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Why Michael Hyatt is Wrong about Organizing Evernote with Tags


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http://www.harmonenterprises.com/blog/organize-evernote-notebooks

Thought I'd throw some chum in the water for the relentless notebook sharks. :ph34r:

I'm one of those taggers who uses very few notebooks, based on access (local, synchronized, shared, offline), not content, but I have to admit that Harmon makes a compelling argument, especially since tag organization cannot currently be viewed on all platforms.

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3 hours ago, tavor said:

Thought I'd throw some chum in the water for the relentless notebook sharks. :ph34r:

We have relentless sharks in both the tag and notebook waters.

My view is that a note has two attributes; Notebook and Tags. 
They're similar; any argument should be based on the features and limitations of each attribute.

>>compelling argument, especially since tag organization cannot currently be viewed on all platforms.

I'm using a Mac and the tag hierarchy is not even displayed on all the menus.
Regardless, I still find it a useful tool to organize my tags (300+).

Since I can't count on the hierarchy being available, I prefix my names so they sort together in alpha sequence; for example colour-red, colour-green, colour-blue

>>tags being used not as an organizational tool, but a find feature in Evernote.

"find feature" works for me; my use for the tools is to enable retrieval of my data.
I know "organization" in itself is important to some people, but I have little interest.

>>If You Fail to Tag a Note, Your Whole Organizational System Fails
    One of the biggest fears of new Evernote users is that their notes will “get lost”

You could also say if you place a note in the wrong notebook, OMG Your Whole Organization System Fails,
but thats just hyperbole; (exaggeration overstatement, magnification, amplification, embroidery ...)

>>It’s Too Easy to Create New Tags

I don't create new tags/notebooks on the fly.  I have my standard list.

>>You Need a Perfect Memory to Properly Utilize a Tag-Based System

Like I have a perfect memory.  Still, I manage to use my Notebook/Tag lists.

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3 hours ago, tavor said:

http://www.harmonenterprises.com/blog/organize-evernote-notebooks

Thought I'd throw some chum in the water for the relentless notebook sharks. :ph34r:

I'm one of those taggers who uses very few notebooks, based on access (local, synchronized, shared, offline), not content, but I have to admit that Harmon makes a compelling argument, especially since tag organization cannot currently be viewed on all platforms.

Yeah, I saw this as well.  Being a tagger I have a built in bias obviously, however, some of the pure logic is a bit lacking, re note  in only one notebook, "This objection is really best addressed by creating a proper workflow that meets your needs for how you want to interact with your information, rather than addressing how the data is organized in Evernote."   Well a "proper" workflow for me includes wanting to search for all insurance or insurance by asset or by asset.  Notebooks don't enable that as well as tags.

IAC, same old arguments will ensue, if you think hierarchically you like notebooks, if you think relationally you like tags, etc.  You got to separate the data from the process.  It's a use case thing at the end of the day.  Nice job of chumming.  :D

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1 hour ago, CalS said:

Nice job of chumming.  :D

That remains to be seen. The only people in this thread so far are taggers! 

And here I was, in "shields up, prepare for incoming!" mode.

Maybe we've beaten the notebook diehards into submission over the years. Or maybe they are gathering their forces . . . 

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On 4/29/2018 at 7:37 AM, DTLow said:

I'm using a Mac and the tag hierarchy is not even displayed on all the menus.
Regardless, I still find it a useful tool to organize my tags (300+).

What do you mean by this? I know you can view the tag hierarchy under the tag view but are you referring to something else? Should it be view-able elsewhere?

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On 8/30/2018 at 10:30 AM, estevancarlos said:

What do you mean by this? I know you can view the tag hierarchy under the tag view but are you referring to something else? Should it be view-able elsewhere?

Here's a example from my Mac1184120912_ScreenShot2018-08-30at10_34_32.png.074dea608478f6f9494ed15e7a11fb0a.png
I'm adding tags to a note, and start typing the tag name

>>What platforms do display hierarchy in that view?

There's no hierarchy displayed.  Just an alphabetic list of tags

afaik      Hierarchy is supported in various views on the Mac, Windows and Web platforms

 In adding tags to a note; If I need the hierarchy. I can drag the tag from the sidebar (Mac)
I never need this; the alpha sequence works well for me.  I only use the hierarchy to organize my tags.

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Yeah, the lack of displaying hierarchy is a major flaw of this application because it inherently encourages the use of a flat structure which limits the organizational potential. It's a user experience problem and... ugh... the company seems obtuse in this way.

What platforms do display hierarchy in that view? I use evernote on Mac, Windows, and Android. I've never noticed the display of the hierarchical structure in any of those platforms.

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I'm referring to the "view" however unless I'm misunderstanding what you're discussing. I know you can create hierarchical tags within the tag view and you can see the hierarchy there. To my understanding there is no other way to see the actual hierarchy without clicking on the tags in the sidebar. Is this the issue you're referring to?

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On 4/29/2018 at 3:47 PM, tavor said:

That remains to be seen. The only people in this thread so far are taggers! 

And here I was, in "shields up, prepare for incoming!" mode.

Maybe we've beaten the notebook diehards into submission over the years. Or maybe they are gathering their forces . . . 

Your interest is appreciated. As I've pointed out many times, I don't always have the time or an interest in adding tags and sometimes depending on the platform there is no option to select tags. In addition, in my case, tags sometimes make me overly anal -- I'll add three or four or more -- while adding the note to a relevant notebook is much simpler for me.

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I fail to follow the works here doesn't work there claims. I use IOS, Android, Windows, Web (less so lately, kind of buggy).  I almost never look look at a tag list in my daily work flow, I just start typing where I want to add one, or go to the general tag view and use the search window and type ahead finds what I want.  My critical ones are prefixed such that I don't have to worry about case, plural, past tense etc

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On 8/30/2018 at 2:47 PM, Etonreve said:

As I've pointed out many times, I don't always have the time or an interest in adding tags

I don't always have the time or an interest in adding or selecting notebooks/tags; I just use the default notebook (Inbox), and follow up later with notebook and tags.  GTD 101 Colllect, Process/Organize

>>In addition, in mycase, tags sometimes make me overly anal -- I'll add three or four or more

I use a script (Mac) to control notebook/tag assignment.  This is not a random process; it is dependent on note type.

For example, a receipt requires a budget category tag, and a vendor tag
                        a medical appointment requires a doctor tag

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8 hours ago, DTLow said:

For example, a receipt requires a budget category tag, and a vendor tag

I also use a vendor tag (company name) for my receipts. 

But 1.) how do you use a Budget category tag?  And 2.) how do you handle receipts with multiple Budget categories?

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On 9/7/2018 at 4:59 AM, jbenson2 said:

1.) how do you use a Budget category tag?

1934186958_ScreenShot2018-09-08at13_08_33.png.8a683386775064f59c84ba73c0a16d16.png

 

I copy my receipt notes into a spreadsheet for some heavy duty number crunching.  
Just a method of ensuring I'm on track personally and filing expense reports

 

>>2.) how do you handle receipts with multiple Budget categories?

Because I need this data (see 1) I create subnotes with the budget categories.
Evernote doesn't support subnotes, so it isn't elegant; just notes with links.
 
edit: 
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On 4/29/2018 at 10:25 AM, tavor said:

http://www.harmonenterprises.com/blog/organize-evernote-notebooks

Thought I'd throw some chum in the water for the relentless notebook sharks. :ph34r:

I'm one of those taggers who uses very few notebooks, based on access (local, synchronized, shared, offline), not content, but I have to admit that Harmon makes a compelling argument, especially since tag organization cannot currently be viewed on all platforms.

I resolved one of Stacey's main concerns several years ago with a simple naming convention.

One of her first examples is how easy it is to create four tags inadvertently. Receipt, Receipts, receipt, receipts

This does not happen to me because I use a simple rule. Tags are always lower case and singular.

 

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2 minutes ago, jbenson2 said:

I resolved one of Stacey's main concerns several years ago with a simple naming convention.

One of her first examples is how easy it is to create four tags inadvertently. Receipt, Receipts, receipt, receipts

This does not happen to me because I use a simple rule. Tags are always lower case and singular.

Actually I never understood the issue.
I rarely type a full tag name.  I start typing rec and a dropdown list is displayed to select an existing tag.

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2 hours ago, DTLow said:

Actually I never understood the issue.
I rarely type a full tag name.  I start typing rec and a dropdown list is displayed to select an existing tag.

I am with you on that one. I never created similar tags because I misspelled it or used uppercase. I start typing and select the pop up, hit enter, it is done.

Also, with the 80 | 20 rule, out of my 297 tags I probably use 20% of it most of the time, so those tags I know by heart by now. Plus my text expander helps a lot, for example "tgday" gives Tag:"!Daily" or "tgch" gives tag:"Cheat Sheet"  in the search box anyway so I don't have to remember the spelling, I just need to remember my text shortcuts.

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22 minutes ago, TK0047 said:

Plus my text expander helps a lot

I'm using scripting (Applescript) on my Mac.752193422_ScreenShot2018-09-07at07_36_30.png.9a3cb8d1627679b3c24446bf54160488.png
The very first question is Type of Note.
The script generates the Title, Notebook, Tags, ...

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8 hours ago, jbenson2 said:

I resolved one of Stacey's main concerns several years ago with a simple naming convention.

One of her first examples is how easy it is to create four tags inadvertently. Receipt, Receipts, receipt, receipts

This does not happen to me because I use a simple rule. Tags are always lower case and singular.

 

It's a little late for that for me. It is extremely easy to create duplicate tags.

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I never understood the "war" between notebooks and tags. There are many different ways to use both of them, and every way that works for you is a good way. There is no "right" or "wrong" way, if someone tells you otherwise, they're just taking themselves way too seriously. ?

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2 hours ago, chronistin said:

I never understood the "war" between notebooks and tags. 

It's skeuomorphism.  Notebook sounds like a container for notes.  Tags sounds like a label applied to notes.
Both are simply fields in the note metadata and in many ways can be used interchangeably.

That said; if you require more than 250 entries; Tags are a better choice. 

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On 9/8/2018 at 5:29 AM, chronistin said:

I never understood the "war" between notebooks and tags. There are many different ways to use both of them, and every way that works for you is a good way. There is no "right" or "wrong" way, if someone tells you otherwise, they're just taking themselves way too seriously. ?

I especially don't understand it because the people who want more notebooks aren't taking anything away from the people who prefer tags. Evernote Business permits thousands of notebooks so it's not like it's impossible to add the feature to the personal versions Evernote.

If you're like me and have run out of notebooks, not being able to create new ones is a PITA.

 

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42 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

If you're like me and have run out of notebooks, not being able to create new ones is a PITA.

You're referencing the 250 limit for notebooks, compared to the 100,000 limit for tags.
It's one of the factors to consider when choosing notebooks or tags.

For me, the important factor is notes can only be assigned one notebook compared to multiple tags.

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25 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

If you're like me and have run out of notebooks, not being able to create new ones is a PITA.

I always thought the limit was architecture or performance driven but with the business limit at 10,000, I guess not.  I don't see why then don't raise this to, say, 1000, but I suppose once they did there would just be requests to go higher, so maybe 250 is their somewhat arbitrary line in the sand for personal accounts.

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On 9/7/2018 at 4:42 PM, Etonreve said:

I have a new project and because I have used all my notebooks I have to assign my notes to a notebook that is too broad and add tags.

 

I HATE IT.

 

 

How do you organize your content? Is it possible to create tags for some of the notebooks, leaving notebooks themselves for projects only?

I'm a tagger so I have a hard time working with any workflow that heavily uses notebooks as I always want to be able to find a note by at least two methods (project and note type), so I have to use tags by default. But maybe a certain type of notebook could be converted to tags, and notebooks can be saved for current projects only?

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On 9/20/2018 at 8:41 AM, chirmer said:

How do you organize your content? Is it possible to create tags for some of the notebooks, leaving notebooks themselves for projects only?

I'm a tagger so I have a hard time working with any workflow that heavily uses notebooks as I always want to be able to find a note by at least two methods (project and note type), so I have to use tags by default. But maybe a certain type of notebook could be converted to tags, and notebooks can be saved for current projects only?

I have to create tags for projects that ordinarily would have received notebooks. I DO NOT LIKE TAGS as my primary unit of organization. I'm not interested in decommissioning my existing notebooks. This is a simple problem with a simple answer that is within Evernote's ability to solve and people have been asking for it for years.

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46 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

I DO NOT LIKE TAGS

You've made that quite clear, but what's the reason for this?
Notes have the two fields for organization, Tags and Notebooks.  Why do you prefer one over the other with such emotion?

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On 9/21/2018 at 4:27 PM, DTLow said:

You've made that quite clear, but what's the reason for this?
Notes have the two fields for organization, Tags and Notebooks.  Why do you prefer one over the other with such emotion?

1

In your zeal to lecture me, you apparently didn't read the previous post. It was in response to yet another person who suggested tags. Tag People:  Stop suggesting tags to people who have made it clear they want more notebooks. You're wasting everyone's time.

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48 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

In your zeal to lecture me, you apparently didn't read the previous post. It was in response to yet another person who suggested tags. Tag People:  Stop suggesting tags to people who have made it clear they want more notebooks. You're wasting everyone's time.

I requested clarification on your post; no lecture; no suggestion.

>>you apparently didn't read the previous post.

I was only following up on your comment, "I DO NOT LIKE TAGS", bold, all caps

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4 hours ago, Etonreve said:

Tag People:  Stop suggesting tags to people who have made it clear they want more notebooks

I hate to say this and this is also going against what you are telling us not to do but I must say it:

This is similar to: 

When Apple introduced the soft keys in a phone (introduction of iPhone), people saying, quit giving us soft | electronic keys, give us bigger keys so we can type with hard keys with our Blackberrys.

My point is, (which I posted before) folder structure (which I say is the same as notebooks) is the old style of thinking. After MS DOS, with the Windows introduction, we all got programmed to have a folder structure. And it is a really hard habit to break, everybody can visualize it easily and get accustomed to it quickly as it mimics our psychical world.  

It is coming from our physical world and the way we see things. But electronics world does not really need to mirror the physical world. A file does not need to be in one space unlike how we file a physical paper. 

A file, document, a note can belong to many categories.Thus, the need for tags. Due to the folder | notebook structure, a note can be in only one notebook. So it is actually against the natural way our brains file things. We pull information based on categories which resemble tags.

I do understand the people who wants more notebooks and want to stick with notebooks, for the "tag people", that is like requesting faster horses, because you want your horse carriage to go faster. Other see it; dude there is a way better way of doing this, if you would only give it a try....

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26 minutes ago, TK0047 said:

This is similar to: 

There's a story about Henry Ford starting out and customers were asking  for faster horses.

>>folder structure (which I say is the same as notebooks)

In my use, notebooks are not the same as folders structures
Notebooks and Tags are two columns in the Note record.
In many ways, either field can be used for the same purpose.

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2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

There's a story about Henry Ford starting out and customers were asking  for faster horses.

Yup!

Another similarity, when people wanting CD | DVD drives in their laptops. Apple cut them out, whether you like them or not but they knew tech is going away from hard-media. You can cry about your CD | DVD backups or stuff all day long but it too became an obsolete product.

I am not saying "notebooks" are obsolete, all I am saying is that everybody should have an open mind about ways to do something better even if it is against our current methods, beliefs and biases.

Our biases control a lot ... and I think this is definitely one of them. 

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Sometimes hierarchical models make sense and sometimes relational models make sense.  Hierarchical thinking is definitely imprinted on our minds based upon filing systems since paper was born.  OTOH, I stumbled across Codd way back when which sent me down the relational path (read tags).  But hey, whatever floats your boat.

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

Evernote only offers hierarchical organization for tags; i.e. a tag can only have a single parent2017498975_ScreenShot2018-09-23at10_04_58.png.11c880af53fcf2295d8d726659acc596.png
I needed multiple parents for tags

Work-Around; I stored the info in a note
I'm able to access this information with scripting on a Mac

I was thinking more in terms of hierarchical and relational concepts, how we think, and what drives us to tags or notebooks.  Not the attendant tweaks to whichever.?

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4 hours ago, CalS said:

I was thinking more in terms of hierarchical and relational concepts, how we think, and what drives us to tags or notebooks.  Not the attendant tweaks to whichever.?

Was this exploring the single notebook assignment vs multiple tag assignment for a note?
I don't think this was @Etonreve's issue; it was "I DO NOT LIKE TAGS"

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51 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Was this exploring the single notebook assignment vs multiple tag assignment for a note?
I don't think this was @Etonreve's issue; it was "I DO NOT LIKE TAGS"

Nope.  More philosophical, tags might be thought of to represent relational thinking while notebooks might be thought of to represent hierarchical thinking.  I get the issue, EN focus is relational with a bit of hierarchical.  Folks want more hierarchical focus.

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On 9/23/2018 at 12:31 AM, TK0047 said:

I hate to say this and this is also going against what you are telling us not to do but I must say it:

This is similar to: 

When Apple introduced the soft keys in a phone (introduction of iPhone), people saying, quit giving us soft | electronic keys, give us bigger keys so we can type with hard keys with our Blackberrys.

My point is, (which I posted before) folder structure (which I say is the same as notebooks) is the old style of thinking. After MS DOS, with the Windows introduction, we all got programmed to have a folder structure. And it is a really hard habit to break, everybody can visualize it easily and get accustomed to it quickly as it mimics our psychical world.  

It is coming from our physical world and the way we see things. But electronics world does not really need to mirror the physical world. A file does not need to be in one space unlike how we file a physical paper. 

A file, document, a note can belong to many categories.Thus, the need for tags. Due to the folder | notebook structure, a note can be in only one notebook. So it is actually against the natural way our brains file things. We pull information based on categories which resemble tags.

I do understand the people who wants more notebooks and want to stick with notebooks, for the "tag people", that is like requesting faster horses, because you want your horse carriage to go faster. Other see it; dude there is a way better way of doing this, if you would only give it a try....

This is a user forum. The question is, are you interested in communicating with other users or insulting them? The notebook model is viable. If it weren't, you wouldn't be able to create 10K notebooks in Evernote Business. Adding more notebooks does not affect you. You know nothing about the "natural way" in which my brain works or that of other users who want more notebooks and for you to suggest you do is highly presumptuous.

Your tone reminds me of all the sanctimonious people in the comment sections of my local newspaper who scolded readers like me who spoke of the need for more charging outlets on public transportation. Scold scold scold and then the new ferries had three times the number of charging stations because the people in charge understood that passengers needed to charge their phones and laptops. If you don't carry a phone or a laptop or don't care if the battery runs down, fine. But don't interfere with the rights of others.

I don't have the time to have the same argument again and again when I've explicitly asked people to stop. It's a waste of time and some of the arguments are clearly in bad faith.

I am putting you on "Ignore."

 

 

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5 hours ago, TK0047 said:

It was not my intention, I apologize if it came out that way.

 

You didn't insult anyone best I can tell from reading the post.  Different viewpoint is all.  IMHO.

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9 minutes ago, CalS said:

You didn't insult anyone best I can tell from reading the post.  Different viewpoint is all.  IMHO.

The knights of the notebook can be a bit sensitive.

I wonder if Google had to deal with this when they switched from folders to labels. Couldn't imagine going back to folders for email, the thought alone makes me shudder.

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This discussion has digressed into user complaints on the limit for notebooks.
To indicate support for an increase to this limit, please add your vote to the feature request linked below.  The voting buttons are at the  top left corner of the discussion.

.  

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On 9/22/2018 at 8:10 PM, Etonreve said:

In your zeal to lecture me, you apparently didn't read the previous post. It was in response to yet another person who suggested tags. Tag People:  Stop suggesting tags to people who have made it clear they want more notebooks. You're wasting everyone's time.

Commenting in a forum to essentially complain with no intention of finding an actual solution, I would argue, wastes more time. I, in good faith, was trying to understand your use case to see if a solution could be found. If you just want to complain that Evernote doesn't have enough notebooks for your liking, then use the search feature, find an already existing request, and voice your complaint there. Or hop into the thread @DTLow linked. 

To quote Annie Get Your Gun, anything notebooks can do, tags can do better. You can drag notes onto tags, just like notebooks. Except that you can have notes with more than one tag, which is a limitation of notebooks. You can nest tags deeper than you can notebooks. The only things you can't do via tag is save for offline or share. But it's easy enough to create notebooks for those use cases and then store everything else outside of that. You can literally replicate your notebook structure as tags and it will barely impact your workflow. Many have done so, and discussed this in these very forums.

What is your reasoning for liking notebooks over tags? Since they are so similar in most regards (except that tags have more abilities), I'm curious why you're so gung-ho. Is it the verbage? The icon? Do you share a lot? Save a lot for offline? I'm trying to understand your use case and trying to help. Because I'm not holding my breath that Evernote will add more notebooks. Maybe they will. But until they do, we're happy to help you find a solution. We're not happy to be your Evernote punching bag, however.

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3 hours ago, chirmer said:

To quote Annie Get Your Gun, anything notebooks can do, tags can do better. You can drag notes onto tags, just like notebooks. Except that you can have notes with more than one tag, which is a limitation of notebooks. You can nest tags deeper than you can notebooks.

What good is that tag hierarchy for heavy mobile users if they cannot see it on mobile devices? This isn't a concern for me, as I use mobile devices mostly to recall information along with a little bit of info entry, and never for organization. But for someone who primarily uses mobile devices, info organization using tags is a real challenge.

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40 minutes ago, tavor said:

What good is that tag hierarchy for heavy mobile users if they cannot see it on mobile devices? 

For my processing, I'm not relying on the tag hierarchy; it's only available for select menus on select platforms.

Tags are still my choice for note organization
Notebooks are my choice for local/sync'd, offline/offline, shared/private

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12 hours ago, tavor said:

What good is that tag hierarchy for heavy mobile users if they cannot see it on mobile devices? This isn't a concern for me, as I use mobile devices mostly to recall information along with a little bit of info entry, and never for organization. But for someone who primarily uses mobile devices, info organization using tags is a real challenge.

I have hundreds of tags, and since I’ve used the same relative organizational scheme for 5+ years, I find that I’m perfectly okay without the tag hierarchy on mobile. I know my tags and often search by them instead of filtering from a tag list.

However, I am absolutely a firm believer that Evernote better improve feature parity between its apps if it wants to survive, and that means getting hierarchy support for tags on mobile. It also means making the Windows client less of a complete travesty, but that’s a convo for another thread. 

However, I think tags are still the better choice and that anyone who commits to them and uses them will in fact survive on mobile without the hierarchy. Though the hierarchy is obviously desired and should be implemented. 

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6 hours ago, chirmer said:

I have hundreds of tags, and since I’ve used the same relative organizational scheme for 5+ years, I find that I’m perfectly okay without the tag hierarchy on mobile. I know my tags and often search by them instead of filtering from a tag list.

However, I am absolutely a firm believer that Evernote better improve feature parity between its apps if it wants to survive, and that means getting hierarchy support for tags on mobile. It also means making the Windows client less of a complete travesty, but that’s a convo for another thread. 

However, I think tags are still the better choice and that anyone who commits to them and uses them will in fact survive on mobile without the hierarchy. Though the hierarchy is obviously desired and should be implemented. 

I'd be curious about that Windows client thread.  I'm only months old, but I don't feel that way.

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I find it really interesting to see how different people use the stacks / notebooks / tags for organizing. I would like to hear more about different setups. Here is mine:

My setup, which came "naturally" from working with EN for years, is this:

Stacks for general areas of related stuff, like "Writing", "Photography", "Webdesign"

Within these I have Notebooks for

  • General Information on the topic
  • Contacts for the topic
  • One notebook for each active project
  • An archive notebook

Now, when a project is finished, I'll tag all the notes with the Project name, move them to the archive and delete the notebook. (I started this before I even knew there was a limit on notebooks, because I like to be able to see the whole notebook list without too much scrolling.)

The only other instance where I use tags consistently are notes about events, so I know at first glance the context and where and when I wrote down the info / scanned the business cards.

I admit, I have about a million old tags flying around from trying out different workflows I read about, and one day I'll get around to delete them. :)

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6 hours ago, chirmer said:

It also means making the Windows client less of a complete travesty

I'm a long time Windows user but migrated to the Mac about a year ago and there are at least a few things on Windows that I miss on the Mac such as merge order and styles.  Offhand I can't think of anything on the Mac that I wish I had on Windows, so, not a criticism of your comment, just wondering what I'm missing on the Mac.  I think this would make for a good separate thread.

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Just now, s2sailor said:

Offhand I can't think of anything on the Mac that I wish I had on Windows

Ok, just thought of scripting, but I haven't gotten into that yet ... someday I will make the time.

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15 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

Ok, just thought of scripting, but I haven't gotten into that yet ... someday I will make the time.

Definitely a vote for Mac scripting; I'm a heavy user.  Many times when you might think," I wish Evernote did  ....",   I write a script and its being done.  

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5 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Definitely a vote for Mac scripting; I'm a heavy user.  Many times when you might think," I wish Evernote did  ....",   I write a script and its being done.  

It is very interesting to see what you have been able to do with scripting.  It is on my todo list ... someday.

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29 minutes ago, chronistin said:

Now, when a project is finished, I'll tag all the notes with the Project name, move them to the archive and delete the notebook.

For the "finished" entries, I prefix the name with an X so it sorts to the bottom of the list.  This applies to both notebooks and tags.

Kudos for tagging with the project name so you don't lose track.  

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

For the "finished" entries, I prefix the name with an X so it sorts to the bottom of the list.  This applies to both notebooks and tags.

Kudos for tagging with the project name so you don't lose track.  

The X is a great idea for organisation. I use Z_ when I finish something but suspect I might need it again soon. when it's done for good, l just want it out of my view (but archived for later reference).

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1 hour ago, chronistin said:

I find it really interesting to see how different people use the stacks / notebooks / tags for organizing. I would like to hear more about different setups. Here is mine:

My setup, which came "naturally" from working with EN for years, is this:

Stacks for general areas of related stuff, like "Writing", "Photography", "Webdesign"

Within these I have Notebooks for

  • General Information on the topic
  • Contacts for the topic
  • One notebook for each active project
  • An archive notebook

Now, when a project is finished, I'll tag all the notes with the Project name, move them to the archive and delete the notebook. (I started this before I even knew there was a limit on notebooks, because I like to be able to see the whole notebook list without too much scrolling.)

The only other instance where I use tags consistently are notes about events, so I know at first glance the context and where and when I wrote down the info / scanned the business cards.

I admit, I have about a million old tags flying around from trying out different workflows I read about, and one day I'll get around to delete them. :)

Two Stacks, one for synced notebooks one for local.

Five synced notebooks, three local notebooks.  Notebooks used for search search facilitation with the exception of one used for offline notes on IOS.  Inbox and Scans are two of the notebooks, so five for search facilitation and one for offline.  Since most of my searches are all notes I could probably get by with five notebooks, Inbox, Synced, Quick, Scans and Local.  Juice not worth the squeeze to make it so.

Everything else is tags.  400 of them across 39000 notes in my main account.  Two notebooks in my archive account, which is a Basic account, Inbox and Synced.  FWIW.

 

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On 9/25/2018 at 3:46 PM, chirmer said:

Commenting in a forum to essentially complain with no intention of finding an actual solution, I would argue, wastes more time. I, in good faith, was trying to understand your use case to see if a solution could be found. If you just want to complain that Evernote doesn't have enough notebooks for your liking, then use the search feature, find an already existing request, and voice your complaint there. Or hop into the thread @DTLow linked. 

To quote Annie Get Your Gun, anything notebooks can do, tags can do better. You can drag notes onto tags, just like notebooks. Except that you can have notes with more than one tag, which is a limitation of notebooks. You can nest tags deeper than you can notebooks. The only things you can't do via tag is save for offline or share. But it's easy enough to create notebooks for those use cases and then store everything else outside of that. You can literally replicate your notebook structure as tags and it will barely impact your workflow. Many have done so, and discussed this in these very forums.

What is your reasoning for liking notebooks over tags? Since they are so similar in most regards (except that tags have more abilities), I'm curious why you're so gung-ho. Is it the verbage? The icon? Do you share a lot? Save a lot for offline? I'm trying to understand your use case and trying to help. Because I'm not holding my breath that Evernote will add more notebooks. Maybe they will. But until they do, we're happy to help you find a solution. We're not happy to be your Evernote punching bag, however.

I've explained why posts like yours are not helpful. Insisting on your right to keep engaging people in the same old arguments in the guise of help is passive-aggressive.

I myself have explained at least 15 times why I prefer notebooks to tags. Others have weighed in. I'm not going to spend my day repeatedly justifying my thought process to you or other members.

"Punching bag"? You're the aggrieved party? Lovely. 

 

 

 

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19 hours ago, Gear64 said:

I'd be curious about that Windows client thread.  I'm only months old, but I don't feel that way.

19 hours ago, s2sailor said:

I'm a long time Windows user but migrated to the Mac about a year ago and there are at least a few things on Windows that I miss on the Mac such as merge order and styles.  Offhand I can't think of anything on the Mac that I wish I had on Windows, so, not a criticism of your comment, just wondering what I'm missing on the Mac.  I think this would make for a good separate thread.

For me at least, I found the Windows client to be difficult to use because of its design. Very little contrast between different sections of the app, the note title text/snippet title text is very small, the thumbnail view's note title overlaps the content, so when the content is text-heavy images/PDFs it's illegible, and it's had this bug for YEARS where certain tags are duplicated in your sidebar tags list if they're used in shared notebooks, with the username of the notebook owner next to them. No way to remove them, no way to hide them, and no other client has this issue. I've reported it multiple times and never gotten a fix. 

And, the Chrome PDF viewer is an abomination. I hate that thing with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. The Mac client still has the older PDF viewer, and it's so much better.

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@chirmer Thanks for sharing. I generally stay in the snippet view.  I know subjective, but I like smaller fonts.  Realize it would be nice if adjustable.  I've seen some kind of double tag thing in non shared environment.  It was only in one of three windows clients I access.  I forgot about it, and now realize it's no longer like that.  Suspect I shut down and restarted at some point. Assuming Chrome PDF is the engine behind inline viewing in Windows client(?).   It's adequate.  Wish I could save bookmarks inline is my only complaint.  However OneNote is my primary recent point of comparison.  It doesn't inline at all.

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4 hours ago, chirmer said:

For me at least, I found the Windows client to be difficult to use because of its design. Very little contrast between different sections of the app, the note title text/snippet title text is very small, the thumbnail view's note title overlaps the content, so when the content is text-heavy images/PDFs it's illegible, and it's had this bug for YEARS where certain tags are duplicated in your sidebar tags list if they're used in shared notebooks, with the username of the notebook owner next to them. No way to remove them, no way to hide them, and no other client has this issue. I've reported it multiple times and never gotten a fix. 

And, the Chrome PDF viewer is an abomination. I hate that thing with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. The Mac client still has the older PDF viewer, and it's so much better.

Ok, thanks for the detail.  Different use case for me so I tend not to be too bothered by those items.  My pain points are around how merge works and the lack of styles in the Mac vs Windows.

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6 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

My pain points are around how merge works and the lack of styles in the Mac vs Windows.

You have styles?
I'm using app Evertool.  Its not styles, but it applies the required font/size.

Mac/Merge is annoying.  I prefer the Windows click sequence

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1 minute ago, DTLow said:

You have styles?
I'm using app Evertool.  Its not styles, but it applies the required font/size.

For tag and notebook names we have minimal style ability.  We can set color, bold, italic, underline and strikeout.  It is the bold and color ability that I find very useful in organizing.

I've seen Evertool.  It looks very useful and fills a gap in the editor.

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Since I see that this is a area a lot of folks use "tags" I use them heavily for my organizational needs.

 

It seems that Evernote has changed something in the past year. In the sidebar (which I keep open all the time) I could see all my tags even the ones that were subtags. Now they collapse, so to see them I have have to click on the "right arrow" to expand it.  I would like to keep all the tags showing even the subtags.

Is there a trick to this? If not any hopes Evernote folks to add this function back?

See my attachment for what I want to be able to see all the time with tags.

Evernote issue with tags.pdf

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18 minutes ago, kramme said:

It seems that Evernote has changed something in the past year. In the sidebar (which I keep open all the time) I could see all my tags even the ones that were subtags. Now they collapse, so to see them I have have to click on the "right arrow" to expand it.  I would like to keep all the tags showing even the subtags.

Which platform are you using?  On Windows, at least for me, it seems to remember the state of collapse.  Once I've expanded all of them it remains that way unless I collapse them.

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Thanks for asking I forgot that detail - it is a Mac.

 

For me it only stays open to a certain level. The "A5. Hobbies" and "Hob- Bird" would be expanded but not anything inside that folder of the tags (per my attachment). I want all the tag folders expanded and to stay that way

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3 hours ago, kramme said:

For me it only stays open to a certain level. The "A5. Hobbies" and "Hob- Bird" would be expanded but not anything inside that folder of the tags (per my attachment). I want all the tag folders expanded and to stay that way

I only use two tag levels which may be the difference, a main and one sub.   An expand all and collapse all option would be helpful for both tags and notebooks.

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13 hours ago, kramme said:

Thanks for asking I forgot that detail - it is a Mac.

 

For me it only stays open to a certain level. The "A5. Hobbies" and "Hob- Bird" would be expanded but not anything inside that folder of the tags (per my attachment). I want all the tag folders expanded and to stay that way

Hi - I'd suggest you repost this suggestion in the Feature Request forum for all Evernote products to see what support you can raise...

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On 9/7/2018 at 4:59 AM, jbenson2 said:

2.) how do you handle receipts with multiple Budget categories?

This is an update1725420962_ScreenShot2019-02-27at07_54_56.png.26ea1c6274523717196943379cb17871.png to my processing of receipts and tags for budget categories

This is still tag based

Most of my receipts are single budget category; handled with a tag

For multiple budget categories, I include references in the note contents; they're inline tags*

My evernote>spreadsheet script (Mac) parses the contents and generates separate entries

* I use a script (Mac) to insert inline tags.  It makes use of Evernote's tag table

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On 9/8/2018 at 7:39 AM, DTLow said:

It's skeuomorphism.  Notebook sounds like a container for notes.  Tags sounds like a label applied to notes.

Modifying/appending your skeuomorphism analogy...I use notes as pages in notebooks; stacks as a grouping of notebooks; and, tags can be visualized as post-it notes you can adhere to specific pages (notes) and multiples to them as well, throughout any of the pages in any notebook, for easy reference and grouping. 

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On 2/27/2019 at 9:53 AM, CalS said:

One word, Quicken.  ;)

Quicken is a fine product and I was a user in the early years.  
These days, I prefer the wide-open flexibility of storing my data in Evernote and spreadsheets for analysis, reporting and number crunching

Evernote is more generic and lacks the Qicken featureset, however I manage using scripting (Mac) and spreadsheets.

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2 hours ago, DTLow said:

Quicken is a fine product and I was a user in the early years.  
I prefer the wide-open flexibility of storing my data in Evernote.  

Evernote is more generic and lacks the Qicken featureset, however I manage using scripting (Mac) and spreadsheets.

Just using your right tool for the job philosophy.  :P

All kidding aside, I keep the receipt images in EN tagged with Receipt and _YYYY, but all the arithmetic is in Quicken.

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