LateToTheGame

@jefito Yeah, I collected tons of notes with the tag system. Over 10,000. It was so easy to let it built up. Became messy. And it was not easily retrievable in iOS when I did not have access to a desktop with Evernote. Converting to links has strongly encouraged me to write one note per topic. So much cleaner and more satisfying. I hope to whittle my notes down to under a thousand. Maybe much less. In particular, having one note per project has led to a huge improvement in personal productivity. I feel that I am able to think more clearly. A useful tip is to have a few links on the first level, and then go very flat on the second level.

@jefito I have the same top level structure in Finder on my Mac, in Evernote, and in Things (which I'm on fence regarding whether I should continue): Education Family Finances Health Professional Content Personal Professional (employment, licensure, etc) Projects Tech Travel Everything branches from here. For my profession, I use Tables of Contents from scientific textbooks (from Amazon if I don't own them) - to ensure that the structure is logical and comprehensive. Everything else is intuitive. I link to the Finder for storage of mission-critical documents (Snag Path). Don't store them in Evernote. It's amazing how easy it is to remember pathways to find information.

A killer feature for me would be -- every time you create a new note -- the Note Link is copied to an alternate clipboard such that you can immediately paste it and create a link to the Evernote Note that was just created. This behavior would occur, for example, following clipping a webpage or screenshot, or after adding a document to Evernote by dropping it on the Evernote icon. It could also occur if you use Apple Services to add an email to Evernote. In the case of Mail, you could immediately insert the Evernote Note Link into your ToDo program, calendar, or Mind Map program of choice without the requirement to switch to Evernote, navigate to your Inbox, and then copy that Note Link. Even better, in the case of Mail, would be creating an Apple Service (via the Mail Menu) that not only copies the Note LInk (as above) but also embeds in the Evernote Note that is created, the link/filepath back to the original email (as occurs in Reminders). It would be awesome if you could create an Evernote Note from an email that contains an embedded link back to the original email. Clicking on it opens the original email in Mail such that you can immediately respond or forward the email. Just underscoring that I love links and would like more link-related tools!!

Couldn't have said it better myself ? I'm glad B40E0148-49D-4C51-96FF makes sense to you (I know that's not what you meant). I suppose it's Apple package content. Speaking for non-engineers, I prefer real names (and not using searching/naming conventions). I agree that the definition of a note includes writing something short. It's also defined "to record or preserve in writing" and "a scholarly or technical essay shorter than an article and restricted in scope". I recall reading somewhere that the same 50,000 people are early adopters and have drawers filled with abandoned tech gadgets. I've tried and discarded so many programs I've lost count. In just the ToDo space alone, in the last year I've tried Omnifocus, Todoist, Reminders, and Things combined with TaskClone. Now I use Evernote tags: Today, Next, Soon, and Someday. My goal is to make these my only permanent tags and just use other tags temporarily for clipping and making tables of contents (links). I'm currently in the process of converting all my tags into links. Hundreds of tags and thousands of documents. Now I'm SO much happier with Evernote. I'm three intuitive clicks away from everything I need, even on my iPhone when I'm on the go. Just drill into my nested knowledge structure. No naming. No searching. Simplifying isn't necessarily dumbing down.

It's a given that if you're on the Forum, you love Evernote (okay maybe there are a few trollers in here). But Evernote as a viable company appears to be in trouble. My suggestions are based on an assumption that radical simplification is needed in order to save the company. In my opinion, Evernote's trouble stems from it being too complex for the average user. My suggestion is to distal the tool down to its core strengths. And to have a clear understanding of the core use of the product. It has been suggested that Evernote is a personal information manager. A place where information is stored and tagged, and then retrieved for creative work outside of Evernote. If that's the case, then there is a clear branding problem because the name "Evernote" implies that it is for taking notes. For me, Evernote at its core is an idea space. And that involves taking a lot of notes and connecting thoughts. As I previously mentioned, writing is thinking. To some extent (for me), Evernote serves as a personal information manager as I store lots of documents (in my case mostly PDFs of scientific articles and web clippings of personal and professional interest). But it's also so much more. It's a place I explore ideas, plan trips, take meeting notes, track my health and fitness parameters, etc. If I was just storing stuff, there are lots of simpler and cheaper ways to do this. For example, in the Finder on my Mac -- which is also backed up to the cloud, has folders and tags, and is available on all my devices (but the Finder does not have hyperlinks). So, I contend that at its core mission, Evernote is not a personal information manager and that seeing it as such is a reason for its demise. The average person will not pay for an additional cloud service to store documents and other files in a proprietary and somewhat arcane format (and yes, I understand and use tags, folders, links, and Evernote's search syntax). The average user does not understand how to use Evernote to its potential (remind yourself that "the average user" in reality has long given up and deleted Evernote). To grow it's user base and survive, Evernote has to understand its core product usefulness and it must simplify its interface. When I ask myself what I love about Evernote, it's not the mechanism that I use to store and find things. It's the immediacy of the tools that Evernote offers to allow me to think better: To capture things and connect the ideas that flow from all the items that I enter into Evernote. You know what I'm referring to: The amazingly great, much-better-than-the-competition Web Clipper, the always available screenshot crosshairs, capturing items with your handheld camera and having it OCR'd, emailing items into Evernote, dragging images and other files between notes, merging notes, linking notes, highlighting PDFs and having highlights sync (not available in OneNote or Bear), ... and ultimately building big ideas out of captured elements. Evernote helps me be creative. I don't just store a PDF. I read it in Evernote. Highlight it. Take notes. Get inspired. Search the web. Clip articles. Connect notes to other notes. Build a structure around my ideas. All in Evernote. No need to switch programs. Capture Connect Capture Connect ... Everthing flows.

I like the conversation, and I can't disagree with you. I too use Evernote as a PIM, but I prefer to also use it as a jack of all trades, to organize my thoughts, and plan my projects, trips, etc.

To JMichaelTX, If you want to see a beautiful implementation of tags, try Bear. Its use of tags is a little piece of genius. Then you'll see why going back and forth from your Notes to Tags to constantly organize your tags in nests in Evernote is a nightmare. Strong word, I admit. But it is no fun trying to find and maintain your notes with tags and search in Evernote. It makes it hard for me to think clearly. I'm sure it works better for you. But after giving this much thought (and rebuilding my Evernote collection of approximately 10,000 notes three times: First with tags, then folders + tags, and then links only ... plus switching to Bear and then back to Evernote), I've found that links are the best because links force you to write better notes - as our English teachers taught us, "writing is thinking". Notes with links are in large part more clear because you can have one note per topic - you should certainly strive for this. With all the relevant links built in. Bear can use links too, but Evernote has much better ancillary tools, including web clipping and PDF management. Ultimately, you want to use Evernote as a Note Taking System to help you think better, and not as a computer directory. You already have a hard drive for that, and it has the potential for incremental backup, mass storage of files, etc. And there are plenty of programs which allow you to add tags and metadata to the files in your computer directory.

To DTLow First, find all you notes that are tagged both with "Taxes" and with "2018". I believe the search syntax is tag:Taxes tag:2018 Once you find all the notes that have both tags, select all the notes Click on "Create Table of Contents Note" Give the new TOC note a name that makes sense to you, e.g., "2018 Tax Deductions" Right click on the new TOC note and select "Copy Note Link" Paste that link into a note such as your Taxes Note I hope that helps. Jason

To DTLow: I would suggest having a top level note that is your Master Evernote Table Of Contents and would include the pillars of your particular life. It might include: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EVERNOTE TABLE OF CONTENTS Education Finances Health Personal Professional Projects Tech Travel If you click on Finances, then your Finances Note opens: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINANCES Bills, Payments, and Receipts Financial Institutions Insurance Investing Taxes If you click on Taxes, then your Taxes Note Opens: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TAXES Resources Accountant Website 1 Website 2 Notes from Book Taxes by Year 2015 Taxes 2016 Taxes 2017 Taxes 2018 Taxes Tax Deductions 2018 Tax Deductions (I placed this here as an example; I would normally put this link into "2018 Taxes") Tax Topics Tax Deductions State Taxes Real Estate Taxes Taxes and Investing ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To answer your specific question, once you find all notes that contain both of your tags, tag:Taxes and tag:2018, then select all of those notes and create a Table of Contents note. Name that note, "2018 Tax Deductions" or whatever makes sense to you. Then right click on that TOC note and select "Copy Note Link". Paste that link into your Taxes Notes under a heading that makes sense. Then erase those tags (once all your notes containing one or both of those tags are in linked to parent notes) ? Seriously! What's the point? Links don't break unless you move a note to the trash. Harder to accidentally do than mistakenly erasing a tag - and potentially losing a giant collection of notes. The next time you create a new note, don't add a tag. Instead, immediately link it to a parent note. Use two Notebooks: Inbox (which contains unlinked notes) and Archive (which contains linked notes). Keep it simple. The goal is to create readable notes that comprehensively cover one topic, and not to create some kind of complex directory in Evernote that you constantly have to search.

Dear Ian, Congratulations on your new position! If I may, I would like to offer a few suggestions. In my humble opinion, Evernote should focus on encouraging its users to use links rather than tags or notebooks. As it currently stands, Evernote presents itself as an unfinished tool, and every user invents his/her own way to use it (some much better than others). As a result, many users often misunderstand Evernote, never discover it's underlying strengths, are overwhelmed by its complexity, and I suspect often end up abandoning Evernote for other alternatives. I realize that Evernote was developed with the strength of 'Search' as its primary method for finding notes. This may work well for the engineers who created Evernote (and for users with engineering mindsets who like standardized naming conventions and complex search syntax), but for many of us, the process of having to search for notes is a major limitation. Tags seem to solve this problem, but end up being a nightmare to organize and maintain in Evernote (particularly if you're lured into the seemingly logical approach of nested tags). The Bear App (a new competitor) has solved these problems - but their implementation of tags is still cumbersome when compared to links. Links are much more intuitive to create than tags, and links are also easier to navigate (when finding your way back to a note). Tags in Evernote iOS also suffer from the limitation that they lose their desktop nested structure and thus require searching - which means you have to remember the names of all your tags -- we're back to the necessity of naming conventions and search syntax. If you work on a desktop all day, then you're unlikely to care about this problem (hello engineers). Bear solves the iOS tag problem by presenting a nested tag structure along a left-hand column that is identical in desktop and iOS. But, as mentioned, tagged-based organization is less intuitive than links. And Evernote crushes Bear with the quality of its tools -- the best of which include outstanding web clipping capability (much better than Bear), PDF management that includes the ability to sync PDF highlights and PDF notes (a major limitation in Bear), and the ability to resize images (also not available in Bear). The Notebook interface is the same in Evernote and iOS -- but Notebooks have the distinct disadvantage of not allowing one note to be in two or more places at the same time. For example, a clipped web article (note) on the health benefits of dark chocolate that includes a brownie recipe can't be simultaneously stored under Health and under Recipes, nor can it be simultaneously attached to a shopping list, nor entered as a todo item to bake this weekend. Linked notes solve all these problems: Links work the same way in Desktop and iOS. Links function as well as tags in allowing one note to be attached to multiple headings, notes, and projects. Links don't require time-consuming Evernote 'tag maintenance'. Links are intuitive and familiar. And most important, links don't require searching. Evernote needs to be simplified if it is to be adopted by a larger audience. Shift away from search as the primary method to find notes (it will still exist for engineers). Deprecate tags. Build a tool to allow tag-users to attach their unique tag names to the end existing note titles - so they can continue to use search and thus be 'grandfathered in'. All true power users/engineers on the Forum (who love naming conventions and search) recommend the approach of using unique note-title naming schemes and avoiding the use of tags for primary organization. Most importantly, build better and more intuitive link creation tools. Then promote and advertise Evernote's primary (new) feature: That it is highly intuitive and works the same way everywhere (via links) -- and that navigation of your notes is as easy as using the internet. Finally, simply links. At present, there are two types of links (Note Links and Classic Note Links) that work in three different ways: There are links between notes, links to the web browser version of Evernote, and links to third-party programs (such as ToDo apps). Have Evernote engineers create some sort of AI so Evernote knows which type of link to create or implement under different contexts. Congratulations again on your new position. Speaking for all devoted Evernote users, we sincerely wish you success. Sincerely, Jason Goldsmith