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Is there a straightforward way of organizing by date in Evernote? I'm creating a large bibliography and need to be able to move frequently back and forth between sorting by author's name (which I can easily do when sorting on Title) and by date of publication. 

I've experimented with putting the date at the beginning of the title line (e.g. "2009-10-28 — [surname] — [abbreviated title]"), and that works well enough, but it means that I can no longer sort by author's name. (And it looks a bit clunky.)

I wonder if it would be possible to modify the date in the "Created" column for this purpose? I sometimes need to identify the most recently modified ("Updated") notes, but I almost never need to sort them by date of creation. Hence the loss of the creation date wouldn't particularly bother me. However, I'm not sure that any of the attributes such as Updated and Created can even be modified. Can they?

I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

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2 minutes ago, wsp said:

I wonder if it would be possible to modify the date in the "Created" column for this purpose?

Yes you can, as long as you don’t care so much about created date.  Just go to info and change it. 

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Thanks. Just a few minutes ago I discovered how to do this. Now I will have to brood over the question of whether I will be losing any essential information by modifying the creation date.

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18 minutes ago, wsp said:

Is there a straightforward way of organizing by date in Evernote? ...

There is a subject date field, but Evernote doesn't provide an easy update mechanism.
I update it on my Mac using scripting.

>> I wonder if it would be possible to modify the date in the "Created" column for this purpose?

Some users modify the Created Date field.
My personal preference is not to; I reserve it for the date the note was created.

>>putting the date at the beginning of the title line

Date prefix is my standard for note titles.

>>but it means that I can no longer sort by author's name.

I use tags for author's name (author-aaaaa)  The tag list is sorted alphabetically

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I see a "Subject" column on my screen but no "Subject date." I wonder if this is because the Windows and Mac versions have slightly different fields?

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6 minutes ago, wsp said:

I see a "Subject" column on my screen but no "Subject date." I wonder if this is because the Windows and Mac versions have slightly different fields?

The "Subject column" is a date field, and the same on all platforms
It's also searchable.

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7 minutes ago, wsp said:

Thanks. Just a few minutes ago I discovered how to do this. Now I will have to brood over the question of whether I will be losing any essential information by modifying the creation date.

You are welcome. I modify created date rarely when I want to match the date of a document in a note.  

For my use case created date is most helpful when refining searches, “... I think I did that last September...”  So if you don’t need that for these notes you may very well be fine. 

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While I appreciate this is an Evernote forum,  the query is more spreadsheet related.  If you had a column for dates and a column for authors you could sort on anything.  And a spreadsheet can be attached to a single Evernote note if it's less than 200MB;  or kept in online storage (Google Drive et al) with a link from a note.

If there are other requirements,  Airtable is my relational database / spreadsheet of choice.

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9 minutes ago, gazumped said:

the query is more spreadsheet related

I disagree.  The query relates to sorting notes in Evernote.

Evernote gives us some standard options (title, created, updated, ....)
and even more flexibility in list view - it does resemble a spreadsheet35469700_ScreenShot2019-06-04at06_49_45.png.b056501f48bbded758ba42c54be2c1e7.png

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I'm not tempted to use a spreadsheet for this data, because Evernote allows me to insert images (with OCR, no less) of dust-jackets and other visual aspects of the books, and of course I also depend very heavily on EN's tags.

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43 minutes ago, DTLow said:

...even more flexibility in list view - it does resemble a spreadsheet

My point being that amending the content of one or more fields to be something 'else' is.. inelegant.  It's far easier to set up the headings you need and sort in any order in a spreadsheet.  But that's me.  Up to the OP what approach seems most effective for them.

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I agree that it's inelegant (many things seem to be in Evernote), but it works for me. I just wish EN would allow me to create a new date field.

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1 hour ago, wsp said:

Thanks. Just a few minutes ago I discovered how to do this. Now I will have to brood over the question of whether I will be losing any essential information by modifying the creation date.

You could also modify the "updated" date, but that would change automatically if you edit the note again.

If your dates are super specific this won't work, buy if they are more of a month year thing, you could add tags and use those. 201905 for May 2019 for example. That gets too tedious though of you need days too.

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7 minutes ago, gazumped said:

My point being that amending the content of one or more fields to be something 'else' is.. inelegant.

It is, but the issue can be contents of the note.  Excel will work well for "one-liners" but not so much for a content rich note.  IMO.

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1 hour ago, gazumped said:

more spreadsheet related

For some functions, I agree, our Evernote data is better viewed in a spreadsheet.
My use cases are receipt (budget/expense reports) and tasks (gantt chart view) 

While on the spreadsheet subject, do you have an easy method for moving data to/from a spreadsheet

I use scripting; Mac based

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1 minute ago, CalS said:

It is, but the issue can be contents of the note.  Excel will work well for "one-liners" but not so much for a content rich note.  IMO.

Agreed - s'why I included Airtable.  You can throw pictures at it and generate all sorts of different views to share the content.  But like I said - Airtable is the way I'd go;  up to everyone else which approach they prefer.  😎

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42 minutes ago, CalS said:

It is, but the issue can be contents of the note.  Excel will work well for "one-liners" but not so much for a content rich note.  IMO.

I parse the note contents and generate multiple spreadsheet lines.

>>Why when it is is a perfectly good note?

My example is a store receipt for multiple items.
Yes, a perfectly good note, includes a scan of the paper receipt.

In the budget/expense spreadsheet, I need the purchases reported in the appropriate categories

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1 minute ago, DTLow said:

While on the spreadsheet subject, do you have an easy method for moving data to/from a spreadsheet

I use scripting, but that's Mac based

For some functions, our Evernote data is better viewed in a spreadsheet.  My use cases are receipt (budget/expense reports) and tasks (gantt chart view)

As you know it's possible to copy and paste from a spreadsheet to/ from a table,  but that's about as sophisticated as I got - sorry.

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1 minute ago, gazumped said:

Agreed - s'why I included Airtable.  You can throw pictures at it and generate all sorts of different views to share the content.  But like I said - Airtable is the way I'd go;  up to everyone else which approach they prefer.  😎

For sure.  Sloth that I am I like to keep things in one place, with as little buggering of the process as possible.So the odd adjustment of a created date doesn't give me too much pause...  :wacko:

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20 minutes ago, CalS said:

For sure.  Sloth that I am I like to keep things in one place, with as little buggering of the process as possible.So the odd adjustment of a created date doesn't give me too much pause...  :wacko:

Fellow sloth here - but I use several different 'specialist' apps for various processes,  keeping the data files (or links to them) in Evernote.

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On 6/4/2019 at 7:41 AM, wsp said:

I just wish EN would allow me to create a new date field.

That's a new subject, and it's two parts

  1. Create New Fields
  2. Functions with the new field (like sorting)

fwiw  My solution for new fields is the use of keywords in the title/contents
           For example, here's the title of a receipt  
           yyyy/mm/dd Receipt <vendor> <budget> [description] $nn.nn
           I added fields
                 purchase date, first 10 characters
                 type/vendor/budget are tags
                 description, identified by []
                 amount, identified by $

           As to functions with the new fields, that's where @gazumped's spreadsheet comes in

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4 hours ago, gazumped said:

Agreed - s'why I included Airtable.  You can throw pictures at it and generate all sorts of different views to share the content.  But like I said - Airtable is the way I'd go;  up to everyone else which approach they prefer. 

I agree with @gazumped, about use of  Airtable, particularly if you have a number of fields that you want to track, sort, and/or search on.

Also, it is easy to include a URL field in Airtable that is a link to your Evernote Note.  I do this extensively in a Medical Records database when I have extensive links to Evernote Notes for details.  Airtable also has an API that I believe (but I have not tested) you can link to a specific AirTable record from an external source, like Evernote.

6 hours ago, wsp said:

Is there a straightforward way of organizing by date in Evernote? I'm creating a large bibliography and need to be able to move frequently back and forth between sorting by author's name (which I can easily do when sorting on Title) and by date of publication. 

If you want to keep all of this in Evernote, then here's what I have done many times:

  1. Set the EN Creation Date to the Source Date of the contents of the Note  -- Date of Publication in your case
  2. Set the Note Title to the title of the publication
  3. Set the Note Author (via the Note Details popup) to the Publication Author, and then add Author as a column in either the Side List or Top List view.

Here's an example screenshot of Evernote 7.10 (457750) on macOS 10.14.5:
(click on any column header to sort by that column)

image.png.3860215df3fea89b729d8c31c98a12a0.png

I'm using EN Mac, and so I use AppleScript to quickly/easily set these fields.

Finally, I'd suggest that you try the top 2 or 3 methods that have been suggested, and see which works best for you.

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I actively use & modify the Created Date on most of my notes. If I get an email confirmation for a payment I made 3 days ago, I will change the created date to match the actual date I made the payment.

The same thing will happen if I add some old family history. It helps with the timeline. 

In other words, I use Evernote to do what I want it to do.

And for safety, I use a date prefix (yyyy-mm-dd) at the beginning of my note title. 

For the original question, I would probably either use a spreadsheet or use the Evernote Created Date with a tag for the name of the author.

I also maintain a reference note in Evernote with tips on Date Searches. There are so many things that can be done with the date field.

Election day (what a great day!)
Created between Nov 7, 2016 and Nov 9, 2016
created:20161107 -created:20161109

Receipts during first 6 months of 2015 not entered into Quicken
Receipts between Jan 1, 2015 and July 1, 2015
created:20150101 -created:20150701 tag:receipt -tag:quicken-done

Notes on my daughter created on or before July 4, 2013 and the beginning of time
created:19000101 -created:20130704 tag:fam-BEB

CREATED (since)
created:day = today
created:day-1 = yesterday
created:week = this week (since Sunday)
created:week-1 = last week (since last Sunday)
created:month = this month
created:month-1 = last month
created:year = this year
created:year-1 = last year
 
CREATED (before)
today = -created:day
yesterday = -created:day-1
this week = -created:week
last week = -created:week-1
this month = -created:month
last month = -created:month-1
this year = -created:year
last year = -created:year-1

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