Tamagotchi

OCR recognition of the content of PDF attachments are seen by many as essential as it permits full document searches. Evernote Premium account shines as it is one of the few noting apps that can do this (but Nimbus, DevonThink and Microsoft OneNote do it too). There is a difference between OCR of a PDF for search indexing as opposed to OCR conversion to a text file. A search index is only good for search. That is the limitation of Evernote. Far better is OCR to a text file conversion. Good document scanners will do this. Fujitsu ScanSnap has the Abby OCR software included free. A text file can be processed with copy/paste which saves retyping or formatting. The other benefit of this is that it opens your note taking options. Insert text from OCR into any note taking app and it can become part of the normal workflow. My point: taking time to OCR scan a document can bring great benefits in the short and long run.

Imagine atoms in a primordial soup. It may be the same atoms there today, but what makes life interesting is how they have been arranged. Information is a little like those atoms. Its value comes from how it has been organised. Note taking software is all about organising information. Evernote has had great success linking information with tags. Here is a comparison of tags versus bidirectional links. Bidirectional links have gain popularity in recent years with Notion, Roam, Obsidian and RemNote. The links related information in two notes and permit you to jump back and forwards between them. How do links compare to tags? Tags can be used to link notes. A tag search returns a sorted list. It is a linear structure. With bidirectional links, a concept can be linked to other notes in which it is found. It is a hub and spoke arrangement. Both are the same though, a label connects nodes (1:n relationship). Dynamic (saved) searches Imagine searching for the tag "dog" (#dog) and another for the concept "dog" connecting to same notes with links ([[dog]]). A search "find #dog" or "find [[dog]]" generates the same list. Changing the mechanism does not change the result. Hierarchy Our information atoms can be connected in a hierarchical chain. From top to bottom: B - E - K- A - G - C - H - D - I. This captures the relationship between the information. We commonly have a second hierarchy. A "folder" contains "notes" and "notes" contain "paragraphs" (folder - notes - paragraphs). Using square brackets to block together folders [] and round brackets to block together notes (), there are many ways to show the same relationships. [B - E - K- A - G] - (C - H - D) - I : 5 nested folders, 3 nested documents and 1 paragraph. [B - E] - (K- A - G) - C - H - D - I : 2 nested folders, 3 nested documents and 4 nested paragraphs. Choosing one over the other is a matter of preference and convenience only. Comparing Evernote with RemNote Both Evernote and RemNote use the same concepts but with different terminology that can be confusing. Comparing Evernote with RemNote terminology, a folder in Evernote is still called that in RemNote, but Evernote Note is a RemNote Document and a paragraph in RemNote is called a Rem. Just as in Evernote you can have different types of a paragraph (normal, bullet, check box, header and numbered) and, so too, RemNote has these types of Rem. The differences start here. In RemNote everything is a Rem and there are other Rem types: Linking types: Tag, Reference (link), Portal (iframe concept) Hierarchical types: Folder, Document and normal "text" Linking types connect Rem. Tags are clear. References are bidirectional links. A Portal is a window in a document showing Rem found elsewhere. You can not only see the Rem but change them in the Portal. Hierarchy revisited Hierarchial relationships between information were discussed above. RemNote has the same of Folder, Document, etc but the Rems only differ in type. So it is possible to switch between following by simply promoting the Documents to Folders and "paragraph" Rem to Documents. [B - E - K- A - G] - (C - H - D) - I : 5 nested folders, 3 nested documents and 1 paragraph. [B - E] - (K- A - G) - C - H - D - I : 2 nested folders, 3 nested documents and 4 nested paragraphs. What can be promoted, you can also be demoted. It is a simple change. So why have folders? We are familiar with folders shown in the left sidebar and it provides some level of visual organisation. Apart from the visualisation, nested documents do the same thing. Network thinking Roam, Obsidian and RemNote have shift way from hierarchical visualisation of folders to visualisation of links. RemNote still has the hierarchy and Documents can be made visible as folders at any time just by changing the Rem type. The emphasis on networks made up of bidirectional links makes folders less important, however. Conclusion: tags or links As both References (links) can fulfil the same function as Tags in RemNote, there is little reason to use Tags. Emoji are also References. A Reference can be any concept." 🙂 smile" is a Reference in RemNote.

Does Evernote 6.25 permit export of files in the markdown format? HTML is not the same. Alternatively is it possible to convert the complete contents of a ENEX export to markdown? Thank you

If you choose a superior tag from the tag list, we would expect Evernote to find notes with the superior tag and those tags below it. On the hierarchy tree, there are branches with tags found on only that branch and no other. Branches which have only have the parent tag in common. Evernote Legacy shows this as "matched anything of the following, tagged with" and then list of tags from the tree. This is an OR function. Evernote 10 (browser) takes the superior tag makes a long list of tags and then ANDs them altogether. Predictably, there is nothing found. Does anybody a plausible idea why Evernote 10 is like this, and when is it going to be fixed?

TLDR or tldr, TL;DR, tl;dr too long; didn’t read: used in response to an online post, text message, article, etc., that is thought to be too lengthy, and usually taken as a rude comment, or used by the writer before a summary of lengthy text. No it is not really, but just not targeted at you. 🙂

Very helpful. Thank you.

One of the problems of both Evernote and Notion is that the data is essential unstructured. Unstructured data is not very useful but that is the way we discover information. One of the reasons for a note taking app is to create structure in that chaos. Evernote and Notion do not provide or suggest structures and workflows. It requires us to think out our own. This makes Evernote and Notion very flexible but requires the user in awe before a mountain of data. Many people need help make headway and Evernote and Notion do not provide that help. Reading more widely requires only searching for workflows and frameworks. It takes a bit of time to do and the options are many. Some are widely used (Agile) and some less so (Getting Things Done). It is unlikely that anyone framework will cover all your needs but rather multiple are required. For example, I currently use the Getting Things Done model (now, next, soon, later, someday, waiting) to prioritise far too many tasks, pull these tasks through a Kanban Board (to do, doing, done) to get them done. With the right sort and the next task is always at the top of the list. Adding structure to the unstructured is tedious. Anything that takes the load from our shoulders is welcome. Shooting down the work is hard enough. An example of a helpful assistant is Filterize. Example of tag hierarchies As Evernote provides little help out of the box how to use it productively. How to start? It has all be done before by somebody else and tell us how. One of the great things about Filterize is that it identifies common workflows and describes how to use them. This example of tag hierarchies in Evernote illustrates what can be done. Many recognise that the potential of tags in Evernote is great. As Filterize puts it: "Evernote allows you to add tags to all of your notes. You can use tags to assign project information, note types, or mark related persons. Every user can create up to 100,000 tags in their Evernote account, while every note can have up to 100 assigned tags. So there is huge potential to organize your notes." A hierarchy can be useful but the Evernote requires the user to work out the best approach. Should we wish to do things efficiently then research, analysis, problem solving, and thought are required, weighing up options and disadvantages. Filterize has done this already. "The main drawback with hierarchical notes in Evernote is that hierarchies don’t influence the search. So if you search for the projects tag, only notes having this tag will be found. There are three common ways to handle this: Create a saved search with all project related tags, like any: tag:home tag:renovation tag:garden tag:work tag:vacation. Problem: You have to change it every time you create a new tag. Use a specific prefix for all hierarchical tags, like pr-home, pr-home-garden, pr-home-renovation, pr-work, and pr-vacation. Now you can find all your projects with the search tag:pr-* and all your home-projects with tag:pr-home-*. Problem: You have annoying long tags, and when you search for your notes related to the garden, you have to search for tag:pr-home-garden Add all tags in the hierarchy. For example, tag your garden notes with project, home, and garden. Problem: If you forget a parent tag, your search is broken." Found lacking The profound lack of functionality of most note taking apps represents a hurdle to get things done. Providing a digital bucket is of limited value. Information is of little value unless we do something with it. We have something in mind even before we start. The note taking app should try to help us get there with workflow options. Filterize is an example where a third party provides a service to provide suggestions and supports the implementation. Filterize offers much but is only a small sample of what could be done. It demonstrates the things that Evernote and Notion are lacking. Roam cult Roam is a remedy. Roam demonstrates that once workflows fall outside of the concept that they are neglected. For organising your thoughts, Roam is great but do not have the expectation to: send somebody an email, format a text so that it could be sent to a client or posted on a website, or even this forum, spell and grammar checking, and print something, should one be so old fashioned, Roam provides no help at all for these things. Even web clipping requires a third party browser add on which is crippled for lack of a Roam API. Getting things in and out of Roam is hard. Note taking apps are letting us done. We look for one and pay the mortgage for all eternity (SaaS) because we want to escape the monotony of mundane work. Unfortunately, the note taking apps fall short of our needs. A generic bucket does not get things done. Filterize is great idea but really and shows what is lacking in Evernote. Read more here. https://filterize.net/tag-hierarchy/

Yes, I have read of Java scripts used in a browser too for copy / pasting things. In the SaaS world, the cost of using multiple apps quickly mount up - from hundreds to thousands of dollars per annum. In the COVID cost cutting measure I reduce my annual subscription costs by 30% but still spend too much. It is not only about what is possible but what one can afford.

We have different preferences but some integrations may serve many. Readwise will copy highlights and notes from over a dozen different apps and synchronise the content with Evernote, Notion and Roam that preference architects, librarians and gardeners respectively (Anne-Laure Le Cunff model). Some of us have more than one preferences. Evernote is a magnificent bucket but the current UI does not enable efficient use. Is there another way to do it? Filterize may be familiar to some allows the structuring and labelling of notes in Evernote to be automated. If you are the architect or librarian you will likely make your own rules. Some people have as many as 100 rules. Alternatively switch on the AI and let it to do the work for you. The AI is well suited to gardeners who are looking for new connections. Be warned, the AI is slow to come back with recommendations if you have a lot of notes. https://whimsical.com/my-boards-EuAZz82HjxJrx7niL3nu9t

Thanks. Yes, I have read a bit about Chromium but did not appreciate this connection. Makes sense.

From reading the Evernote forum it is apparent that people use Evernote in very different ways. While it is true that each has their own way of doing things are preferences seem to have a lot to do with our personality. Anne-Laure Le Cunff captures this idea in her article. How to Choose the Right Note-Taking App by nesslabs.com - https://nesslabs.com/how-to-choose-the-right-note-taking-app Anne-Laure Le Cunff considers three types of note takers: architects, gardeners and librarians. This is what she means by this. "The architect. They enjoy planning, designing processes and frameworks, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily structure their ideas. The gardener. They enjoy exploring, connecting various thoughts together, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily grow their ideas. The librarian. They enjoy collecting, building a catalogue of resources and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily retrieve their ideas. " I have made similar observations in recent posts but here is a nice summary from the article. "There is no universally perfect note-taking app, and no note-taking app will do the work for you." "Choosing a note-taking app doesn’t have to be a black-and-white type of process. It is likely your use case is at the intersection of several apps, and that you may need to use two or more of them in combination to achieve your goals." Many work through and identify a core feature set for a note taking app. Many auxiliary functions can be added with integrations. This comes up a lot in this forum. What I think is too often ignored is the importance of personal style. The way we enjoy working that is important as we will get more out of the note taking app that better suits us. We need to try it on to see if it fits. This is the idea behind this article. "Because features don’t mean anything when considered in a vacuum, we are going to look at the benefits of certain note-taking apps based on your own note-taking style." What type are you? Do you have more than one of these preferences?

Note taking apps all have their strengths and weaknesses which is good as everybody can find something but nobody will find the perfect app. We settle rather for the best fit. There is no reason accept the deficits of an app when it has in API. An API opens the door for the enterprising to create functionality to compliment that of the app. Many have done this and provide the function to others as apps in their own right. Imagine workflow where you are a researching from many different sources. This may be for a client, academic work or as a student. The reading volume is very large and only a small amount of it is useful for what you are to write so that the task is to capture these highlights in a single location with links back to the original should the highlight become important or require further investigation. This process can go on for hours, days, weeks and even months depending on the scope of the work. A web post of just a few hundred works requires considerably less work. The workflow should be scalable so that it can grow to complete the task. Memory is a poor substitute. Web research is aided by Instapaper - a competitor to pocket. Capture the web page in the browser with a click and read later. Highlight what is relevant. The Instapaper API then lets you connect it to everything else. Kindle is well known but less so is that the highlights from the kindle are available on Kindle Cloud Reader. Whisper synchronise the book markets between Kindle and Audible. The newer Kindles play Audible files via Bluetooth. Readwise is an integration and less an app that will synchronise Instapaper and Kindle Cloud with Notion, Evernote or Roam. The strength of Evernote and Notion should not be seen as just the app itself with its limitations but rather how they are the trunk of a tree with many branches that draw information in from many other apps. Evernote and Notion allow you to create your own ecosystem. If you think it this way then the choice of note taking app has far less to do with the function it has and the UI, although a minimum functionality is required but rather, as an enabler to gather information from and share to the best of apps for niche functions. These niche functions may never be made available in Evernote but it does not matter as they are available now in another app. Seen in this way then we choose an app for the trunk of our tree which is many branches, through a public API, integrations, and iframes. Evernote and Notion are well suited for this purpose. New apps are popping up all the time that can work with Evernote and Notion in this way. IFTTT Is not new but a good example. It will copy your highlights from Instapaper to Evernote better than Readwise and can do much more besides. Read more here: https://ifttt.com/ What other apps do you use with Evernote?

Apple Silicon is coming and the apps will use Electron. Better hardware and slower software. It may seem a strange choice. In the modern world teams and distribution channels are more important than local data. "software-based companies are focused on serving as large of a market as possible, the better to leverage their investments in creating the software in the first place. " Here is an article of interest. Apple’s Shifting Differentiation by Ben Thompson - 11 November 2020 https://stratechery.com/2020/apples-shifting-differentiation/ Highlights below: Meanwhile, it is the cloud that is the real problem facing Sketch: Figma, which is built from the ground-up as a collaborative web app, is taking the design world by storm, because rock-solid collaboration with good enough web apps is more important for teams than tacked-on collaboration with native software built for the platform. Apple’s performance trajectory and unquestioned execution over these years is what has made Apple Silicon a reality today. Anybody looking at the absurdness of that graph will realise that there simply was no other choice but for Apple to ditch Intel and x86 in favour of their own in-house microarchitecture – staying par for the course would have meant stagnation and worse consumer products. The fly in Sketch’s celebratory ointment is that phrase “even macOS itself has evolved”; the truth is that most of the macOS changes over Sketch’s lifetime — which started with Snow Leopard, regarded by many (including yours truly) as the best version of OS X — have been at best cosmetic, Instead, the future is web apps, with all of the performance hurdles they entail, which is why, from Apple’s perspective, the A-series is arriving just in time. Figma in Electron may destroy your battery, but that destruction will take twice as long, if not more, with an A-series chip inside! The vast majority of these apps, though, are made by 3rd-party developers, which means, by extension, 3rd-party developers are even more important to the success of the iPad than Apple is: Apple provides the glass, developers provide the experience. I remain convinced that the lack of a thriving productivity software market that treated the iPad like the unique device Jobs thought it was, instead of a laptop replacement, is the biggest reason why. the commoditization of software inherent in web apps will work to Apple’s favor, This is why many software-based companies are focused on serving as large of a market as possible, the better to leverage their investments in creating the software in the first place. Sixteen years on from the PowerPC-to-Intel transition, and Apple’s software differentiation is the smallest it has been since the dawn of OS X. Meanwhile, most customers use web apps on their computers, PC or Mac. There has been an explosion in creativity, but that explosion has occurred on smartphones, and is centered around distribution channels, Android is more flexible and well-suited to power users, and much better integrated with Google’s superior web services; there are strong arguments to be made for both ecosystems. Google’s photo-processing software is generally thought to be superior. What makes the iPhone a better camera, though, is its chip. It is difficult to overstate just how far ahead Apple’s A-series of smartphone chips is relative to the competition; AnandTech found that the A14 delivered nearly double the performance of its closest competitors for the same amount of power — indeed, the A14’s only true competitor was last year’s A13.

Merits of tagging There are different ways to organise notes but the best for me have always been tags. Tags are links to thoughts I have in my head. It connects my brain with my second brain built on a note taking app. I have always found that simple keyword searches generate a rather random result. Notebooks I have found laborious. Why not tags? But tags in recent years may have fallen into disrepute. Tiago Forte was of the opinion that tagging is a waste of time - see the article "Tagging is broken" (11 February 2015). https://fortelabs.co/blog/tagging-is-broken/ Readwise supported the use of tags in the blog: "How to Tag Your Highlights While You Read" by Daniel Doyon (16 May 2018) https://blog.readwise.io/tag-your-highlights-while-you-read/ "Distilling a highlight down to a single keyword or forging an association between a passage and something you're working on are both forms of actively engaging with what you're reading. And actively (rather than passively) reading is essential to getting more of what you want out of books." Daniel Doyon critiqued Tiago on note taking too: "Tiago might argue that if you've had an idea with merit, you need not write it down because surely you will have the same great idea again later. ("I practically never write down my own thoughts. I assume if I thought it once, I'll probably think of it again. And probably better next time.") To each his own. I'm one of those people who benefits from sometimes writing down thoughts and ideas." Me too. Ideas are fleeting and good ones should be noted down in my opinion and preferably developed too. Why I use tags With a tag, you are grouping similar things. One tag will not help much as there can be over a thousand notes with this tag. Use 3 or 4 tags together (with a logical AND function) and you can end up with a quite small number of notes and they are all very, very similar. I not only find the note I was looking for but also other notes that could be helpful too. You discover a gold mine of stuff you may have forgotten about. Tagging is about giving a text a personal context: “for me it means this.” Tags allow you to structure a search in the way you think. The tagging makes finding things intuitive. Benefits of tags Tags go beyond a keyword text search which are limited to the words in the text. Here are a few: Traditional the association between a folder and note is unique. Tags allow multiple associations. Logically, notes marked with the tag FolderA or FolderB to do the same. Standardise spellings - some words have different spellings and particularly regional spellings (-or vs -our, -ise vs -ize). It is much quicker to tag than "correct" spellings in the original document. Sometimes the wrong word may be used or spelt incorrectly - such as common misspellings ('coarse' or 'course'). A single tag can be used to mark text of the same language or same source. In later searches, this makes them easier to find. Generic terms come up everywhere but some words have different meanings depending on the context and often technical meanings. Tags allow you to find a subset of meanings. Eg. tag:economics AND efficiency. In economics, the word “efficiency” has a technical meaning that has nothing to do with the general understanding of the term. Two or more words have the same meaning. An example, from economics: market liberalism = economic rationalism = Thatcherism = Reaganism. It is all the same thing and just regional variations if you keep the tags very short, preferably one word, you can use set theory and boolean algebra to reduce the selection from thousands to just a few and refine searches. The basic Boolean algebra operations (AND, OR, NOT) are few but combined with nesting very powerful. It pretty standard finding the same word in noun, adjective or verb form in different notes and usually the spelling will be different for each grammatical form. These variations can be again marked with a single tag. Tags capture associations that may go beyond the original article. Articles are written for a particular audience and have a specific purpose but when you read them it, you may find relevance beyond that. Tags allow you to collect notes under one topic in any way you like, independent of the original intention of the article. Why do you use tags?

Using note taking software as an external brain. Where our brain falls short Efficient workflows for gathering and synthesising information are important for information workers. Our memory is less than perfect. Here is one approach outlined by Readwise in three blog posts. Quotes: Integrate might also mean enhanced creativity resulting from the serendipitous juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas. Creativity is notoriously hard to pin down, but some have suggested that it is nothing more than making connections that no one else has noticed. As they say, "You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just attach it to a new wagon." The concept of a reading workflow might also sound somewhat theoretical, but if you look closely, they're actually quite common in practice. From Maria Popova's idea index to Ryan Holiday's commonplace book to Tiago Forte's Progressive Summarization, great readers across time have relied on clever, external systems to compensate for their inherent forgetfulness. In fact, it is rare to meet a great reader who hasn't developed some sort of reading workflow (whether they call it that or not). Learn more here: How to Actually Use What You Read From <https://blog.readwise.io/reading-workflow-part-1/?ref=dashboard> Notion approach with Windows heritage Notion does much but not everything. With integration and embedding, it is the centre of an information system that enables new creative outputs. Below are two mind maps: what it can do, and how to make it work. Notion does not have workflows predefined. You will have to think it out yourself. This is why it is useful to design workflow around proven frameworks. Agile would be one example of something that could be done in Notion. In this case, the task is the gathering of information from many sources, linking it togethering, finding it again, and synthesising the information to produce many useful outputs. This could be a video script, a report, a webpage post, academic research, or writing a book. Notion - what it can do - features of Notion https://whimsical.com/notion-what-it-can-do-7fh2vXKePCXo4d2iNbn3Ls Notion - making it work for this workflow https://whimsical.com/notion-making-it-work-QhrZR8fGutmfvAssVE54U3

We are not comparing Evernote 10 to the black plague (ie the end of the world) but rather we are comparing Evernote 10 to other note taking apps. Evernote is not competitive to other possibilities available in the market currently. I think it unattractive for new users. Those that have a workflow built on on Evernote and a history working with it may put up with Legacy for now in the hope that Evernote 10 gets better, but at a price. We could also narrow the comparison to not taking apps free plans. With Evernotes symbolic upload limit of 60MB, the free plan is as good as useless. Compare the Evernote paid plan $10 per month with other things available on the market and we see other note taking apps are cheaper and offer just at much, if not more, although it will not be exactly the same features. An unsupported product means the product may break unexpectantly as a result of the development of Evernote 10 (update) and the problem will not be fixed. Take the Apple OS example - Evernote software updated and no rollback, no warning given. Vulnerabilities and exploits is another issue. There is no chat/email support for unsupported software. Evernote 10 development could break Legacy synchronisation. If you have walked out to an island it is not wise to wait until the tide comes back in. There is a reason why people use and pay for supported software. Finally, there is an opportunity cost here. Time spent fighting with Evernote could be use to learn something new. :-)

Hi. I agree with your comments. Evernote has presented us with an ultimatum. It was a rude awakening for many. One would think after all those years of use that they would value us as a customer. The indifferent communication from Evernote would indicate otherwise. If they were clever they would have at least pretended to care. The second point is the technical deficiencies of this "beta" product. The good news is there are other ways to do the same thing we have done with Evernote in the past. It is inconvenient to have to leave what was a good thing but the discussion from this forum, from those who know software development better than I, suggest there is no way back. Evernote may get things working but not without some losses. I wish them all the best. I need to continue my business as usual and I cannot do that on Evernote. Coming from Windows and Android perspective, I have found that Notion and OneNote serve my needs. Both have their strengths and work on any platform or device. I can buy the phone, tablet and PC that suits my needs, or continue using the existing ones, and are not locked into an ecosystem. OneNote is native on the Windows PC with local data storage, synchronisation, OCR, annotations and easy sharing through Outlook.com. It has become my document management tool. Typing in a text as speed works well too as it is easily capable of keeping up with the pace. OneNote has a good editor so that I can tidy it up and make it look suitably professional as well, before sharing it in some way - except with social media and messaging. I do not draw things much as I more the spreadsheet and charts sort of guy but drawing is there for those who feel they wish to get creative. Notion has taken time to get my head around but is exceptional for task and project management. It is a database and not a project management software as such but allows great flexibility to tailor the functions around my workflows and thinking. Notion allows notes as pages and web compatible editing features including embed (iframes). It is designed for teamwork. Saved searches are supported by views. It always feels self-made like Excel, no matter how much formatting you put in. Excel never lets us quite hid the spreadsheet and Notion never lets us quite hide the database. I think that might be alienating for some. I like Notion because if I have an idea of how I want things I can usually find a way of quickly doing it without breaking anything or coding. For taggers, the big shift moving from Evernote to Notion or OneNote will be tag support. I was a tagger and had to rethink how things would be done. For OneNote that is a note taking approach with pages sorted into notebooks/sections/pages/subpages and OCR search. For Notion, I analysed the function of the tags as I used them and then created database fields that recreated that function. Through the imported tags for Evernote to fill those fields via ctrl-A mass selection of notes. Finding things is done with Notion powerful boolean expression. More technically they are filters that allow a complex selection and nest conditions: A AND (B OR (C AND D NOT empty)). There are limitations compared to a proper database selection. Adding another field to save intermediate results. An EXCLUDE check box is useful (toggle) as it allows in a preliminary search to exclude items - first through selection and then afterwards handling individual tailoring - before viewing, narrowing what remains through a filter. Notion for research Web research, web clipping, and annotation of notes is good with Notion. One an 8th generation (2020) iPad it is faster than clipping with OneNote on PC. iPad ( 6, 7, 8 ) support the Apple Pencil (Generation 1) too. In the Gallery view, a preview of the notes is displayed along with note attributes. The notes can be sorted, read, edited highlight. After getting the thoughts in order useful material can be transferred back to OneNote for the business end of things. For students, some other app may be better as it lacks automatic capture and referencing of quotes which are part of any academic work. With a handful of sources, it may be manageable but with dozens, it will quickly become unworkable.

Evernote 10 is currently a poor and unpopular product as the discussion in this forum demonstrates. Evernote 10 is a placebo, a work in progress, and Legacy dead software (unsupported). Read the post.

Here I note the dominance of Windows in the PC market and consider the example Notion/OneNote as an Evernote 10 replacement on Windows PC with Android phone and iPad as mobility options. Apple remains a minor play in the PC market Reading this forum, it seems that Macs are a large share of Evernote users. This impression may be due to the English language and Macs market share in North America. Now important are other PCs? A little casual research showed that the vast majority of the PCs worldwide use Windows OS (over 80%). Further research shows the worldwide sales of Apple are tiny compared to other manufactures of PCs. See the third quarter sales of 2020 in the graph below. This has been true since 2015, at least. Source: Gartner. Looking for Windows 10 solutions The purpose of this post is not to a critique of Apple or Mac users or the quality of the Apple product. Rather, the market dominance of the PCs and Windows OS is just as relevant as it ever. If Evernote would like to make money, it will need a good Windows PC product. DevonThink is a great note taking software but is a Mac product. The holy grail for Windows PC users is to find a good, stable Windows 10 equivalent with local storage. Evidence in this forum suggests this may not be one app but a number of apps that to provide a full functionality that is available now and thinking how best to work with it. Here is one suggestion of how Notion and OneNote strengths are combined. Case study Using the best of each: OneNote and Notion together. Using multiple tools and playing to there strengths. The process is batch so that each step of 30 to 60 minutes requires the use of only one device and one app. The workflow does not require jumping between apps. Which is used for what? Browsers Chromium browsers: Edge and Chrome - Chrome addons work on both. Edge has Microsoft services integrated and Chrome those of Google. Chromium should get updates about every 6 weeks. OneNote Reading is done on an iPad. PDFs are prepared for reading on the PC by printing to OneNote. This stage can include annotation of PDF. Apple Pencil (1st generation) works on an inexpensive iPad. Notion Planning is done in Notion Web research and clipping with Chrome and Notion Transfer of data of content for reading and annotating with export to PDF and then print to OneNote. Office functions with Outlook.com Email, calendar, task lists, day planning, correspondence. Cloud storage OneDrive 1TB free for OneNote Google Drive for Notion embedded files (iframe) Mobile usages Android phone from 2020 but not an expensive one and works like a dream. Weak point Social networks and messaging integration. Looking for solutions for that. Total cost $2000 - priced in the last week New office PC $1000 New Andriod $350 New iPad $650 Subscriptions Office 365 - 5 users (the whole family), 1TB cloud storage - about $130 per annum Notion - free account OneNote - native app with local storage included in Office 365 Outlook.com - free Android apps - free Cloud storage - included in Office 365 Evernote as archive Serves an archive for work completed between 2010-2020 All notes from this period have been imported for this period into Notion and OneNote too. Free account so not cost for this archive

Legacy is a unsupported software. Contact support and they will tell you to install Evernote 10. Some people still use Internet Explorer too. Unsupported software is dead software. There is no guarantee that Evernote will get there act together. Recent history would say not. There are alternatives. In the dynamic tech change is a permeant. A little adaption on our part is required to consider new ways of doing the same work if we are not to become tech dinosaurs.

The forum is full of discussions like this and many of the problems existed in the beta months and were "never fixed."

Considering how much effort we put into our notes, it would be nice to easily share them. There are so many note taking apps that it is very likely that the person with whom you share is not using the platform of your choice. You could suggest that they sign up on a free account but that is not likely to happen. People are creatures of habit, they use what they have always used. “What is best is that with which I am familiar.“ It is foolhardy of note taking apps to think people will sign up for serendipitous exchanges. A good note taking app should have the flexibility to share with social media. To some extent, this is provided by the OS, particularly in a browser on mobiles. Spotify is an app that encourages sharing with direct sharing to Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, Telegram, Skype, tumblr, copy album link, copy embedded code, and copy spotify URL. Social media use varies between countries so that the list needs to be quite long. For example, the king of all apps in Germany is WhatsApp. Surely, WhatsApp should be included as one of the options. Social media usage in Germany (% of the population - source Statista, 11/11/2020) WhatsApp 94% Messenger 51% Skype 15% Telegram 13% Theema 3% Signal 2% Integration with note taking apps The presumption here is for sharing you do not need an account with the note taking app. This allows "passive sharing" where I can share from the note app of my choice to a customer/person without them having to do anything to get it. I adjust to their habits and I do not expect them to adjust to mine. "How can I best contact you," is worth asking. OneNote – email Notejoy – Slack Notion – none Evernote 10 – email not supported any more :-( Email is necessary but not good enough I know of people who check personal email every few days or even just on weekends. Send a message with social media of THEIR choice and they will get back to you quickly - from minutes to hours. Email is good for business but it increasingly does not serve the needs of a broader and particularly the younger community well. If Evernote is to survive it needs to broaden its horizon for popular, mass-market appeal.

OneNote search syntax from tests The default for a multiword search on the Windows 10 Office 365 OneNote native app is the boolean operator AND but the default for a multiword search on OneNote browser app is the boolean operator OR. Crazy but true. Different versions of OneNote have different search functionality. Improving search has been a feature request since 2014 and little has changed in the last five years. As previously discussed, Evernote style tag searches are extremely limited therefore cannot be recommended. What works best is the old fashion "notebook" method. A hierarchical structure of "folders" is created and the notes dropped into them to create order. For OneNote permits levels: notebook, grouped section, section, page, subpage. Search can be narrowed to the notebook, section or page. Macros can be applied to the notebook, section or page but also selected sections. File graveyard One person described SharePoint as a file graveyard. They were referring to their own experience that things are hard to find due to a weak search function. The way one person files things rarely makes sense to anybody else. One becomes reliant on one's memory and the memory of others with a weak search. This comment may also apply for OneNote. Keywords must match to find anything at all. The search is not case sensitive. There are no recommendations for similar spellings. SYNTAX FROM TESTS Windows 10 Office 365 OneNote native app This works: CAT OR DUCK OR EMU CAT AND DUCK AND EMU = cat duck emu "CAT EMU" General rules: AND and OR operators only permitted but they cannot be mixed in the same boolean expression. The search does not distinguish between upper and lower case. Does not work: Boolean operator AND and OR in the same string. OneNote browser app Using the browser app-only options are "CAT EMU" or without quotation marks. Without quotation marks is the boolean operator OR (not AND as for the native app).

When choosing a note taking app, it is not only the core functionality that is important but the integration with other services and the ability for the user to add augmented functionality so as not to be hostage to feature roadmap. · Core functionality – what comes out of the box - standard · Integration – provided through an ecosystem and addons - easy · Augmented functionality – functionality that is user specific – with some effort Evernotes API is currently troubled. I assume here that it is working. Your comments are welcome. :-) Note taking app Core functionality Integration Augmented functionality What is lacking Evernote 10 Online, web clipping, folders, tags, rich search, OCR, multi-device, multi-OS, notes history, note annotation, familiar branding. Google provides email, calendar, task management, team sharing and cloud storage Evernote has an API which is used to synchronise with Notion. This forum could provide other examples. Native apps (slow) and local storage, cannot select multiple items, email sharing and more. Maturity and stability. OneNote Whiteboard integrating all media types. Online, web clipping, folders, search, OCR, multi-device, multi-OS, notes history, native app performance on Windows 10, note annotation, email sharing, good editor. Outlook.com provides seamless integration with email, calendar, task management, team sharing and cloud storage Onetastic macro library for power functions in a whiteboard environment No tags, no rollback. Risky to use macros that overwrite text. Notion Database with attached webpages. Online, web clipping, database, rich search, multi-device, multi-OS. Rollback permits correction of errors, good editor. Embedding with Micro, Google Drive, Google Documents, YouTube, etc. Evernote content synchronises quickly with Notion via API. Notion is a database that allows, with a little knowledge and no coding, to build folders, tags, save searches, and project management functionality. No OCR. Search does not include attachments or URLS (YouTube) in the notes pages. No email sharing or print function. Google email, calendar and tasks are not integrated with Notion. Nimbus Online, web clipping, folders, OCR, multi-device, multi-OS, familiar UI. Limited None Native apps (slow) and local storage, basic search and no tags. Limited integration.

Each to their own. It is however quite easy to focus on what is lost with a switch but NOT the gain. Other apps have other strengths that Evernote never and may never have. As for the future nothing is certain. All we know is what is available now. We cannot know what Evernote will do and they have not committed to a roadmap in any way. I hope your strategy pays out for you.