(Archived) Showing tags for the selected notebook only

[bobc 11]

There should be a way to show the tag tree with only tags that relate to the particular notebook. You can choose "Hide unassigned tags", and then whenever you click on "Tags" in the tree, you will, for a moment, get what you want. But as soon as you select some tag, most of the of the tags in the tree disappear. I do understand why this is (because the selected tag then acts as a filter -- okay I get it), but still, there really needs to be a way of navigating around in tag tree without seeing irrellevant tags that relate to other notebooks.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I don't know what your point is here. You want to hide unassigned tags but the 'hide unassigned tags' filter isn't what you want??? You want to be able to click on a tag in the left pane but make it not act as a filter??? I don't see where that makes any sense. If you want to move down the left pane to see more of the tags in the list, you can use the scroll bar.

[gregfromgilbert 0]

> But as soon as you select some tag, most of the tags in the tree disappear.

If you click on "tags" you see them all again (and just for the selected notebook).

[leeroid 5]

I think I see where you're going here--

This is really only pertinent in the mobile apps where the filter process is less robust.

Pick a notebook, then see just a list of tags that are in THAT notebook. Of course in the desktop apps this is easy, but in the mobile apps it doesn't work that way as the only way to see a list of tags is to see a list of ALL tags.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I think I see where you're going here--

This is really only pertinent in the mobile apps where the filter process is less robust.

Pick a notebook, then see just a list of tags that are in THAT notebook. Of course in the desktop apps this is easy, but in the mobile apps it doesn't work that way as the only way to see a list of tags is to see a list of ALL tags.

Maybe, except AFAIK, none of the mobile apps has the "hide unassigned" filter. IO specifically stated "You can choose "Hide unassigned tags"... Since this is the section for the Windows client, if OP really is meaning one of the mobile clients, it would be better to have posted in that section.

[CWeinhofer 1]

I understand exactly what the original poster was having trouble with, becuase I have the same frustration. Maybe I can explain it differently and revive this topic.

Let's say I have two notebooks BookOne and BookTwo. For BookOne I use the tags A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, & L (although not all the tags are in use at all times) and for BookTwo I use tags N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, & Y. Since I never use tags N-Y when I am working in BookOne, seeing them when I am in book one provides a lot of unnecessary clutter (especially because, as opposed to this simplified example, the do not all sort so cleanly and expand my sidebar to the point where I have to scroll).

So, to try and clean things up, I use "Hide Unassigned Tags". However, this creates two new problems:

Let's say I want to do something with tag B in BookOne, but B is not currently assigned to any notes. Because the list only shows tags in use, B does not appear and thus I cannot use the drag-n-drop functions normally available.

Also, when I click on a tag in the list to see everything taged with that, the "Hide Unassigned Tags" function make all the other list items not used in those notes disappear. Thus if I want to filter by a completely different tag, I have to click on "Tags" or the notebook itself to get all the tags to reappear before choosing the new tag I want. Certainly not the end of the world, but still a frustrating extra step.

As the original poster suggests, what would solve this problem is to have tags attached to each perticular notebook and then have an option to show only that notebook's tags (regardless of whether they were assigned to any notes or not).

[_yoo 0]

I understand exactly what the original poster was having trouble with, becuase I have the same frustration. Maybe I can explain it differently and revive this topic.

Let's say I have two notebooks BookOne and BookTwo. For BookOne I use the tags A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, & L (although not all the tags are in use at all times) and for BookTwo I use tags N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, & Y. Since I never use tags N-Y when I am working in BookOne, seeing them when I am in book one provides a lot of unnecessary clutter (especially because, as opposed to this simplified example, the do not all sort so cleanly and expand my sidebar to the point where I have to scroll).

So, to try and clean things up, I use "Hide Unassigned Tags". However, this creates two new problems:

Let's say I want to do something with tag B in BookOne, but B is not currently assigned to any notes. Because the list only shows tags in use, B does not appear and thus I cannot use the drag-n-drop functions normally available.

Also, when I click on a tag in the list to see everything taged with that, the "Hide Unassigned Tags" function make all the other list items not used in those notes disappear. Thus if I want to filter by a completely different tag, I have to click on "Tags" or the notebook itself to get all the tags to reappear before choosing the new tag I want. Certainly not the end of the world, but still a frustrating extra step.

As the original poster suggests, what would solve this problem is to have tags attached to each perticular notebook and then have an option to show only that notebook's tags (regardless of whether they were assigned to any notes or not).

+1 for adding this feature in the future. Here're a few other posts requesting the same

a. I think the OP does have a separate notebook for recipes. That is the entire point.

b. I agree with the OP. I would find it very convenient to be able to see only the tags used in my current notebook without them disappearing once I click a note that does not use all the tags used in the notebook. That is just the way my brain works. It would be great to have an option "Show only tags used in current notebook" or rather "Notwithstanding the preceding option, hide all tags not assigned at all in the current notebook" right under "Show unassigned tags".

I agree this would be a great feature in Evernote. People have been complaining about this for a long time. The problem is that when you click on a tag in the left panel, it acts as a filter, only showing notes with that tag. But since you've said "hide unassigned tags", all the other tags disappear! (Unless a note has both the tag selected and some other tag). But this isn't what many (most?) people want. You want the hierarchical display of tags to act as if they were folders and subfolders, not unlike the folders in Outlook, or even Windows Explorer. You want to be able to click around in the list and see the associated notes for each tag, without the tags disappearing on you, but still only showing tags in the currently chosen notebook.

[jefito 5,589]

Let's say I want to do something with tag B in BookOne, but B is not currently assigned to any notes. Because the list only shows tags in use, B does not appear and thus I cannot use the drag-n-drop functions normally available.

There are other ways to tag that do not use the drag'n'drop method. If you want to tag a bunch of notes with B, then select them, and use the multi-note display to apply the tag. You can use type-ahead matching in that context; it's pretty nice.

Also, when I click on a tag in the list to see everything taged with that, the "Hide Unassigned Tags" function make all the other list items not used in those notes disappear. Thus if I want to filter by a completely different tag, I have to click on "Tags" or the notebook itself to get all the tags to reappear before choosing the new tag I want. Certainly not the end of the world, but still a frustrating extra step.

This is just a case for not using the "Hide unassigned tags" option.

As the original poster suggests, what would solve this problem is to have tags attached to each perticular notebook and then have an option to show only that notebook's tags (regardless of whether they were assigned to any notes or not).

Maybe there's a case for that, but let's face it. What's being proposed is another option, for the tag/notebook tree behavior, and the original two are confusing enough. I third might be nice for you two users, but of course it won't exactly match what some other folks want, so maybe there's a need for a fourth option, ad infinitum, probably not a great design direction. The problem here is really that the tag and notebook trees are used both for navigation and information display, and they interact with each other. Personally, I mainly avoid using the tag tree, and keep it closed up. Gives me more room for the notebook tree.

Doubt that there will ever be notebook-specific tags in general, if that's what you're suggesting (except maybe in the case of shared notebooks), since the whole idea of tags is that they allow you to categorize notes across notebooks.