways of working and organising but don't fall into the trap that there is only one way that works. I regularly see proponents of Dave Allens Method, structuring Evernote as a productivity tool. Tried it and hated it. I see Evernote as a storage and Reference hub in my workflow not a productivity tool per-say and Notebooks suit this better IMO.

[DTLow 5,728]

17 minutes ago, Jim Finn said:

I liken it to Drawers in a Filing cabinet with the Notebooks sub-dividers in this drawer which were around long before DOS and Windows and this suits me better

Are you sure Evernote is the best product for you to use?  It doesn't support drawers, folders, subfolders, dividers.

>>allow tagged notes to be shared by tags

This has my vote.  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/107800-sharing-notes-using-tags/

>>proponents of Dave Allens Method, structuring Evernote as a productivity tool.

I read Allen's GTD book and learned much about task management.  I use Evernote to manage my task, and implemented many GTD aspects.

 

[Jim Finn 4]

3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

7 minutes ago, Jim Finn said:

I liken it to Drawers in a Filing cabinet with the Notebooks sub-dividers in this drawer which were around long before DOS and Windows and this suits me better

Are you sure Evernote is the best product for you to use?

As a paperless based note and information storage system yes. I not only use it for web clippings, I also use it to store receipts and other important documentation in pdf format (both Synced and Local for more personal documentation such as bank statements etc.) Is there an alternative you might suggest as I have tried many of them and stay with Evernote.

I currently have 60 Notebooks and over 5000 notes across a wide range of categories.

One example of a use is I recently had to make an insurance claim against a builder that caused damage in mu home. I had copies of every document and email exchanged with builder as well as notes on every phone call and was able to share all this information with my insurance company who were able to successfully recover most of the costs from the builders insurance.

I also use it to keep track of both my progress in teaching topics as well as students progress via an attached Excel spreadsheet. When I had a subject inspection a few years ago I was able to share this notebook with the inspection team as my class records. 

[DTLow 5,728]

13 minutes ago, Jim Finn said:

I currently have 60 Notebooks and over 5000 notes across a wide range of categories.

12,000+ notes; minimal notebooks, 300+ tags

I use notebooks for the Share/Local/Offline feature

Beyond basic notes, I use file attachments; Word/Pages for word processing, Excel/Numbers for spreadsheets, ...

No ideas for alternatives.  None of them offer the same filing services as Evernote.

[Jim Finn 4]

3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

No ideas for alternatives.  None of them offer the same filing services as Evernote.

That we can agree on ?

And the superior Web clipping.

[DjBea 7]

I'am still waiting evernote team to listen for their customers... 
In the futur you will remove this limit, why waiting more ?
This limit is absurd and don't have sense.

I've just read a text Evernote sent me from Stacy Harmon : She prefer Notebook... ( https://blog.evernote.com/fr/2018/06/08/sorganiser-avec-carnets/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EVN-ENG-NLS-EM-88-8888-Newsletter_062718&utm_content=button )

I don't like answer from support : It's a technical limit, we can't do more ! 
In software limits are where you to place it...  

Maybe some of users dont need more than 250 notebook, i think i'am not the only one that would like more than 250.

I'am not happy with the choice of evernote team : 
Adding features that i don't need, and don't add basic missing features (like search & replace expressions across notes).
It's seems to have no collaboration between evernote team and users. 

Notes and data store in evernote are not private.

When i tell to support My data on evernote servers are not encrypted, so evernote team can read my notes....
The answer is : "data are encrypted between your computer and our server". 
And they may say " we have strict policy.... no one in evernote team will read your notes", how many times it happen in lots of company with same policy, private user data have been stolen by member of the team or pirat ?
If notes was encrypted on the evernote server, it would be more secure. And also encryption may be done in local files.

As i told before, i like the evernote concept. i think it as a great potential, but now it's going wrong.

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

I'm planning to go for the premium but no encryption thing (only text encryption is *****) and the privacy thing is making me cold feet. I know EN in their policy pledged to not look at user notes but once they did and that still raises questions and does not give peace of mind. Now another thing I came to know is we have a limit of 250 Notebooks in premium. 

So, currently, my issues are: 
1) No PROPER ENCRYPTION thing. Text encryption is *****. It does not even let encrypt bullet point and automatic numbers. I have manually written "1)" and then "2)" in another line below and then goes like "10" or "15", depending on the number of important points. It does get boring right? Text encryption won't encrypts bullets or automatic numbers, wow as if they put the option, users won't like lol.

2) Privacy Issue. I very well know that EN pledged NOT to look at user notes but my question is why would they even look at the first place and then pledge later by releasing a new privacy policy? That does still leave doubt and we don't get complete peace of mind.

3) Limiting to 250 Notebooks in premium. I'm a guy that needs to have max notebooks as I sort down business as well as personal things too so we should get unlimited in premium.

I'm still considering to get premium but I am getting cold feet. It's such a great app but this Encryption and Privacy issue is kinda ruining it to be honest. And now came to know 250 limits, more amazing lol.

You DON'T even listen to your fans who love your app and WANT to continue using your app. You still DON'T care about full encryption and privacy issues.

At least GIVE the option to encrypt whole Notebook or individual notes like your BIGGEST COMPETITOR -> ONE NOTE!

[Eldorado 26]

Yes, Stacy Harmon's text was made available in all important countries (also in German, English, ...) and made me think "OK - typical marketing thing: They do not talk with the technical staff ;-)"

A limit of 250 is typical in many other circumstances (not only in EN): if a byte (8 bit) is used to point to any data, you can distinuish only between 256 states. Using a maximum of 250 notebooks means that the current data structure in EN's database format forsees only one byte to represent a notebook. Widening this limit needs to change the database structure on server and ALL supported client environments. Might be a nightmare...

Regarding "Notes and data store in evernote are not private.": I got the same answer from support - together with a further argument: On some clients, data is synced only on demand. In this case, a search is processed on server site. If data would be encrypted on server site, a search would be impossible.

This is true - but if a user knows about this and decides to used data encryption on servers, it's his choice. So I'm with you: EN should offer a possibility to encrypt data on server site. Users may use clients with full data replication (like on Windows and on Mac (AFAIK)).

In my opinion (as a developer), it would be easier to implemement data encryption than opening a 250 notebooks limit. And it would help to convice customers that EN will never read note contents ;-). Living with less than 250 notebooks IS possible. 

 

[TK0047 411]

46 minutes ago, Eldorado said:

Living with less than 250 notebooks IS possible.

Yes indeed it is possible. I understand that everybody's needs and usages are different, I get that! But the notebook structure is such a linear, and "old school" way of filing. It is how we were programmed since we started messing with computers. Things | Files belong in one location...that's how folder structures worked and that's how our physical environment work. You have a letter you need to file, you will put in a filing cabinet, one drawer, one location!

But electronic files do not need to follow that at all. Proper indexing and tagging is all what we need. We don't know where exactly it is on the hard drive, right? It just has to be retrieved when we need it. Similarly, as long as you can retrieve it, notebooks can be irrelevant too. Our brains however work a lot differently..in categories and many different categories. One item belongs to many categories depending on the situation, context etc. A fire truck could be things that are red, or emergency vehicles, things with sirens on etc. I would recommend (which I posted before) Organized Mind book by Daniel Levitin, he explains the categories and how our brains work way better than I would. This is why the tagging will work better than the notebook structure. You can combine both of course but again the solution is not the number of notebooks to the organization problem.

I know people will still say I need my more than 250 notebooks etc. but if there is that limit and Evernote seems to be sticking to it, I would recommend everybody to get out of their comfort zone and look for solutions. To me this is not a deal breaker. There are other issues and concerns for sure that takes precedence in my opinion.

Security and encryption are big concerns for many so I definitely get that. So I would harp on that before the 250 notebook limit.

My 2 cents on the issue!

Happy Friday Eve!

[Riggar 51]

This is a continuous issue / problem that crops up regularly and I suspect is probably discussed at Evernote HQ fairly frequently. It's a fundamental design problem (did someone say some time ago '250 is fine; people will need need more than that'). Evernote themselves know in their hearts they are going to have to face the consequences some day. The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled. Actually, I'm well versed in risk analysis and subsequent mitigation having worked for a large Banking outfit in UK - so hire me to get the ball rolling! Joking aside, we are being fobbed off with 'tags' - which is not a solution. Tags are a really useful tool - but that is what it is - tool. The situation is a shame as the rest of Evernote is very good and while I've mentioned costs - we don't know the real cost of those people who don't use Evernote in earnest due to the 250 limit. I'm looking elsewhere to see what's about - I'll keep an eye on Evernote and we'll see what happens.  

[DTLow 5,728]

6 hours ago, Riggar said:

The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled.

You may have more details than me.  My guess is 250 Notebooks is an arbitrary number; it used to be 100.

Notebooks were not set up to be a primary organization tool.  
Their use was related more to sync/local, private/share, offline/online.

Having many notebooks causes an organization problem.  
Evernote recognized this and implemented the Stacks feature; it's a bit of a hack

>>Tags are a really useful tool - but that is what it is - tool.

I'm not sure what this means.
Notebooks are also a really useful tool.
I have 10 shared notebooks, 1 Local, 1 Offline, 1 sync'd, and my default Inbox Stack
I have 350+ tags and make use of the hierarchy feature to keep them organized

[Etonreve 187]

On 12/13/2016 at 8:09 AM, GiacomoLaw said:

Whilst I believe that more notebooks would be great, don't you find its a little cluttered with all of them? IMO, i think that if you hit the limit, it would start working against you, not with you.

My notebook system is not at all cluttered. It's a very efficient system for me and I need more than 250 notebooks. 

[Etonreve 187]

6 hours ago, Riggar said:

This is a continuous issue / problem that crops up regularly and I suspect is probably discussed at Evernote HQ fairly frequently. It's a fundamental design problem (did someone say some time ago '250 is fine; people will need need more than that'). Evernote themselves know in their hearts they are going to have to face the consequences some day. The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled. Actually, I'm well versed in risk analysis and subsequent mitigation having worked for a large Banking outfit in UK - so hire me to get the ball rolling! Joking aside, we are being fobbed off with 'tags' - which is not a solution. Tags are a really useful tool - but that is what it is - tool. The situation is a shame as the rest of Evernote is very good and while I've mentioned costs - we don't know the real cost of those people who don't use Evernote in earnest due to the 250 limit. I'm looking elsewhere to see what's about - I'll keep an eye on Evernote and we'll see what happens.  

I use tags, but I'm not always in a position to add them. I also am not always interested in re-Googling Evernote's peculiar search syntax to find them. I want to go to my notebook.

[Etonreve 187]

Whenever I read the posts of people who say "Why don't you just use tags?" I'm reminded of how Microsoft kept telling everyone how great Windows 8 was when it was awful. Finally, it came out with 8.1.

An organization app that prevents many customers from organizing their information in the way that seems most natural to them is not pursuing a winning strategy. And stop telling those of us who want more notebooks that we're dumb. We're not. Insulting the customer is another bad tack.

 

EDITED TO ADD

This comment has "-1" ranking. That's odd because I don't have the option to downvote other people's posts, only to upvote them. I'm still right about notebooks.

 

[jefito 5,588]

11 hours ago, Riggar said:

This is a continuous issue / problem that crops up regularly and I suspect is probably discussed at Evernote HQ fairly frequently.

It's a static issue in that it hasn't changed in 7 or 8 years or so. I doubt that they have weekly meetings over it.

11 hours ago, Riggar said:

It's a fundamental design problem (did someone say some time ago '250 is fine; people will need need more than that').

It used to be a hundred, before stacks came along, and was deemed to be a practical limit for the one-dimensional list of notebooks. Stacks were added, so they raised the limit to 250, since you could now do some limited nesting. The thinking behind all of this seemed to be that that tags  are a better, more flexible way to organize content.

11 hours ago, Riggar said:

Evernote themselves know in their hearts they are going to have to face the consequences some day. The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled.

Which is it:-the fact that there's a limit to number of notebooks or that nested notebooks don't exist? I'd say that the former option would be a lot less risky; the latter would mean a large change across Evernote's architecture on server- and client-sides, and the API that ties them together. Do some folks at Evernote regret this architecture? I'm pretty sure that they do. But it's not something that they're going to attack lightly, if they do.

[Shane D. 1,809]

Hi All,

You may have noticed that all threads requesting an increase of the 250 Notebook Limit have been merged into this thread, regardless of platform specificity. 

This was done in order to better enable us to quantify and qualify user requests, and amplify their voice.

While this does not mean this is a feature that will be coming, we certainly want to relay user feedback/sentiment to our various teams.

Moving forward, please put all commentary and votes for an increase of the 250 Notebook Limit here!

[DTLow 5,728]

On 8/28/2018 at 8:53 AM, Etonreve said:

My notebook system is not at all cluttered. It's a very efficient system for me and I need more than 250 notebooks. 

Can you provide details on  your notebook organization?

Some users are asking for nested notebooks.  I use a prefix naming system so my entries organize alphbetically.

[Naveed 1]

Hi All, its 2018 and i been reading this thread for the last few days from it inception listed date of 2015.

I have just hit my limit of 250 notebooks, im a plus user. Is there a way of increasing the number notebooks now?

[DTLow 5,728]

13 hours ago, Naveed said:

Is there a way of increasing the number notebooks now?

Currently (2018) the limit is 250 notebooks  https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005247-What-are-the-system-limits-of-Evernote-
For additional notebooks, you can open a second account

You may have noticed the limit is 100,000 tags.

[iRQ 5]

16 hours ago, Naveed said:

Hi All, its 2018 and i been reading this thread for the last few days from it inception listed date of 2015.

I have just hit my limit of 250 notebooks, im a plus user. Is there a way of increasing the number notebooks now?

Hi Naveed,

The only option for going over 250 notebooks is through an Evernote Business account (~360/year). Those accounts allow up to 10,000 notebooks.

https://evernote.com/compare-plans

 

RQ

[OneDrop 5]

Absurd and Absolutely ridiculous they would limit to 250 notebooks!!

 

PLEASE ?? PLEASE =>INCREASE THIS LIMIT!  IAM at 215 notebooks right now!  : ( .. . .

?

[debodeem 8]

I guess about 3 years ago I reached my 250 limit by surprise since there was no warning that I was getting close and no way to check how many notebooks I have. The whole thing was a real time waster because of the glitch when finally figure out you have to delete notebooks, it doesn't sync and release more notebooks to you for awhile.

Anyway, I remember proceeding here on the forum with long drawn out discussions about tags and how I must conform to tags or delete notebooks. See, the thing is, I like nesting. Nesting works for me. Tags?... meh.

Fast forward to today and I was curious if this restrictive limit on notebooks has changed. Surely it has, right? But sadly, no. And, here I am reading the same requests over and over - and the same vague reasoning as to why we can't have more notebooks, and the same cheerleaders trying to rationalize why Evernote doesn't listen to their users.

I would like to be officially counted as a user that wants more notebooks.

Bottom line though , I would happily PAY for this product if my account could have unlimited or practically unlimited notebooks. I know the business plan says 10K, but the individual account limit of 250 remains, so the only way to have more notebooks is to open additional accounts.

So, my 'workaround' was to go to OneNote. I can't really say I like it better. It's a horse of a different color and probably a bit too robust.

Evernote has a simplicity that attracted me. I really wish I could have continued with Evernote with 251, 500, even 1000 notebooks if that's what I needed.  And I wish that Evernote would have evolved to understand that long time users would by logic, need more than 250 notebooks.

I will check back again in 3 years to see if this feature is updated for the 21st century. See ya later.

[DTLow 5,728]

39 minutes ago, debodeem said:

See, the thing is, I like nesting. Nesting works for me.

Not sure where thIs comes in on this discussion.  There are requests posted for Notebook Nesting, but so far no indication that Evernote's interested.  

It would be a useful organization tool for users having many notebooks.  I manage using a prefixed naming standard for my notebooks and tags.

>>there was no warning that I was getting close

Evernote recently implemented a notification when the notebook limit is reached.

>>I would like to be officially counted as a user that wants more notebooks.

There are voting buttons at the top left corner of the discussion

[KenSc 1]

I too would like to call for more notebooks. The limit is baffling from both a technical and a usability point of view.

[michaelzapun 8]

I am absolutely seething about this.  I'm heavily invested in Evernote at this point as far as time and resources that it took to restructure my law practice.  I'm a sole practitioner and don't have an IT department on deck.  So the choice is to stick with 250 notebooks or make another leap to "business application" for $14.99 a month? But wait --- I was considering that until I saw two person minimum which means about $30 bucks a month.   It's really unacceptable.  This is not a free application.   I have a fear that if Evernote doesn't listen to its customer base for something so essential like this, the company will go the way of Gavel and Gown -- their once flagship product for lawyers Amicus Attorney eventually faded into obscurity because it failed to address the needs of its paying customer base.  I'm seriously going to have a look at Microsoft One Note again -- I'm wondering if that product also has such a limit. 

[DTLow 5,728]

29 minutes ago, michaelzapun said:

So the choice is to stick with 250 notebooks or make another leap to "business application" for $14.99 a month?

Or use another method to organize/archive your data.

[michaelzapun 8]

On 5/16/2018 at 10:42 AM, Rey San Pascual said:

For those who can live with less than 250 notebooks, it's perfectly usable. For those like me who are needing more than 250 notebooks at this point, Evernote is less than perfectly usable. If the 250 maximum notebook limit is arbitrarily set by Evernote when it was increased from the also presumably arbitrary limit of 100 notebooks, then Evernote can arbitrarily increase it again.

I don't see anyone arguing that that Evernote isn't usable with the 250 notebook limit. I do see people requesting that Evernote's usability be enhanced by increasing the notebook limit.

My other recommendation in the mean time to help users still under 250 notebook limit is to set a flag or warning or message at some arbitrary point when a user has created a certain number of notebooks, perhaps at 125 notebooks and again at 200 notebooks. People have pointed out that the limits are published and available. But either I didn't read that part or glossed over it during my learning curve. I placed a lot of thought in how I arranged and structured my information. A reminder of the limit would have been helpful so that I could have adjusted my information map a lot earlier on to account for the limit than having to deal with the limit at a time when I need to create my 251st notebook. And I'm not going to start a new thread/request on this idea. I'll let an Evernote employee do it if they want to; I'm busy trying to deal with the 250 notebook limit.

 

3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Or use another method to organize/archive your data.

HI DTLow.  Easier said than done since as I said, I'm heavily invested in the notebook (and notebook stack) hierarchy.  But you are right about using another method.  I'm exploring migrating to OneNote.

[Don Dz 165]

58 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Can you provide more details on your naming standard.

My standard is to prefix the names with the "parent" levels
This results in the entries sorting alphabetically.

Well, I use the parent idea only with tags, currently my naming is mostly designed to push notebooks up or down the list, an asterisk* in front of the name to push notebooks up plus bold and maybe red for emphasis, a japanese dash character 一 to push notebooks I don't want to see down to the end, a couple of stacks for neatness and to hide things as needed, and a few free standing notebooks above that I currently need.  Just trying different ways to see only what I want to see each day without complication.

[Seattlitte 5]

On 10/6/2018 at 11:38 AM, s2sailor said:

You show up here as a premium member so I would think this should be working now for you.  Time to contact support.  One last thought, if you haven't recently, log out of your account and then back in to see if that resets you correctly.

Great suggestion!  I logged out (not just closed EN) , reopened, logged in - and I'm creating additional  notebooks beyond 250  - without warnings or issues. Oh, the Heady freedom! 

 

Thanks EN for responding to our requests for this increase.

Philip

[CalS 5,132]

5 hours ago, Seattlitte said:

After I updated, I right clicked a Stack, and "Create Notebook in ...".   

Did you try to just create a notebook, not in a stack?

[s2sailor 1,533]

1 hour ago, Seattlitte said:

I was at 249.  After I updated, I right clicked a Stack, and "Create Notebook in ...".   The Message I get is "You cannot create more than 250 synchronized notebooks.  Please delete some of the existing synchronized notebooks and try again."   

It occurred to me that EverNote might have be trying to save me from myself.  I have another machine with an older (so still 250 limit) version of Evernote connected to the same account.  I update that one just noew  to 6.16.1.7953 (307953) Prerelease (CE Build ce-53.4.6770) -- its on Windows 8.1,  But trying to add a Notebook to the same stack as before creates the same message as above. 

The version of EN on my Windows 10 machine is 6.15.4.7934 (307934) Public (CE Build ce-53.4.6700) and clicking Help\Check for Updates on that machine assures me I have the latest update.    I'll try again in a few days.  

You show up here as a premium member so I would think this should be working now for you.  Time to contact support.  One last thought, if you haven't recently, log out of your account and then back in to see if that resets you correctly.

[Seattlitte 5]

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

How did it tell you?  Were you at 250 notebooks and then tried to create another?  Were you actually prohibited from creating 251?  Just wondering if you are seeing an old and now inaccurate error message.  

I was at 249.  After I updated, I right clicked a Stack, and "Create Notebook in ...".   The Message I get is "You cannot create more than 250 synchronized notebooks.  Please delete some of the existing synchronized notebooks and try again."   

It occurred to me that EverNote might have be trying to save me from myself.  I have another machine with an older (so still 250 limit) version of Evernote connected to the same account.  I update that one just noew  to 6.16.1.7953 (307953) Prerelease (CE Build ce-53.4.6770) -- its on Windows 8.1,  But trying to add a Notebook to the same stack as before creates the same message as above. 

The version of EN on my Windows 10 machine is 6.15.4.7934 (307934) Public (CE Build ce-53.4.6700) and clicking Help\Check for Updates on that machine assures me I have the latest update.    I'll try again in a few days.  

[Etonreve 187]

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

How did it tell you?  Were you at 250 notebooks and then tried to create another?  Were you actually prohibited from creating 251?  Just wondering if you are seeing an old and now inaccurate error message.  

I didn't upgrade, I already had Premium, but in the past when I tried to create a 251st notebook I would receive an error message. After the announcement, I selected the new notebook choice and Evernote created a notebook. That was all there was to it.

[s2sailor 1,533]

12 hours ago, Seattlitte said:

it just told me that i can not have 250 notes

How did it tell you?  Were you at 250 notebooks and then tried to create another?  Were you actually prohibited from creating 251?  Just wondering if you are seeing an old and now inaccurate error message.  

[Etonreve 187]

12 hours ago, Seattlitte said:

I've moaned about the 250 limit on notebooks on this thread before, so very excited to hear about increase to 1000.  So took the dangerous step of updating Evernote for my Premium account on my Windows 10 PC, but, after installing,  it just told me that i can not have 250 notes.  :-( What gives?

I hope you get the problem fixed soon.

[DTLow 5,728]

12 hours ago, Seattlitte said:

I've moaned about the 250 limit on notebooks on this thread before, so very excited to hear about increase to 1000.  So took the dangerous step of updating Evernote for my Premium account on my Windows 10 PC, but, after installing,  it just told me that i can not have 250 notes.  :-( What gives?

I recommend you contact support on this at https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action

I'm sure it's something simple.  We were told the limit is increased for paid accounts.

[Seattlitte 5]

I've moaned about the 250 limit on notebooks on this thread before, so very excited to hear about increase to 1000.  So took the dangerous step of updating Evernote for my Premium account on my Windows 10 PC, but, after installing,  it just told me that i can not have 250 notes.  :-( What gives?

[Etonreve 187]

On 5/16/2018 at 10:42 AM, Rey San Pascual said:

 

I don't see anyone arguing that that Evernote isn't usable with the 250 notebook limit. I do see people requesting that Evernote's usability be enhanced by increasing the notebook limit.

 

2

I for one never argued that Evernote wasn't usable after having reached my 250 notebook limit, only that it was much, much easier, efficient, and more natural for me to use notebooks instead of tags. Time permitting, I use both a notebook and tags. But if I'm rushed it's easier simply to assign the note to a notebook. And there are many occasions when it was not possible to add tags because of the form of web clipper I was using.

[Etonreve 187]

55 minutes ago, michaelzapun said:

Funny how things go.  I all but converted over to One Note and then saw the thread about Evernote increasing number of notebooks to 1,000 which is great.  Im wondering if anyone knows whether there are limits on the number of STACKS you can create?   I'm torn between the two products.  It's a factor for me and I can't find anything on the subject. 

You have my sympathy. I'm glad that Evernote increased the number before I invested that kind of time into moving to another app. I think there is a limit to the number of stacks, but  can't tell you with certainty.

[Etonreve 187]

20 hours ago, Shane D. said:

Hi All,

I'm very excited to announce that we have officially increased the Notebook limit from 250 to 1,000 for all paid tiers.

You can see those new limits here:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/articles/209005247

We will likely lock this thread soon so if you have any thoughts/questions feel free to reach out to me directly if you're unable to share those here in time!

Shane:

That's terrific news.

THANK YOU.

 

 

 

[jefito 5,588]

14 minutes ago, michaelzapun said:

Im wondering if anyone knows whether there are limits on the number of STACKS you can create?

Currently (based on the Evernote SDK), a stack only exists as a field in a notebook; that is, every Evernote notebook has a stack name field, which may be empty. There is no separate list of stacks. When it comes time to display your notebook collection, all notes that have the same stack name are grouped together under that stack name, and those that have an empty stack name are listed separately. So to answer the question -- so long as the SDK reflects the actual underlying reality -- then the max number of stacks is the same as the max number of notebooks, or 1000 currently, since each stack can contain a minimum of 1 notebook (and you'd never do this).

[DTLow 5,728]

20 minutes ago, michaelzapun said:

Im wondering if anyone knows whether there are limits on the number of STACKS you can create?

afaik  There's no limit on the number of Stacks.
It's not stored as an actual entity; just a comment on the notebook record.
There might be a problem in the UI display if you create too many.  You could test this out and report back.  I'd take on the challenge but I only have 8 notebooks to work with 

[michaelzapun 8]

Funny how things go.  I all but converted over to One Note and then saw the thread about Evernote increasing number of notebooks to 1,000 which is great.  Im wondering if anyone knows whether there are limits on the number of STACKS you can create?   I'm torn between the two products.  It's a factor for me and I can't find anything on the subject. 

[michaelzapun 8]

On 9/28/2018 at 11:22 AM, jefito said:

It's good to know that you think you've found "the one" (usually takes more than a day to find out if a tool is long-term livable or not), and I hope that it works out for you, but  I don't think it's a good idea to post a full length review in these forums (it that's your intention). Evernote knows that OneNote is out there as an alternative, and some tolerance for discussing it is obviously allowed, but in the past they've frowned on more full discussions on why an Evernote user might want to switch to a competitor. That policy may have changed, but it does feel a little bit impolite to me.

In hindsight you're right -  that this would not be the proper forum. 

[CalS 5,132]

1 hour ago, Don Dz said:

I wonder if that creates literal file separation in the program, I guess I could take a look around later.

Notebooks/stacks are good for creating separation for searches.  Probably more a logical thing than a literal or physical thing.

[DTLow 5,728]

1 hour ago, Don Dz said:

I wonder if that creates literal file separation in the program, I guess I could take a look around later.

afaik   There's no literal file separation, and I'm looking at the actual database.
All notes are stored alongside each other in the database file/folder.
The notebook/tag assignment is simply an entry in the note metadata

[Don Dz 165]

56 minutes ago, jefito said:

What are files? Notes? Notebooks? Attachments? Evernote has only Notes, Notebooks, Stacks and tags. Are you talking about items displayed in the Evernote UI or the note storage database on disk? That latter shouldn't matter to users On Windows, it's mainly a single large file).

Now I am the one who is not sure what that even means.

In the context of what DTLow was asking me and what I responded at least.

[jefito 5,588]

6 minutes ago, Don Dz said:

File A and File B, vs the single large file, not that it really matters all that much.

What are files? Notes? Notebooks? Attachments? Evernote has only Notes, Notebooks, Stacks and tags. Are you talking about items displayed in the Evernote UI or the note storage database on disk? That latter shouldn't matter to users On Windows, it's mainly a single large file).

[Don Dz 165]

11 minutes ago, jefito said:

I'm not really sure what that even means.

File A and File B, vs the single large file, not that it really matters all that much.

[jefito 5,588]

3 minutes ago, Don Dz said:

I wonder if that creates literal file separation in the program

I'm not really sure what that even means.

[Don Dz 165]

4 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I use notebooks for the sync/local, online/offline, shared/private feature

Ah, that makes sense.  I wonder if that creates literal file separation in the program, I guess I could take a look around later.

[Don Dz 165]

3 hours ago, jefito said:

If you only use one tag per note (a policy you'd need to enforce on yourself), that's pretty much equivalent to navigating the notebook tree.

True, but that would be one more thing to have to remember, wouldn't it? 

I surmise whoever decided to include it in the program had that in mind.

[DTLow 5,728]

39 minutes ago, Don Dz said:

Apparently you use it to some limited extent (Notebook - single note assignment)

I avoid using notebooks; I resent the one notebook limitation.
There's also futher limitations in the search feature.

I use notebooks for the sync/local, online/offline, shared/private feature

[jefito 5,588]

30 minutes ago, Don Dz said:

Forgot about that.  That single assignment is the main functional difference from tags, which works for me, though in reality there isn't a physical file separation in the program.

You can certainly navigate your notes using the tag  tree in the desktop applications, if that's what you mean by "physical file separation". If you only use one tag per note (a policy you'd need to enforce on yourself), that's pretty much equivalent to navigating the notebook tree.

[Don Dz 165]

8 hours ago, DTLow said:

Notes can only be assigned a single notebook.
Most of my notes do not fit a single assignment.

Forgot about that.  That single assignment is the main functional difference from tags, which works for me, though there isn't a literal file separation in the program.

Apparently you use it to some limited extent.

[DTLow 5,728]

6 hours ago, Don Dz said:

Not quite sure what one notebook per note means

Notes can only be assigned a single notebook.
Most of my notes do not fit a single assignment.

>>not leaving things in my Inbox

I also have a default notebook (@Inbox)
This is my collection tool; In processing, I move the notes to their proper notebook

>>Your naming system based on dates caught my attention, but I don't fully grasp enough of it to borrow the idea.

This was my note title standard; I prefix the title with the subject date.
- It gives me a place to store subject date.
- It allows me to sort notes into subject date sequence 

[Don Dz 165]

59 minutes ago, DTLow said:

That was my only organization concept, building hierarchies instead of completely separate entries.  A hierarchy even if it's prefix naming.  Relational is better.

A concern with Notebooks the one-notebook-per-note.  I need a good reason to isolate a note in a notebook.

Not quite sure what one notebook per note means, unless you mean one notebook per project, I have seen that debate.

For me notebooks are a way of not leaving things in my Inbox, which creates  psychological dissonance.  They also  help remind me I may need to still tag, rename, create note links, table of contents, etc. 

They also allow me to corral my tendency to "procrastinate" (the actual name of one of my two stacks).  My "Main" stack is for notebooks that have been mostly processed and organized, or at least prioritized.

 

But the idea of exporting things easily is another motivator, based on my experience trying to move everything into Evernote from my previous systems.  A need for large categories of things to deal with in an export/import scenario was very evident to me at the time, particularly with keeping track of whether I am losing notes.

 

Your naming system based on dates caught my attention, but I don't fully grasp enough of it to borrow the idea.

[DTLow 5,728]

1 hour ago, Don Dz said:

What, Who, Where, When

That was my only organization concept, building hierarchies instead of completely separate entries.  A hierarchy even if it's only prefix naming.  Relational is better.

A concern with Notebooks the one-notebook-per-note.  I need a good reason to isolate a note in a notebook.

 

[Don Dz 165]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

This isn't a tag vs notebook discussion but I'm interested in the difference between organization and visual separation.
Can you provide examples?

With tags, I try to devise ways to quickly find what I am looking for (I borrowed some ideas from your post about prefixes for What, Who, Where, When), so that if I type ?, all my Who tags come up, etc.

'What' is the hardest and the most numerous, for that I have devises a number of my own categories that work for me.

 

With notebooks my aim is not so much to find, but to hide notebooks, to push out of the way that which I do not need at the moment.  I have some notebooks called Old and similar names.  How I name them I explained some in the previous comment, very simple at the moment. 

For certain cases, I have a separate free account for notebooks I really don't want to see unless I have to (job training mostly), but that is not the best option from day to day.

I believe your approach is a lot more involved, but I have only seen bits and pieces that you have shared.

[DTLow 5,728]

17 hours ago, michaelzapun said:

I'm not forced to sort the Order in the limited ways Evernote forces.  I can move sections and notes to any order I want.  That's huge for me. 

Can you add more details regarding the order.
The note sort options work well for me; there are user requests for a pinning feature.
I'm not clear on the sections comparison.

edit: The Order comment referred to the "pinning" feature
         The Sections comment referred to notebook hierarchy.

>>I may wind up doing a full length review at some point for those that may want to consider.

Not a good idea to post in the forums supplied by Evernote.  Post in the OneNote forum and post a link here.

[michaelzapun 8]

2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Can you add more details regarding the order.
The note sort options work well for me; there are user requests for a pinning feature.
I'm not clear on the sections comparison.

Sure.  In Evernote, when you create notes in a notebook, you are forced to use the order assigned by Evernote.  Or you can sort according to Evernote's parameters.  But in my practice, I needed to have notes in a different order.  Example, I always like to have my first note in in notebook (client matter) be "Status Report" and 2nd note be "People in this File" (etc.).  There was no easy way to do it.  In OneNote, you just drag and drop to any order you want. In OneNote you have notebooks, sections (tabs) and pages all of which you can put in whatever order you like.  

[michaelzapun 8]

13 minutes ago, jefito said:

It's good to know that you think you've found "the one" (usually takes more than a day to find out if a tool is long-term livable or not), and I hope that it works out for you, but  I don't think it's a good idea to post a full length review in these forums (it that's your intention). Evernote knows that OneNote is out there as an alternative, and some tolerance for discussing it is obviously allowed, but in the past they've frowned on more full discussions on why an Evernote user might want to switch to a competitor. That policy may have changed, but it does feel a little bit impolite to me.

In hindsight you're right -  that this would not be the proper forum.