(Archived) Feature Suggestion: Hierarchical Filter Tags

[jimclay75050 0]

A feature that I think would make Evernote more dynamic would be hierarchical filters. I know you can do filters with the search and that those searches can be saved. But I feel like there is a better way to use filters, that would make the filters much easier and faster to use. You could just drag and drop them to create different hierarchies.

The left pane has several sections: Notebooks, Tags, Attribute, Saved Searches, and Trash. I think there also should be a section for hierarchical filtering using tags. As I have envisioned it, it would look much like the tag section looks now, but instead of having a hierarchical for organizing tags, the hierarchical would be a filter.

So for example if you have this hierarchy:

Tag 1

. . . .Tag2

. . . .. . . .Tag3

Tag3

If you clicked on Tag1, you would get every note that has been tagged with Tag1.

If you click on Tag2, you would get every note in Tag1 that is also tagged with Tag2.

And of course if you click on Tag3, you would get every note in Tag1 that has also been tagged with Tag2 and then tagged with Tag3.

Then if you clicked on the second Tag3, because it is at the first level, you would get ever note that has a Tag3 tag.

I think this would be a very flexible way to organize notes. You could create a structure that would be the same as that used with notebooks, but with more levels. And you could use the tags in other creative ways.

You could even have Not tags. Such as:

Tag1

. . . .<Tag2>

So if you clicked on <Tag2> you would see all the notes with Tag1 that do not have the tag Tag2.

Perhaps you could do Or and Either tags, but that might be getting too detailed and unnecessary.

I hope this makes sense. It seems like it would work well and be easy to use. The only negative is you would have to use tags on all your notes. And you would have to plan your tags in advance, not just create tags willie neely.

[jefito 5,589]

Yes, something like this gets suggested occasionally, in various forms (my own variation was to propose extensions to the tag search grammar, such that you could exploit tag hierarchies in saved searches). Plenty of discussion in the forums on the topic, probably not too hard to find via search, but in the two years since I've been coming around, I haven't seen much interest on Evernote's part in implementing any system like this. Not that they always tell us their plans in advance.

Note that despite the lack of hierarchical tags in the current scheme, some folks have found ways of implementing hierarchies by use of common tag prefixes; forum member jbenson2 having expressed his system fairly often here. Maybe somewhat awkward, but it works. I use a different scheme, but I can assure you that it is somewhat planned, and it's not willy-nilly.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Here is the tag format mentioned by Jefito:

Try a naming convention trick to group your tags for easier maintenance using a parent and child structure. Example:

Company

Com-Ford

Com-IBM

Com-Target

Insurance

Ins-Car

Ins-Dental

Ins-House

Ins-Life

Ins-Medical

Personal

Per-Exercise

Per-Gift

Per-House

Per-Travel

Per-Yard

[jefito 5,589]

I figured you'd be on this; thanks for picking up the thread.

[jimclay75050 0]

Well, it was just a thought. I was learning about tags this weekend and I got the impression that was how tags worked. Then when I started using tags, I was kind of disappointed.

I think I've decided it is easiest to use notebooks for most of the organization and maybe use tags for just special situations, but I'm still thinking about it.

[jefito 5,589]

My tendency is to use tags on everything; and notebooks sparingly.

[jbenson2 2,147]

I think I've decided it is easiest to use notebooks for most of the organization and maybe use tags for just special situations, but I'm still thinking about it.

Give it a try. One of Evernote strengths is the flexibility of the program.

When I started Evernote, I had the same thought.

After a couple months, I realized the strength of search and tags, plus the difficulty in managing lots of notebooks.

So I combined a lot of notebooks into a few major, broad categories (Jobs, Personal, Leisure, Politics, Misc.)

Search and tags act as the method to fine tune my info.

I have 12,000+ notes that are in 7 notebooks. Some of the Evernote power users have just one single notebook.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Well, it was just a thought. I was learning about tags this weekend and I got the impression that was how tags worked. Then when I started using tags, I was kind of disappointed.

I think I've decided it is easiest to use notebooks for most of the organization and maybe use tags for just special situations, but I'm still thinking about it.

I use notebooks for broad ranges. IE, Bills. All bills, regardless of year or company go into that notebook. Since I use accurate tags & titles, it's easy to pluck any bills I may need to review at a later date:

I agree that you need to work with it to determine what works best for you. In my case, I have a notebook "insurance policies". All of them go in there. I use titles & tags to differentiate between car 1, car 2, homeowner's, etc. However, all these notes could be easily put into a "big old notebook" with the addition of a tag of "insurance policies" applied to all of the insurance policy notes. Same with auto info. All notes pertaining to the cars (other than insurance) go in there. Copies of vehicle registration, tire & battery purchases/warranties, maintenance info, go in there & again use titles & tags to differentiate between each vehicle.

I have hundreds of documents in my EN & I'm diligent about using an accurate title. I always include the date of the bill/letter in YYYYMMDD format as well as the company or the name of the sender/recipient (if it's something I sent). So if I need to find the Cox cable bill from May of 2007, I'd simply do this search:

intitle:cox 200705*

and boom...out of thousands of notes, the one note I'm looking for pops up, no matter what notebook it was in. And no tags involved.

However, if I wanted to eliminate the Bills notebook, I'd just tag all the notes "bills", move them to the "everything else" notebook & delete the Bills notebook. It's easy enough to replicate the Bills notebook by simply searching all notebooks on tag:Bills

[jbenson2 2,147]

And give the Saved Searches a try.

That makes it easier to run the frequently needed searches.

[jimclay75050 0]

Thanks for the great ideas. I think this is the hardest part about using Evernote, deciding on the organizational scheme.