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Why nested tags?


Gear64

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I'm just wondering if I'm missing something, or maybe the product has evolved to be unnecessary.  When I first started using Evernote I started off with some nesting based on various 'how to' posts, but soon found it to be not of much value.  More important is to have some categorical leading characters for commonly used tags, but even with generally named tags, I've found the intellisense in most contexts more than adequate to pare down my choices quickly. Maybe I haven't accumulated enough tags yet to see the value, or is there some other benefit?

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10 minutes ago, Gear64 said:

More important is to have some categorical leading characters

This is my process, using a prefix naming standard.
Also useful since the tag hierarchy is not available in all menus, or all platforms.

I use the tag hierarchy for tag organization but this is not an ongoing process.
I also make use of it in scripts on my Mac, wiorking through top level to the lowest level elements.

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56 minutes ago, DTLow said:

This is my process, using a prefix naming standard.
Also useful since the tag hierarchy is not available in all menus, or all platforms.

I use the tag hierarchy for tag organization but this is not an ongoing process.
I also make use of it in scripts on my Mac, wiorking through top level to the lowest level elements.

Thanks, I've just discovered ENScript for Evernote.  Will need to make some time to explore.

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I went to the Dark Side...  I use titles as my primary delineator - <date> <document details> <keywords> with Search as a major tool.  Tags are used to provide granularity when its necessary - if I get too many hits to a search,  even after refining it a little,  I'll start curating - looking at merging notes,  editing titles or adding tags so I can more easily find the correct notes next time.

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36 minutes ago, gazumped said:

I went to the Dark Side...  I use titles as my primary delineator - <date> <document details> <keywords> with Search as a major tool.  Tags are used to provide granularity when its necessary - if I get too many hits to a search,  even after refining it a little,  I'll start curating - looking at merging notes,  editing titles or adding tags so I can more easily find the correct notes next time.

I'm evolving down a similar path.  Embracing 'intitle:' has greatly reduced my reliance on tags.  I'm also starting to use tags as a late filter, rather than first filter.  Most of my tag usage lately has been in the context of database table keys (as datestamp)  linking tags as pseudo notebooks when managing projects or events like a vacation.  The first note gets an 'abstract' tag describing the collection.  I also deal with a lot of PDFs as a product vendor and have been making heavy use of the 'import folder' and 'Table of Contents' feature as another way of managing collections.  And very recently discovered that 'resource:' is driven by MIME types, allowing more general 'has attachment' searches or 'attachment of specific type' searches.  One can use this page for alternatives to 'application/pdf' commonly displayed in help guides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_type. I've also used the negative of 'has attachment' to mitigate searches inside documents.

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13 hours ago, Gear64 said:

I'm just wondering if I'm missing something, or maybe the product has evolved to be unnecessary.  When I first started using Evernote I started off with some nesting based on various 'how to' posts, but soon found it to be not of much value.  More important is to have some categorical leading characters for commonly used tags, but even with generally named tags, I've found the intellisense in most contexts more than adequate to pare down my choices quickly. Maybe I haven't accumulated enough tags yet to see the value, or is there some other benefit?

I use nesting tags for organizational purposes only.  Accounts, People, Trips are examples.  And I agree, a leading character for certain tag types facilitates search and tag selection (= for people, ! for TSW, . for projects and some others).  I have about 400 tags after all these years, don't add many any more other than projects and trips.  For that I have 10 top level tags and not many third level.  FWIW.

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Thanks for the replies.  My initial assumption when I first started using them was typing parent in note or search would expose children as choices for a <parent.child> tag. However in hindsight I can see how that could create redesign chaos. Based on replies and researching further it seems the main benefit to nesting tags is standardization.  It's a process to work through that hopefully results in a well thought out, well defined, standardized tagging framework.  I can see benefit to that even while trying to remain tag sparse as a primary strategy.

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