How Do You Save Your Documents?

[C6REW 416]

Hi All,

OK the title does not say exactly what I want, but let me explain!

In my newbieness of slowly working into a near paperless world I have just set up the transfer of some emails to Evernote. These emails contain multiple documents one of which is the agenda of a recent meeting. I have opened the document and made the notes I would have made in red if I had Evernote running and my iPad and re saved it.

However, if I have three documents in one 'Note' surely this makes finding them and dealing with them all the harder in the future doesn't it?

Whilst the email goes in this case into my Photo - RPS Emails folder should I make a link in a new 'Note' for each of the three documents?

So would I have three 'Notes' with titles as follows?

120120 Photo - RPS - Committee - Meeting

120127 Photo - RPS - Speaker Venue costings 2011 - 2012

120127 Photo - RPS - Speaker Venue costings 2012 - 2013

Each containing the relevant document?

Have I gone too far with the title?

Should I make sure these are created in PDF rather then their being currently 'Word' documents?

Thanks for your help.

Best regards

Chris

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

ideal world

1. ideally, i prefer to keep my sources separate from my notes. sources (i usually convert everything to pdf in order to ensure that i can read it going forward) would each get their own note with an appropriate title. notes i make go in a separate notes with links to the relevant sources.

reality

2. but, in this case you are dealing with emails. emails are a real pain for the obsessively organized. unless this is a one-time thing, and you don't mind spending time separating the email from the attachments (this can be frustrating in a series of emails that have several attachments each), i'd just send the email on to your account as it is. not because this is the "best" method, but because i am lazy, and there is no way i am going to be able to keep up with the 20+ emails with attachments i get each week if i have to mess around with each one of them.

why?

3. in going paperless, my goal has been to dump everything into evernote. that way, i know it is all there and searchable. this is a key point (in my system). if everything isn't in there, then i am wasting time combing through other applications, files, etc. looking for something. after i get it all in (no small feat), i try to keep the time spent organizing focused on priority materials that i will frequently refer to, and may need on a daily basis.

[C6REW 416]

Hi GrumpyMonkey,

Many thanks for taking the time to type that out for me.

I understand where you are coming from when it comes to needing to be easy.

With this in mind I think the easiest solution is to drag the document from the email into the Photo - RPS folder. That way each of them will creat a new note and all I have to do is name it. I have no need to keep the email in Evernote and if I do I can delete the documents thereby saving me keeping two copies.

As I tend to use two screens when at my office desk or home study it is fairly easy to do.

The docuements are created in Word and Excel. What would be the benefit of changing to pdf?

How is my naming procedure? I want to make sure it makes sense based on the information I have already gleaned off you 'old timers'.

Best regards

Chris

[C6REW 416]

Hi GrumpyMonkey,

Got it! The search facility works on pdf's!

As I have a full version of Acrobat I can send a document from within the Office 2010 as a pdf. So that is easy. All I have to do is make sure the naming process is simple.

Best regards

Chris

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

hi. i think you have a good solution there. the naming looks fine. i tend to keep everything lower case, i don't use dashes, and my years are two digit (11-12). that is no big thing, though. the benefit for me with pdfs is that they don't require me to have special software installed. i can be on a computer anywhere in the world, or on any mobile device, and i can always open and read the files. i think the universal accessibility of the pdf makes it a better format for storage. that said, i wouldn't bother converting those attachments.

search ought to work with just about any file type. i never really thought about it before, but i guess i haven't tested that to be sure

[C6REW 416]

Hi GrumpyMonkey,

Thanks again for your thoughts.

I am using a two digit year code along with month and day. I think you and someone else got me into it a few days ago!

I tried to search for something in the Excel file and it didn't find it. Changed it into a pdf and it worked. It is fairly simple to do, just need to make sure I am consistent with the naming.

Ony thing I need to confirm is I can write into the pdf's on my iPad. Just off to check that now!

Best regards

Chris

[jbenson2 2,147]

I tried to search for something in the Excel file and it didn't find it. Changed it into a pdf and it worked. It is fairly simple to do, just need to make sure I am consistent with the naming.

Here is a link and explantion to the files that Evernote can search:

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

thanks jb. good to know that.

as for annotating pdfs on the ipad, no problem. my favorite is pdf expert (minor stuff i like that makes the process smoother), but in terms of features, the best overall app is hands-down iannotate. goodreader used to be a favorite of mine, but they just haven't kept up with the times.

[C6REW 416]

Thanks guys.

I think being able to search inside a document makes it a fantastic feature. So whenever I can it will be pdf's. Looking at the both I will purchase pdf expert, seems to have better functionality and reviews.

Off I got to do so now.

Best regards

Chris

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

not sure i would agree about pdf expert. first of all, it has no global search (the content of all pdfs at once). second of all, it does not have as many features (as far as i can tell). iannotate recently made a major update that completely overhauled their interface. i think people (justifiably) liked pdf expert a lot better because of the interface. nowadays, though, i actually like iannotate better.

anyhow, they are both fine pieces of software. depending on how much you use the ipad, you may want to consider purchasing pdf provider in order to convert files into pdfs (for annotation and for import into evernote).

[C6REW 416]

Hmm, just been playing with pdf expert and to be honest it makes work as far as I can see!

You can open the pdf from Evernote, but you cannot save the same document. It has to be a new one which is saved into a different location, not back to Evernote.

This means more work to find it, move it then delete the old pdf.

Anything that can be opened in Evernote and when saved it updates the original document in Evernote?

Best regards

Chris

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

that is an ios problem. i do not know of any solution to it. sorry.

in my opinion, evernote is best-suited for completed projects, especially when you are dealing with special file formats. i am not saying it "can't" handle ongoing projects. just that this isn't its strong suit.

to deal with this, i prefer to keep my sources untouched in one note, and my annotations in another. it has worked pretty well for a few years

[mrbrim 7]

I have a folder on my desktop where I save many documents to---also a dropbox folder. Then I set up my Evernote import folders, so that when a document goes into a particular subfolder it automatically gets imported into a specific folder in EN...