(Archived) Feature requests and comments

[evernote-rqm 0]

I have been using Evernote for about 10 days and I love it. However, I have a few feature requests. I have seen some of these covered in other posts but this is jus my comprehensive list.

Ability to update a note that would show an update time: For instance, I may have a note regarding a series of ongoing phone calls about something. An example that comes to mind is a credit card charge that I am disputing. I have made several calls to different parties over the course of several days. I know that I can go back to the original note and type updates but I am thinking of a feature in which I could specifically post an update to the note such as right clicking the note and choosing "add update". This update would post the date and time that I made the update. As it is now, I would have to go to the original note and manually add the date to an entry about speaking to someone on the phone

Hyperlink to another note entry: I would like some way to create a link within a note to another note. I have seen this request in another post and realize that the difficulty is implementing this correctly across all OS platforms

Create markups on an image: Maybe a toolbar that would enable me to draw a circle, an arrow, or create a handwritten note on an image

Windows mobile client that syncs: This could be something like what the mobile Outlook client does in that it would sync the last 5 days of notes locally to the mobile device. Maybe it could have options to choose whether or not images are included and maybe always sync items with certain tags.

More robust web client

Native Linux client: I am an IT professional and tend to use a variety of operating systems. I may use Windows XP for a while and then I may use a Linux OS as my primary operating system for a few months and then go back to using Vista for a while. If Evernote would create a native Linux client, that would cover all the bases. I found a post with instructions on how to install Evernote under Ubuntu using Wine and it installed but it did not seem to run with full functionality. A Linux client would be great. I don't see Microsoft OneNote crossing that bridge anytime soon.

Ability to export a subset of notes to another Evernote database: I am thinking of a particular example. I work for a company that contracts IT services out to other companies. When I am working at a particular site such as abc company, I tag all notes pertaining to that company with an abc tag. If I should quit working for that company and someone else takes my place, I would like to introduce that person to Evernote and start them out with an exported subset of my notes that are tagged with the abc tag. That way, my replacement would have a history of what work I performed and get them started using Evernote. Also, I'm sure that the client would be interested in my notes as well.

Links to documents are not working: This is more of a comment than a feature request. It looks like from the demos that I have seen that I shoud be able to clip a paragraph from a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet and Evernote should include information about the source of that clip within the note similar to clips from a web page. So far, I have not been able to get Evernote to include any source information. I am currently using Microsoft Office 2007. Could that be the problem?

Also, how does the Auto-Import work under Account / Properties / File Auto-Import? I am assuming that I point it to a folder full of something like Word documents, that it would import the text of these documents into my notes somehow. I don't see anything regarding this in the documentation and I have tried pointing it to a folder but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Thanks,

Rod

[engberg 89]

Thanks for the detailed feedback. A number of these are already in our plans (e.g. note-to-note links, export-and-import notes), and we appreciate the input.

Re: auto-import - the software will create notes out of any files that appear in this directory of the following types: .jpg, .gif, .png, .wav, .mp3

[salgud 12]

Thanks for the detailed feedback. A number of these are already in our plans (e.g. note-to-note links, export-and-import notes), and we appreciate the input.

What about external links to notes?

[engberg 89]

What about external links to notes?

I assume you mean for desktop applications to access notes in your own desktop account? (We already support permalinks to public notes.)

Yes, although we need to figure out the best cross-platform way to do this.

[salgud 12]

What about external links to notes?

I assume you mean for desktop applications to access notes in your own desktop account? (We already support permalinks to public notes.)

Yes, although we need to figure out the best cross-platform way to do this.

Thanks. That's good news!

[kdombros 0]

Any plans for being able to create markups on images? I'd love to be able to do this, combined with highlighting, on pdf clips and scans of handwritten notes.

[engberg 89]

If you right-click on an image, you can open it in an image editor of your choice, and the saved file will go back into Evernote.

[kdombros 0]

Hmm, this doesn't appear to be an option for me. Maybe that means I don't have an appropriate image editor. It just brings up the box where I can edit the size, brightness, etc etc. I tried it with a photo.

Kelly

[engberg 89]

Sorry, I was thinking of the wrong client. On Windows, you'd save the image, edit it, and then put it back into the note.

[drivera 1]

I have been using evernote for about a year now, I cant do my job without it. I love the clipping feature, and the ability to annotate with the drawing mode, especially with the ability to do whatever you want with the clip (copy to clipboard, save as a note, or save it as a png). One feature added to drawing mode that would be helpful would be the addition of text annotations. I dont know about anyone else but I have a hard time writing with my mouse even with the recognize shapes turned on.

[Matsya 0]

Hey,

Well, I've two requests:

- I will really appreciate if we could draw some simple forms or simple graphs

- And my other request is to have a little alarm for some to-do-lists or stuff like that.

Thanks a lot.

-MATSYA-

[mak 0]

It would be fabulous to be able to share a notebook with specific users in a collaborative fashion. Being able to make a notebook public is great, but sometimes you want to only show it to a few people, and if you could opt to allow them to add data of their own that would be even better.

[Amafortas 0]

I'd find it useful to be able to add text annotations to .pdf's, word documents, PowerPoint slides, and images.

I'd like to be able to use EverNote as a repository for the notes I use to deliver lectures at a local university. However, without these features, the program isn't really up to the task.

Has anyone found a workaround on the Mac?

Thanks for your time,

~A

[engberg 89]

If you have those documents as File Attachments within Evernote, you can open it from the desktop client and then edit it in the appropriate application (e.g. Powerpoint). When you save the file from that app, the edit will be saved back into Evernote.

[wsp 11]

Just a few thoughts about external links. I began using Evernote years ago when it was a Windows-only program, and I could see immediately that it was absolutely terrific for storing and finding information; but I also noticed -- as did many other users -- that it was far less satisfactory as a program for structuring and organizing notes. For those purposes, almost any hierarchical note-taking program seemed better.

At that point I came up with a solution that I persuaded myself was quite clever: I took my notes in Evernote, but I built the outlines of books or articles I was trying to write in My Notes Keeper. It was easy to insert into My Notes Keeper the links from individual notes in Evernote. So -- I thought -- I had the best of two worlds: my information was stored in Evernote, which had a brilliant UI, and the structure of whatever I was writing at the moment was then designed in an external hierarchical program.

My wonderful scheme, of course, fell apart with the arrival of Evernote 3.0. In the current version of Evernote, it is not possible to use such links, and for the past year I have been floundering around, trying to find a substitute scheme. I know that hundreds of thousands of Evernote users have found many different ways of exploiting its capabilities. For some it just becomes a dumping ground for miscellaneous information they come across every day; at the other extreme, there are those of us who are trying to structure our Evernote data very tightly as part of a writing process. The needs of the first group are nicely met by Evernote as it now is; but some of the rest of us are still quietly mourning the premature death of EN 2.2 and are trying to figure out how to use EN 3 for serious and complex note-taking. External links to individual EN notes are, I think, the key to this problem.

The EN management is badly informed if it assumes that users only want to clip occasional snippets from the Web or make little grocery lists. We obsessive note-takers are not a small group!