Raphael Sason

This morning, I opened up Evernote to create some notes about a project that I am the leader for. As I started writing, it became apparent that an outline form would be more appropriate. So I clicked on the bullet icon, and started adding thoughts and ideas in a bulleted format. When I was looking over the document, I realized that I needed to move some of the bullets around. So I clicked on one of the bullets, and tried to drag it up, but nothing happened. Of course not. Because your app does not support true outlining functions like Workflowy. Please understand that this is not a letter of complaint, but a letter of admiration for the work you have done on your app and a plea to be a little more responsive to the needs of your users. I’ve been a premium member of your app for some years and during those years I turned many others on to it. I used it to collaborate in joint projects, also used it for sharing documents that I want feedback on. I absolutely love using the clipper extension on my browser for saving various versions of a webpage to Evernote. It has been one of my primary go-to apps for doing research and organizing. However… However, I am writing in the past tense because, as my work has evolved, so has my needs, and I am finding that I have to lean on a couple of other apps these days to make my work easier for me and my collaborators. There are specific shortcoming of EN that have driven me to rely more on other apps. I have written to support in the past about some of these, and while there was some upgrades that made it easier for users (list view at top, duplicating notes, etc), the blaring one that has not been addressed is the outline function. I sent this to you back in 20150710 "I love that I can create documents in outline form, both bulleted and numbered. It is my preferred way of sorting a complex project into its sub-sections, etc. It would be so much better/easier/faster if I had the ability to move bulleted items up and down and re-arrange a list, again, without having to cut and paste. Sometimes, when I have an outline with multiple indents, C&P gets a little cumbersome and sometimes it just does not work. I really don't like having to use the MS Word to work with my lists/outlines, etc, but currently that is my only choice, unless I am not aware of how to move around a list/outline." Of course, not too long after I wrote that, I discovered WorkFlowy, which by far has the best outlining technology I’ve come across, making MS Word totally obsolete in that respect. Unfortunately, Workflowy does not have the formatting and note management ability of EN or Scrivener. So I use both EN and WorkFlowy, which gets a little cumbersome, because they don’t (can’t?) talk to each other. And then there is the limited text processing functions of EN. I have now taken to using GoogleDocs, which has almost totally replaced MS Word for me, for creating work that needs collaborator’s input and comments. I find it a lot easier to convince many partners to use GoogleDocs for sharing and collaborating, there is no emailing, no back and forth. I write an article, give various sharing options to others, and I get their comments in real time, sometimes as I am writing the document. And since apparently everyone out there uses GoogleDocs, and the learning curve is almost none, everyone so far has agreed to use GoogleDocs to collaborate on a document. So in my world, I use Evernote for clipping articles for reference -both on my iPhone and Mac; I use Evernote for creating Stacks, Notebooks and Notes for each Department and Division of my work that I am responsible for; I use Evernote for jotting down insights, ideas, etc. as they come to me. This part EN does wonderfully. However, I also have to use Workflowy to organize my universe of duties, functions and work activities, because I can very easily isolate a group of functions, and move each step around in their outline form, and create docs that I can publish and share. Of course it totally lacks in word processing functions. And for that I use Google Docs, like I would have used MS Word in the past, to Write. Write letters, write proposals, write stories, write essays, etc. While I understand that Evernote can’t be all things to all people, it would be such a super app if it at least incorporated some (all) of Workflowy’s features in the outlining department. Have you thought about acquiring Workflowy? Of course there is always the possibility that Google will acquire both Evernote and Workflowy and make GoogleDocs the THE leader in document creating and sharing. Love to get some feedback or response to this post.