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Can't Take it Any Longer - Migrate Out of Evernote


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I hate this burger, I really hate it, but I quite like the sauce that comes with it. 

Some other people like the burger and sauce so they keep ordering it.

Some other people don't like the burger and/or the sauce so they stop ordering it.

I'm going to keep torturing myself by ordering something I hate and then complain about it. Maybe I should just find a burger and sauce that I do like and that will make me happy?

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21 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Your theories are fascinating. However, I would bet cold hard cash that on your computer you use deeply nested folders.

Again, as always, some people love feeling like rebels who eschew convention and  use those tags to emulate an almost good enough nested filing system. 

Actually that's a perfect example of why tagging works much better than nested folders.  On my work computer I have my own C drive and the server's "P" drive.  I make documents and save them in a folder on C but then have to copy them to P for others to view and use.  To get to where I need to put it, I have to tunnel down through P:/spay-neuter clinic/animal care/rounds/2019/June.   If I want to view a file in one of those nested folders I have to do the same thing (and many of them go deeper than just 5 levels).  But if I use the search function it will usually bring up the correct document if I know the exact title. More often, I know part of the title and my search brings up pages of documents that may have a few words the same.  Tags in EN enable me to quickly run a search for ONLY things with that tag, not things that may have that word somewhere in the title or document.

No one is saying tags are the ONLY way to go and you MUST use them!  But those of us who have tried them and given it a fair shake often find it works better for us.  your mileage may vary of course and you are free to find software which does what you want.

FWIW, when I started with EN years ago, I too wanted nested folders and made a ton of notebooks and stacks to emulate that.  It didn't take long to realize how much time i was spending putting things in the correct notebook, or remembering whether I "filed" it in "Work" or "School" since that overlaps. With a few tags I can now find it for either purpose.

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14 hours ago, DTLow said:

Thank you for the folder definition.  As noted,  folders are not supported in Evernote (failing?)

We get Notebook and Tag fields

>>emulating folders via tags

We can also emulate folders with notebooks; but only 2 levels

The GUI is the notebook/tag trees in the sidebar

They can call them whatever they want--that does not force the English Language to change to accommodate them. 

Do tell, if they called their program "code instructions" would you claim it was no longer software?

I mean, that is what you are arguing--down to the point that a book publisher can call the printed things they publish "hornwogos" and you would argue they are, therefore, not books, and all of us must go to the "hornwogo store" to purchase them.  

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16 minutes ago, DTLow said:

If you're talking about notebooks and tags, they're just field-1 and field-2 in the note metadata

Yes, they can call them whatever they want.

 A rose by any other name would smell as sweet

And the rest of us can call them what they are according to the English language. 

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41 minutes ago, TheMagicWombat said:

And you are about the 500th person to make that comment. 

Exaggeration, obviously. And yet you still don't get it. Well, carry on, O Crusader for Truth, Justice, and Windmill-tilting. Just trying to guide you into more fruitful endeavors (you'll note that I haven't taken any positions here on the tags/folders "debate"). But no...

Anyhow, obligatory (some more irony food for you):

Duty Calls

Adios!

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4 hours ago, DTLow said:

It actually works better if we all use the same names  😊1132396167_ScreenShot2019-05-31at12_16_05.png.cd339d52a7009f40c5f47b314c70d55d.png

As I said, "what they are" is  field-1 and field-2

Listen, you accused me of being wrong because Evernote doesn't have folders. I pointed out that they ARE folders, in addition to whatever marketing term Evernote has some up with to refer to them by. Just because Microsoft decided to brand its operating system as "Widnows" doesn't mean it stopped being an OS. Evernote, in a branding/marketing decision decided to call its folders "notebooks". You know what? They are still folders.  

And, it is true that this works better if we all use the same nomenclature. So, since we are discussing a Database program, and the commonly accepted name used to describe those record depositories* in database programs are folders, perhaps you should change so we are all on the same page...

Nah, I can't do that. To tell you that you need to change the phrase you are using would be every bit as wrong as you were when you got snitty over the use of the word folder, because at the end of the day, despite your protests, BOTH labels are correct. As would be repository, group, storage place, archive, site, spot, and a whole host of other terms. And unlike you, when you say "notebook" I know you mean folder, but are using the term Evernote used to brand its product with differentiation, and we are referring to the same thing. 

So, you call them notebooks. I will call them folders. We will both be correct.

 

 

 

*Gasp! Another name!

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16 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I have database experience, and access to the Evernote database on my Mac; no folders

Would "record depositories" be tables;
- there's a Note table, with fields (columns); Notebook, Tags, .....

I've already posted the definition of a folder when used in computers.

You are hung-up on the fact that because Evernote has branded them as "notebooks" and thus that is the only word in the Universe that can describe them.

Chrysler branded their products as having "Rich Corinthian Leather" interiors. Ricardo Montalban was the spokesperson. Major ad campaign. Ran for YEARS!

In 1987, on David Letterman, Mr. Montalban admitted "Rich Corinthian Leather" didn't mean anything--it was just a branding name. (Fast Forward to about 8:40 in)

 

"Notebooks" is just an Evernote branding name for folders.  

You call it "Rich Corinthian Leather" if you want--I'll call it leather because that is all that it is. You call them Notebooks if you want, I'll call them folders, because that is all they are. 

 

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7 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I am hung up on the facts, Notes have fields called Notebook, Tag, Title, ...

You're picking one of the fields, and claiming "that's a folder"

The English language does not bend to the marketing strategies of Evernote, nor does my language usage.

You can accept that, or not. Either way, the English language, and my language usage, remains unchanged. 

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9 hours ago, DTLow said:

Whatever
This has nothing to do with folder support in Evernote.

Give us facts, not your vomit of unrelated posts.
You pointed me to the database and  folders/"record depositories".  I looked and found nothing there.
What else do you have.

Here is what I have:

 

https://www.frankbuck.org/new-to-evernote-the-notebooks-you-need/

 

https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-use-evernote-for-GTD/

 

https://craftindustryalliance.org/use-evernote-organize-business-tasks/

 

https://www.pcmag.com/feature/323014/36-tips-every-evernote-user-must-know  (Pretty sad when PC Mag is convinced that Evernote Notebooks are folders, eh?)

 

https://www.schneiderb.com/6-tips-for-getting-started-with-evernote/

 

https://connect.edleadersnetwork.org/blogs/frank-buck/2014/03/05/evernote-suggestions-for-notebooks

 

https://brettkelly.org/evernote-not-notes-app-ios9-el-capitan/

 

http://libguides.nus.edu.sg/evernote

 

https://www.quora.com/Evernote-product-Tags-or-folders-Tags-AND-folders-Neither-tags-NOR-folders-Why

 

http://www.techademic.co/blog/2015/6/evernote-for-academics-tagging-vs-notebooks (OMG! 

 

Oh heck, let me just post the whole Google search:

https://www.google.com/search?q=evernote+"folders"+called+notebooks&ei=DnPyXPaPJISGtQXdpbOwDQ&start=10&sa=N&ved=0ahUKEwj2zoXhp8jiAhUEQ60KHd3SDNYQ8tMDCMYB&biw=1896&bih=867

 

Now, as I said, The rest of the WORLD understands that "Notebooks" as Evernote uses the term is "Folders" as the rest of the world uses the term. It is just a little marketing differentiation tactic to call them "notebooks" and appear to people to be more free-form. (Folders are what those stuff business people use, while creative people use notebooks!). But, your last 4 posts have been evidence you are one of those people who feel that if you don't get in the last word, you are giving up and allowing the other person to win, and if you get in the last word, you de facto claim victory.

I am MORE than willing to allow others to weigh the evidence *I* have presented in my posts that folders and notebooks are the same thing (except Evernote has nerfed their folder abilities, of course) and let them make up their own minds. But to appease you, here is what I am offering--you can say whatever you want on the subject, no matter how much it does not address the issue at hand, or align with facts, and declare victory.

You won't have won, any more than notebooks are not folders,  but if your pride demands it, I will allow you to convince yourself you have won.

So, just like an SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skit where Alex Trebek tells the contestants that whatever they write down, they win, I am telling you to post whatever you want, and tell yourself you have won because you have got in the final word, even if it wrong.  

Proceed.

 

 

 

 

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15 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

I am MORE than willing to allow others to weigh the evidence *I* have presented in my posts ...

Proceed.

The objective is to emulate file folders with our Evernote data.1005657622_ScreenShot2019-06-01at13_23_02.png.55d2be4a8a8367ed524d2deee96bf4c3.png

My position is this can be accomplished with the notebook/tag trees in the sidebar.
As evidence, *I* present screenshots from my Mac.   94504695_ScreenShot2019-06-01at06_23_41.png.2b18f0df95ca4610d7006d0a6cf93045.png1282183111_ScreenShot2019-06-01at06_22_44.png.907bd876328f76da8cb52b911a9c478d.png

The notebook tree is limited to 2 levels.
The tag tree has unlimited levels.

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18 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

So, since we are discussing a Database program, and the commonly accepted name used to describe those record depositories* in database programs are folders

Not so sure of that relative to the EN schema.  File might work better.  In my view, not having access to the internals, EN is primarily comprised of one record type, the note.  And those notes are stored in what EN calls a notebook, hence file.  There's some other stuff but the meat and potatoes is the note and all its metadata.

4 hours ago, DTLow said:

My position is this can be accomplished with the notebook/tag trees in the sidebar.

One can do this, but it is still a hack for anyone wanting a pure hierarchical notebook structure.  It only pi$$e$ people off when you bring it up.  ;)  

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On 6/1/2019 at 10:48 AM, CalS said:

it is still a hack for anyone wanting a pure hierarchical notebook structure.  It only pi$$e$ people off when you bring it up.  ;)  

That's a different discussion; they only get pi$$ed if you point out tags have a "pure hierarchical" structure. 😊

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4 hours ago, CalS said:

Not so sure of that relative to the EN schema.  File might work better.  In my view, not having access to the internals, EN is primarily comprised of one record type, the note.  And those notes are stored in what EN calls a notebook, hence file.  There's some other stuff but the meat and potatoes is the note and all its metadata.

One can do this, but it is still a hack for anyone wanting a pure hierarchical notebook structure.  It only pi$$e$ people off when you bring it up.  ;)  

He thinks he is the only person in the Universe who gets to decide what is best for them. 

I don't know if he is a troll, or far, far worse, sincere.

At any rate, some other user alerted me that you can ignore people on the forums, so he is gone.

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Luckily Evernote never ventured beyond that one single piece of software. 

However, the new kid on the block (no insult intended @Ian Small  ☺️) rekindled hope for Evernote's future. 

Who is to say that the universally accepted system of \ root \ folders \ subfolders \ etc. will not make its way into Evernote?  In fact,  Evernote has no other option, technically speaking. 

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1 hour ago, JohnLongney said:

In fact,  Evernote has no other option, technically speaking. 

Why "no other option"?   Is that really a fact?

It's more a UI thing;
technically speaking, the database structure is solid - that's a fact.

I'm speaking as a Mac user.  
I'm not sure about cramming everything into a single .exb file (Windows)

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No issue on Windows - it is good practice to separate data and program. The exb-file works well, access is performant.

In general: The same data can be displayed in several ways, depending on the (G)UI.

But I think before redoing this from scratch (and why ...), the logical step should be to make the user experience on the different platforms more unified. Given the power of the modern tablets (iPad Pro !), I would like to have my database localized there as an option, including important workflow options like  merging of notes, working (tagging) on several notes simultaneously, display of nested tags etc.

With tags, nesting makes sense, because the same note can be tagged using different dimensions like who, where, what, when, next process step etc. The categories form a logical 1st level for the tags, then follow the more detailed tag levels. What is different to folders: You can use a tag way down in the structure without knowing / introducing the levels above: Let us say you build your „Where“-structure by Continent - Country - Town - Quarter - Hotel.

You can introduce „My cozy place - Inn“ without knowing / caring about the structure above. When cleaning out your tags (which you should do from time to time) you find the „orphan“ tag and place it into the structure. This will leave the note(es) tagged with it completely in peace. And this is the big difference between using tags and folders - in the case of (classical) folders the note itself would have to be moved around, or her „container“. If there exists a (hyper)link to that note, this would be broken by relocating etc.

Using tags like this means that there are several ways to access the same note. This is shown well when using bubble browser on the Mac.

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5 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

No issue on Windows - it is good practice to separate data and program

How about separating the data from the meta-data.
The meta-data needs to be stored in the database.  On Macs, the note contents are stored externally; a separate folder for each note.

>>With tags, nesting makes sense

"Nesting" makes sense for the organization of both tags and notebooks,
I have minimal notebooks, but some users are approaching the 250/1000 number limit.

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Meta-Data is organizational data. This as well can be viewed as being separated from the programs.

See the EXIF-metadata of picture files as an example. EXIF can be used to organize pictures by completely independent programs. Not all programs will make use of it, but in general EXIF-manipulation will work along a workflow for a picture with different programs.

I did not want to open again that „nesting“-discussion. However, a note „belongs“ to a notebook. This means it inherits the properties of that notebook like being shared, being local, being downloaded etc. And 1 note can only be in 1 notebook (folder ...) at any given time, no matter how many levels of nesting are above it.

With tags, there is nothing like this. From being assigned a tag, the properties of a note (own and inherited) will not be altered, and removing the tag will not change the note at all. If I want to add a tag, I add it, if a tag has outlived its use for a note, I remove it. If I want to move a tag around in the tag structure, I move it, without having to think at all about the notes related to this tag. The notes stay where they are, and the tag-note-relation is not altered by moving the tag.

So i doubt that it would be necessary for an individual to have a critically high number of notebooks if a good combination of notebook assignment and tagging would be used. This may be different for business users, depending on their business case. If for example you use individual notebooks to share information with your suppliers, freelancers, customers etc. (one notebook for each partner), you will rapidly dig into the allowed maximum.

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5 hours ago, JohnLongney said:

Luckily Evernote never ventured beyond that one single piece of software. 

However, the new kid on the block (no insult intended @Ian Small  ☺️) rekindled hope for Evernote's future. 

Who is to say that the universally accepted system of \ root \ folders \ subfolders \ etc. will not make its way into Evernote?  In fact,  Evernote has no other option, technically speaking. 

Don't kid yourself--Evernote will insist that Nested folders are evil and not good for their product up to, and past, the day the file Chapter 7. The reason for this is branding. Evernote is trying to say "You can run a small business, or the Department of Defense itself, if you switch over to our loosely-organized unstructured way of doing things. Look, we're cool--we've got tablets you can write on that feed your words directly into Evernote--what could be more Bohemian than that!"

The leaving out of nested folders is, simply put, marketing. For people who want their data left free and flowing like the clouds, Evernote is digital crack. It makes them feel all warm and tingly inside. 

Now, they could add nested folders, but they have resisted doing so for over a decade. They have seen their disciples preach the doctrine of tags being "just as good" to the nested-folder people each and every time anyone wanders into these forums wanting nested folders. Think for a second what it would mean to the loyal if Evernote added in nested folders. Yes, the true believers could simply not use them. But, think a little deeper--it would mean that Evernote was officially endorsing the idea that tags were not a substitute for nested folders, and for over a decade, the loyal were championing Evernote's official stance, only to have Evernote sell them out.

Don't kid yourself--the people in here who are constantly saying tags are just as good as nested folders have put skin into he game. They have a reputation to consider. 

Evertnote adds nested folders, and the debate is over--the nested folders crowd was right all along--rigid structure IS a better option in a lot of circumstances.

In the eyes of a lot of Evernote users, Evernote will no longer be a "new kind of information storage, processing, and retrieval tool for a new generation"--instead, it will simply become something to invest your feelings into as much as, oh, say the latest version of Word. 

Evernote isn't going to do that--right now they have people who are loyal to their software because of philosophical reasons. There is no other reason for the loyal to feel a need to "correct" someone whenever they say, "I'd really find nested folders more useful." I mean, think about it--if someone was to post in a Word support forum that they wish Word included direct stylus input, translating cursive into standard text input, none of us would feel compelled to say, "You really need to learn to like using the keyboard--it is WAY better, and I have PROOF!"

No, we'd probably just skip over the post because the message did not affect us directly.

But posting you want nested folders does affect the loyal directly. They want you to learn to do it THEIR way--which of course, they can "prove" is sooooo much better.

Evernote has branded itself as being anti-nesting. They are not likely to change that brand image anytime soon. 

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1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Don't kid yourself--Evernote will insist that Nested folders are evil and not good for their product
<whine> <whine> <whine> 
Evernote has branded itself as being anti-nesting. They are not likely to change that brand image anytime soon. 

I haven't seen any such thing from Evernote.
I know that Evernote implemented Stacks to allow a level of nesting for Notebooks
Nesting has always a feature for Evernote's primary organization tool (Tags)

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Probably the most frontier gibberish I've seen posted on here for quite some time.

Evernote are a business, they make decisions based on what they think will make their business successful. Lots of pieces of information help them make these decisions, I don't think that offending a dozen people on a user forum is a major contributor.

I've never seen anyone from Evernote say that "Nested folders are evil", I've seen them say we have chosen a different path because we want to, because we are a business and because we believe that there are enough people who agree with us to make our business viable.

I like Evernote a lot, I was a user on their first shard, back when that meant something. I make the choice, knowing the constraints and the bits I don't like to use the software. I know it's far from perfect, I'm loyal enough to jump ship as soon as something better comes along, I certainly wouldn't waste my time trying to push water up a hill on a user forum.

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EN is not leader of the DARK anti-nesting-forces, trying to force the GOOD side out of nesting. And I am neither (add some deep breathing here for effect).

They just made a decision way back that a note (1) belongs to a notebook (1), and that the logical „superstructure“ above and between that should be set up using tags. This is a user interface decision that is reflected through all clients. The later additions like stacks (not well reflected under the Business account) and nesting of tags (not reflected under the mobile OSes) are not reflected through all clients.

Those systems that depend on nesting of folders typically have no tags (Win), or only a weak tagging (Mac). If nesting of folders would solve anything, there would be no need to dump data into EN, one could just stay on with his deeply nested folders and search function like Windows index-based search or spotlight. Anybody knows what building and maintaining this means who is running a desktop OS. The mistake is that there the logical path to a document leads through the physical description of where to find the file. When this structure is organized by „Year“ as 1st criteria, there is no way to approach the files from several years by simply type in „customer“.

So it can as well be part of EN success to NOT have implemented nested notebooks / folders, as is may be it’s peril. For me, nesting of notebooks is not relevant - tags, their management including nesting and a massive and fast search infrastructure is essential for my approach.

Others may see it differently.

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1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

If nesting of folders would solve anything...

Others may see it differently.

Therein lies the problem--again. Over the past decade the forums have had people screaming/begging for nested folders, and other people say they are not needed. 

The two sides boil down to:

1. People who could really use the usefulness of nested folders.

2. People who don't need nested folders, and think anyone who wants nested folders is screwed in the head.

You know what I don't need? Lipstick and nail polish. But the fact I don't need lipstick and nail polish does not mean that some people don't really, really, really want the end result they can achieve with lipstick and nail polish! I could argue that they could smile more or wear different clothes to make themselves more attractive, and rub cherry Kool Aid into their lips to emulate lipstick, and use a colored Sharpee to emulate nail polish. but I would never claim--just because I don't need lipstick or nail polish--that those two products not solve any needs.

You actually started out your treatise by saying that nesting does NOTHING, and then, as an after thought, throw out the "others may see it differently."

No, others DO see it differently. Other people process information and work differently than you. And just because you don't need nested folders does not mean that having them would be pointless even for other people. 

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6 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

I did not want to open again that „nesting“-discussion. However, a note „belongs“ to a notebook.

"a note „belongs“ to a notebook" has nothing to do with nesting.

Nesting is a useful aid to organizing notebooks and tags

>1) I did not say it would be nesting. It just means it is a 1:n-relation, that can be handled by one field of data in the metadata of each note.

And you repost the same notebook/tag explanation.

We just want to organize our notebooks and tags

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4 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Don't kid yourself--Evernote will insist that Nested folders are evil and not good for their product up to, and past, the day the file Chapter 7. The reason for this is branding.

I think you are way over thinking and misinterpreting this decision.  Evernote architected a solution in the beginning that did not include nested folders.  We can all insert our own opinion as to why here.  The no nested folders argument started to ramp up and Evernote hacked in stacks which provides a folder collection level.  That helped some.  I find them handy, but it is not a solution for those that want deeply nested folders.  Evernote has said (somewhere) that adding more layers would be a non-trivial architecture change, so we haven't seen anything more since then.  

I've got to believe that (certainly by now) EN realizes that many want nested folders.  Whether adding that in would add to their bottom line ... who knows.  So far this hasn't been prioritized.  Maybe the effort this year to unify the app experience and address long standing problems may involve some back end architecture changes that would allow nested folders ... one can hope.  I really don't care either way, but it would end this long standing debate ... and that I do hope for.

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@DTLow 1) I did not say it would be nesting. It just means it is a 1:n-relation, that can be handled by one field of data in the metadata of each note.

2) Nesting of notebooks would not change this. But it would require 1 field of data in every notebook, and reading this in a loop, as deep as the nesting goes. The deeper, the more loops.

From my understanding, to introduce this would be the major change in all of the EN structure and clients.

3) Tags are different, because they can be represented by a n:m-relation. Because the number of tags per note is restricted, it could be done by x fields (x=Max.number of tags) in each notes metadata containing tags. More typical and in line with a relational database design would be a linking table between tags and notes. Because changing the note-tag-relation is easy, I think that this is the solution that was implemented.

If tags are nested, this does not change this, because nesting of tags is again 1:n, before you start reading the n:m-table  for the note to tag relation. It seems this was implemented to the desktop clients, but whyever not to the mobile ones.

And no, I am not a SW engineer.

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35 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

I think you are way over thinking and misinterpreting this decision.  Evernote architected a solution in the beginning that did not include nested folders.  We can all insert our own opinion as to why here.  The no nested folders argument started to ramp up and Evernote hacked in stacks which provides a folder collection level.  That helped some.  I find them handy, but it is not a solution for those that want deeply nested folders.  Evernote has said (somewhere) that adding more layers would be a non-trivial architecture change, so we haven't seen anything more since then.  

I've got to believe that (certainly by now) EN realizes that many want nested folders.  Whether adding that in would add to their bottom line ... who knows.  So far this hasn't been prioritized.  Maybe the effort this year to unify the app experience and address long standing problems may involve some back end architecture changes that would allow nested folders ... one can hope.  I really don't care either way, but it would end this long standing debate ... and that I do hope for.

I teach branding and marketing to college business students. Everything that Evernote produces--down to the alliances they have made with third-party vendors are designed to appeal to their target audience. They will NOT be bringing in Nested Notebooks because it would water down their brand and thus alienate their target audience. 

 

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1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

They will NOT be bringing in Nested Notebooks because it would water down their brand and thus alienate their target audience. 

My understanding is that Evernote has not implemented Nested Notebooks (hierarchy) because of priority and development workload.  They did implement simple notebook nesting with Stacks.

I'm not clear how this would impact brand or cause alienation.

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1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

I teach branding and marketing

Ok, so everything to you looks like a branding exercise, understandable.  EN may never implement nested notebooks, but will that be because of some great EN branding plan or fear in alienating the taggers? ... nah.

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2 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

They will NOT be bringing in Nested Notebooks because it would water down their brand and thus alienate their target audience. 

Really?  I'm a tagger (5 notebooks of merit for 42k+ notes) and nested notebooks are meh to me, wouldn't use them.  If I am a member of the target audience, no alienation here.  After 10+ years of using EN changes that negatively affect my workflow are the path to alienating yours truly.  

IAC, as @s2sailor so succinctly put it, "I really don't care either way, but it would end this long standing debate ... and that I do hope for."

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1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

Ok, so everything to you looks like a branding exercise, understandable.  EN may never implement nested notebooks, but will that be because of some great EN branding plan or fear in alienating the taggers? ... nah.

ALL successful companies focus HEAVILY on branding. And by successful I mean grow larger than a mom and pop corner store. You identify your target audience based upon a slew of factors, and design a product for them. 

If you are smart, you never, ever water down your brand. A lot of companies will try to do such, and they wind up doing what is known as "Straddling". This is when you are trying to keep your original customers happy, while recruiting new customers in different markets. It usually results in mediocre sales in both markets, and company death. Most companies adopt an entirely new product line or company name to be able to pull this off.  A top-shelf food item will create an entirely different brand to sell a virtually identical product at 2/3rds the price. Why do they do this? Because one segment of their market will purchase the more expensive item to their family gets "the best", while another segment prides itself on purchasing the "more economical yet just as good" item, and thus saving money. 

And companies know if they also sell the cheaper brand, that cheapness "taint" will spill over to their more expensive product, and drive the top-shelf customers away. No one is stupid enough to to pay more for a product that they suspect (know) is the same as a cheaper product. but the top shelf customers are not satisfied if they purchase the cheaper item, so they will purchase a different item, telling themselves that THIS new brand is top quality. 

People do NOT make purchases based upon taste alone. Let's face it--most store bought food is average. But they WILL make purchases to satisfy their own sense of self-identification. 

They will spend a fortune on that variable. Standard marketing ploy--offer them 3 comparable products. Say... egg cookers. Vary the features only slightly. You are appealing to 3 different market segments. (There are more, but we will not discuss the early adopters, seekers of reliability, etc, etc.. We are focused on PRICE segments) Make the cheap on $15. Make the expensive one $29. Where do you price the middle one?

$25.

Some people will ALWAYS buy the cheapest one. Some people will ALWAYS by the most expensive. That middle group? They will almost always purchase the MIDDLE product--so why would you price it  in the middle? $22 would be halfway between the two ends, but you can make $3 more per unit without seriously affecting sales by charging $25. 

I remember shopping trips with my wife where she would want the "name brand" because it "was better". I would then pull out the private label store brand, show her the list of ingredients (identical), the percentages of each (identical), and then show her the city of manufacture (identical). Sometimes it would even say "Manufactured by ...." and the manufacturing company would be the same for both. 

Let's see, same ingredients in the same ratios made by the same factory...

It was a sheer display of stupidity on my part thinking she would ever choose the IDENTICAL store brand. She was in the "brand name" segment, and nothing was going to change her mind. She could have seem the batch of Tums bottles intermixed with Meijer bottles and being filled by the same batches out of the same automated hoppers, and she still would have wanted the 30% more expensive Tums. 

The reason I see branding everywhere, is because it IS everywhere. We teach our students to never, ever, dilute their brand. Never change their brand unless it is to become even MORE niche. If they have an opportunity to corner the market in a new market segment, you make a new brand to move that product.

I have never heard of a major software company that could pull off the multiple-brands for similar products. Websites do it like mad. There are a handful of parent companies that own dozens of "competing" dating websites.

Now, having said that, I don't know of any, but that doesn't mean there are any. Maybe someone has pulled it off and I haven't heard about it yet.

But I do know this--never mess with your own brand. If Coca Cola couldn't get away with it with "New Coke", YOU sure as hell can't with whatever it is you are marketing! 

Here is an easy to read (and somewhat humorous) article on the subject. 

https://brandmarketingblog.com/articles/branding-definitions/what-is-brand-dilution/

 

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@TheMagicWombat

quite frankly my albeit limited insight into the world of advertising and branding fails to associate  computer software with anything beyond logos in terms of keeping to original concepts.

Perhaps things are somewhat different over your side of the Big Pond but over here Coke is just not the drink any more.  However The Coca-Cola Company sells other drinks, some orientated towards health-conscious consumers thus retaining its market share. 

How does all that relate to Evernote with that one and only product? Going by my experience with Evernote and software in general I'd predict Evernote demise within 4 - 5 yrs unless Evernote either becomes the note-taking editor for all operating systems or the database software for notes. 

Evernote  may have 200+ million users world-wide but in real terms its current usability  is flawed in so many ways that no business I know of could use it.

 Original data embedded in the  database is the road to hell in terms of PC capability (secure data storage!) in conjunction with web synchronisation. I am not speaking of 100,000 notes with trifling content such as single pdf docs scanned or generated for web usage but notes that border on the single file  limit.  Creating notes linking to external storage? API limited to Google Drive. Dropbox, OneDrive and a whole of lot of others? Fail. 

In fact, for synchronised document storage on any of the reliable cloud servers nobody needs Evernote.  These cloud servers index content at speeds which Evernote just cannot match. 

Though a group of <100 prominent forum helpers swear by their storage/editing systems within Evernote, in the real world, Evernote is no more than a pricey piece of software offered by a company unfortunately led by a number of incompetents of the first order for too long. 

Apple's days are over as far as general office usage is concerned. Their latest machine, the new Mac Pro will ship for a mere $ 10,000.  Macbooks are poor relations in terms of hardware and software against Windows notebooks for the same money. Therefore Evernote has to focus on Windows and Linux. 

Just my few cents, so to speak. 

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Branding? We're doing branding now? Really? Sure, we all know that branding is important, but Evernote's branding remains, at heart, "Remember everything and access it wherever you are", not "Organize your stuff without folders. Really." But sure, let's skip all of that, and hand-wave off to a completely off-topic lesson on the power of marketing over fact & reality, but which wholly unrelated to Evernote. I hate to say it, but things were a lot better -- or at least more amusing in an eyebrow-raising sort of way -- when it was just bad arguments folders vs notebooks vs tags.

Never mind that nobody *ever* said "Nested folders are evil." Nobody from Evernote, nobody in the forums  Anyone who claims that should cite their source, or be shown to be an all-star fantasist, or exaggerating pathetically for rhetorical effect, or just plain lying.

Not sure what "frontier" gibberish is, but internally translating it to "inane" works for me...

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12 hours ago, JohnLongney said:

I'd predict Evernote demise within 4 - 5 yrs unlesEvernote either becomes the note-taking editor for all operating systems or the database software for notes. 

Evernote's currently in a positive cash flow and I'm expecting this continues for the immediate future.
My prediction for the long term is that we all die.

  1. Note-taking is a hot product, but it's the dedicated niche for other companies.  
    I don't see profit in incurring development costs for significant improvements.

     
  2. Database software for notes isn't a great selling point, and what I'm paying for
    I consider Evernote the best solution.

I'm satisfied with using the Evernote product/service for the imediate future
- If something better comes along, I'll switch
- If Evernote's demise occurs, I'll take my data and move on

>>Apple's days are over as far as general office usage ... Therefore Evernote has to focus on Windows and Linux. 

Boo Hiss, Apple Rocks.   

I welcome the focus on a common editor.  Linux users will benefit from Web focus.

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1 hour ago, jefito said:

Branding? We're doing branding now? Really? Sure, we all know that branding is important, but Evernote's branding remains, at heart, "Remember everything and access it wherever you are", not "Organize your stuff without folders. Really." But sure, let's skip all of that, and hand-wave off to a completely off-topic lesson on the power of marketing over fact & reality, but which wholly unrelated to Evernote...

You simultaneously claim to know nothing about it, and yet are certain it does not apply...

I applaud the skill of your cognitive dissonance mechanism!

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5 hours ago, JohnLongney said:

 

...

Evernote  may have 200+ million users world-wide but in real terms its current usability  is flawed in so many ways that no business I know of could use it.

 Original data embedded in the  database is the road to hell in terms of PC capability (secure data storage!) in conjunction with web synchronisation. I am not speaking of 100,000 notes with trifling content such as single pdf docs scanned or generated for web usage but notes that border on the single file  limit.  Creating notes linking to external storage? API limited to Google Drive. Dropbox, OneDrive and a whole of lot of others? Fail. 

In fact, for synchronised document storage on any of the reliable cloud servers nobody needs Evernote.  These cloud servers index content at speeds which Evernote just cannot match. 

...

Just my few cents, so to speak. 

I would agree. The people at Evernote convinced themselves that they had a "new way of doing things", and they were somewhat correct. Evernote is to traditional database software what Spanx are to a tuxedo. The problem is that trying to convince the business world that your new different way of doing things is better requires you to solve problems--not simply have people do things differently. Evernote is great for single users who enjoy the ... loosely organied way of storing ad retrieving data. Trying to entice the big players is not working for them. Look at Evernote's own list of companies it is used by:

https://evernote.com/business/customer-stories

I see one company with over 500 employees, one with 100-500. No mention in either of those how many people actually use Evernote for more than the most basic of tasks. And from there, we start to hit companies with a handful of employees. When your company is bragging about being used by companies that don't even have 10 employees, you are hurting. Plus, laying off 15% of your workforce (Evernote--less than a year ago) during a BOOM economy, does not inspire confidence. The trade mags have already been advising people to follow protocols to be ready for that random Tuesday morning when the Evernote servers are permanently down for Chapter 7.

This discussion has made me go back and re-look at Notion. Leaving all my data in the Evernote basket just does not seem prudent...

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4 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Plus, laying off 15% of your workforce (Evernote--less than a year ago) during a BOOM economy, does not inspire confidence. The trade mags have already been advising people to follow protocols to be ready for that random Tuesday morning when the Evernote servers are permanently down for Chapter 7.

Wow - so much unfounded gossip,  so little time:  lessee

  1. Evernote (they said) pre-staffed for an expansion that didn't happen in that year.  Rather than have people sitting around on their thumbs,  they let surplus staff go.  Evernote's tweets about the circumstances then included comments to the effect that they were increasingly profitable and wanted to stay that way.
  2. Which 'trade mags'?  They're remarkably badly informed if they think that
    • Evernote syncs everyone on a Tuesday
    • Losing the servers disables the data stored on every users' hard drive and (if they're sensible) backups.
    • Evernote 'closing down' would necessarily shutter the (Google based) servers
    • Users would be unable to use the 'import' feature in (currently) a few competing products
  3. And last but by no means least:  that 200M+ users would not be hotly sought after by averyone else in the note-taking market and offered all sorts of "Try me! Try me!" deals to take over their data.

I get that Evernote is not everyone's favourite product,  and that this is a useful channel to blow off a bit of steam about reasons for going elsewhere.  But for pity's sake: to borrow a quote from Bill Shakespeare: "Stand not upon the order of your going,. But have your winge,  and go!"

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The things you learn here....

Quote

Apple's days are over as far as general office usage is concerned.

I guess their highest ever enterprise numbers are the first step to that failure. The new pro is targeted at a very specific group of users and just comparing the specs of hardware is a really poor method.

Anyway, pick a burger and sauce you like.

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7 hours ago, gazumped said:

Wow - so much unfounded gossip,  so little time:  lessee

  1. Evernote (they said) pre-staffed for an expansion that didn't happen in that year.  Rather than have people sitting around on their thumbs,  they let surplus staff go.  Evernote's tweets about the circumstances then included comments to the effect that they were increasingly profitable and wanted to stay that way.
  2. Which 'trade mags'?  They're remarkably badly informed if they think that
    • Evernote syncs everyone on a Tuesday
    • Losing the servers disables the data stored on every users' hard drive and (if they're sensible) backups.
    • Evernote 'closing down' would necessarily shutter the (Google based) servers
    • Users would be unable to use the 'import' feature in (currently) a few competing products
  3. And last but by no means least:  that 200M+ users would not be hotly sought after by averyone else in the note-taking market and offered all sorts of "Try me! Try me!" deals to take over their data.

I get that Evernote is not everyone's favourite product,  and that this is a useful channel to blow off a bit of steam about reasons for going elsewhere.  But for pity's sake: to borrow a quote from Bill Shakespeare: "Stand not upon the order of your going,. But have your winge,  and go!"

1: Here is what REALLY happened with the layoffs: https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/18/evernote-just-slashed-54-jobs-or-15-percent-of-its-workforce/

2: A. Not what I wrote. Not even close. You need to take some classes in reading comprehension skills

2. B. Those serves drop, and how are you going to synchronize your various devices? You better have a plan ready because IF you are more than a single user--but rather a company using Evernote Commercially--you need your plan in place or the dropping of servers will cripple your business. (I I realize working for an actual company of several employees is an alien concept to you, but having Evernote's servers drop would be a catastrophe for any such endeavor.)

2.C. You got any evidence to indicate that if Evernote closes the Evernote servers will stay up streaming your data, I would just LOVE to see it.  

2.D. Tell that to someone who mistakenly didn't prep for it and now their 7-person sales team is left without access to their data. Sure, you could have everything up and running in a week, and that might only have cost your company a few tens of thousands. No big deal, right? 

3. It takes a bankruptcy court months to approve any transactions. That means those "try me" offers would be delayed for months. You wanna sit around waiting 3-4 months to restart your business, you are MORE than welcome to.

Biting sarcasm aside, only a FOOL does not have a disaster backup plan in place for ALL of their important data and processes from the moment they start to use the software. 

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7 hours ago, Metrodon said:

The things you learn here....

I guess their highest ever enterprise numbers are the first step to that failure. The new pro is targeted at a very specific group of users and just comparing the specs of hardware is a really poor method.

Anyway, pick a burger and sauce you like.

I remember back in the 90s when the MAC/PC debate was still being fought. Most of my friends used PC--but one was a Mac devotee. He would talk about the fact that the Mac was a better machine. We would hit back with the fact that it was way more expensive, and PCs had more hardware options. He would comment on the fact that it cost more, but it was better, and you got what you paid for.

Debate went nowhere.

Then one day we were all sitting around discussing how much we LOVED playing Doom, and co-op and deathmatch rocked. He sat their quietly. Finally one of us asked him if he liked playing Doom. He said that Doom wasn't out on the Mac yet, but it was being coded. 

When we asked when it was going to be released for the Mac, his answer was, "Next year, sometime."

He never defended his Mac again.... 

It isn't what the machine can theoretically do that makes it valuable, it is what you can get done with it that makes it valuable. 

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10 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

You simultaneously claim to know nothing about it, and yet are certain it does not apply...

I applaud the skill of your cognitive dissonance mechanism!

Nice "but-what-about". Go ahead and source your claim that Evernote thinks "folders are evil". Bet you can't. And source my claim that I "know nothing about" marketing while you're at it. Then realize that I also never said that marketing does not apply to Evernote. Is making stuff up just what you do?

Re marketing: I am not a marketer, but I understand its usefulness. Many products, including software -- which I develop, and yes, I deal with our marketers -- require both marketing and technical aspects, and in the right balance. Marketing a technically deficient product will likely run out of steam before too long (i.e., can't deliver the goods, at least in my business, geographic information and analysis), while an under-marketed product that is otherwise technically superior may never get off the ground. I know enough about marketing to know, and be able to freely admit, that I'm not an expert, but that doesn't mean I know nothing, nor do I think it's valueless. It's just not my gig, mush as tech is not yours.

Anyways, riddle me this: Why in the world would adding nested notebooks "water down their branding"? Makes no sense. They already have notebooks. Their branding says nothing about nesting either way. If they added it, lots of Evernote users would be happy, but many would be none the wiser. The simple user metaphor of notes, notebooks, and tags would remain.

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15 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

be ready for that random Tuesday morning when the Evernote servers...

Could've sworn I saw that somewhere..

On layoffs, I think journos tend to write attention-grabbing,  exciting copy - additional fact checking is always useful...

Not going to debate all of it,  because that's pointless: you have your opinion,  as is your right.

On one point I'm actually happy to agree with you.

3 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Biting sarcasm aside, only a FOOL does not have a disaster backup plan in place for ALL of their important data and processes from the moment they start to use the software. 

If Evernote crashed tonight,  I'd be working again tomorrow.  (Backups,  and imports into other note-taking apps that already support it.)

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41 minutes ago, jefito said:

Re marketing: I am not a marketer, but I understand its usefulness.

Ditto.  Paraphrasing, advertising being a subset of marketing and all, but what the hey.  ;)

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” John Wanamaker (1838-1922).

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19 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

only a FOOL does not have a disaster backup plan in place for ALL of their important data and processes from the moment they start to use the software. 

My EN data is backed up, but I consider the backups optional
- If I loose internet access to Evernote, I have full copies of my data (Mac/iPad)
- Evernote uploads my data to the server, and has extensive data backups in place

More important is to have an exit plan;  for both Evernote users, and "migrate" users
Evernote makes it easy to export my data (Mac); I'm not sure about the alternate services

Edit: If using Local Notebooks, you are forgoing Evernote's backup goodness - see @s2sailor's post

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28 minutes ago, DTLow said:

My EN data is backed up, but I consider data backups optional... Evernote has extensive data backups in place at the server level.

I know you are aware of this, but for others that may not be, as a reminder, that is not true if you have any local notebooks.  It is our responsibility to have backups of those.

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6 minutes ago, jefito said:

'm guessing there would have been consequences... 

And then the thread would have been locked.  That is how many of those "discussions" ended up.

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20 hours ago, jefito said:

Nice "but-what-about". Go ahead and source your claim that Evernote thinks "folders are evil". Bet you can't. And source my claim that I "know nothing about" marketing while you're at it. Then realize that I also never said that marketing does not apply to Evernote. Is making stuff up just what you do?

Re marketing: I am not a marketer, but I understand its usefulness. Many products, including software -- which I develop, and yes, I deal with our marketers -- require both marketing and technical aspects, and in the right balance. Marketing a technically deficient product will likely run out of steam before too long (i.e., can't deliver the goods, at least in my business, geographic information and analysis), while an under-marketed product that is otherwise technically superior may never get off the ground. I know enough about marketing to know, and be able to freely admit, that I'm not an expert, but that doesn't mean I know nothing, nor do I think it's valueless. It's just not my gig, mush as tech is not yours.

Anyways, riddle me this: Why in the world would adding nested notebooks "water down their branding"? Makes no sense. They already have notebooks. Their branding says nothing about nesting either way. If they added it, lots of Evernote users would be happy, but many would be none the wiser. The simple user metaphor of notes, notebooks, and tags would remain.

1. The fact is that Evernote claims tags are better than nested folders, and refuses to implement them despite a decade of demand, says volumes.

2. So, you have now said that you are not an expert in marketing, but taken umbrage with me saying you said you don't know marketing. So... are you claiming to straddle the fence and know a little? A little and two smidges? Which is it? 

3. You were the one who felt that I was reading too much into Evernote being branded and marketed. Which is it. Are they big into branding or not. Make up your mind please, and let us know WHICH position you are going to commit to.

4. And that shows why you don't understand even the basics of marketing and branding. As I have repeatedly stated, Evernote is marketed to a specific market segment--the kind of people who reject dogma and traditional ways of doing things. If you think employee-designated work hours, with time off for Frisbee tournaments, and open office space with flexible groups, think dress codes are for boring stuffy old people, and don't understand why "the suits" fixate so much on "profits", you are an Evernote ideal target. I mean, come on--every time they show a workplace environment in their marketing it looks like some hipster 20-something is working on the latest killer app. Every other database software in the world, down to and including Gmail, includes nested folders AND tags. That means their either created Evernote with software devs who had never SEEN a database before, or they made a decision to leave it out of the equation.

There is no middle ground on that last one. By default, any software dev would include nested folders--unless they were told to keep them out. And the reaosn why they were told to keep them out is so Evernote could say "And no rigid structure--we have found a better way..."

TAGS??? Mandatory tags are somehow better than nested folders and tags???

Absolutely, if you are striving for product differentiation to brand your product... 

didn't say they were better for the user--they are simply better for Evernote because now it can stand up and say, "Look we are BETTER because we are DIFFERENT!"

And, it has worked. No one in here can give a single reason why nested folders and tags are somehow inferior to only having tags--oh, but they will claim the Evernote way is better, or "just as good".

They bought into the marketing, and are now committed to it...

 

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16 hours ago, s2sailor said:

I know you are aware of this, but for others that may not be, as a reminder, that is not true if you have any local notebooks.  It is our responsibility to have backups of those.

It is also prudent to know WHICH software you are going to use if there is more than only your time at stake (i.e. employ ant least one employee). If you don't, when everything drops, you are left with a situation where you are paying employees to sit around while you scramble like mad to find and transition to your replacement software. 

Now, admittedly, Evernote has never been able to break into selling to corporations with any significance, so this is probably only a major deal for those small companies that have built their business with Evernote as one of the foundations. But, perversely, those same companies are the ones who struggle the most with cash flow, and even 3-5 days of downtime could kill them. 

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1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

It is also prudent to know WHICH software you are going to use ... even 3-5 days of downtime could kill them. 

This is in regards to disaster and abandoning the Evernote ship.

I've made no decision on replacement software; I know I can export in html format (Mac) and have continued access to my notes. I run this weekly as part of my data backups - a 25 minute process

My plan is for zero downtime.

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7 hours ago, s2sailor said:

And then the thread would have been locked.  That is how many of those "discussions" ended up.

You say that like it would be a bad thing...

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On 3/11/2019 at 6:43 PM, TheMagicWombat said:

The owners are religious fanatics about nested folders being the Devil's work. ...

 

On 6/2/2019 at 8:54 AM, TheMagicWombat said:

Don't kid yourself--Evernote will insist that Nested folders are evil ...

 

1 hour ago, TheMagicWombat said:

1. The fact is that Evernote claims tags are better than nested folders, and refuses to implement them

I've seen no evidence of these claims.  
Notebooks and Tags serve different purposes, but I see "nest" levels implemented for both fields.

Tags are the primary tool for organization; Notebooks also serve as identification for default, private/shared, sync/local, offline.

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In the 10 years I've been with EN, I have bought half a dozen new devices, Getting up and running with EN was the easiest part of setting up a new device. 

Having said, that, I am religious about my backups. I have no reason EN is going anywere, but if they do, we will have plenty of time (and in only takes less than an hour) to grab all our stuff. 

But with the volume of stuff I have in EN, it would be irresponsible not to backup. I alternate weekly backups to the ENEX files, combined with monthly dumps into HTML. Plus the fact that almost everything in EN was someplace else on my hard drive first, which means it is also backed up to 3 external drives and the cloud.

As far as the other debates are concerned, smooth peanut butter is far superior to chunky. It is known.

 

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2 hours ago, DTLow said:

This is in regards to disaster and abandoning the Evernote ship.

I've made no decision on replacement software; I know I can export in html format (Mac) and have continued access to my notes. I run this weekly as part of my data backups - a 25 minute process

My plan is for zero downtime.

You employ zero people? Correct?

That is the difference. If you research NOW which software to use after Evernote tanks, you spend time for something that might not happen. Better to spend the time on now's emergencies. If you employed people, however, you'd want to do a bit of research first because you pay the employees even if they are texting friends while you find an Evernote replacement. 

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56 minutes ago, DTLow said:

 

 

I've seen no evidence of these claims.  
Notebooks and Tags serve different purposes, but I see "nest" levels implemented for both fields.

Tags are the primary tool for organization; Notebooks also serve as identification for default, private/shared, sync/local, offline.

Only because Evernote intentionally nerfed notebooks. Think about what you just said--tags == organizing. 

Organizing means to make things arranged in a neat, useful,  and compact manner. Tags do no such thing. 

or·gan·ize
/ˈôrɡəˌnīz/
 Learn to pronounce
verb
1.
arrange into a structured whole; order.
"organize lessons in a planned way"
synonyms:    put in order, order, arrange, sort, sort out, assemble, marshal, put straight, group, dispose, classify, collocate, categorize, catalog, codify, tabulate, compile, systematize, systemize, regulate, regiment, standardize, structure, shape, mold, lick/knock into shape, pigeonhole; More
2.
make arrangements or preparations for (an event or activity); coordinate.
"the union organized a 24-hour general strike"

 

Tags don't do any of those--except maybe ... no, they don't even systematize. What they do is allow you to pre-decide what important categories a record might have as a property, and label said tag for when you do you scan or peruse that category. The nested tags, as is often pointed out, allows one to emulate organization, but that is only if you ...

Multiply your number of tags. For a long time I have been trying to verbalize what it is about tags that just doesn't work, and I admit I have failed. I know they don't work, as other people have also encountered, but we've not been able to explain it. One thing, important to at least me, why tags don't emulate nested notebooks well is because doing so makes it impossible to have a logical and concise tag system. I am forced to have some of my tags be for what tags are for ("Hey, this relates to motivating students--I'll tag it "Student Attention") and some of them relate to emulating my nested folders (Classes > 2019 > Spring > International Business > Section 002  > Missed Quiz Absolution.

My tags are becoming unwieldy.  The true tags, and the emulation tags, are all mixed together. Every time I add a tag, the machine is suggesting a slew of tags--a lot more than I need to wade through.

Further, you know what happens after grades are in with nested folders? The folder " 2019" gets dragged over to  "Archive" and dropped there--out of sight, out of mind.  The entire set of sub-folders is not there to add clutter to my working environment. Yes, I must make a 2019 > ... set of nested folders, but I have to do that no matter what. 

With tags, however, those tags are always there, sitting in my way. Growing larger every semester. The list of tags grows and grows and grows. I could delete them, but then I could not find the document I might need. With an out-of-sight sub-folder I don't' trip over it every day, and I can still find it later on. With tags, I either trip over it every day, OR I forfeit the right to ever safely know I can locate that document and related documents.

As you use tags, they are great--to emulate nested notebooks, however, your list of tags grows and grows and grows... They are ALWAYS there in your way. Think of it as putting your documents in a folder, but then never being able to drop the folders into a filing cabinet so they are out of the way. Instead, you must leave them out on your desk, in your work area. 

Not the best way to store something if you are tripping over it every time you are working...

 

 

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33 minutes ago, dbvirago said:

In the 10 years I've been with EN, I have bought half a dozen new devices, Getting up and running with EN was the easiest part of setting up a new device. 

Having said, that, I am religious about my backups. I have no reason EN is going anywere, but if they do, we will have plenty of time (and in only takes less than an hour) to grab all our stuff. 

But with the volume of stuff I have in EN, it would be irresponsible not to backup. I alternate weekly backups to the ENEX files, combined with monthly dumps into HTML. Plus the fact that almost everything in EN was someplace else on my hard drive first, which means it is also backed up to 3 external drives and the cloud.

As far as the other debates are concerned, smooth peanut butter is far superior to chunky. It is known.

 

Chunky peanut butter is to real peanut butter as raw potato chunks mixed into mashed potatoes is to real mashed potatoes.

Everyone knows that!

Might as well put raw cranberries into your cranberry sauce!

 

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7 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

You employ zero people? Correct? ...

Number of employees has no relevance to this discussion. edit: 9/11 has no relevance to this discussion

As I said, I plan for zero downtime.  edit Nobody expects the ...

7 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Organizing means to make things arranged in a neat, useful,  and compact manner. ...

Using Evernote, my data meets this organization definition.

>>Tags do no such thing. ..

I use a combination of Notebooks and Tags; a great improvement over legacy folder methodology

edit: I am Canadian, I am not connected with any Fortune 500

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I'm migrating all my content to Microsoft OneNote. There is an importer tool (Windows) that migrate all your notes in one single operation. To do that, you need the Evernote Classic Windows Desktop Version installed. 

And, OneNote had a very great web clipper tool, that just WORKS and capture almost everything that I need. I have a Evernote account almost from 10 years (since 2009), and I really feel that the company is somewhat lost: the most annoying bugs that drives me crazy are forgotten and the developers seems to unable to fix them. A SINGLE web clipper issue that is almost SEVEN FUC@!*&&*¨# MONTHS are open without solution till now. It's appears that they are giving a sh*&#@t to users problems. It's really sad that in the past years Evernote has been my loved app, and now days I really don't recommend it to anyone.

I'll give the version 7.0 a shot, but meantime I'm migrating all my notes to OneNote, and starting using it even the 7.0 comes to our aid and save us, but, to be honest, I don't believe in miracles, and this should be a miracle to force me to continue using Evernote. 

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5 hours ago, DTLow said:

Number of employees has no relevance to this discussion.

As I said, I plan for zero downtime.

Using Evernote, my data meets this organization definition.

>>Tags do no such thing. ..

I use a combination of Notebooks and Tags; a great improvement over the legacy folder methodology

1. It is CRITICAL to this discussion, and IF you employed people, you would know that. When your computer system can't be used, do you know what your employees will be doing? They will be collecting earning their base pay, SSI, WC, Health Insurance, retirement, and any and all other monies you pay out for them. And do you know what they will be doing to earn that money? Playing Candy Crush Saga on their phones. What that means is if Evernote drops today, and you don't have a replacement ready, you will be paying... $20-$25 per hour each menial employee is there playing CCS. And while that is happening, your customers are growing wary of you, and are looking at your competitors. 

There was a major event that happened on September 11, 2001. Arab terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings, the Pentagon, and one crashed in a Pennsylvania woods. There was a financial services/wall street company (I don't recall the name, but I will Goggle it if you want the info) housed in one of the Towers that was open the next day for business. Their employees were all educated that should some event happen to close the buildings, they should call a specific number and receive instructions.  That Tuesday night the employee called the number, and were told of the back-up office location. The employees went there the next day, and were informed where their respective desks were, and went to them. Their computers had all their software and files waiting for them. Their old phone numbers were forwarded to their new phones. Simply put, they sat down and went to work as if 9/11 had never happened.

Sure, the company probably paid somewhere between $1M and $2M to have the place set up, and another $.5M  a year to maintain a basically fallow building, but when you are making several millions of dollars per day, you can't afford downtime for looking for a new business location, setting it up, and then hiring the people to replace the peope who found other work because their unemployment ran out, and was pennies compared to what their commissions were.  

Heck--look at the NYBOT remote trade centers that were created after the 1993 World Trade Center truck bomb--they cost the NYBOT $300K per year to just sit there. Empty. Doing nothing. But after 9/11 those emergency centers were one of the best investments the NYBOT had made. 

For a good overview of the subject, I refer you to Crisis Communication: Lessons from 9/11, Harvard Business Review, DEC 2002.

https://hbr.org/2002/12/crisis-communication-lessons-from-911

Like all HBR articles, it can be a bit dry, but the information is invaluable. 

2. I know of no one who plans for downtime, yet downtime does somehow seem to occur...

3. I am sure for your laissez faire, low-need, Bohemian work structure, Evernote is the cats meow, Daddy-o! Don't see many Fortune 500s using it though. But, I am sure you would know their needs better than they would...

 

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As I think has already been said on here (multiple times), if you are so unhappy there can be little reason to hang around.

Evernote have given no indication that they are going to change their view in the short/medium term on nested folders/notebooks/whatever. You haven't brought any new arguments to the table on the subject and really those of us who have been around long enough should know better than to get involved in a circular discussion like this.

Our old friend Bnfries would have washed her hands of you and this ages ago, time the rest of us did the same.

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6 hours ago, Metrodon said:

As I think has already been said on here (multiple times), if you are so unhappy there can be little reason to hang around.

I think we are in the presence of a bot, a Wombot, to be precise. State a fact or opinion, get triple spew for your effort, most likely pretty dated spew at that, and barely relevant to the original statement, or Evernote, even. Amusing for awhile, maybe ("Bohemian work structure" is a gem), but a time-suck overall.

Not that this thread has been all that from the start, seeing as it began as a "Goodbye cruel Evernote" plaint...

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9 hours ago, jefito said:

Bohemian work structure" is a gem

Yeah, I liked that one, I'll add it to my performance review collection.

I think the 9/11 reference is an extension of Goodwin's Law
But embellished with such detail; must be paid by the word

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6 hours ago, Metrodon said:

As I think has already been said on here (multiple times), if you are so unhappy there can be little reason to hang around.

Evernote have given no indication that they are going to change their view in the short/medium term on nested folders/notebooks/whatever. You haven't brought any new arguments to the table on the subject and really those of us who have been around long enough should know better than to get involved in a circular discussion like this.

Our old friend Bnfries would have washed her hands of you and this ages ago, time the rest of us did the same.

Congratulation on being the 502 person to say that!

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2 hours ago, jefito said:

I think we are in the presence of a bot, a Wombot, to be precise. State a fact, get triple spew for your effort, most likely pretty dated spew at that, and barely relevant to the original fact, or Evernote, even. Amusing for awhile, maybe ("Bohemian work structure" is a gem), but a time-suck overall.

Not that this thread has been all that from the start, seeing as it began as a "Goodbye cruel Evernote" plaint...

I am flattered you consider me the equivalent of an artificial intelligence, able to pull in facts and data on a whim. Rest assured,  I am just a humble man like yourself. I simply read and understand a lot. You can get there if you try.

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18 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Yeah, I liked that one, I'll add it to my performance reviews.

I think the 9/11 reference is an extension of Goodwin's Law
But embellished with such detail

You are actually trying to equate a reference to one of the of the most often cited Harvard Business Review articles on disaster preparedness with Hitler.

That is all you got?

That article has been cited in 141 scholarly articles and books on the subject. For everyone who enjoys learning more than making really poor analogies, here is the complete Google Scholar listing of the books and articles that reference that particular HBR article:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=13015085434493713480&as_sdt=5,36&sciodt=0,36&hl=en

 

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16 hours ago, TheMagicWombat said:

Classes > 2019 > Spring > International Business > Section 002  > Missed Quiz Absolution.

If this is an actual tag you are missing the point on tags in general, independent of the specifics of EN.  Tags work best in a relational model not a hierarchical model.  

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35 minutes ago, CalS said:

If this is an actual tag you are missing the point on tags in general, independent of the specifics of EN.  Tags work best in a relational model not a hierarchical model.  

You're correct there. There is  a very real problem trying to model a file folder system in Evernote using tags, as tag names must be globally unique, while file system names must be unique only in the folder that they reside in. There are just some things you cannot model with tags without engaging in a lot of contortion, like artificially long names.

Most people figure it out sooner rather than later...

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47 minutes ago, jefito said:

You're correct there. There is  a very real problem trying to model a file folder system in Evernote using tags, as tag names must be globally unique, ... Most people figure it out sooner rather than later...

The unique name issue is common to both notebooks and tags
There is  a very real problem modeling using notebooks, as notebooks lack sub-levels
 I consider sub-levels the more important issue

There's also the issue of notes and single folders

fwiw  This "model a file system" is non-productive, based on a legacy filing methodology
          Some people never figure it out.

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On 6/4/2019 at 9:45 PM, DTLow said:

[snip]

- Evernote uploads my data to the server, and has extensive data backups in place

[snip]

That kind of backup is secure vs. equipment failure (yours or theirs) but the most common use of backups is to recover from user or admin error, e.g. accidentally deleting something or discovering a bug that causes corruption. In which case, unless you are lucky and discover the problem before sync happens, relying on Evernote's backups to help you recover is no good. They will only 'restore' your account to the most recent version of it, which would be the corrupt version in this scenario.

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3 hours ago, John in Michigan USA said:

 ...relying on Evernote's backups to help you recover is no good. They will only 'restore' your account to the most recent version of it, which would be the corrupt version in this scenario.

I make use of Evernote"s Note History backup.705346852_ScreenShot2019-06-06at08_52_29.png.5d58bfe6db9b953892a81d2b79777ee8.png

Deleted notes can be retrieved from Evernote's Trash backup

You're right that personal backups are useful for a mass database recovery

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2 minutes ago, John in Michigan USA said:

That kind of backup is secure vs. equipment failure (yours or theirs) but the most common use of backups is to recover from user or admin error, e.g. accidentally deleting something or discovering a bug that causes corruption. In which case, unless you are lucky and discover the problem before sync happens, relying on Evernote's backups to help you recover is no good. They will only 'restore' your account to the most recent version of it, which would be the corrupt version in this scenario.

Not quite.  Note history can help with getting a copy of a note pre corruption, be it bug or self induced.  But only really helps with a note or two at a time.  I can't see rebuilding an entire DB using this method, shoot me first.  Only one way to protect from DAA deletes and that is your own backups.

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1 hour ago, jefito said:

You're correct there. There is  a very real problem trying to model a file folder system in Evernote using tags, as tag names must be globally unique, while file system names must be unique only in the folder that they reside in. There are just some things you cannot model with tags without engaging in a lot of contortion, like artificially long names.

Most people figure it out sooner rather than later...

I could handle that--IF it worked and didn't force me to deal massive amounts of clutter. 

But, it doesn't, and it does. 

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

The unique name issue is common to both notebooks and tags
There is  a very real problem modeling using notebooks, as notebooks lack sub-levels
 I consider sub-levels the more important issue

There's also the issue of notes and single folders

fwiw  This "model a file system" is non-productive, based on a legacy filing methodology
          Some people never figure it out.

But when you create a folder name in ... anything... The program does not then assume you will want to give that same name to other things. With tags, once I go to apply a tag, and start to type in the first characters, the possible tag options wait for me to just choose one and hit enter. The more tags, the more I am forced to picking through them to the one I want and then drag and dropping the tag onto the record. Thus, keeping the number of tags low is prudent, while with folders the number of folders is pretty much a non-issue. And, you are still left with massive amounts of tag clutter.

 

fwiw: If you are saying nested hierarchy for record storage is not needed, you are wrong. If you are saying Evernote won't do a nested hierarchy for record storage, you are correct. 

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On 6/5/2019 at 2:15 PM, dbvirago said:

I alternate weekly backups to the ENEX files, combined with monthly dumps into HTML. 

I raise you    ....    daily incremental backups (html)

Also, my Mac Time Machine runs hourly backups (enml) but there's a limited retention period (hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months)

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Can we not shut this thread down at this point? Things have gone from pointless to obnoxious, and now it's reached tasteless, throwing 9/11 in as an example of airtight IT disaster recovery practices.

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20 hours ago, MarcSant said:

I'm migrating all my content to Microsoft OneNote. There is an importer tool (Windows) that migrate all your notes in one single operation. To do that, you need the Evernote Classic Windows Desktop Version installed. 

And, OneNote had a very great web clipper tool, that just WORKS and capture almost everything that I need. I have a Evernote account almost from 10 years (since 2009), and I really feel that the company is somewhat lost: the most annoying bugs that drives me crazy are forgotten and the developers seems to unable to fix them. A SINGLE web clipper issue that is almost SEVEN FUC@!*&&*¨# MONTHS are open without solution till now. It's appears that they are giving a sh*&#@t to users problems. It's really sad that in the past years Evernote has been my loved app, and now days I really don't recommend it to anyone.

I'll give the version 7.0 a shot, but meantime I'm migrating all my notes to OneNote, and starting using it even the 7.0 comes to our aid and save us, but, to be honest, I don't believe in miracles, and this should be a miracle to force me to continue using Evernote. 

Hey Marc--could you describe how large your data are; i.e. roughly how many notes, how many have attachments, and how the migration has worked for you regarding preserving notebooks, tags, attachments, etc?  I'm really interested in your experience as most of the time it seems people around here consider OneNote a poor substitute. (Note to all--I'm not stating a fact or attempting to be critical, but that is my rough impression after reading here for years, so if you disagree and love OneNote I'd love to hear that, but please don't light me on fire for that remark!).

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1 hour ago, friz said:

Can we not shut this thread down at this point? Things have gone from pointless to obnoxious, and now it's reached tasteless, throwing 9/11 in as an example of airtight IT disaster recovery practices.

Reading the 20 or so posts a day in this thread has become a highlight of my day, please don't take it away!

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20 hours ago, MarcSant said:

I'm migrating all my content to Microsoft OneNote. There is an importer tool (Windows) that migrate all your notes in one single operation. To do that, you need the Evernote Classic Windows Desktop Version installed. 

If OneNote works well for you, that's great. I tried the OneNote importer on my Windows database a couple of years ago, and it failed miserably: notes not added, loss of notebook structure, and so on. And I wasn't too keen on their organizational structure either. It seemed as though whoever developed the importer didn't understand how Evernote's architecture works. Maybe it's improved since then, but I couldn't use the results, that's for sure.

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10 hours ago, eafpres said:

it seems people around here consider OneNote a poor substitute

My evaluation of products/services identified Evernote as the best solution for myself.
I consider OneNote "a  poor  substitute" for myself.

If others believe OneNote is the best solution
they should be using OneNote
- they should be posting in the OneNote forums; Please go

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3 hours ago, friz said:

Can we not shut this thread down at this point? Things have gone from pointless to obnoxious, and now it's reached tasteless, throwing 9/11 in as an example of airtight IT disaster recovery practices.

Actually IF you had actually read what I wrote, and the article in Harvard Business Review (A+ rated business scholarly publication!), yo would know that because the was one of the worst disasters, and was, for the most part unforeseen, it is an example of HOW disaster preparedness is done correctly. There are those who were counting on things to never go wrong, those who were literally ready for the building to get nuked and fall over, and those who were somewhere in -between. The farther you were away form the first extreme, and closer to the second, the more likely your business survived the day just fine. 

You may not like the fact that people who are trying to prevent future losses study disasters to minimize their impact in the future, but that is you. The rest of us study when things go horribly bad so that they are not quite as bad the next time around. 

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11 hours ago, CalS said:
3 minutes ago, CalS said:

Duh.

  

We were discussing, with me taking the side of "not a chance" whether or not tags could replace nested folders. Some people claim they can. I and others know they cannot. I gave an example of a LONG tag that would be required as one of many to emulate a nested folder system.

In response, you said:

"If this is an actual tag you are missing the point on tags in general, independent of the specifics of EN.  Tags work best in a relational model not a hierarchical model."

I then, in response, said:

"If only I had known..."

I was actually writing on why tags WON'T work, and then you stepped in and chided me trying to make it work.

Now, before we go any farther, do you dispute what I have said so far in this post? 

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3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Some of us need a sign

89FA8985-4895-41C6-8724-63B794C85E1B.jpeg.c4eea249f3a789c02a40b5dd93615510.jpeg

Based upon the fact he was informing me of the same thing I was informing others of--in the very post he responded to--I don't think it would have done any good. 

And, that was one of the best episodes. When Leonard held that up it was a riot! 

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@TheMagicWombat

Got it the first time.  Did not chide for trying to use tags, more about trying to replicate a folder structure with tags.  Deep compound tags are not a functional solution in my use case or view.  Again, I think relationally  not hierarchically.  Adding multiple simple tags to a note and then searching/sorting works for me.  If you think hierarchically it can be hard to fathom.  No need to go any farther.  It isn't going to get any better.

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