Evernotes vs Word Doc

[Marci 5]

Hi,

I recently was introduced to Evernote for my research projects. I sort thru scientific papers and books and websites. I'm used to underlining these documents then typing them into a Word doc organized by subjects, titles and subtitles. Often I have to cross-reference topics because they intermix. This hasn't been smooth and easy in Word as it means copy and paste. I've been playing with Evernote and not sure I see how it would be different. Maybe the cross referencing would be easier but the rest of it? I'm thinking a user that's more familiar can help me understand if this might be a better system for me. I appreciate your time.

Marci

[PinkElephant 8,072]

First you can directly annotate documents (works best with pdf), and your annotations will show at the top of the document. No need to sift through all the pages to find your annotations. If it is web based, use the WebClipper to grab it.

Second by tagging you can create a multidimensional organisation of your documents. Advanced search lets you find all relevant documents related to a combination of tags and key words found in the documents.

And third, you can then create a live note with a table-of-content from this search result (desktop client), in which each line is a document, and the title text is an active link that takes you to the original note. No more duplicates !

For serious work a premium account is IMHO a must.

Happy ever-noting !

[Marci 5]

Thank you for responding. I appreciate your time. Perhaps I missed it, but I saw nothing that provided this type of overview. I watched a couple of videos but nothing demo'd annotating PDFs or the TOC you mention. Looks like I need to download the trial version and spend a few more hours playing around. If you know of a comprehensive video, please let me know. Again, my thanks.

[gazumped 11,652]

1 hour ago, Marci said:

If you know of a comprehensive video, please let me know.

There's a lot on Youtube...

 

[PinkElephant 8,072]

And Carl has a lot more about EN on his YT-channel.

Generally the videos are about productivity in general, not research in special. Another good source of specific information (for example about advanced search) is the help & support database EN offers on its website. From sources like this you can learn, understand and then build your own workflows according to your needs. We have done it all !

For finding out I would probably use one research project and try it with EN. Only the desktop clients (Win or Mac) offer the full functionality, so for really working with your documents and data it is necessary to use one. TOC for example is not possible with a mobile client.

 

[Marci 5]

Thanks again for the info.

I had checked YouTube but was searching for something more specific. Your example was helpful.

[Marci 5]

I've watched several of these videos and have questions about the annotation.

I'm wondering if when I annotate a section of a PDF, does that put that note somewhere? Or do I still need to type it into the particular notebook? Does it link to the downloaded PDF in another file? Or is annotation most helpful when sharing docs with others?

I can't say it enough -- thank you so much for helping me with answers!

[DTLow 5,736]

22 minutes ago, Marci said:

I'm wondering if when I annotate a section of a PDF, does that put that note somewhere?

PDF annotations update the pdf file itself.  The file format allows for layers of content

[PinkElephant 8,072]

An alternative that I prefer because it has superior capabilities on my Mac works like this:

Right-Click the pdf header, choose „open with“, then choose PDF Expert. This is a program you have to buy, but it is worth the price. It will open the pdf. There the can be annotated, highlighter, signatures, stamps etc. are available. And it can be edited, which means the original pdf can be changed: Text modified, pages deleted or resequenced, pictures added etc.

When I am done, I close the tab in PDF Expert - and it saves my changes automatically into the attachment of the EN note. Sure, it will not show the annotations on top, but the possibilities are much more elaborate than what EN offers. In PDF Expert itself changes can be saved in addItion, or can be embedded into a new flattened copy that melts the original pdf together with the editing.

[Marci 5]

Bummer. PDF Expert is only for Macs. I'm using a PC with Windows 10. There is a conversion app which could be similar (Acrobat Pro DC) at around $15/mo. They offer a 7 day trial. 

What would be uber helpful to me is to be able to take excerpts from a PDF and put it into notes. Then I would not need to type these out. I think without something like this, I would still be typing notes from books and PDFs into EN. Am I understanding this correctly?

 

 

[Marci 5]

Oooohhh...poked around some more and there's an Export PDF that converts PDFs to Word or Excel. This might be the right answer. It's $2/mo.

[PinkElephant 8,072]

If the pdf was created from an editor, or OCRed you usually can directly select text with the mouse and copy it. OCR is even done by the scanning app I use on my iPhone, called ScannerPro. It costs a little, but not much, and allows to switch between picture and text view after scanning and doing the OCR. Works pretty good on regular printed stuff.

The ScanSnap scanner as well has tools to convert scans into Word or Excel documents. For word this is o.k., for Excel it is more tricky, and often you would like to get the formulas, not only the raw data 😉

Personally I had to work for 30 years on Win-PCs, because this was what the IT-Departments of my employers pushed on me. I am glad I can choose my own hardware today, and it is NOT any windows machine I am willing to spend my money on.

[CalS 5,280]

17 hours ago, Marci said:

Oooohhh...poked around some more and there's an Export PDF that converts PDFs to Word or Excel. This might be the right answer. It's $2/mo.

Never sure of the validity of some of the best of lists, but here is a list of free PDF editors, at least for a test period.  You can dip your toe in the water with one of these, re copy paste or the rest.