PaperlessBrian

On 10/7/2023 at 7:36 PM, VincentC said:

@PaperlessBrian  In fuller response:  Here is a list of the kinds of information I keep in Evernote.

Professional:  ...

Personal: ...

... to name a few.

Hope this helps.

Vinnie

Vinnie, very much so.  Thank you for taking the time to share with me.  What are the top three features/capabilities of Evernote that keep you using it (vs just storing these items in your file system)?

18 hours ago, VincentC said:

 

For me, it's not an either-or, one or the other choice.  I use Evernote AND I use folders on local storage.  They complement each other.

I myself don't keep filled out tax worksheets in Evernote.  I avoid keeping anything with my social security number in Evernote.  Those documents stay in my file system and are backed up to a cloud service with complete end-to-end encryption.  I might path links to those files in Evernote for convenience, though. 

Also, for me, the more consistent I am with naming conventions, the less I lose notes.  And, the better I get with search, the easier it is to find notes I have misplaced.  And I suspect AI search will make it easier to find notes as it matures and make a rigorous tagging or naming convention system less important.  (I wouldn't prejudge the usefulness of AI search based on its current stage of development - it's still in beta.  I think it has a lot of promise.)

BTW, I also use tasks heavily so I don't forget important stuff I need to get done.  I haven't felt the need for reminders or the filtered notes widgets.  Maybe I will in the future.

Vinnie

 

This has been on my mind as well. It’s one of the reasons I’m considering switching to local folders again. If you don’t mind me asking, what do you put on Evernote? Anything with the exception of secure files?

1 hour ago, VincentC said:

Also, since tax preparation (in the US, anyway) is an annual exercise -- with a pretty consistent set of steps that you need to go through each year, but widely enough spaced so that it's hard to remember exactly what the steps are -- maybe set up a "master tax preparation" note with a checklist that lists each step?

In that note, you could also include the details of your naming convention.  Like Jon, I use naming conventions as a primary organizational tool and I rarely use tags. I recognize that tag work really well for a lot of people, but I'm more a naming convention kind of guy.  But for a naming convention to work, you have to be really consistent and disciplined about applying the convention.  So, I keep a note that lists the details of my naming rules.

But my main suggestion is to think about a checklist to help you remember every step you need to take.

Vinnie

 

 

Great ideas but I have to weigh this against just using folders (i.e. ditching Evernote).  Here are the features I find to be very useful with Evernote and those I don't.  (Not that you all need to see this but I've been thinking about it a lot and it's not a bad idea to be cross-examined on this.)

LIKES:

• One stop-shop for my filing including tax prep worksheets (but I have to upgrade to a business account which is a bit annoying)
• I can add commentary to a PDF file without some kind of clumsy PDF editor
• I don't have to worry about creating PDF/Word files for particularly large files such as when I do an photo inventory of my house for total loss purposes
• Mailto feature is very useful

DISLIKES (better with folders / Apple Notes)

• I'm always loosing notes...  this is a tagging problem as described above
• It's easier to group like files together (i.e. tax example, legal cases, big claims, etc) <- If anyone has a recommendation in Evernote I'd love to hear it
• It's not a replacement for Apple notes for quick notes and sharing notes with my SO (Let's face it, it's just not as fast)
• A company can't "shut down" a folder system like FileThis did with their service

50 minutes ago, gazumped said:

I don't see a problem.  If a note is (or will become) important as of a certain date,  why not set up a Reminder or a Task or a Calendar item (with notifcation) or use the Home Page options like Pinned Notes or Filtered Notes to highlight important entries?

Yes you could forget to apply any of those,  and I have a system which I occasionally forget to apply at creation of the note.  My only protection is that when I spot an error or omission I'll correct it.

I think perhaps Jon's suggestion will work best.  Have a Notebook specific to taxes.  This way I would need to mess up twice to loose it:  miss-tag and miss-drag.  I can make it a habit to look not only at the tax_year_tag but also at the taxes notebook.

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

It happens - I’ve mis-filed documents   
To recover, I fall back to the text search feature.  
Creation date could also be useful   
Also I have a consistent naming/keyword standard for documents   
   
fwiw I’m not seeing it as a notebook vs tag issue

.

You first have to know you lost it.

Hey folks, I'm a looong time Evernote user.  I have an automated workflow that included the FileThis service (and Hazel) that essentially made my filing work pretty easy.  With the retirement of FileThis I'm reexamining my what I save, my workflows, and even my use of Evernote.

I thought I'd start with my biggest issue with Evernote (or really any tag based system) and see if there's anyone that has figured out solutions to this issue.  It's probably best if I walk through the issue at hand and see if anyone else has had this problem.

1. You have an important tax file.  This is not something you would search for at tax time.  It's something you need to be shown at tax time to remember.
2. You drop it into Evernote and accidentally tag it with the wrong tax year.  (I have a tag for each tax year - i.e. "tax year 20XX")
3. You're effed...

Obvious answer is to be far more careful when you tag things like this however, I prefer a more resilient process.  Compare to using folders on Dropbox.  I find that my error rate with folders is FAR less and it's fairly easy to search the higher level "tax" folder for files by creation date.  Another answer might be to use different notebooks in Evernote but this strikes me as counter to the tagging ideal of Evernote not to mention it might not be any more accurate.

Anyone have any advice?

9 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Sure, I"m interested in any tips on auto tagging

I use a series of rules in Hazel on OSX..  I have two different sets of rules in Hazel.  One set is tied to FileThis which will deliver the statements automatically to a folder on my laptop.  These rules generally just match the title of the file and snag the date.  The other set is for scanning for which I use a separate "inbox" folder.  These rules are a little more complex as they need to match the contents of the file which often changes.  The maintenance can be a problem because sometimes statements/bills will change their format.  In either case, I use AppleScript to push everything into Evernote and tag it.

On 11/24/2019 at 4:14 PM, DTLow said:

I don't see a need for the  "folder system in parallel"   
All  my notes/documents are stored and organized in Evernote

Folders can be emulated using the notebook/tag trees in the sidebar

...

Check for an email option

I have been storing in a folder system in parallel so I can compare the two systems.  i definitely don't plan on doing it forever.  Unfortunately, using hierarchical tags doesn't really replace the folder structure.  For example, tags cannot share names and therefore you'd have to make everything unique.  Not really the same but there's certainly a way to simplify with a hierarchy.

So far I haven't found a single vendor who will email my statements.

On 11/24/2019 at 6:52 PM, CalS said:

I would add the ability to search PDFs as a major feature that might be missed

For improvements I have a table in EN and include a link to the appropriate note per line item (row).  For taxes I use a set of tags prefaced with 1040 and store all the notes in a local notebook with year tags, etc.

Thanks for the tip.  OSX has an amazing search feature with Spotlight so I don't really need Evernote's search feature.

On 11/24/2019 at 7:13 PM, DTLow said:

Can you explain your autotag process?

Were you asking me, DTLow?

Hey folks!  So I've been using Evernote for my paperless office for 60 days now and I thought I'd share some of my thoughts.  I'd like to get some feedback from you all as well.  Before I get into some of my challenges, I'd like to share my current process.

1. Input files come from either FileThis, scanned paper or emails direct to Evernote.
2. Pre-processing is done by Hazel which sends to Evernote with the correct tags.
3. Notes that cannot be automatically tagged by Hazel are put in Inbox for manual processing.

So this works pretty well for much but here's the issue.  First off, FileThis, as a service, is getting pretty unreliable.  The guy who runs it no longer response to emails and as sites add more and more multi-factor authentication, connections keep failing to work.  This means that more and more of my files need to be scanned manually.

This brings me to the first challenge:  what do I save?  When I had FileThis working, it was pretty much "free" to download and save all my bills and statements.  Now it's a nightmare.  I'll need to start getting my bills/statements sent to me in paper again.  I'm definitely not going to download them one at a time.  I would love some advice on what to save and what to "shred".

My second issue is with tags.  I have three notebooks in Evernote:  File Cabinet, Inbox, and Secure (local).  I have about 45 tags answering three questions:  "What is it?"  i.e. correspondence, statement, bill, etc; "Who is it for" i.e. pets, people, etc;  and "Why is it important?"  i.e. tax year, legal, etc.  This worked REALLY well when I had like 20 tags but now it seems to take forever to manually classify notes and frequently I end up failing to stay consistent.  I've been storing all my notes on my computer in a folder system in parallel so I can compare the two.  And I have to say that the folder system is SO SIMPLE and CONSISTENT.

So, I'm actually thinking about just ditching Evernote and going with a folder system, but here are the features I will really miss.

• Adding comments:  Evernote allows you to add some comments to the notes (rather than just dropping files into a directory).  This is useful if I need to add context to some kind of tax-related receipt.
• Email to Evernote:  It's very easy to email things to my Evernote inbox when I'm out and about (receipts, licenses, etc).

Also, my folder system is useful in cases where I have an active worksheet describing tax info or perhaps home improvements.  Generally I don't like to include this stuff in Evernote.  So there's the added advantage of 'keeping everything in one place' with folders.

Any thoughts/advice?

Sorry for the delayed response.  Got very busy.  So this change did the trick and it worked like a charm.

BUT..  It sounds like you've been using EN for a long time and you already use my current model with date first?  So far, it's not terrible for me - I just see a date followed by another date and then the file name.  Have you found your naming scheme to be usable in the long run?  Thanks for you help!

Hello everyone, I've made the leap to Evernote and after importing over 1000 notes, I've realized that the filenames I used with my file system (YYYY-MM-DD filename) is not very readable as a note title.  Essentially you get the look of a Creation Date followed by another date and finally the name of the note.  In many cases I'm sending notes over email without any date in the name and so I'd like to create an AppleScript I can use from the Services menu to move the date to the end of the note title.  The only issue is that I don't know how to get the note title so I can then manipulate it in AppleScript.  Any advice?  Here's what I have so far...

I suspect that when I "set noteTitle to title of n" that I'm not actually getting a string but perhaps something in HTML that I need to first convert to a string...?

Quote

 

on run {}

tell application "Evernote"

set the_notes to selection

set the_count to 1

repeat with n in the_notes

set noteTitle to title of n

set noteDate to characters 1 thru 10 of noteTitle

set noteName to characters 11 thru -1 of noteTitle

set title of n to noteName & " " & noteDate

set the_count to the_count + 1

end repeat

end tell

end run