VoidSerpent

Tags are NOT a more recent advancement, I know from experience that if you were to step inside an old professor's office who still uses filing cabinets you'll see folders and tags have been around 50+ years, before we started trying to figure out the best way to organize digital information, there are no new concepts involved here, just modifications to analogue techniques. So why not modify and implement sectioning like you'd see in a binder/notebook that is itself thoroughly tagged and filed in a labelled cabinet drawer? I have implemented a new tag naming system, as suggested, but it is still insufficient so I opened my mind to where things could be improved and notebook sectioning is still what I would do. If anything your mind is closed to all other possibilities that should be explored to improve the product instead of trying to assimilate users to use it as is when ultimately it will still fail to meet their needs. Tags and Folders should be used and improved upon with equal significance. I think too many people fall back on "nothing is perfect" or "you can't please everyone" and stop trying to improve at all. Those nice little aphorisms are good for the psyche and to help one sleep at night but bad for the work ethic.

The searching from the global level with or without sections would be almost identical, going off my original example, if I wanted to filter down with a search to Credited Income notes for Client 1; With Tags notebook:"Client 1" tag:Income tag:Credit With Sections notebook:"Client 1" section:Income tag:Credit But users want to be able to click and view instead of search, so with sections, I could select "Work > Client 1 > Income" and scan for the credit tagged notes or even do a simpler local search for "tag:Credit". Without Sections Income and Expenses would all be under Client 1 and an extra tag is still needed in a local search if viewing the Client 1 notebook. I also want to mention now, I thought earlier that you could create Child Tags of the same name under different parent tags, this is not true. So from my original example, "Income", "Expenses", "Donation" and "Credit" are four unique tags regardless of if any exist as the parent or child of another, and have to be applied individually regardless of inheritance.

Even with tags, I am constantly wishing I could Visually group my notes into sub-categories that don't require a complex search string to identify. I prefer to think of the Sub-Notebook more like a Section maybe... So as of now we have; Stacks (Multiple Notebooks) Notebook (Multiple Notes) but I think I would personally prefer Stacks (Multiple Notebooks) Notebook (Multiple Sections) Section (Multiple Notes) Tags are ok, but I can't visually narrow down to what I need to from a Tag level unless I create a rather convoluted search. A very simple example I can give based on a comment I saw (or maybe it was the original description); Work (Stack) Client 1 (Notebook) Income (Section/Tag) Expenses (Section/Tag) Client 2 (Notebook) Income (Section/Tag) Expenses (Section/Tag) I could add tags "Income" and "Expenses" to the relevant notes within each Client Notebook, but then the search is [notebook:"Client 1" tag:Income] because the Income Tag will be used across multiple notebooks, across multiple stacks even, or I have to view Client 1 and sort by Tags. I admit that the Search Functionality in Evernote allows for tons of customization that would allow for this behavior, but the end-user experience should be taken into account, not everyone can set up the perfect search; most people can organize their thoughts by groupings though. That simple example can get complicated fast once you start adding in other tags that would work better if there were sectioning and not child tags. Income and Expenses could have tags for "Credit", "Rebate", "Donation" and others that would need to be nested either within the parent Tags or set aside as their own tags requiring two tags minimum, now we have [notebook:"Client 1" tag:Income tag:Donation] (I have not used nested Tags yet so my example is based on experience) that must be used instead of quickly looking at the Income Section for Client 1 and picking out the notes tagged with Donation. Try visualizing this example, and how you might optimize it, with tags alone; Work (Stack) Client 1 (Notebook) Income Credit Rebate Donation Expenses Credit Rebate Donation Client 2 (Notebook) Income Credit Rebate Donation Expenses Credit Rebate Donation Home (Stack) Spouse 1 (Notebook) Income Credit Rebate Donation Expenses Credit Rebate Donation Spouse 2 (Notebook) Income Credit Rebate Donation Expenses Credit Rebate Donation Can you see why a Section/Sub-Notebook/Folder would work better?