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I love doing all my text work in evernote so it's with me wherever I go.. but I'm trying to make my life a little easier.

I'd like to do an outline in evernote with different levels of indentation.

There's an indent button in the toolbar which is inefficient, but can work ok... it has a keyboard shortcut though it's a bit hard to reach. It'd doable.. but unfortunately the formatting doesn't stay if pasted into another document which makes it quite limiting.

There's lists, which are more practical seeming, and appear somewhat more nicely, but they are limited to 2 levels. They can be pasted to other programs, but hierarchy is not maintined (list item or non list item).

I can use tabs, which can carry over, paste-wise, but they are frustrating because I do not start the next line at the same indendation.. I have to hit tab until it lines up.

How do you do outlining in evernote? Is there a better way that I'm missing? because this seems like a really useful capability to have

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Short answer: Evernote doesn't do outlining. As you note, it's possible to do some limited layouts with bulleted or numbered lists - hit ~tab and ~shift+tab to demote / promote lines; but if you're looking for headings and styles and other conveniences, you're out of luck. Of course you could use another form of dedicated local or cloud outliner (I'm boring, I use my MSWord) and then cut/paste the document into Evernote, or -if your outliner generates a supported file type- you could embed or attach a saved file.

It's pretty hard IME to make a good outline directly from a source - you need some rough notes to be working on; and the best way to use Evernote might be 1) for the rough notes stage, which then can 2) be extended by the more coherently formatted outline and 3) (if necessary) by a more fleshed-out "final version". You'll have the audit trail of previous versions of the notes, and a shiny new copy of your latest draft as the current note.

If there's not already an add-on for Evernote (see Trunk) that helps with Outline note-taking, there probably should be - but Evernote's concentration on improving their core process will likely mean any more advanced formatting of text notes is still somewhere over the horizon on their route plan.

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Thanks for the considered reply.

I am probably an edge case in that I use evernote pretty much just for the text capabilities.. for tagging and sorting all the text/notey type things I write up so I can get at them from anywhere and search through them easily. I haven't been in a situation where I felt it would be particularly useful to use the other features.. just hasn't ever felt necessary. So from that perspective I guess I'm not really using it for what it's meant for.. and that's why the features I specifically want are left in the dust a bit, but I haven't found any other service that has quite the same abilities with organizing text in the cloud, desktop and cross-platform.

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No problem at all - but in many ways Evernote's text capabilities are just icing on a very big storage and searching cake. In part I'm using Evernote like a traditional folder structure on my hard drive - files are going into Evernote as attachments or embeds (new word?) in the same way that I'd file them in a ~me ~documents ~work ~project1 type of tree layout - except I don't have to worry about exactly where I file any document, because I can Search for it easily: and those files that annoyingly could go in two or three different folders.. just get 2/3 tags instead. And they don't get hidden away in the 3rd place I think to look because I forgot exactly where I did file them.

Having said all that, I still use Word and Excel and Adobe and Outlook for their different special purposes - I just save all the files in Evernote. Along with several kazillion archive documents and press cuttings and random things of interest.

It's fine though to use Evernote just for the storing and searching - have a look around and see what outlining software you might use to generate some files to stick in there.

:D

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Would really like a dedicated outline mode like Onenote. It is so much more intuitive and the way people think. just having a nested heiarchy would be a big step forward. the way it works now is brain dead.

It's the way you think I suppose. Doesn't necessarily mean it's the same for everyone though.

If it doesn't work for you because it is 'brain dead' then why not find a solution that does?

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outliner tools have been around for 25+ years. Word / ppt even have an outline mode. OneNote serves most of my needs but the mobile / integration is lousy. I've been trying to work with Evernote for 2 years .... hoping they are listening to user feedback.

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  • 2 months later...

I too would love to see some improved outline capability, but I don't think we need a huge new "mode" or a plug-in or anything. The current tool is very close. In my opinion all it needs is to have a few things:

1) the tab key indent (*****-tab reverse indent) instead of instead of inserting 5 spaces.

2) when indenting a numbered item is should include the "parent" number e.g. "1.1" or "2.3.1" instead of just "1." -- the bulleted list is smart enough to pick a new kinda of bullet, so the numbered list could do that. Heck..already the numbered list is smart enough to renumber the lines the next level up!

3) The ability to select indented lines of text and cycle between bullets, numbers, and nothing. Currently it can't do that...it just gets very very confused...

I think that is all that is needed...am I wrong?

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1) the tab key indent (shift-tab reverse indent) instead of instead of inserting 5 spaces.

For normal text, Windows client uses Ctrl+M to increase indent; Ctrl+Shift+M to decrease it.

For lists (bulleted and numbered), Tab indents (not by adding spaces), Shift+Tab dedents.

You can mix and match bulleted and numbered in the same list; just indent a section, then flip to the other style. You can mix normal indented textin, too, but you have to work at it a bit.

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I'm still waiting for Evernote to offer a standardized Roman Numeral outline format that can be reverse highlighted with colored fonts and a black background utilizing a hierarchical promotable / demotable gif-style movable italicized numbering system. Shouldn't be too difficult to code.

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I moved most of my notes to Evernote from OneNote due to the cloud storage features and ability to access my notes from so many different devices/form factors.

However, outlinning is the one feature that really, really bugs me about Evernote. I guess it's because it is done so well on OneNote and SO poorly in Evernote.

Here is what I'd like to see.

  • Ability to create a collabsable and expandable the outline. I want to be able to hide whole areas of my outline. This makes navigating a large outline very easy.
  • Ability to indent and outdent using indents, not spaces.
  • Formating that is preserved between Evernote clients. (Ipad, Iphone, web, win/mac clients, etc) I should never loose my outline, just because I edited the outline on a different device.
  • Abiltity to choose from a wide variety of outline formats. Some people like bullets, some roman numerals, some legal numbering, etc.
  • Abiltiy to export my outline to word, outlook, ppt, mind manager, etc without loosing the fomating.

To me, it feels like the basic editing features of evernote have taken a back seat to the other features. While I LOVE the other features, I think that focusing on the basics will help keep more people in Evernote and help insure the don't stray and look for other solutions.

Any chance we can get a Evernote Product Manager to comment on plans for doing this?

Thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...
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  • Formating that is preserved between Evernote clients. (Ipad, Iphone, web, win/mac clients, etc) I should never loose my outline, just because I edited the outline on a different device.

That might actually be a lot of the reason why we cannot get outlining - so hard to maintain across all platforms. IIRC, html coding doesn't do outlines, so how would your ideas work on the web version? Other folks may have it right, that you use the right program for the right job. In which case, it may be MS-Word for outlines ...

I am not a lover of MS-Word, so if there is a better outliner that is compatible with EN, I am all for that. In the meantime, EN (Win, desktop) does allow me to do that first quick outline using just numbers. Fleshing out has to be done in Word. Of course, if any one from EN would like to prove me wrong, I will be happy to say thank you!

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html coding doesn't do outlines, so how would your ideas work on the web version?

Not an outline, but certainly an outline-like list:

<ol>

<li>

<ol>

<li></li>

</ol>

</li>

</ol>

I don't use outlines a whole lot myself, and probably wouldn't use the feature if it was implemented, but I know a lot of people who really want them.

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+ 1. Like the previous poster, I switched to evernote from onenote mainly for the cloud storage features. But the lack of basic outlining features caught me a bit by surprise and is really frustrating. This needs to be improved.

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Don't have a clue about the level of difficulty of implementing in Evernote, but a quick google search on "html collapsible list" results in quite a few methods for doing this with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Several of these go back to 2007 or earlier.

Of course, doing this in an WYSIWYG editor makes it more complex.

At least one iPad app seems to have mastered this: http://www.magicalpad.com

Don't know how well it actually works since I haven't used it.

But the

looks good.
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  • 3 weeks later...

Even the forum editor has the capability to indent a list.

  • Outlining Helps Group Similar ideas
    • Indenting lets you understand parent-child relationships
    • another child

    [*]This is a basic feature in most editors

    • This is major oversight in evernote
    • EverNote should implement this feature - low hanging fruit

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  • 2 weeks later...
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it is crude. i don't use it. i just use dashes.

- outlining

-- it isn't so bad in plain text

-- i just add some dashes

-- it works fine for me

-- of course, hard core outliners will scoff

-- my notes will export fine and work in just about any program, though

i'm sure en will make a lot of people happy with better outlining. until then, and maybe even after it comes, i'll roll old school.

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it is crude. i don't use it. i just use dashes.

- outlining

-- it isn't so bad in plain text

-- i just add some dashes

-- it works fine for me

-- of course, hard core outliners will scoff

-- my notes will export fine and work in just about any program, though

i'm sure en will make a lot of people happy with better outlining. until then, and maybe even after it comes, i'll roll old school.

Yeah. I use external tools for real outlining (lots of indent/outdent & re-arrangement) and then copy the finished product into a note. Been using Workflowy web app recently for the job.

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I tend to feel the same way about outlining the same way I feel about code. If It's indented more than 3 levels, it's too much: refactor. I try to keep them simple, and I don't get into trouble too often.

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Is there something to outlining beyond the bullet points that indent? Cuz we do that (yes, some improvements could be made). We also don't do 1 and the sub points be 1.1 then 1.2 etc. That one is a big trickier, and sorta could be a rabbit hole. The desktop clients, probably not as bad. *Insert your least favorite mobile device* would probably ruin that outline immediately

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the outlining on evernote, frankly speaking, is not a very impressive feature. there is so much more that "could" be done, but as dlu said, the additional complexity that others manage to overcome on a single platform (usually a desktop) would be a disaster for evernote. evernote's strength (available on so many platforms) is its weakness as well.

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Yeah. I use external tools for real outlining (lots of indent/outdent & re-arrangement) and then copy the finished product into a note. Been using Workflowy web app recently for the job.

How does the interchange between Evernote and Workflowy work?

Are you able to save the Workflowy results as a "document" in Evernote, that you can easily up back up in Workflowy and continue to edit?

IOW, does it work like a MS Word document you have stored in Evernote?

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I take many of my notes in outline format, as it is the way that I think. However, I find that I also do it manually, using dashes and spaces. It works, but is not a super high-powered solution.

I would use it, but again, I think making it work with the mobile clients and retain its formatting would be the tricky part.

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No. I export the outline from WorkFlowy and paste it into a new note in evernote. I set the sourceurl to point back to the original WorkFlowy list if I foresee a need to edit the list again in WorkFlowy.

e.g,

20120203 Test Evernote Windows 4.5.4.6170 (Beta 1)

  • Added support for dragging and dropping attachments/images to MS-Office apps
  • Find for PDFs starts from the current page of the PDF
  • Notebooks sync upon sharing if the notebook hasn't been synced before
    Not tested.
  • Copy Note Link Starts Sync if a note hasn't been synced before
    Not tested.
  • Sync on Exit checkbox under Tools >> Options
    Confirmed Tools -> Options -> Sync -> [X] Synchronize changes on exit Default was checked. Which matched current setting.
  • Fixed Find in PDF bug where only first term is highlighted
  • Fixed limit on notebooks/stacks in dropdown
    Not tested.
  • Fixed issue where notes print at larger font size than expected
    Still have problems.
    • Print Preview is blank/garbage
    • Fonts are oversized when printing to CutePDF

https://workflowy.co...1-7f089b1d746a/

Alternatively I just include the link in the note text and point the sourceurl to e.g.

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I've used workflowy on and off. I have to admit I don't take advantage of the cool collapse and moving around features much though.

What I can see us doing a much better job is basic bullet pointing. The cool outlining features workflowy and other apps have... well we're quite a ways away from that.

Oh yes, and indenting. I should look into the indenting stuff later on (Yes, I am publicly procrastinating).

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I've used workflowy on and off. I have to admit I don't take advantage of the cool collapse and moving around features much though.

What I can see us doing a much better job is basic bullet pointing. The cool outlining features workflowy and other apps have... well we're quite a ways away from that.

Oh yes, and indenting. I should look into the indenting stuff later on (Yes, I am publicly procrastinating).

I use WorkFlowy because:

- The Evernote web client editor is too funky and unreliable with complex interior edits

- It has a very reliable update and save process

- It creates a daily journal email of recent changes. The journal is created daily circa 06:00 ET. I auto-forward the journal to Evernote.

- I can use it anywhere I can use a browser.

- The lists created are private by default

- Formatting and function is good enough for my use. I could use other tools, but, the above features make it a good adjunct to Evernote for creating medium complex new notes. e.g. I have a large planning note in progress in WorkFlowy for my expected upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 in April.

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As dlu said, this will not happen (if at all) any time soon.

Other projects and features are way higher on the list of EN developers.

As Owyn and others pointed out, if your really need outlining, than other apps are better suited for you.

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  • 7 months later...

I've actually just recently launched an app for iOS on the app store. It does outlining similar to how WorkFlowy or TaskPaper do it, and in the next update (awaiting approval as we speak, ETA 1 week) it has full Evernote integration, letting you attach Evernote notes anywhere in your outline.

In the future I plan on adding a feature to export an entire outline (starting at any "node") to Evernote.

http://itunes.apple....29256?ls=1&mt=8

And here's a screenshot of what the Evernote integration will look like:

UeiIT.png

I hope this isn't considered spam, as I think it's very relavant to this conversation. If it is, I can remove it, or if it would make a difference, post a bunch of promo codes so people can try the app for free.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm amazed by several items in this thread:

1. Like me, many people assumed Evernote would have standard outlining functionality.

2. Evernote DOESN'T have standard outlining functionality.

3. Despite a large number of Evernote users saying how much want this functionality, the Evernote people commenting don't seem to care, which is odd. Typically paying attention to what your users want is a good idea.

A lot of people don't get the power of a full-function outliner. But for those of us that use it a lot, it's a great tool for collecting and then structuring your thoughts, developing relationships between items, and creating to do's, projects, or just for note taking. You can collapse levels, expand levels, move the items around, renumber and reorder at will. Typically they include all the different numbering styles and automatic indentation. A friend of mine says he "thinks in outlines" which makes sense to me. For him, having an outliner is indispensible. In fact, it's the only reason he doesn't use Evernote. I like Evernote, but I agree with all the other posts, that not having a true outliner is a major hole in Evernote. As soon as an Evernote competitor appears with a good outliner, I will switch. But I'm hoping the Evernote people will realize the power in outlining and give us what we want.

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1. Like me, many people assumed Evernote would have standard outlining functionality.

Gotta be careful of assumptions -- they on the part of the assumer, not the target of the assumptions.

2. Evernote DOESN'T have standard outlining functionality.

True enough.

3. Despite a large number of Evernote users saying how much want this functionality, the Evernote people commenting don't seem to care, which is odd. Typically paying attention to what your users want is a good idea.

Please do not take Evernote's lack of delivering a full outline function as lack of caring. I know that they understand the importance of outlining to many people (who knows, there may be frustrated outliners among the Evernote staff), it's just the usual development thing of resources and priorities. Outlining is not the only proposed feature on their plates.

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I know that they understand the importance of outlining to many people (who knows, there may be frustrated outliners among the Evernote staff)...

There must be a support group for this kind of thing :)

Of course, we'd all like the app to have everything that its 40 million + users have requested, but I wouldn't hold your breath, because I've never seen an app do that. Instead, we have a constantly improving app that is better than it was this time last year, but not as good as it will be next year. Hopefully, outlining is on the roadmap, but who knows. There are lots of reasons why things don't immediately appear, but the fact that the app is developed for every major computing platform is surely one thing to consider.

Anyhow, please keep suggesting the feature. The more data the developers have about what you do and what you want to do with the app, the more likely they are to incorporate your suggestions into the app. If you go through the forum posts, you can find numerous suggestions that have become reality, so it's a possibility, and the developers are definitely listening.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I love doing all my text work in evernote so it's with me wherever I go.. but I'm trying to make my life a little easier.

I'd like to do an outline in evernote with different levels of indentation.

There's an indent button in the toolbar which is inefficient, but can work ok... it has a keyboard shortcut though it's a bit hard to reach. It'd doable.. but unfortunately the formatting doesn't stay if pasted into another document which makes it quite limiting.

There's lists, which are more practical seeming, and appear somewhat more nicely, but they are limited to 2 levels. They can be pasted to other programs, but hierarchy is not maintined (list item or non list item).

I can use tabs, which can carry over, paste-wise, but they are frustrating because I do not start the next line at the same indendation.. I have to hit tab until it lines up.

How do you do outlining in evernote? Is there a better way that I'm missing? because this seems like a really useful capability to have

Thanks for the considered reply.

I am probably an edge case in that I use evernote pretty much just for the text capabilities.. for tagging and sorting all the text/notey type things I write up so I can get at them from anywhere and search through them easily. I haven't been in a situation where I felt it would be particularly useful to use the other features.. just hasn't ever felt necessary. So from that perspective I guess I'm not really using it for what it's meant for.. and that's why the features I specifically want are left in the dust a bit, but I haven't found any other service that has quite the same abilities with organizing text in the cloud, desktop and cross-platform.

I'm in this boat to some extent too. It's better now than in previous versions, but there's still more than can be done.

I try to keep related ideas and thoughts in one note in outline form, and add to them over time. Two out of three times, I'm most likely doing this on my iPhone, so it's a bit more of a hassle to outline effectively. I'm finally using Evernote on my MacBook Pro more now -- as in the last few months -- and foresee using it too on an iPad when I give in and buy one within the next year.

Copying and pasting text in from other sources hasn't been the best experience either. I often find myself spending more time than I should trying to keep the format consistant and in a similar manner I'm use to in Word for Mac 2011. I've had a few disastrous attempts with inconsistant outlining, fonts and spacing in the last week with copying and pasting. Often the biggest issue is trying to figure out if it's my ignorance or limitations of the software.

My first several months of using Evernote was text only. It was only fairly recently I started using the Web Clipper, audio and photo features. Now I'm trying to get the hang of the new major update. Pretty pleased so far. Still, I'm creating text in outline form the most and doing this multiple times a week now. It would be pretty awesome if there was a plugin for Word to export into Evernote and an export to/open in Word feature (.docx) in Evernote.

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  • 1 month later...

Although full outlining capability would be nice, I'd be satisfied with having bulleted lists that aren't buggy.

With capability for OCR and note taking, Evernote could be an excellent office companion but the lack of simple, hierarchical note taking is a big limitation. I tried using an embedded word doc but then the problem becomes 1. lack of editing from a mobile device and 2. lack of integrated search of office apps.

For now, a google document works great for an outline. Evernote will keep my OCR'd documents and whiteboards.

<sigh>

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  • 1 month later...

I'm one of those people who "think in outlines" and probably always will. I'm such a devotee, I've even made decisions about upgrading hardware and OS, based on whether they would support my ancient version of Clarisworks. I'm not a Luddite, I just don't want to give up powerful functionality.

Simple indentation is not outlining. That just makes text easier to read. The real power of outlining is in the writing --collapsing your text into headers in order to rearrange big chunks of text. If you try to do that with ordinary cut and paste, you can get totally lost in the scroll-scroll-scroll, trying to remember where you wanted to put that text. But once everything is collapsed into headers --you see exactly what you want to do with your text. Slip, bang, done. It - just - works!

I've been hunting for a more recent alternative to Clarisworks, but still haven't found anything that will let me convert my hundreds of docs without losing the precious formatting. Any suggestions?... BTW, if you're going to suggest one of the many outline-based task managers, thanks but no thanks. I don't need a bunch of features to help me get things done --I'm already a very happy Toodledo user. What I want is an outliner with for *text editing*.

 

Which brings me back to the topic of this forum thread...

I do love Evernote's portability and other fabulous features. But I keep holding back on really using it simply because of the lack of outlining capability. When I saw Cloud Outliner I thought my prayers were answered --until I found out that it's only for iOS   I've contacted the developers and they told me they have no plans for a Windows version. No joy in Mudville... :(

 

There has got to be a developer out there who can write a outliner that will work on Windows and coordinate with EN. Please, pretty please..?

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Up until this point I haven't used Evernote too much due to the terrible ability to expand/collapse lists.  This seems like such a core function to what Evernote is.  Forget Hello, Skitch, Food etc.  They aren't core.  It would be nice if Evernote would a) give more visibility into their road map and B) use UserVoice or something similar to let their users influence the road map.  They would be far more successful if they did this.  Evernote does a lot of things very well, but this is just such a basic need and I don't know if I can ever use it extensively without something like this.  Workflowy is so basic, but does this sooo beautifully.  I can't imagine the Workflowy concept is too hard to implement.  I think it is silly to say people should use a different app to construct outlines... outlines are core to so many things and the whole point of Evernote is to have everything in one place.  This is a note taking app... notes ARE outlines.  How well you can take notes should be the number one thing they should be paying attention to.  It wasn't until recently that you could even create a basic outline.  I understand the limited resources, but they raised a ton of money last year and they are rolling out far less important things.

 

Please Evernote listen to us I am begging you!!!

 

 

 

I fully agree with David Heimer when he says:

I'm amazed by several items in this thread:


1. Like me, many people assumed Evernote would have standard outlining functionality.

2. Evernote DOESN'T have standard outlining functionality.

3. Despite a large number of Evernote users saying how much want this functionality, the Evernote people commenting don't seem to care, which is odd. Typically paying attention to what your users want is a good idea.

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I would really like to second everything said here. Even if Evernote's primary purpose is to be data capture & search, the fact that it purports to be a place to store notes (even short ones!) but has such horrible formatting is a great failure. I'm not asking for OneNote like formatting, or even Microsoft word formatting. But basic bulleting is not hard. Neither his highlighting. Nor is it a herculean effort to get this stuff working cross-platform (if it is, they have made some bad technology decisions up to this point which will burden them forever or until they decide to make a change). Every platform supports some extremely basic formatting operations (bullets, indents, proper tabs, text color, background color, bold/italic/underline). That's really all we're after. The editor that I'm using right now, or on any other online forum, supports MUCH more formatting/etc than Evernote. 

 

The reality, I think, is that the massively cross-platform support effort has become a) a good example of extreme bog-down from supporting multiple codebases and B) a crutch to justify poor user experience on the creation-of-content and UI/UX side of things. Evernote is amazing for storing, searching, and just generally capturing information - which is why I continue to love and use it, despite the many ways in which I have sadly grown to hate it.

 

But if a company that has been around for 5-7 years and has raised over $250 million dollars cannot get basic formatting right, they shouldn't be claiming they have anything to do with notetaking or the creation of unique content. Universal capture, fine (again, they're great at this). But it's unfair for Evernote and it's supporters to defend a company that can't get something this basic right. Evernote does not do this well, never has, and yet they market themselves as a note-taking repository in addition to being a capture-bucket. Either they should fix it, or they should market themselves differently, or they should just be honest about the fact that they made a few bad technology decisions combined with spreading themselves too thin across too many codebases and as a result are failing on this front. Bog-down from way too many focus areas isn't an excuse, but it's at least an explanation (is it really necessary to have Evernote available on obscure platforms, and are all the loosely-integrated side-projects really more important than this core functionality (skitch, hello, evernote food, clearly, evernote peek, etc)

 

Off the top of my head, a few random examples (using bullet points): 

  • Bullet points in evernotes are fraught with technical issues. I'm not sure why they insist on using their own GUI, there are plentiful codebases out there for rich text editing that are cross-platform. A quick search on Evernote forums will show you the scope of this issue. An example is that on the Windows client, un-indenting a bullet (if it's not the first bullet in a list) is not possible. Whether you try the un-indent button or you hit shift-tab, the bulleted list simple dissolves and you have to re-create the bulleted list then indent. One example of this is here http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/18780-shift-tab-shortcut-broken/
  • No highlight/background color support: why is this? It's particularly weird since on the mac client the text-color picker is insanely robust (detrimentally so, in my opinion: do you really need to be able to pick between CMYK, RGB, HSB color schemes AND have the options of crayons, color wheels, color spectrums, and color sliders to select a color? A bland 8x5 of color boxes would be fine! ). This is even weirder because Clearly CAN highlight stuff -- so I end up with evernote notes where things are highlighted, but I cannot un-highlight or add highlights! So inconsistent. 
  • Image insertion: if you insert an image to evernote notes, you can't resize it !! At all!
  • Etc etc (a quick search for evernote editor on these forums will bring up many issues

Again, I'm really trying to be constructive here. I love Evenote.  I want to see it succeed. But I do not think that basic RTF functionality, available in ever web-email program in existence as well as all forums etc, is really that unreasonable. I'm not asking for any features that are unique or special or next-gen, I'm asking for the stuff available in a crappy program like MS Wordpad or a random forum post.

 

I think that the backlash against these types of feature request is really unusual and odd. They are not unreasonable requests, and it has been a long time. 5-7 years and $250 million dollars should be able to get you the basics of text editing, on a piece of software that purports to be "your external brain" where you can dump thoughts and notes and capture content. If this is really that hard or if they really have that many other priorities, maybe they should rethink those priorities. Is a food-picture add-on that's loosely integrated, really more important than a very basic level of functionality in their core product? Is it really more important to support the Nth different OS or Mobile OS or browser? 

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@KellyH, Jon Sheller:

I'd be happy if Evernote upleveled their support for better formatting options on their various clients and brought better consistency to their various Evernote clients. No backlash from me against these improvements, in other words.

I will, however, continue to defend their right to make their own business decisions as to what it and is not feasible to do in the interests of the preservation of their company. It's their livelihood that's at stake, and their future as the company that wants to be around for 100 years. I don't find a lot of value in second-guessing what they should do next; Evernote is today -- imperfect as is noted -- still a useful tool for me.

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@Jefito,

Totally agree that the final calls are up to them, in terms of balancing what the right priorities are after weighing all the incoming feedback.

 

Don't agree though, that it's not useful to second-guess them. I think being second-guessed by your customers can be extremely valuable. I'm not even second-guessing per se, rather providing feedback. This should be something valuable, given that they're a 100% consumer/smb-facing company. Their livelihood is their consumer satisfaction. My point is that MANY users seem to voice this concern, or related concerns, and there really has been very little progress over many years. I know they have other priorities, but my intention was to point out that at some point "we're busy with other stuff" becomes an empty or at least very weak excuse (becuase we all know that the "other stuff" list is infinite). Particularly when that other stuff is all over the place (food photo clipping, evernote peek, etc). I'm 100% ok to be overridden by popular outcry seeking flash-card-like ipad functionality. I just a) don't believe that in reality these features are as important to users as the core functionality of note-taking, thought-jotting, etc and B) don't think that being multi-platform is an excuse. Basic text formatting capabilities, via html or markdown or whatever, or not a cutting-edge technology. If I can make webpages work in IE7, Evernote should be able to get their note-taking interface up to current standards across platforms (unless it's not a priority). 

 

If the real answer is, rather than "we're really busy with important stuff", actually "we're not a note-taking app, we're a universal-capture-but-not-create app" then that's 100% OK with me. But this is not the current message/marketing/pitch. If evernote is my "external brain", it should be a place where I can at least have a non-buggy, basic level of text and note-taking support. 

 

My last point, and the reason that I wrote my original post, is that the debate surrounding these issues can be frustrating to watch on these forums. Often (to be clear, not always) the response from Evernote or Evernote Evangelists is , roughly, to criticize folks for even asking/expecting these types of features (or, even more, for feeling they have a right to know whether these features are on the roadmap). As far as I know this is the only place to discuss features with a chance of being heard by Evernote (I wish they used UserVoice or something similar!), and most people are really genuinely well-intentioned. I just don't agree with the blanket responses that "evernote can't immediately deliver everything it's 40m+ users request, so don't hold your breath" and "evernote can't immediately do everything because it's working on so many platforms, maybe it will work on this someday, or is working on it, but who knows".

 

I think that there are probably a lot of people who want this, it shouldn't be THAT difficult, we're not asking for it immediately but sometime soon would be nice, and I do think it's reasonable for users to expect some degree of visibility into these things vs unquestioning support of an invisible roadmap. We don't need a full roadmap, but rough priorities or at least a commitment to NOT say "we're definitely interested in doing this at some point" if that's not really true. I think it's fair for people to get frustrated when something they consider core to an application they care a lot about isn't up to par, and when they feel like they're getting either misleading answers, unsatisfactory answers ("it's too hard"), indefinite/misleading answers ("it's hard but we're really trying to deliver on this sometime soon"),  or no answers as to why and whether it will ever change. 

 

My ten cents. Again, genuinely happy to be outvoted here if I'm in a minority of caring about this feature. Just wish the message would be clearer one way or another from evernote. 

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@KellyH, Jon Sheller:

I'd be happy if Evernote upleveled their support for better formatting options on their various clients and brought better consistency to their various Evernote clients. No backlash from me against these improvements, in other words.

I will, however, continue to defend their right to make their own business decisions as to what it and is not feasible to do in the interests of the preservation of their company. It's their livelihood that's at stake, and their future as the company that wants to be around for 100 years. I don't find a lot of value in second-guessing what they should do next; Evernote is today -- imperfect as is noted -- still a useful tool for me.

 

@jefito

 

I have no idea what defending Evernote's "right to make their own business decisions" has to do with outlining. Did one of the many people requesting basic outlining features say that Evernote couldn't make their own business decisions? Since you're an Evernote Evangelist, surely you would see the benefit of keeping this little part of the Evernote discussion forum strictly focused on the subject -- OUTLINING. 

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@JonS: I was going to write up a long point-by-point response to you, but I don't think we really need that. I do sympathize with a lot of what you say and always hope that Evernote can deliver a better editing experience. Just some points:

* My notion of "second-guessing" is something beyond just feedback and suggestions (these are good things and are certainly encouraged here). It seems like you were hedging on the distinction yourself. I guess where I draw the line is somewhere between "it would be great to have X" and "Evernote ought to have X", and that can depend on my perception of the attitude of the poster.

* I doubt very much whether you will hear criticism from Evernote staff of people making feature requests. You're far more likely to get a bland (but not unmeant) "thanks for the request". And they do read them. They have some idea of what's on the roadmap, but they do not generally divulge it (I think that they probably call it the "Due Date Rule", backstage :)) Sometimes they do talk about motivations for what they do or do not do, but they don't care to repeat themselves if their stance hasn't changed, so using search or reading all of a long thread can be useful.

* I can't speak for all of the Evangelists -- we are separate individuals. Personally, I've tried to learn to tone things down, though sometimes -- if the requests are made in a rude and/or uninformed fashion (and they can be) -- I am not always as polite as I might be (certainly not as polite as GrumpyMonkey). I feel as though it's OK to ask what's on the roadmap, but the stock answer is as above: Evernote doesn't generally reveal what's coming up. For me, that's their policy, so I accept it. I never claim to know what's on the roadmap (because it's almost always true); however, after several years of fielding forum posts, I do have a feeling for some of the things that I think might be more or less unlikely, and that sometimes seems worth sharing. I do tend to disclaimer things that I don't know for sure.

* Bottom line is for me is that most of the time we just try to help solve problems for users of Evernote, with the actual Evernote product as it exists. Beyond that, when I hear someone insisting that Evernote must have feature X, I think it's valid to point out something like "if you need X, and Evernote doesn't have it, then you should perhaps find something that does, rather than agitating over something that may never change".

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David Heimer, on 03 Mar 2013 - 21:31, said:

I have no idea what defending Evernote's "right to make their own business decisions" has to do with outlining. Did one of the many people requesting basic outlining features say that Evernote couldn't make their own business decisions? Since you're an Evernote Evangelist, surely you would see the benefit of keeping this little part of the Evernote discussion forum strictly focused on the subject -- OUTLINING.

Making feature requests is fine. Editorializing that Evernote doesn't seem to care or doesn't pay attention to their users is strictly speaking not topical, either. But since you seemed to want to have that conversation...
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I'm one of those people who "think in outlines" and probably always will. I'm such a devotee, I've even made decisions about upgrading hardware and OS, based on whether they would support my ancient version of Clarisworks. I'm not a Luddite, I just don't want to give up powerful functionality.

Simple indentation is not outlining. That just makes text easier to read. The real power of outlining is in the writing --collapsing your text into headers in order to rearrange big chunks of text. If you try to do that with ordinary cut and paste, you can get totally lost in the scroll-scroll-scroll, trying to remember where you wanted to put that text. But once everything is collapsed into headers --you see exactly what you want to do with your text. Slip, bang, done. It - just - works!

I've been hunting for a more recent alternative to Clarisworks, but still haven't found anything that will let me convert my hundreds of docs without losing the precious formatting. Any suggestions?... BTW, if you're going to suggest one of the many outline-based task managers, thanks but no thanks. I don't need a bunch of features to help me get things done --I'm already a very happy Toodledo user. What I want is an outliner with for *text editing*.

 

Which brings me back to the topic of this forum thread...

I do love Evernote's portability and other fabulous features. But I keep holding back on really using it simply because of the lack of outlining capability. When I saw Cloud Outliner I thought my prayers were answered --until I found out that it's only for iOS   I've contacted the developers and they told me they have no plans for a Windows version. No joy in Mudville... :(

 

There has got to be a developer out there who can write a outliner that will work on Windows and coordinate with EN. Please, pretty please..?

 

I like the features of Cloud Outliner, but Evernote could easily incorporate some of those features.  That and some sort of greying of text when an item is checked.

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They realize it is an issue. dlu even said that he uses Workflowy, sometimes.

 

The problem is that notes are created in a restricted type of HTML(ENML) which only allows certain tags and doesn't allow javascript. My guess is that being able to have a collapsible outline would require a new basis for how all notes are formatted.

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The problem is that notes are created in a restricted type of HTML(ENML) which only allows certain tags and doesn't allow javascript. My guess is that being able to have a collapsible outline would require a new basis for how all notes are formatted.

JavaScript is not part of HTML; not sure why that would be a problem.

I'm guessing that Evernote might be able to implement outline collapsing using the current set of HTML tags, but I'm not sure how they'd go about persisting that state. Maybe by adding special properties to the CSS "style"? Another problem might be recognizing outlines at all; I am also guessing that they've had more than one outline implementation over the years, so it may be difficult to recognize an outline as such.

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Not a part of HTML, I meant to say not a part of ENML. 

 

If your input has <script> it removes it before outputting in ENML so that JavaScript is not allowed.

 

I'm not very advanced in this stuff, but you can hide and unhide, just with CSS, so maybe it could be a possibility to do without JavaScript. So, instead of you clicking the button to bold and it inputting <b>, you would have a button that inputted <style = display:hidden> (not sure if that is even correct) The funny thing about the ENML is that each line has a <div> or something strange and that id's and classes are also blocked, so I don't know how you could send a command to hide more than one line, just by inputting tags.

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That's right -- the script tag is explicitly disallowed by ENML (http://dev.evernote.com/start/core/enml.php#prohibited). 

 

ENML doesn't have a requirement that <div>s be used for each line (though that's a recommendation for plain text notes: http://dev.evernote.com/start/core/enml.php#plaintext, which outline notes are not). Aside from that, Evernote does use divs, but if you ever peek inside the ENML for a note that contains outlines (and I recommend that you do -- it's interesting), they use <ol>, <ul>,and <li> tags to implement their outlines.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...

It's been some time since I checked in on this topic. I've always figure that it's something they'll eventually get to if enough folks find the feature to be of value.

 

In the meantime, I've been outlining in Word and then pasting into Evernote when I need depth or special format. That seems to work pretty well as a stopgap.

 

As a writer, the format I'd most like to see is:

 

I.

   A.

      i.

         a.

II.

...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've used WorkFlowy's outlining system in the past, and I've also bought NoteSuite ($10 total for the iPad and Mac versions). One key thing I really like with NoteSuite is the outlining feature. Whether you use bullet points or checkboxes, you can expand/collapse outlines and move items (and all of the sub-topics under that item) around the outline.

 

This is a very, very good feature, and one Evernote should really implement if at all possible. I can use indented bullet points for my article/book/presentation outlines, but having a feature like this in Evernote would allow people to use one less tool (i.e. WorkFlowy or OmniOutliner) in their workflow. 

 

I think competition is good for everyone. Hopefully, NoteSuite's introduction can introduce some ideas on which the Evernote team can increase development.

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Thanks for the heads up -- I'll check out NoteSuite. Yeah, as much as I like EverNote they just don't understand outlining and why outlining is so important. You'd think that since all major document creation tools have good outlining tools that EverNote would see the market opportunity, but apparently they don't.

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I'm not sure how to do this, but there must be some way to request that outlining tools be bumped up in the priority list. Anyone have a contact at Evernote?

Evernote staff read these forums, and they seem pretty well aware of the issues. You can contact Evernote staff directly via support (see link in my signature) or chat (Premium folks).

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

I'm not sure how to do this, but there must be some way to request that outlining tools be bumped up in the priority list. Anyone have a contact at Evernote?

Evernote staff read these forums, and they seem pretty well aware of the issues. You can contact Evernote staff directly via support (see link in my signature) or chat (Premium folks).

 

I'll do that -- AGAIN -- any hints for getting results this time? I look at the enhancements to the latest version of Evernote, and I think they're nice, but not anything as significant or gap-filling as outlining. 

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Per GrumpyMonkey's suggestion I followed the link in his/her signature block to the support link and logged the following support request. 

 

Outlining is an important tool that's missing in Evernote. I love Evernote, but the lack of a decent outlining tool in Evernote is a problem every day for me. I know that sounds like an overstatement, but it's not. I think in outlines, I organize myself in outlines, and I plan in outlines. The ability to create outlines, quickly move sections, indent, subordinate, reorder, collapse, expand, etcetera makes the tool tremendously effective and easy to use. Thanks for your consideration. 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...
Hello,

 

I have been using MS Word Outline view for just about as long as I have been computing. However, knowing that I've been missing out on some time-saving functionality, I recently began researching several of the highly-touted notetaking apps.

 

Based on what I've read in a number of reviews and comparisons, Evernote has thus far seemed to be the clear front runner — and I was even planning to spend a chunk of time this coming weekend diving into the inevitable learning curve that accompanies any new application.

 

However, as of about 30 minutes ago — after reading through several of the posts in this thread — I'm sorry to say that Evernote has not only tumbled from the top of the list but has been unceremoniously booted from even retaining a place in the running. However, before leaving, I felt compelled to leave a post of my own.

 

To say that I am dumbfounded would be an understatement. How can an application which even includes the word "note" in its name, not include a robust outlining ability? That's akin to a car not having a motor or a computer without a CPU!

 

I realize that notes jotted down by many people do not take on the form of an outline. But any well-thought out collection of information — be it a book or a calendar or a computer program or even running errands, putting together a shopping list or just making one's plans for the day — takes on the form of an outline.

 

My sympathies go out to those of you who have already gone through the learning curve — presumably unaware of Evernote's lack of outlining capability or at least assuming that it would be shortly forthcoming — and whose requests have gone unheeded.

 

Now I suppose I must go back to re-investigate the remaining apps on my list to determine which of them does or does not include the one capability I have not felt compelled to closely scrutinize.

 

Still shaking my head. :P

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However, before leaving, I felt compelled to leave a post of my own. To say that I am dumbfounded would be an understatement. How can an application which even includes the word "note" in its name, not include a robust outlining ability? That's akin to a car not having a motor or a computer without a CPU!

 

At it's core, despite the syllable "note" in its name, Evernote is not a note taking program or a word processing program. It's designed for storing lots of different kinds of information and finding it quickly. The note taking features are kind of a small extra. I admit, they're not incredibly feature rich. Which is why I use other programs for taking notes. 

 

Lots of people think that with just one more really, really key missing feature, Evernote would be perfect. But there are a lot of different ideas out there about what that really, really key feature is. Evernote doesn't generally make public their roadmap so it's hard to know for sure what they consider the key missing feature. My guess, based on the amount of effort they seem to put into developing the note taking/editing aspect is that that isn't it. 

 

Best of luck. 

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  • 1 month later...

I'll chime in here.

 

The historically best outliner UI of them all has not yet been mentioned here. Sadly, the owner of NetManage pulled Ecco Pro from the market in the face of the Outlook onslaught... and it's been an unsupported app ever since. Even so, it is SO much more usable that many thousands still depend on it, having found nothing else even close... even though this is now ancient software.

 

I highly recommend installing and using a copy of Ecco Pro for a while before any developer or product manager lays out a strategy for developing a new outliner.

 

A few of the great / simple / clear capabilities:

 

- Selection of single or multiple items Just Works, both keyboard and mouse/touch

- moving items or whole subtrees is a single keystroke (alt-Left/Right/Up/Down) or simple drag

- Visible text acts like regular text when it comes to insert/delete within a line, and auto-switches to whole-line insert/delete for multiline

- Search shows outline lines, with context to the root showing in a faded color

- Split/Join is a single keystroke

- Simple keystrokes to collaps/expand (all, next level, show to level N -- ctrl 1 shows level 1, ctrl 5 shows levels 1-5 etc)

etc etc etc

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'd really like to be able to use this kind of functionality (and more, like code folding) - or even try to hack/implement it myself (if possible)!

 

Unfortunately, AFAIK, the Evernote API allows you to basically only import / export notes, not extend the program (desktop, web or mobile apps) in any way. Does anyone know if I'm wrong? Since I mostly use the desktop version, I would not mind having this feature enabled only on the desktop application...

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I'd really like to be able to use this kind of functionality (and more, like code folding) - or even try to hack/implement it myself (if possible)!

 

Unfortunately, AFAIK, the Evernote API allows you to basically only import / export notes, not extend the program (desktop, web or mobile apps) in any way. Does anyone know if I'm wrong? Since I mostly use the desktop version, I would not mind having this feature enabled only on the desktop application...

The Evernote API interacts with the Evernote servers, and not any local Evernote clients. On WIndows, there is a semi-secret COM (and unsupported) interface to the desktop client, but I don't know what actual capabilities it requires, and given the BitQuik experience, I'd shy away from that. On the Mac, you might be able to do something with AppleScript, but I'm not super sure about the capabilities there, either.

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  • 2 months later...

Sigh....   No outlining in Evernote.   I suppose I should add my whimpering to the rest of the stack, and at least help keep this thread alive.

 

....Lyle (Evernote premium user, and still-to-this-day Ecco32 user)

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  • 4 weeks later...

I considered switching to OneNote because it has superior outlining capability.  Unfortunately, I found it fell short in other ways, so I'm sticking with EverNote for information gathering,sorting, and organizing,  and using OneNote for outlining.

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Why not do your outlining in Cloud Outliner or better still, WorkFlowy? Cloud Outliner has Evernote integration. WorkFlowy allows you to export in different formats - so you can copy-paste your outline into an Evernote note. The bullets are not collapsible, but then again, Evernote is not an outlining tool.

Besides... What's with this whole "can't-outline-in-Evernote" thing? The indentations and bullet thingamajigs work just fine for me in iOS and desktop.

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I personally don't even care about collapsible outlining, although that would be nice.  But I've seen consistent issues when I create a bulleted outline in Evernote, and then return some time later to the outline and try to add new nodes to the outline.  You frequently have to keep pressing the bullet icon to get the outline to work.  As others have mentioned, the product is called EverNote - lots of people use outlines when they are taking notes....

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  • Cloud outliner is only on iOs and OS X - not on on windows and android.

With respect to the "indentations and bullet thingamajigs"

  • You can't collapse and expand outline levels - an essential component of outlining, IMO.

You'll find if you make many changes to an outline, Evernote get's confused very easily

Workflowy looks interesting.  I will look into that - thanks for the suggestion

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Hey Jlady, yep... Didn't mention the platforms Cloud Outliner was available on. On the other hand, Workflowy has a windows desktop client (works through chrome browser) plus Android (besides Mac and iOS). For your interest, they have a regularly updated blog which gives you a sense of community:

http://blog.workflowy.com/

A lot of folk on there are Evernote users, and they offer their take on what goes in Evernote and what goes in Workflowy. A major plus with Workflowy is that you can create notes and add links to anything - including your Evernote notes - under any bullet point (some people write novels in Workflowy) and they have a unique "zooming" feature where you can focus in on a specific bullet point as the main "heading" to simplify things visually. This goes above and beyond what any outliner should do. I particularly don't have too much of a need for an outliner, but it is just that good that it makes you want to find a way to use it.

EDIT: 8 months later… And I'm Doing a heck of a lot more outlining :-)

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I would love for Evernote to have either a functional outliner or the ability of hierarchical (embedded) notes.  I used to be a big Springpad user until they got rid of their embedded notes and went off in other "social networking" directions which alienated many of their original core users.  That is when I made the switch to Evernote, even though they didn't (don't) have embedded notes either.

 

I have also used The Guide Portable (http://portableapps.com/news/2013-07-04--the-guide-portable-2.0-rev-2-released) which is a great two-pane outliner, but only runs on the PortableApps platform and appears to not be under development anymore.

 

It sounds like Workflowy might be a good thing to look into for those of us that would really love this type of functionality.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 months later...

I have been using Evernote for 8 years. From the start, lack of outlining has been far and away Evernote's most painful defect. I gave up suggesting it because the response to my very early suggestion left me with the impression that Evernote management had a visceral, almost religious, determination not to include it, which there was no point in trying to persuade them to change. So I sacrificed outlining for search and then cloud and then cross-platform, but not a day goes by that I don't mourn the loss of my previous note-taking list-making applications' ability to create and reorganize simple hierarchies  (demote, promote, move up/down an item and all of its children), even if only within a single note. 

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Given that Mac version 6 launched recently with the latest and greatest editor and did not feature this functionality I think it's safe to say that outlining won't be coming to the Evernote apps in the short to medium term.

 

If integrated outlining is key to your workflow then Evernote is probably not the right app for you at the moment. If you are happy to use dedicated (and therefore far more powerful) outlining tools then there are lots of options available.

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EN Mac Ver 6 represents the completion of a complete rewrite of EN Mac, which started with Ver 5.6.

It seems to me that the primary purpose is to provide support for EN Context and Work Chat.  Yes, they have added some other new features, but it is not clear what their intent is.

 

Evernote continues to surprise us with their direction and feature set.  So it is at best very risky to predict the future features of Evernote.

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  • 4 months later...

I'd vote + on this as well.

 

I've been a very long-term Evernote Premium user, and have recommended it to many friends - a great app. However, this one missing feature-set has made me crazy!  

 

Even trying to copy/paste outlines to/from Word is fraught with frustration. Big bugs in what's already in the app. It needs to be fixed, and fixed right!

 

This is such an important feature - and if Evernote management ever had the balls to do a survey of their customer base, I'd bet it'd have to be one of the highest-voted requested features. (Not that they seem to care for feedback whenever I've offered, even very tactfully initially  - hence my skepticism and hostility). 

 

Thanks for the suggestions on Workflowy, etc - I'll take a look again. That being said, it's not unreasonable to want a SINGLE app to hit 80% of your note taking, data collection needs. Switching between apps, even with great integration, is still disruptive and less than idea.

 

 

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I get the need for consolidation... but only once you "take the red pill" and dive into the wonderful world of outliners... once you're on the other side, you wouldn't want it any other way. Your workflow will take on a more intuitive and structured approach. You may just find that 80%+ of your workflow will gravitate towards an outliner. Problem solved. Sorry... I'm not making light of your predicament... I'm just of the opinion that unless one is using an outliner, you're not really going to be doing outlining as it could be done.  You might just quit doing outlining (bullet-ing) in Word.

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Many Many Many of us "to the end" evernote users have asked for more robust outlining functionality.  Most of us have quit asking for this important feature set.   @dlu (Illustrious Seer) Thank you for "daring" to enter this forum thread back in 2012.....It is now clear that you an "Employee Alumni"....  

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Even trying to copy/paste outlines to/from Word is fraught with frustration. Big bugs in what's already in the app. It needs to be fixed, and fixed right!

 

If you haven't already, I would suggest that you download the latest version and enable the beta features.  Tools -> Options -> General Tab -> enable beta features.  These include editor fixes and I have found the bulleting to be greatly improved.

 

I'm also in the camp where collapsible outlining would be greatly appreciated.  I think it would make their presentation mode much more usable.

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  • 5 months later...

Actually, I chose Evernote exactly because I use outlining extensively;)

 

The trick is to use Emacs org-mode interface to Evernote and you got the most powerful outlining capability ever.

 

The only bad thing is that there's no finger friendly emacs for small portables and the web version when you use that. 

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Over the years in this forum several people have suggested 3rd party addins or front ends to Evernote to get some better level of outlning (some to promote their own product). I think that a note-taking, thought-recording tool requires full outlining functionality, and I think that should be built into Evernote. But, I've given up on them doing that. So I am in the process of switching to OneNote. (BTW I have no relationship with Microsoft, OneNote, etcetera.) OneNote has the full outlining functionality I need, full multi-platform access, and so far (I've been slowly switching for about 3 months) I haven't missed anything about Evernote.  And a bonus is that Microsoft hasn't been spamming me with upgrade notices. hahahaha. 

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