Michael Allen

P.S. One last positive thought, even though I found Evernote no longer filled my needs (because of the archiving problems some of us have encountered, as discussed in this thread). I'm sure Evernote are one of the 'good guys'. And for two reasons. Firstly, though Evernote is not totally Open Source, they make such a large amount open to others that it enables other people to work with the Evernote file structure. That has allowed the Linux community to develop its own front-end (as the number of users couldn't justify Evernote spending their own development time on Linux). And, secondly, when it finally came to me sadly finding that I had to find an alternative, they have good export tools which will export to friendly formats. I managed to move the very large majority of my Evernote notes out so that I could pick them up in a simpler system. I have never been able to do that with the few Microsoft OneNote notebooks that I have used. So if Evernote continues to work for you, please support them. You don't have to need the Premium features to want to support a company.

Yes, now you say that, I remember doing that for a while using one computer with an archive account. It was OK, because the Windows app allowed you to switch between 'users' (both me). I seem to remember finding it just a bit too fiddly - I'd forget to switch back to my Premium account and so my notes weren't synced with my main account when I expected them to be. It's those little frustrations that I'd live with if I weren't paying a decent amount of money for the service (which I still am, though I am no longer using it). Bottom line - archiving is so fundamental that Premium customers shouldn't have to be finding fiddly ways around to do it. If you can selectively sync folders on the Mobile Apps, why not on Windows? But I've moaned enough, and I don't want to any more. And actually I am still fond of Evernote because it served me superbly for many years. It's not like it was something I had to use and always hated. I chose to use it and I chose to use my own money to pay for it (and not just for the Premium features, but because it was so part of my everyday working life I wanted to support it as a 'thank you'). I'm probably just coming across as moaning because I really really liked Evernote, but this was the one thing that I found increasingly problematic as the years wore on (and as my Evernote system got bigger and bigger and bigger). If Evernote wasn't so good at all the other stuff I probably would have never got to the point where I just had too much stuff in Evernote for it to handle it well.

The main problem I was having with Evernote was the inability to archive on a separate drive. In the past I was enthused that Evernote could be used to store much more than text notes and so I accumulated, over many years, more GB of notes than I wanted to store on, for example, a Microsoft Surface. I had lots of very large PDFs. Other systems, such as OneNote and TagSpaces are not dependent on everything being held in a single file structure like Evernote required in Windows desktop (but perhaps that has changed recently? I haven't kept up with Evernote recently). A secondary problem was quickly searching only non-archived notes. And then as my problems with archiving grew I realised possibly the biggest problem - so much of what I had was tied up in a proprietary meta-data and storage system. So I've since back-peddled (avoiding OneNote* as well, though I think Microsoft have quietly made that better and better over the years) and have gone for a much simpler tagging system that allows me to keep all notes in native formats that will never be tied to any one storage 'system' (TagSpaces simply adds tags to filenames - it has some nice Open Source software to create, tag and find files but you can also just use any standard file system if you needed to; it's a very very simple idea). But I also don't agree with you when you say "Evernote’s methododology is organization by Tags, instead of the traditional folder/subfolder methodology". It has both a folder structure and a tag system. I liked (and still like) the combination of having both a tree (folder) and tree-less (tag) system. The advantage of a file structure is that I can very easily move a whole folder (usually a project) over to an archive drive, and I can specifically share folders when I work with other people on a project. So, for example, using DropBox (with files tagged by TagSpaces) when I finish on a project I move it to an archive folder. That keeps it in DropBox but I can choose whether to have it present on each device I use or just rely on a cloud connection. Evernote mobile apps can do that. But Evernote Windows desktop could not (though that might have changed). And also why pay twice for cloud storage? But I'm happy we each find the solution that works for us. I just get e-mails about this thread (because I answered this thread last year saying I'd really like a solution to this, but none sadly came*), so thought it worth mentioning another system for people who ran into the same problem as the thread author, and me. Michael *P.S. When I answered last year I said I was thinking of moving to OneNote. I tried it, and it was nice (it's been quietly getting better over the years it seems), but I realised I didn't want to tie myself to another proprietary system, especially as I was starting use use Linux more (OneNote is not supported at all in Linux, whereas Evernote does at least have a community-developed front end, NixNote, which is pretty decent). That's when I went hunting for a simply cross-platform system and found the Free and Open Source TagSpaces.

I have now abandoned Evernote. It was for 2-3 reasons, but this was very much one of them. I was a very long term paying Evernote User but I found the the system was getting totally bogged down by years of notes. I really really needed a good archiving system that would enable me to occasionally open up old projects with folder structure easily, but without those notes and structures being there the whole time. I tried saving project endnote libraries but it was too cumbersome for me. My paid-for subscription runs sometime into 2018 but I've already said a sad farewell to Evernote. We had many good years together, and I got a lot of good value out of Evernote. But for me it just hasn't kept up with my needs, and lack of decent archiving was a major one. I'm happily using TagSpaces now. It's lighter than Evernote but does what I need. It doesn't have a dedicated cloud server but I pay for DropBox so I don't need another cloud storage system (tagSpaces works with my files in DropBox). I wouldn't recommend TagSpaces for everyone, but I do think it's worth looking at. And it has the advantage for some of us that it crosses over into Linux. And it's simple in that it leaves notes/files in their native format, which makes it very future compatible. It's also Free, Open Source and, because of the very simple way it works, pretty much totally future-proof. All the best Evernote - you definitely helped me for many years. In fact you were pretty central to my work for many years. Maybe we'll meet again in the future some time.

This really is important to me. I've been a premium user for over 5 years now and my Evernote note collection is just getting too large and cumbersome but I don't want to delete. Sadly I'm considering moving fully over to OneNote now which I have been using alongside Evernote to try to manage the quantity of notes. It is much easier to archive OneNote notebooks. I'm really disappointed Evernote still haven't tackled this - there must be many of us older users whose Evernote collections are in desperate need of a dedicated archiving tool.