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Search for all notes not in a notebook


Grant837

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Probably the answer is too simple, but tonight I can not figure it out. I want to find all my notes that are not yet in a notebook. I can not seem to do it using search, and dont see any quick way to just select them in the notebook pane...

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Aren't all notes in some notebook, even if it's just the default notebook? Can notes exist outside notebooks?

No I dont think this is correct - the 'All Notes' is not a notebook, I think, as it has a different icon, but also, if every note was part of the default notebook, then they would show 'All Notes' in the Notebook indication in the upper right.

I suspect what I wanted to do is not possible. I was hoping something like -notebook:* would work. Thanks for considering this however.

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Aren't all notes in some notebook, even if it's just the default notebook? Can notes exist outside notebooks?

No I dont think this is correct

Jef510 & Owyn are correct. Every note exists in a notebook. There is no such thing as a note that has not been assigned to a notebook.

'All notebooks' is just that - all notebooks.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Aren't all notes in some notebook, even if it's just the default notebook? Can notes exist outside notebooks?

No I dont think this is correct

Jef510 & Owyn are correct. Every note exists in a notebook. There is no such thing as a note that has not been assigned to a notebook.

'All notebooks' is just that - all notebooks.

I would like to understand this better. I can not any evidence in the user interface that its a notebook other than than the fact that 'all notes' (not 'all notebooks' by the way) is in the list of notebooks on the left.

For example:

1. The 'all notes' item in the notebooks list cleary has a different icon, and always at the top suggesting its not a notebook, but just a useful extra list

2. You can not manipulate 'all notes' like you can other notebooks. Left click on it and the fuctions for working with notebooks are not enabled

3. If you click on the dropdown on the file bar, 'all notes' is not listed as a notebook

4. In an individual note, you do not see 'all notes' listed as one of the notebooks that the note can belong too

This is just a detail, but like to understand the nuts and bolts of things when I can.

Cheers,

Grant

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You're right in that it's all notes & not notebooks. But I don't know how to say it any more clearly than it's already been said. Every note resides in a notebook. There is no such thing as a note that is not in a notebook. When you click on "all notes", you are looking/searching all notes, regardless of which notebook they are in.

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  • Level 5*

The folks who point out that a note belongs to one and only one notebook are correct. 'All Notes' is not a notebook, though it appears in some contexts where notebooks are usually found, for example the Notebook panel and the dropdown in the Search Info panel.

The Notebooks panel contains a tree structure in the 'Account' tab whose nodes are the following:

* Actual honest-to-goodness Evernote notebooks.

* Stacks, which are not notebooks themselves, but are named collections of notebooks; the notebooks in a stack are sub-nodes of their containing stack

* 'All Notes', which not a notebook, but is a placeholder/shortcut for the collection of all notes.

* 'Conflicting Changes', which is not a notebook, but is a placeholder/shortcut for the collection of conflicting notes (i.e. notes that have been changed on more than one client before being synced to the cloud).

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And Trash which is "All Notes" which have been deleted/removed.

The notes can be restored to the notebook they were removed from unless permanently deleted by emptying the Trash.

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Grant,

Perhaps something not immediately obvious is that in your preferences there is a setting for the default notebook. If you enter a note and don't specify a notebook to put it in then it will go into that notebook. This is different from the "All Notebooks" which shows all notes from every notebook.

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  • 11 months later...

AHHH, I finally understand! (bit slow). I was under the belief that you could put a note note in ' all notebooks' which was a kind of limboland until you assigned it to a notebook, but indeed, a new note always goes into a ' real notebook ', which is, if you do not select one, the one which is assigned as 'default'.

Thanks everyone for putting up with my simplicity.

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As an aside, what got me thinking about this again is that I am a more and more making use of Tags, and I wanted to know how to search for all notes with no Tags. Fortunately, this can be done, using "-tag:" (without the quotes and with out the commonly used "*".

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  • 2 years later...

As an aside, what got me thinking about this again is that I am a more and more making use of Tags, and I wanted to know how to search for all notes with no Tags. Fortunately, this can be done, using "-tag:" (without the quotes and with out the commonly used "*".

Grant837 - I find that I need to use the asterisk in my search for notes without tags. If I use your search - - "-tag:" (without the quotes and with out the commonly used "*" - - I get all my notes. (I counted them!) and they all have tags. Don't know what version of Evernote I'[m using, if there is more than one, but I am on a PC at the moment.  I'm curious if you feel that your "notes without a notebook question got answered. I read the entire chain above and still feel ambiguous about this. For example, is "All notes" truly the illustration of a master, general, default notebook?? I am thinking of -- Evernote Plant, Group Illustrious-- saying that "all notes" is just a placeholder or shortcut for all notes, not a notebook, and -- Memorable, Group Member-- who says that somewhere, perhaps years ago when we opened our accout we set our Preferences to create a default notebook, and that if we forget to assign a notebook it falls into that one. I'd love to access those preferences again today, but cannot find a link in the evernote drop down "account settings". 

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  • Level 5*

In the current Windows Evernote client (5.8.4.xxx), a search on "-tag:" returns no notes that have one or more tags, which is exactly correct.

 

There is no such thing as a note without a notebook; all notes belong to exactly one notebook. "All Notes" is not a notebook, it's just a collection that contains all of your notes.

 

In the forums, our names are at the top of our avatars, in green; titles ("Evernote Plant") and groups ("Illustrious") are something else.

 

The Default notebook is something that you can set by right-clicking on a notebook in the notebook list, and checking the checkbox that says "Make this my default notebook". If you don't choose one yourself, then Evernote picks one, I believe.

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  • 6 months later...
  • Level 5*

Can't do it in single search however...

  • Assign a unique tag, e.g. "x" to all notes in the notebook
  • Search for all notes not tagged "x" ( -tag:x )

 

 

{facepalm}

Why can you not use -notebook: as an operator? Rhetorical question. Kind of baffeling this was left out. Tagging every note in a specific notebook will modify the changed date on the notebook I want to exclude, and will involve syncing hundreds of notes. I appreciate the workaround, but there should be no need for it.

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