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Tags 101


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I'm new to Evernote and the use of tags as my dominant organizing tool.  How do I set up tag hierarchies or parent tags?  Most conversations I've read that involve tags have been over my head!  Oh and I am an IOS device and Mac user if that makes a difference.  Thank you!

 

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2 hours ago, Safir559 said:

How do I set up tag hierarchies or parent tags?

Tag hierarchy is a Mac/Windows function (for now)

You access the tag page by clicking the tag icon in the sidebar, or View > Tags

To create parent tags, drag tags on top of another tag780564372_ScreenShot2019-07-30at12_34_45.png.9721e2c859256930fe5cf8554331a7bc.png

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If its of any help I found tags confusing when I started - not least because over about 100 tags I lose track of what terms to apply to any given note.  I opted for a title-based system which includes the date of the event or document I'm writing about,  the type of the occurrence,  the name of any person or company involved,  and any keywords that occur to me.  So a bill from my mechanic for a car service yesterday would be 20190729 - invoice - smith & jones - car service.

The format of the content is simple enough to remember and apply consistently.  The date layout is reliably sortable,  and I don't normally need much more data to be able to find everything I need. 

Designing a tag system becomes easier once you have some notes on which to base it,  so it might be preferable to go with 'simple' for the time being and see what develops...

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20 hours ago, Safir559 said:

I'm new to Evernote and the use of tags as my dominant organizing tool.  How do I set up tag hierarchies or parent tags?  Most conversations I've read that involve tags have been over my head!  Oh and I am an IOS device and Mac user if that makes a difference.  Thank you!

 

There really is no Tags 101, i.e., there's no One True Way to Tag. There are many ways to tag, and different methodologies. You should be more specific about what you're trying to do. I could tell you what I do, and how it works for me, but that's surely different than other folks' approaches.

Well, OK, there is some 101 stuff (more like rules of the road):

  • Tags have no intrinsic meaning, except what you give them.
  • Tags can be formed into trees (hierarchies), similar to file folders, but one restriction to this is that tag names are unique, meaning that a tag name can exist in only one location in your tag hierarchy scheme.
  • The formal Evernote search language can find notes with specific tags, for example, a search for "tag:abc" will match the "abc" tag, but not tags "abce" or "xyzabc". You can use a wildcard at the end of a tag term to match the start of a tag name; for example, , a search for "tag:abc*" will match the "abc" tag, and the tag "abce" (but not "xyzabc"). Note that some tools (e.g. the tag filter tool in the Windows search panel) do filter on infix matches, as in you type "abc" and it matches "abcxyz", "zabcz","xyzabc" etc. That's really handy.
  • You can apply multiple tags to  a note, much like in many languages (e.g. English), a noun may have several adjectives that describe it (e.g., "my big red dilapidated house").
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7 hours ago, gazumped said:

I opted for a title-based system which includes the date of the event or document I'm writing about,  the type of the occurrence,  the name of any person or company involved,  and any keywords that occur to me.

Likewise, I also store copies of the tagnames in the title;
example  2019/07/22 Receipt ?Vndr-Walmart !Budget-FoodGrocery  [Groceries] $-42.16

My tag assignment is note-type dependent,
for example receipt notes are assigned tags          Type-Receipt <vendor> <budget>
                      project task notes are assigned tags Type-Actionable <project>

I prefix my tagnames;
for example vendor tags are: Vendr-BestBuy, Vendr-Walmart ...
                      budget tags are: Budget-Housing, Budget-Health ...

 

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Tags 101 for me.

  • Use tags to winnow search results to where text search can be used if need be
  • Keep tag names as short as possible
  • Let tag names be what they mean
    • Statement for statements
    • Companyname for company name, Amex for  American Express
    • PC.Stuff for PC stuff
    • Model name for car, GX460 for Lexus GX460
  • Use a few prefixes to help with tag drop downs,
    • = for people =Smith  =Jones,
    • ! for GTD/TSW task stuff, !1-Now  !2-Next.
    • _ for years _2019 _2018
    • . for projects,  .Kitchen  .New.UI
  • Avoid compound or multi word tags unless you are a hierarchical thinker.  They just get in my way.
    • Exceptions can be tings like 1040.Sched.A 1040,W2
    • In this case a tag:1040* tag:_2018 search yields a search set for all tax documents for 2018, US anyway.
  • Have the fewest tags possible
  • If a tag is used by fewer than 5 or 10 notes check to see if it can be consolidated.

Net of it all you need to do what feels right to you.  Good thing about EN, most of the time you can make adjustments fairly quickly and easily.  I don''t add many tags each year now.  Just trips and projects.  Use case can make a difference, mine is paperless, tasks, reference, and thought pieces which may be why I haven't added a bunch of tags after the first couple of years.

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I agree to what CalS says.

Plus reserve some time every month or so just to clean up the tagging landscape. Get rid of rarely used tags, merge synonyms into one tag, watch out for blank spots in your tagging logic etc. It is better to do this on a desktop, because it offers other tools to do so, especially for changing a bunch of notes in one go.

Just make sure you always assign the new / replacement tag before you delete the old / replaced one.

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Thank you eveyone starting with DTLow.  I realize that I had been trying to create tag hierarchies on Evernote web and that is why i wasn't getting anywhere.  Everyone else, your comments are so helpful. I've only been tagging for a few weeks and I am going to start over  now based on your experience and comments.  Thanks again.

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Good start.

And do not try to create the „perfect“ tagging system. Tags are flexible, your use of EN will develop and change over time, so stay fluid on how you tag.

It is much easier to modify a tagging where each basic note exists exactly once, than to clean up a mess of duplicated and then modified documents in a tree type  folder structure. This is true, even if you want to re-do your tagging of ages before.

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