Need workaround to accommodate lack of stackable notebooks...

[TheMagicWombat 68]

Every month I go through and assign various tags to articles to simulate stackable notebooks. At the end of the month, I want to move ALL current notes in a ... "location" to an archive.

So, imagine I have a MAIN tag, and then various assorted sub-tags. For convenience sake, let us call them MAIN-SUB1 through MAIN-SUB5. And I want them ALL to go to the archive, and no longer clutter  Main, and MAIN-SUB1 through MAIN-SUB5. I'd like to keep them categorized, but get them the hell out of my work area. Because I am forced to use tags to simulate stackable notebooks, I cannot simply drag them to an appropriate archive folder, as they will STILL have their original tags.

Aside from manually going through each and every article I have saved every month, and manually re-adjusting all of their tags, is there a way to delete say the tag MAIN-SUB1 from ALL notes currently tagged MAIN-SUB1 without deleting the tag every month and re-creating it to be used in the next batch of notes saved? (SInce that would destroy their classifications and leave them unsorted.)

 

 

 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

25 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

And I want them ALL to go to the archive, and no longer clutter  Main, and MAIN-SUB1 through MAIN-SUB5

I also have "archived tags".  My solution is to prefix the archive tags with x (xMain-Sub1)The tag isn't deleted, but it's moved to the bottom of the list

I exclude notes from searches using a tag -tag:!Archive, or -tag:x*

>>Aside from manually going through each and every article I have saved every month, and manually re-adjusting all of their tags

On my Mac, I can select multiple notes and perform a bulk process such as reassigning tags. For example, all notes with tag:Main-Sub1, reassign the tag to xMain-Sub1

[gazumped 11,657]

As I understand it (haven't tried this,  have no idea if it works - so test with a few copy notes first!!) notes in different Stacks can be excluded from searches.  So.  Create new stack / move notes en block / search with added term -stack:<newstackname> / job done (hopefully...)

If your notes span several notebooks,  you could add a new tag for each notebook name if that's important for you.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Aside from manually going through each and every article I have saved every month, and manually re-adjusting all of their tags, is there a way to delete say the tag MAIN-SUB1 from ALL notes currently tagged MAIN-SUB1 without deleting the tag every month and re-creating it to be used in the next batch of notes saved? (SInce that would destroy their classifications and leave them unsorted.)

Nope.  You can delete the tag but then you would add it back with the first use in the new month.  A date like prefix might help to keep the structure after you move the notes to the location.  You could either use it to begin with or rename the tags at the end of the month, Main to 1710Main for example.  Still have to recreate Main in the new month (or create a dummy note with all your monthly tags you import each month).  Nothing elegant for sure.

[TheMagicWombat 68]

So... No viable solution yet.

This really sucks because it is theoretically possible to simulate nested folders using tags, but it is beyond unwieldy to take .. say 50 notes OUT of a simulated folder (simulated using tags) without destroying the sort you have already created or manually editing each note. With nested folders, I would simply take everything in the folder:

Main.sub1.sub-sub1 

and move it to 

ZZZ Archive.Main.sub1.sub-sub1 

Doing that, if I have 10 sub-folders total, at the end of every month I have, at most, 10 moves of pre-sorted groups of files. Takes about 30 seconds and I am ready to start compiling notes for the next month.

Anyone got a viable work-around to do something like this in Evernote?

[DTLow 5,736]

30 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

it is beyond unwieldy to take .. say 50 notes OUT of a simulated folder (simulated using tags) without destroying the sort

On my Mac, I select the notes, then resassign to a different simulated folder

[CalS 5,280]

What other tags exist on the notes?  With the above do you add 10 folders a month to the archive or use just move notes to the 10 archive folders?  Said another way, how do you maintain the order in the archive?  Any current to archive and maintain structure will have some work without a search exclusion of some sort.

[TheMagicWombat 68]

34 minutes ago, DTLow said:

On my Mac, I select the notes, then resassign to a different simulated folder

Well, yes, moving them to a different folder is super simple. But what I am doing is trying to compensate for the lack of nested notebooks by using nested tags to emulate a nested notebook hierarchy.  The problem is that when I go to archive the notes every month and get them out of my current work area, there is no real way of doing it that does not involve manually editing the tags of each old note and giving them different tags. 

[TheMagicWombat 68]

35 minutes ago, CalS said:

What other tags exist on the notes?  With the above do you add 10 folders a month to the archive or use just move notes to the 10 archive folders?  Said another way, how do you maintain the order in the archive?  Any current to archive and maintain structure will have some work without a search exclusion of some sort.

Sort of the problem I am running into

 

[DTLow 5,736]

22 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

there is no real way of doing it that does not involve manually editing the tags of each old note and giving them different tags. 

And I showed you the panel that allows me to change the tags of 98 notes just by typing a new tag

I can easily add tag:ZZZ Archive.Main.sub1.sub-sub1, and remove tag:Main.sub1.sub-sub1 

[TheMagicWombat 68]

14 minutes ago, DTLow said:

And I showed you the panel that allows me to change the tags of 98 notes just by typing a new tag

I circled the current tag common to the notes; I can change this to ZZZ Archive.Main.sub1.sub-sub1

Sorry, I didn't understand what you were showing me there. And, yes, it does appear that will do the job. I did encounter the fact that it is best to use a 2-step process tho--ADD the new tag and TEN delete the old one. I mistakenly deleted the tag while clicking to rename it, and it was not pretty.

 

But, ty. 

[CalS 5,280]

Not sure if the Mac works the same way, but on Windows you can right click on a tag in the note header and rename it from there.

[jefito 5,589]

21 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

But what I am doing is trying to compensate for the lack of nested notebooks by using nested tags to emulate a nested notebook hierarchy

You can simulate nested notebooks using tags, but tags will never have the one underlying property that notebooks have, namely the one that says a note belongs to exactly one notebook:. If you drag a note to a new notebook, then it's moved to that notebook (since it can only belong to one notebook at a time). If you drag a note to a tag, it just adds the tag (since a note may have many tags). It's always going to be a workaround.

[TheMagicWombat 68]

23 hours ago, jefito said:

You can simulate nested notebooks using tags, but tags will never have the one underlying property that notebooks have, namely the one that says a note belongs to exactly one notebook:. If you drag a note to a new notebook, then it's moved to that notebook (since it can only belong to one notebook at a time). If you drag a note to a tag, it just adds the tag (since a note may have many tags). It's always going to be a workaround.

Oh, I know. I find the only viable work-around for the Evernote refusal to have stacking notebooks is to have grouped (or whatever they are called) notebooks where notes go, and then an expanded hierarchical structure for tags to tag things. I don't think the people at Evernote understand that forcing customers to abandon stacking notebooks for hierarchical purposes is a lot like forcing everyone to use the new "common core new math". Yeah, you can show me studies that argue it teaches kids to understand math better, but as long as I can use the standard, time-honored, method and get more efficient and effective results than the kids using the new math, those studies are defacto disproven. 

What works best is not what someone wants to work best, but what actually gets the job done. 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

38 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

I don't think the people at Evernote understand that forcing customers to abandon stacking notebooks for hierarchical purposes

I think Evernote is well aware their product is a paradigm shift in data organization.
It's one of the reasons I use Evernote for my filing; I see it as an improvement

I don't believe in forcing anyone.  If stacking notebooks/folders is a requirement, I advise users to look at other products

>>What works best is not what someone wants

There's a story about Henry Ford; if he asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses

 

[TheMagicWombat 68]

8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I think Evernote is well aware their product is a paradigm shift in data organization.

It's one of the reasons I use Evernote for my filing; I see it as an improvement

I don't believe in forcing anyone.  If stacking notebooks/folders is a requirement, I advise users to look at other products

>>What works best is not what someone wants

There's a story about Henry Ford; if he asked his customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses

 

Let me be clear -- I use Evernote for a small number of reasons:

1. Clipping from the web.

2. Mobility.

3. ...

Wow, I had expected at least THREE reasons, but I was wrong. When someone comes up with ANY kind of competitor to Evernote that does those 2 things, AND stackable notebooks,  I will cancel my Evernote subscription and never, ever look back. Evernote is the "Ma Bell" of data storage, and few people will cry when it dies.

 

Now, as to your logic error in your post. You have used the false analogy of Henry Ford and cars, and people wanting faster horses. Actually, cars were an obvious improvement in terms of fuel, water, waste, medical care, convenience of storage, range, etc, etc.. To where the ONLY thing that people wanted when the car came out was cheaper cars (as with all consumer goods) and better roads. 

That was it. The ONLY area that horses held an advantage was they could go over uneven roads that killed cars. 

So, now that we have dismissed with your fictional story about Henry Ford, let's move back to the "better" argument. YOU think tags are better. Good for you! HURRAH! YOu have an opinion! You prefer something. Doesn't matter what it is, it is a preference. Sort of like how I prefer my ice cream to be strawberry flavored over beef-liver flavored. You can prefer beef-liver flavor ice-cream if you wish. Nothing wrong with that. It is a preference and we are all entitled to those.

Now, YOU consider tags as an improvement. But wouldn't tags AND stackable notebooks be even better? You could still leave your notes 100% disorganized and count on a boolean hypertext search every time you wanted to find something. But if we had tags, I could organize my notes AND use your boolean hyper-text search feature as well!

YAY!

We BOTH win.

So, to be clear. You are wrong -- their methodology is NOT an improvement. It is merely different. It works better for you because you prefer it, but guess what--Evernote didn't invent tags nor did it invent boolean searches. I know that will shock you but "tags" or flags" were in use when I was creating databases on my Commodore 128 back in grad school in 1988--and they were not new then.

Evernote is hardly doing anything new, aside from forcing people to abandon Hierarchical storage and convincing some people that it is a feature. Oh, I agree they are packaging it as some new trendy hipster thing to convince people it is new. But, alas, it is not. Tags and boolean searches go back to probably the first revision of the first database used on the Harvard Mark 1 in 1944.

So, the only "paradigm shift" that Evernote can claim is eliminating the OPTION of hierarchical notebooks, and calling it a feature. 

Sort of like the new iPhone not having an erbud plug and Apple calling it an improvement... 

[DTLow 5,736]

44 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Let me be clear -- I use Evernote for a small number of reasons:

I would have expected note filing to be one of the reasons

>>But wouldn't tags AND stackable notebooks be even better?

No objection, although my priority is to get Tag Hierarchy on my iPad and the other mobile devices

I'm sensing we've gone beyond discussing archiving notes. 

[CalS 5,280]

[TheMagicWombat 68]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

I would have expected note filing to be one of the reasons

 

Efficient and effective filing is. Flat layer filing is neither of those. 

[DTLow 5,736]

40 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Let me be clear -- I use Evernote for a small number of reasons:

1. Clipping from the web.

2. Mobility.

...Efficient and effective filing is. Flat layer filing is neither of those. 

I find that filing in Evernote is both efficient and effective.  

Are you sure you want to be using the Evernote service?   It seems you'd be happier with a folder/subfolder methodology

[jefito 5,589]

2 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

I don't think the people at Evernote understand that forcing customers to abandon stacking notebooks for hierarchical purposes

But that was never part of Evernote, so there was nothing to abandon. I think that they knew very well what they were doing, and understand what they've left out.

1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

So, the only "paradigm shift" that Evernote can claim is eliminating the OPTION of hierarchical notebooks, and calling it a feature. 

I don't know whether Evernote has ever claimed that their way is a paradigm shift, but they never eliminated any option for nested notebooks, since it never existed in Evernote in the first place. Is it a feature? Dunno; it's just Evernote (GMail doesn't have anything like nested folders either, and it seems to work for a few people). If you like it, then use it. If it doesn't work for you, then you might be better off with a different product -- surely someone will see that some people want both hierarchical storage and tags/labels and build a competitor.

Anyway, to circle (yes, @CalS) back to your original request again and repeat what you already know but don't seem to want to accept: there is no real workaround for nested notebooks if you want a pure solution. Tags aren't going to do it. Evernote is what it is, and all of the arguments for nested notebooks have all been made many times before, by reasonable people who don't even need to resort to snark about "trendy hipster thing" and the like (hey, I was in computer programming grad school in 1985, and I am anything but a trendy hipster). The request is fair, but scorning a toolmaker for deciding to make a hammer when you want a screwdriver just seems silly to me. We should all have good tools to use and make our lives easier; unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though Evernote is the one for you.

[TheMagicWombat 68]

9 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Are you sure you want to be using the Evernote service?

I find that filing in Evernote is both efficient and effective

Nope. Just downloaded OneNote (free, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited number of devices), the Chrome Clipper for OneNote, and am using the free importer to pull all of my Evernote notes into OneNote (847/1,328 so far). Also downloaded OneNote app for my android phone, and am about to install it on my iPad.

Like I said, Evernote is spunky-keen for a lot of people, but the number one complaint, that pops up over and over, is the lack of stackable notebooks/folders. And, there is a reason for that--people need that feature. Not you, but some of us find increased efficiency in hierarchical storage both improves storage, but also in retrieval and brainstorming when browsing the list of notes. 

 

Evernote, in the last hour, sent me an offer to try Evernote for Business for free for 30 days. Until Evernote learns to allow business to store data the way each individual business wants to, I expect its financial trouble it has had over the last couple of years to continue. I can just see someone pitching Evernote to a mid-level manager, "You see, it uses tags. We store everything in one big box and then use the tags to pull out what we need. We just have to re-educate every employee and adapt every other component of our business to operate in this way and... What? What do you mean I am no longer needed? My way is better!"

[CalS 5,280]

7 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Just downloaded OneNote

May you find what you need with ON.

[TheMagicWombat 68]

7 minutes ago, jefito said:

But that was never part of Evernote, so there was nothing to abandon. I think that they knew very well what they were doing, and understand what they've left out.

I don't know whether Evernote has ever claimed that their way is a paradigm shift, but they never eliminated any option for nested notebooks, since it never existed in Evernote in the first place. Is it a feature? Dunno; it's just Evernote (GMail doesn't have anything like nested folders either, and it seems to work for a few people). If you like it, then use it. If it doesn't work for you, then you might be better off with a different product -- surely someone will see that some people want both hierarchical storage and tags/labels and build a competitor.

Anyway, to circle (yes, @CalS) back to your original request again and repeat what you already know but don't seem to want to accept: there is no real workaround for nested notebooks if you want a pure solution. Tags aren't going to do it. Evernote is what it is, and all of the arguments for nested notebooks have all been made many times before, by reasonable people who don't even need to resort to snark about "trendy hipster thing" and the like (hey, I was in computer programming grad school in 1985, and I am anything but a trendy hipster). The request is fair, but scorning a toolmaker for deciding to make a hammer when you want a screwdriver just seems silly to me. We should all have good tools to use and make our lives easier; unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though Evernote is the one for you.

It isn't.

Also, Gmail DOES have a hierarchical structure.

 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

14 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

some of us find increased efficiency in hierarchical storage both improves storage, but also in retrieval and brainstorming

I have no argument with this.  People should use whatever works for them

>>I expect its financial trouble it has had over the last couple of years to continue.

Evernote has financial trouble?  I know they're no longer venture funded, but I understood they're in a positive cash flow

 

 

[TheMagicWombat 68]

3 minutes ago, CalS said:

May you find what you need with ON.

Sad. But, probably true. I loathe M$, and am keenly aware that their business model is to take control of a software sector through good price and good product, and then when they have a monopoly, turn out expensive krapware. 

But, as long as they have Evernote and a few others keeping them honest, ON will probably remain a good product.

And, Evernote can be to note storage what a Macintosh is to computing!

[TheMagicWombat 68]

1 minute ago, DTLow said:

I have no argument to this

>>I expect its financial trouble it has had over the last couple of years to continue.

Evernote has financial trouble?  I know they're no longer venture funded, but I understood they're in a positive cash flow

 

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=evernote+financial+struggles&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwif2NHFyaDXAhVRFMAKHaRSA2UQ_AUICigB&biw=2560&bih=987

Positive cash flow beats negative cash flow, but until your ROI is in decent numbers, the business is in trouble.

 

[jefito 5,589]

32 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

It isn't.

Also, Gmail DOES have a hierarchical structure.

Um, look a look a little closer. It has hierarchical structure (and I never said that it didn't), but those 'folders' are actually labels, i.e., tags. Their terminology is fuzzy, but an email may belong to multiple folders, with at least one exception (Inbox). Just like tags, and just unlike notebooks.

https://gmail.googleblog.com/2010/04/new-in-labs-nested-labels-and-message.html

[TheMagicWombat 68]

6 hours ago, jefito said:

Um, look a look a little closer. It has hierarchical structure (and I never said that it didn't), but those 'folders' are actually labels, i.e., tags. Their terminology is fuzzy, but an email may belong to multiple folders, with at least one exception (Inbox). Just like tags, and just unlike notebooks.

https://gmail.googleblog.com/2010/04/new-in-labs-nested-labels-and-message.html

You need to look a little closer -- they call them labels for a reason -- same way a folder in a file cabinet has a label on it. And dragging a message from one folder to another does not duplicate the email, it MOVES it. That is NOT how Evernote tabs work. It is how FOLDERS work, and in Gmail, they are hierarchical. 

Don't believe me? Create a Gmail account and try dragging emails back and forth between those folders.  See, how the message doesn't actually wind up in both spots?

Now, it might also be able to somehow clone an email to two spots, or do something to give an email more than one hierarchy set of labels, but you have to use a workaround, like here:

http://gmail-tips.blogspot.com/2014/10/inbox-by-gmail.html

When the page you cite says that an email message can have more than 1 label, what it means is the message has the label of the folder it is in, and all higher folders it is also sitting in.  That is like a folder on an Sam's petty theft sitting in master folder for Sam's cases, sitting in a drawer labelled "S", sitting in a file cabinet labelled "Current Clients". Sams Petty Theft file technically shares all those designators by virtue of the hierarchical filing system, and that is what that Gmail page is referring to. 

Thus, Gmail uses a normal hierarchical folder system, just like almost every other record keeping program, and totally unlike Evernote. 

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

hierarchical folder system, just like almost every other record keeping program, and totally unlike Evernote. 

As I posted in your other discussion; We don't need another discussion thread on this.

The main discussion is at

 

[TheMagicWombat 68]

52 minutes ago, DTLow said:

As I posted in your other discussion; We don't need another discussion thread on this.

The main discussion is at

 

Your observations are, not surprisingly, totally unrelated to what you were replying to. And as I am a paying user, and you are NOT god, I will post as I see fit.

 

Comprende?

[DTLow 5,736]

On 2017-11-02 at 9:35 PM, TheMagicWombat said:

And as I am a paying user, and you are NOT god, I will post as I see fit.

God is God, and I am not.  Steven Curtis Chapman

And I will chose to not continue in this discussion

Good Luck with your OneNote conversion 

[jefito 5,589]

8 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

You need to look a little closer -- they call them labels for a reason -- same way a folder in a file cabinet has a label on it.

Architecturally, they are essentially tags, as the documentation (and my experience) says. Don't believe me? Don't believe the document I previously referenced? Try this one: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/118708?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

The dragging behavior is nice for use cases like yours (and maybe that's a behavior that Evernote could add  as an option). That's also addressed in the link above. Didn't know about it because I don't drag emails around. I do however make use of email filters to automatically apply labels, a feature that I wish that Evernote had. But in any case, yes, Virginia, an email may have more than one label, which is generally not the case with folders (folders are containers of items, labels are identifiers that you apply to items), so they are more tag-like in terms of how they can be used to organize your emails.

Beyond that, I wish you well with OneNote; as I say, we should all have tools that work well for us. Hope you don't find it hard to operate while holding your nose at the indignity of using a Microsoft product...

[TheMagicWombat 68]

2 hours ago, jefito said:

Architecturally, they are essentially tags, as the documentation (and my experience) says. Don't believe me? Don't believe the document I previously referenced? Try this one: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/118708?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

The dragging behavior is nice for use cases like yours (and maybe that's a behavior that Evernote could add  as an option). That's also addressed in the link above. Didn't know about it because I don't drag emails around. I do however make use of email filters to automatically apply labels, a feature that I wish that Evernote had. But in any case, yes, Virginia, an email may have more than one label, which is generally not the case with folders (folders are containers of items, labels are identifiers that you apply to items), so they are more tag-like in terms of how they can be used to organize your emails.

Beyond that, I wish you well with OneNote; as I say, we should all have tools that work well for us. Hope you don't find it hard to operate while holding your nose at the indignity of using a Microsoft product...

Gmail:

1. Gmail does, indeed, have a hierarchical folder system.

2. Their folder system is called "labels"

3. Gmail permits you to drag emails back and forth between these folders at will. 

4. Dragging an email MOVES the email to the new folder.

5. This is like the NOTEBOOK section of Evernote.

6. (Except for the fact that Evernote does not want to allow users to have a hierarchical filing system for whatever bizarre reason.)

7. It is true you can manually ADD an additional label, or labels, to an email. 

8. Then when you click on an appropriate label, that message will show up, and if you click on multiple labels that a message is labelled under, it will show up under all folders/labels.

9. That makes the labels act similarly to the TAGS portion of Evernote, in ADDITION to acting likes FOLDERS for every record keeping program out there. (Including your OS, WHATEVER it is.).

10. Once an email has more than 1 label, dragging it from its location within a folder BREAKS that particular folder connection, and applies the new folder connection (i.e. label).

11. The email STILL resides within the OTHER folders (aka "labels") that it was in BEFORE it was dragged out of the folder/label it resided in.

12. This is entirely unlike Evernote.

13. And is infinitely more useful. 

 

 

 

[TheMagicWombat 68]

8 hours ago, DTLow said:

God is God, and I am not.  Steven Curtis Chapman

And I chose to not continue in this discussion

Good Luck with your OneNote conversion 

Finally, we grok!

[jefito 5,589]

13 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

When the page you cite says that an email message can have more than 1 label, what it means is the message has the label of the folder it is in, and all higher folders it is also sitting in. 

Actually, it doesn't mean that at all.

First, an email may have labels from separate label trees, just like Evernote tags.

Second, parent labels are not automatically inherited. If you have a label named "Color" with a sublabel named "Red", then the sublabel's name is actually "Color/Red", which is distinct from "Stuff". In other words, if you assign that to an email (say by dragging the sublabel "Red" onto your email), then  filtering on the label "Color" will not show that email, unless you've also assigned the label "Color" explicitly to it. I.e., parent label names become part of child label names, but the parent labels themselves aren't inherited by there children. 

You can verify this in about five minutes, maybe three if you're a whiz Commodore 128 database programmer...

Beyond all that, have fun with OneNote,... I'm sure they're eagerly awaiting your presence over there in the forums...

[TheMagicWombat 68]

51 minutes ago, jefito said:

Actually, it doesn't mean that at all.

First, an email may have labels from separate label trees, just like Evernote tags.

Second, parent labels are not automatically inherited. If you have a label named "Color" with a sublabel named "Red", then the sublabel's name is actually "Color/Red", which is distinct from "Stuff". In other words, if you assign that to an email (say by dragging the sublabel "Red" onto your email), then  filtering on the label "Color" will not show that email, unless you've also assigned the label "Color" explicitly to it. I.e., parent label names become part of child label names, but the parent labels themselves aren't inherited by there children. 

You can verify this in about five minutes, maybe three if you're a whiz Commodore 128 database programmer...

Beyond all that, have fun with OneNote,... I'm sure they're eagerly awaiting your presence over there in the forums...

You know the sad part? I went to Gmail and verified EVERYTHING I said before I wrote it. I didn't write a single point without first verifying each and every point I raised by manually verifying it. But still, you sit there and Google a web page on Gmail you don't understand and cite it as an authority. 

You can theorize all you want, but Gmail operates the way *I* described it. It isn't MY fault if you don't understand how Gmail operates. Or perhaps you just don't want to admit that you were wrong. Who knows--Not my problem. 

And, I am sure I will enjoy OneNote FAR better. The program is designed to accommodate people who think in a logical/hierarchical structure, as well as people who think storing stuff in an organized structure is just way too much work and prefer to learn complex boolean search syntax to find what they are looking for--unlike Evernote, which only accommodates the latter.

No wonder your favorite software has yet to turn a profit.... It needs to be adopted by the business world if it hopes to get a positive ROI, but thinks it knows better than GM how GM should operate its business!

LOL!

 

 

 

[CalS 5,280]

12 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

The program is designed to accommodate people who think in a logical/hierarchical structure

Which is fine, however there is more than one way to logically think about structure.  Deeply nested folders are more hierarchical, tags are more relational.  Both methods have their place.  As said many times before, EN has opted not to include nested folders, so if you need the nesting, go forth and prosper.  Not sure why the need to denigrate the non-hierarchical thinkers as Luddites in the process.

When ANSI first laid out the idea of a logical schema in 1975,^[2] the choices were hierarchical and network. The relational model – where data is described in terms of tables and columns – had just been recognized as a data organization theory but no software existed to support that approach. Since that time, an object-oriented approach to data modelling – where data is described in terms of classes, attributes, and associations – has also been introduced.  - Wikipedia

[TheMagicWombat 68]

You may to go back and re-read the thread. Others started out by stating that they felt the inability to have a hierarchical structure was an improvement, and that those of us who wanted it were the Luddites.

In short, they were the posers with the egos. I merely counter-punched. (Like that *** that dared to tell me I couldn't make a thread on a subject because *he* felt the thread belonged in another thread? **** him!)

In reality, Evernote has taken what is an improvement (tags) to a strictly hierarchical storage and retrieval system (notebooks/folders/labels/whatever you want to call it) and marketed it as a replacement for the hierarchical system. I agree that tags are an improvement over un-tagged notebooks, but to state that tags without notebooks are somehow an improvement over tags with notebooks, is... I can't even come up with an analogy to  mirror such a foolish statement  It would be like if Windows or Mac OS removed the directory structure, and replaced it with tags that get applied to each file sitting on the hard drive. Yes, you could run a boolean search for "document+word+letter+smith+draft of Reinke communication+November 3rd, 2007+last revision" but there is a problem with that--aside from the fact it is hellishly inefficient, it also requires you to remember the tags you applied, and never make the mistake of mis-tagging on untagging a file. Me, I prefer to simply browse through the tree to find the file I want. Or, use the "recent files" feature.

Frankly, I have yet to see any feature that Evernote has that hasn't already been in a host of other programs. To say it is superior to other programs that do more, and that people should not want the core features left out of it... Reminds me of all the Mac users who would drone on how their OS was better than Windows, while complaining about the lack of software of the Mac--hey have bought into a concept that they are superior and anyone who wants anything different is a heretic. 

And if people don't like the fact I think Evernote is pretty much intentional cripple-ware, too bad. The company has been in financial difficulties for years because it refuses to accommodate the paying users. Seriously, how much code would it take to add the MOST requested feature--stacking notebooks?

One day? Two?

Evernote has problems. Financial problems. OneNote does everything Evernote does, and more. OneNote is free, supports unlimited devices and unlimited bandwidth per month--free. 

Evernote had a good head start on the competition. but instead of adding features that the users wanted, Evernote (like many of the people in here) said, "We are doing it better, if you don't like doing it OUR way, you need to leave."

Evernote is the Soup ***** of the record storage world... And OneNote just got all its recipes, and more. 

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

You know the sad part? I went to Gmail and verified EVERYTHING I said before I wrote it. I didn't write a single point without first verifying each and every point I raised by manually verifying it. But still, you sit there and Google a web page on Gmail you don't understand and cite it as an authority. 

You can theorize all you want, but Gmail operates the way *I* described it.

No it *doesn't*, not fully anyways, and your description misses some important points. And in fact, I also verified everything that I wrote about, in my own GMail account; some of which directly contradicts some of your conclusions, authoritative or not (I'm guessing you missed some scenarios, as I freely admit that I did). The simple label/sublabel example that shows that labels aren't necessarily inherited is easy to see. It's also easy to see that an email can contain multiple unrelated labels. That's authority straight from the horse's mouth; the cited web pages were for independent validation. You clearly didn't try the simple scenarios that I suggested. One thing I didn't do was deny what you described. In fact, I tried it myself, accepted it, and even appreciated some of what you pointed out... and said so. Sorry that you couldn't accept that for what it was.

1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

And, I am sure I will enjoy OneNote FAR better. The program is designed to accommodate people who think in a logical/hierarchical structure, as well as people who think storing stuff in an organized structure is just way too much work and prefer to learn complex boolean search syntax to find what they are looking for--unlike Evernote, which only accommodates the latter.

Hmm, people cannot organize logically using tags? That tag-based organization isn't, er, organized? I can certainly deal with hierarchies (they're not rocket science; I've traipsed up and down more file systems and tree data structures than I care to recall; I really, really don't need more in my life), but frankly, hierarchies aren't the only way to organize items in a domain as you know, and in fact, they're limiting in some ways. More importantly for me, they don't match the way I tend to think about things. And in fact, effective tagging can be a bit of work; it's just different than the work entailed in finding the single branch of some hierarchy where a note ought to go. But I don't need to resort to 'complex Boolean search syntax' to organize my notes; it's a simple system that, yes, uses multiply-tagged notes and text search, and doesn't need storage hierarchies (or even tag hierarchies), or even many notebooks (10 or so in each of my personal and work accounts). I use it every day, and it works for me, which not the same thing as claiming that it's perfect, by any means; flip side is that I understand that it's not for everyone, and I don't make fun of people who want/need hierarchies: you  just offer up the standard workarounds (and their pitfalls), you try to give a feeling for how tags work and how they're different from folders, and if that's not sufficient then there's not much else you can do but shrug. 

By the way, I long ago gave up on advocating that Evernote doesn't need nested notebooks. I just work with the fact that they don't exist, and go from there. I wouldn't use them if they were, so I don't have much stake either way. As I say, Evernote pretty much works for me as is.

Anyways, I'm pretty certain that OneNote is a fine product, as Microsoft Office products seem to be. I must say that their Evernote import process completely botched my notes database, so it was pretty much a non-starter for me, and adapting to the OneNote structure didn't really suit my existing note organization and workflow, as far as I could tell. Admittedly, I didn't push on it that hard because the import came out was so poorly (either the import developers didn't understand how tags work in Evernote, which is sort of an important starting point for an importer, or the Evernote/OneNote impedance mismatch is too great), so I don't claim to understand all things OneNote. But believe it or not, I'm sincere in hoping that it works for you, despite idle silly snark about C128 database programmers (hey, you brought it up, right?)...

[TheMagicWombat 68]

3 hours ago, jefito said:

No it *doesn't*, not fully anyways, and your description misses some important points. And in fact, I also verified everything that I wrote about, in my own GMail account; some of which directly contradicts some of your conclusions, authoritative or not (I'm guessing you missed some scenarios, as I freely admit that I did). The simple label/sublabel example that shows that labels aren't necessarily inherited is easy to see. It's also easy to see that an email can contain multiple unrelated labels. That's authority straight from the horse's mouth; the cited web pages were for independent validation. You clearly didn't try the simple scenarios that I suggested. One thing I didn't do was deny what you described. In fact, I tried it myself, accepted it, and even appreciated some of what you pointed out... and said so. Sorry that you couldn't accept that for what it was.

Hmm, people cannot organize logically using tags? That tag-based organization isn't, er, organized? I can certainly deal with hierarchies (they're not rocket science; I've traipsed up and down more file systems and tree data structures than I care to recall; I really, really don't need more in my life), but frankly, hierarchies aren't the only way to organize items in a domain as you know, and in fact, they're limiting in some ways. More importantly for me, they don't match the way I tend to think about things. And in fact, effective tagging can be a bit of work; it's just different than the work entailed in finding the single branch of some hierarchy where a note ought to go. But I don't need to resort to 'complex Boolean search syntax' to organize my notes; it's a simple system that, yes, uses multiply-tagged notes and text search, and doesn't need storage hierarchies (or even tag hierarchies), or even many notebooks (10 or so in each of my personal and work accounts). I use it every day, and it works for me, which not the same thing as claiming that it's perfect, by any means; flip side is that I understand that it's not for everyone, and I don't make fun of people who want/need hierarchies: you  just offer up the standard workarounds (and their pitfalls), you try to give a feeling for how tags work and how they're different from folders, and if that's not sufficient then there's not much else you can do but shrug. 

By the way, I long ago gave up on advocating that Evernote doesn't need nested notebooks. I just work with the fact that they don't exist, and go from there. I wouldn't use them if they were, so I don't have much stake either way. As I say, Evernote pretty much works for me as is.

Anyways, I'm pretty certain that OneNote is a fine product, as Microsoft Office products seem to be. I must say that their Evernote import process completely botched my notes database, so it was pretty much a non-starter for me, and adapting to the OneNote structure didn't really suit my existing note organization and workflow, as far as I could tell. Admittedly, I didn't push on it that hard because the import came out was so poorly (either the import developers didn't understand how tags work in Evernote, which is sort of an important starting point for an importer, or the Evernote/OneNote impedance mismatch is too great), so I don't claim to understand all things OneNote. But believe it or not, I'm sincere in hoping that it works for you, despite idle silly snark about C128 database programmers (hey, you brought it up, right?)...

You know what?

I am publicly calling you a LIAR!

You point out a single thing I said that you are now claiming is untrue so I can PROVE you are a LIAR!

Here is the complete list again:

Gmail:

1. Gmail does, indeed, have a hierarchical folder system.

2. Their folder system is called "labels"

3. Gmail permits you to drag emails back and forth between these folders at will. 

4. Dragging an email MOVES the email to the new folder.

5. This is like the NOTEBOOK section of Evernote.

6. (Except for the fact that Evernote does not want to allow users to have a hierarchical filing system for whatever bizarre reason.)

7. It is true you can manually ADD an additional label, or labels, to an email. 

8. Then when you click on an appropriate label, that message will show up, and if you click on multiple labels that a message is labelled under, it will show up under all folders/labels.

9. That makes the labels act similarly to the TAGS portion of Evernote, in ADDITION to acting likes FOLDERS for every record keeping program out there. (Including your OS, WHATEVER it is.).

10. Once an email has more than 1 label, dragging it from its location within a folder BREAKS that particular folder connection, and applies the new folder connection (i.e. label).

11. The email STILL resides within the OTHER folders (aka "labels") that it was in BEFORE it was dragged out of the folder/label it resided in.

12. This is entirely unlike Evernote.

13. And is infinitely more useful. 

 

GO FOR IT!!!

[gazumped 11,657]

My understanding of Gmail's structure is exactly the same as @jefito's,  and a listing of my 'All Mail' category in Gmail seems to confirm this,  in that each email is listed once,  with the various labels that are attached to it - in these cases up to three separate labels per email.  If I search by each one,  I'll see all the emails with that label and only the emails with that label.  In some cases that means I see the same emails no matter which label name I choose - meaning they are behaving exactly like tagged notes.  Just my 2c.

[TheMagicWombat 68]

2 hours ago, gazumped said:

My understanding of Gmail's structure is exactly the same as @jefito's,  and a listing of my 'All Mail' category in Gmail seems to confirm this,  in that each email is listed once,  with the various labels that are attached to it - in these cases up to three separate labels per email.  If I search by each one,  I'll see all the emails with that label and only the emails with that label.  In some cases that means I see the same emails no matter which label name I choose - meaning they are behaving exactly like tagged notes.  Just my 2c.

Yep.

What I said here:

7. It is true you can manually ADD an additional label, or labels, to an email. 

8. Then when you click on an appropriate label, that message will show up, and if you click on multiple labels that a message is labelled under, it will show up under all folders/labels.

EXCEPT that these do not behave like tags in Evernote, but are infinitely more useful, as I pointed out here:

9. That makes the labels act similarly to the TAGS portion of Evernote, in ADDITION to acting likes FOLDERS for every record keeping program out there. (Including your OS, WHATEVER it is.).

10. Once an email has more than 1 label, dragging it from its location within a folder BREAKS that particular folder connection, and applies the new folder connection (i.e. label).

Having said that, I did try to shift-drag an email between labels to 'clone' it (we need a better phrase -- the email takes on the properties of both instances, although it appears to remain a single email with a dual identity), but that did not work. You cannot drag to add the extra label that I could find, but rather must click on the email and manually add a new label. Shift-drag is universal for "copy" so I would tweak Gmail to add labels that way. But, it is a minor complaint. In truth, I think Gmail has come up with the best record keeping solution I have seen, by blending nested notebooks and tags together into a single entity that acts as both, with all the features of both, and a reduced amount of desktop menu space taken up in the process. 

 

PS. Congrats on your homeland's mandate for all electric cars by 2040. You won't need those nasty petrol update emails!

[gazumped 11,657]

11 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Congrats on your homeland's mandate for all electric cars by 2040. You won't need those nasty petrol update emails!

Thanks for the vote of confidence,  though diesel cars seem like a bigger threat to the environment than petrol.

I think I'm going to stick to my misconception of Gmail's architecture for the time being.  This magic moving from one folder to another depending on which label is applied seems overly complicated.  Actually I looked online for anything from a Google perspective and found this...  from Kevin Fox of Gmail & FriendFeed on User Experience Design  in 2008

 

Quote

 

Folders vs Labels in Gmail

When you mention designing Gmail out of respect for existing design patterns... what do you say to the labels versus folders debate that has been going on for, I think, years?

Ironically, labels is a great example of when it’s best to not rely on existing design patterns, since in this case that would give the users a false understanding of the feature. Conversations were the most fundamental difference between Gmail and prior email applications. By treating messages in the same conversation as a single entity instead of separate emails, we gave users (especially users on mailing lists and those who get a lot of email) some real power.

The problem is that conversations meant we couldn’t have folders. The logic went like this: If you move a message from the Inbox into a folder and then another message came in on the same conversation, the conversation would pop back in to the Inbox (as it should). Should it still be in the folder as well? It’s very inefficient to move it back in to the folder each time, frustrated that it keeps popping out. And if it stays in the folder and the inbox, then how do you get it out of the inbox? If you throw it away it would throw away the conversation from everywhere, or maybe it should just throw it away from the Inbox and remain in the folder, in which case if you really wanted to delete something you’d either have to find it in all folders it was ever placed in, or you’d have to have some sort of ’super delete’ which, as it turned out, was a far more troublesome difference to grasp than that of multiple-inclusion folders (which is what labels are).

So instead of deleting from the inbox, or re-moving, you could ’archive’ the conversation (whether or not it was in another folder) and it would just take care of it.

Another way to look at the problem is if you have filters set up to put messages from certain people or with certain keywords in folders, the same conversation could appear in multiple folders because one message put it in ’family’ and another put it in ’vacation’. Then you have the same problem of a single item appearing within multiple containers that people have been trained to understand only hold originals or copies, not aliases, and you run into the same confusion with some users trying to delete out of a folder to keep a conversation in another folder, or expecting it to vanish from everywhere. Either way you’re going to have a huge number of users who either can’t delete or are accidentally deleting, which was a much bigger problem than calling them ’labels’ and teaching them about multiple-inclusion..

 

 

[TheMagicWombat 68]

44 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Thanks for the vote of confidence,  though diesel cars seem like a bigger threat to the environment than petrol.

I think I'm going to stick to my misconception of Gmail's architecture for the time being.  This magic moving from one folder to another depending on which label is applied seems overly complicated.  Actually I looked online for anything from a Google perspective and found this...  from Kevin Fox of Gmail & FriendFeed on User Experience Design  in 2008

 

 

Truth be told, the Gmail interface is so intuitive at a basic level, I didn't even know it would support multiple labels until 2 days ago. I can see the extra labels as a perk for some people, but I doubt I will ever use it. 

Nested labels, however, I created the same day I made the Gmail account.