CalS

Asked for many times on the forum, hasn't made it to the top of the enhancement queue as yet unfortunately.

Sorry Cal, I don't see how having more Notebooks causes you to "have the more a pain search". No need to be sorry, as always different strokes for different folks. I simply view notebooks as the way to segregate notes for searches, not to fully organize the notes. So fewer notebooks makes sense in my world (assuming one puts like notes in the same notebook). And I would say the bulk of my searches are all notes, some are by stack, and rarely by notebook. But it ain't for everyone.

I understand that many would prefer a more hierarchical notebook structure. It just seems EN is disinclined to implement such a thing. IMHO, the more notes you have the more a pain search can become if you have a lot of notebooks/stacks. Notebooks and stacks segregate your notes in searches so if you didn't put it where you thought you did you won't find it. Then you end up doing an all notes search or something close. Tags don't segregate your notes, but if you tag something wrong, same issue and solution. So for me, as few notebooks and tags as possible is the solution. Currently I have 8 notebooks, 2 stacks, and 300 or so tags (named so I can remember them) with 30k notes. Typically I will get a search result with less than 20 notes which makes it easy to find what I was seeking. FWIW.

First try pressing sync icon on the home screen. Also, check to see if sync on wifi only is checked in Settings - General. If it is and you don't have wifi access things won't sync. If neither of these work go to Settings - Activity Log and see if there is an error of some sort.

In windows click on the notebook in list view, click on any note, Ctrl-A to select all notes, right click, select print, and then print to PDF selecting the new page per note option. Not sure if the equivalent print exists on Mac, and Cmd-A for Ctrl-A. FWIW,

Go to Tools - Options - Hot Keys and create your own Capture screen shortcut. As an example I have used Alt-P forever, not wanting to use the Windows key. FWIW.

Answering your question, not.for me. I use EN as a repository for stuff, from articles I've liked to statements to reference manuals to statements. I prefer as little structure as possible, very few notebooks and as few tags as possible. In my use case I typically don't want to build relationships amongst notes. When I do need that relationship I use links or a TOC. Otherwise I let the power of the search create the relationships on the fly. 30,000 notes at this point. OTOH, I could see other use cases where the note linkage you describe might be beneficial. Particularly if it had a strong visual component. FWIW.

I don't know why EN has opted not to extend the notebook hierarchy beyond the stack concept. Since this is page 38 of this thread there has been a lot of discussion re this concept in general. If it is really important to you to have a deeper folder hierarchy, EN might not be the tool that you want to use. However, I think you can still accomplish your goals, though in a slightly different way (read claw marks). Your call in the end obviously. To be clear I am a proponent of minimalist notebooks, using tags I can mostly remember (which means not too granular), and the power of the search engine. I think too many notebooks constrict searching, for my use case anyway. To your specific concerns. (1) Search the forum for various posts on notebooks vs tags, how to use tags, using keywords, etc. Many different methods embedded in those posts. (2) To discuss how to view tags I think I need to mention notebooks first. I view notebooks as containers for a large grouping of notes. I have six notebooks, 2 synched and 4 local (excluding INBOX and Scans which tend to be empty). Most of my synched notes are in one notebook the other is for receipts. This makes it easier to limit the search, but frankly most of my searches are at the All Notes level. I view the tags in EN as a grouping mechanism. Sometimes they can form a hierarchy. For example Accounts - Bank - Wells.Fargo is a three level tag hierarchy which includes Credit, Insurance and the like at the second level and all of the third level are actual companies. I use the same tag hierarchy concept for projects. End of the day though, it is the bottom level tag that makes a difference in searches. The rest is just for left panel display. Don't know if this is clear or answers your question, but I guess you could say I use tags in flat and hierarchical methods. A - For this I would create a stack containing all of your active notebooks and perform your searches with that as the context. Should you ever want to see all notes with the tag you can use All Notes as the context. No need to delete or rename any tags. B - When I start a new project I create a tag and add that tag to the shortcuts bar for quick access to work the project. I put the tag in my tag project hierarchy. I don't really move anything after that, I may add other tags to some of the notes, but often don't. No real need for any global re-categorization, the initial tag sets it up. Tags can definitely become clutter when they are too discrete, as can notebooks in my view. The last thing you want is a complex tag structure or a tag for every little thing. Easy to remember, oft used tags are the way to go. A tag should only have one meaning across all your data. For me notebooks and tags should enable a search which gets me to 25 or so notes (1 of which being the one I want) out of the largest possible context that I can then word search or scan if I like. I have 30k notes now. For me the note resides in EN in one of 6 notebooks which comprise two stacks. Tags and word searches are how I find the note. Oftentimes I work in EN without the left panel even showing (using the F10 option). So I guess I'm not as concerned where the note is as how do I find it. I may be taking the risk that you mention of being able to accidentally delete a tag and suffering the consequences. Safe so far. Same risk with notebooks as you state, difference being the notes are gone if you delete a notebook. Not a point I would make a decision on though. I will stress my methods are not for everyone. I'm okay conceptually using tags in a flat and hierarchical fashion, once I got my head wrapped around it. Works for me and my use case and that's about it. If any thing I would go for a Boolean search capability before more deeply nested notebooks. Workarounds for that are more painful.

@JM, 10-4.

Don't exactly know what triggered the resurrection of the hierarchical organizational debate, I was just wondering how the OP would handle changing insurance companies for an asset. People do things in different ways that feel comfortable to them, just trying to understand the OPs way. Been around the block long enough to know there is no ONE way.

How do you deal with the access to the asset if you change providers?

You don't want a new EN account, which I am inferring from your post. Just sign in to your "old" EN account on the new Android and the sync should start.

Yeah, but as soon as you access the note (if it is not in an offline notebook) you will download it. Or am I missing the point of the thread? It's happened before.

First check on the web to be sure the notes are there. If they are you might try modifying one of the notes on the iPad,or adding a temporary tag like Fix.It and then synching on the iPad and then your PC to see if it breaks the logjam. You can also check the activity log on your PC to see if there are any error messages in there. If it is the local DB on your desktop that somehow got out of "sync" then sometimes modifying a note forces the sync. If not reloading your DB to the PC ends up being the solution. As long as the notes are on the web.

And you could add a recurring reminder in FollowUpThen so as to get an email each day to be sure you review the note.

Yeah, can't argue with the Work Chat comments, cleaning up some bugs would make more sense to me. It may be more use case or style, @Yvel, but I think I am doing what you mention above. I have all of my receipts, statements, policies, tax returns and detail, manuals, reference materials, inventory pictures, etc. in EN. Almost 30k notes worth, 40% in local notebooks, 8 notebooks total. I don't have an archive tag nor an archived stack. I use tags to shrink the search pool and then text.to get to the 20-25 notes that contain what I am seeking. Would an archive function be beneficial, sure it would. I guess I react to statements like "really limits the value". Just would like to understand what has been tried and doesn't work. Inquiring mind kind of stuff. But again, it could just be my use case. FWIW.

Perhaps a listing of the things you cannot do without the feature that really limits the value to you would help the EN developers understand the use case.

Out of interest is meat brain a reference to the Terry Bisson short? I heard it on a podcast recently, I wonder how those beings would view this AI discussion?

I'm all for note level encryption, but I don't think we need to include "safe" computer protection in the mix. This can be managed with normal Windows screen saver password protection. Protect EN and everything else that's open on the home/work system.

You can add a row to the table and enter x's in the columns until you get the widths you want. Color the x's white and you don't see them. Example below. This will fix the width of the columns.

You got it Alan. I'm just using Excel as Excel, if you will forgive the phrasing, and EN as the central storage location to enable access from multiple platforms. Some might use Dropbox I suppose. I also get the benefits of historical backups and having the contents of the model being searchable. I have about 300 notes with spreadsheets in them, so not many. FWIW.

Cal: That's sure a novel approach using Excel as described. Would appreciate a clear example... would you mind conjuring up a little case study which we can all see? Thanks much in advance, ~ Alan Pretty simple Alan. I use EN tables for templates, like a phone call log, or to organize non computational information. For example I was an executor on an estate so a table of all the particulars of the interested parties was easy to set up and use. Anything that is data intense that I want to be able to get at on multiple platforms I put in Excel and then put that worksheet in a note. Then I can access it from any platform, though view only my phone/tablet. I don't expect EN to have the ultimate in table management options. They could definitely improve the editing and formatting capabilities of tables, but so far it works okay for my needs. We haven't hit the workaround pain threshold as yet.

Probably so. My table solution is less intricate than yours. I use EN for simple tables and everything else is in Excel as an attachment to a note. And I am willing for a low level of workaround aggravation to stay in one application. Also, probably too lazy to learn another.

Me thinks she was pulling your leg @dutch and giving you a compliment. I hope anyway.

Hi there, I think the only time I've mentioned the sync problem with EN is here - https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/73373-i-see-in-the-news-today-nov-4-2014-evernote-premium-price-may-change/page-4#entry351329 I could recover my lost work in the history of the note if I originally composed in the web version. If I composed in the desktop version, the losses were not recoverable. Some of the broken notes would end up in conflicting changes, but the lost data wasn't there. The troubleshooting process was primarily a matter of working on the web version vs desktop, reinstalling desktop version, and sending logs and app/browser versions over to EN support. They did what they could but it wasn't solved. It may work fine now, but I don't compose in EN anymore, so I don't know. I had one sync problem with ON from one device. I forget the details but I was able to solve it by following the steps in a KB article. I didn't need to get support involved. One advantage EN has over ON in my use case is that there are more integration options with IFTTT and Zapier. Making backups of my blog posts, youtube watch later videos, etc., just seems to work better with EN. I find it endlessly fascinating that people can have such different experiences with the exact same software. It really makes it tricky to find the ideal solution, because one person's sync horror story could scare another away to a product that they might in turn have a sync horror story, which they might have avoided going with the original software presented. It makes my brain hurt! Same here. I've had tag sync issues across time but no general sync disasters such as have appeared in the forum. It would be interesting to know what combination of EN software, other software on a machine, settings, communications and network, general experience level, and whatever else causes some to have such issues. Just good to be on the green grass side of the fence on this one.