HOWTO: Find a tag in the tree

[Sava 0]

Hello! Is there any way to find a tag in a tag tree? All ideas I tried resulted only in note search for particular tag, how can I highlight a tag in a tag tree for example?

[jefito 5,589]

There's no direct way to find tags in the tree. Indirectly, you can create a new temporary notebook, and then create note with that tag, then "Hide unassigned tags".

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Hello! Is there any way to find a tag in a tag tree? All ideas I tried resulted only in note search for particular tag

Yes, that's how EN works. If you click on a tag in the left pane, you are selecting that tag in your search.

how can I highlight a tag in a tag tree for example?

I don't understand what you're asking. The only way to "highlight" a tag is to click on it. As mentioned above, that action means you are selecting that tag in your search.

[Sava 0]

Hello! Is there any way to find a tag in a tag tree? All ideas I tried resulted only in note search for particular tag

Yes, that's how EN works. If you click on a tag in the left pane, you are selecting that tag in your search.

how can I highlight a tag in a tag tree for example?

I don't understand what you're asking. The only way to "highlight" a tag is to click on it. As mentioned above, that action means you are selecting that tag in your search.

I mean a situation, when I know a tags name (or part of its name), but don't know its location in tree structure and want to find it.

[Wern 246]

There is no way to do this at the moment. There is no "highlighting a Tag" function in EN the way you are describing it.

If you really cannot find a tag in your tag tree, you may think about the organization of your tags. You may have too many and reducing the number may be an option.

Wern

[jbenson2 2,147]

At last count, I have over 850 tags. No problem finding the tag in the Left Panel.

I rely on a 3-character prefix method that helps me find the tag quickly.

• Similar tags are grouped together for easy and fast navigation.
  

• And as a side benefit, this method reduces the number without the prefix, so those are easier to spot.
  

Here is a link to a post that explains the method.

.

[Sava 0]

At last count, I have over 850 tags. No problem finding the tag in the Left Panel.

I rely on a 3-character prefix method that helps me find the tag quickly.

• Similar tags are grouped together for easy and fast navigation.
  

• And as a side benefit, this method reduces the number without the prefix, so those are easier to spot.
  

Here is a link to a post that explains the method.

http://discussion.ev...dpost__p__82762

.

Thanks for this ref, it gives considerable food for thought.

[zheilman 1]

I'm pretty sure that years ago, evernote had the ability to search for tags.

Anyway, it's a huge flaw in the organization of Evernote. One, because the cross-categorization of notes is one of the main functionalities of the application. And here's the scenario where you find out how badly a search of categories is needed:

I have hundreds of categories that lie under 20 to 30 main categories. It works great and I know where everything belongs. But every once in a while I want to move a category from one group to another or to the top level. The navigation of dragging the categories is pretty awful and very hard to see, and if you drop it and don't see where it landed, you will never be able to find that categorie again. It's happened to me many many times.

So what am I supposed to do now if I have no idea which category it fell into? basically nothing. Fail.

Saying you have too many categories in evernote is like telling someone they have too much going on in their life. It's not constructive. It would be much easier if evernote just created a right click event on the tag itself that gave the option of following the tree stucture of the tag, kind of like a "display file path." And another idea: change the design of creating a new categorie, so that you can see the tree structure, just like creating a new file in file manager.

[spg SCOTT 736]

This is the perfect time to plug the favourites bar.

The favourites bar has a feature that allows you to search tags by typing their name/selection.

Hit Alt + Shift + T (or click on the tags dropdown menu if you have it pinned to the bar) and type the name of the tag you are looking for.

Select that tag, and it will not only search for that tag (displaying the relevant notes) but it will also highlight the tag in the left panel, expanding the tree and showing you exactly where said tag can be found in the tree.

This also works the same with notebooks (though it is Alt + Shift + N)

Even better, the shortcut works whether you use the favourites bar or not.

Scott

[chodorowicz 9]

This is the perfect time to plug the favourites bar.

The favourites bar has a feature that allows you to search tags by typing their name/selection.

Hit Alt + Shift + T (or click on the tags dropdown menu if you have it pinned to the bar) and type the name of the tag you are looking for.

Select that tag, and it will not only search for that tag (displaying the relevant notes) but it will also highlight the tag in the left panel, expanding the tree and showing you exactly where said tag can be found in the tree.

This also works the same with notebooks (though it is Alt + Shift + N)

Even better, the shortcut works whether you use the favourites bar or not.

Scott

Unfortunately this does not work in current version (5.2)

[jefito 5,589]

In the version 5 series, that feature is indeed gone. You might find the Tags panel of use, though: click on the "Tags" header in the left panel, and the main screen will change to a view of your tags. You can select various subsets of the tags available to you (personal, business, etc.) and you can filter the list by typing in the search box. I'm not claiming that it's the same feature / functionality, but it's new to V5 and may help. I'd say that the "Search" control might better be labelled "Filter", and an actual search that located tags in the tree context might be more useful.

 

My guess -- based on fielding questions in the forums about the old tag tree--  is that the old UI and its associated interaction were confusing to users, however useful it was otherwise, but I could be wrong about the reason for the change.

[chodorowicz 9]

In the version 5 series, that feature is indeed gone. You might find the Tags panel of use, though: click on the "Tags" header in the left panel, and the main screen will change to a view of your tags. You can select various subsets of the tags available to you (personal, business, etc.) and you can filter the list by typing in the search box. I'm not claiming that it's the same feature / functionality, but it's new to V5 and may help. I'd say that the "Search" control might better be labelled "Filter", and an actual search that located tags in the tree context might be more useful.

 

My guess -- based on fielding questions in the forums about the old tag tree--  is that the old UI and its associated interaction were confusing to users, however useful it was otherwise, but I could be wrong about the reason for the change.

Thanks Jeff, that works  I just wanted any way to find tags in my kinda complex tags tree and this is enough. Greets!

[james300 5]

Thanks for discussing this topic. It is important. But this is not really a solution.

 

I cannot understand why software based on notes and tags has not the functionality:

 

-  to search directly for the location of a tag in a tree

 

-  to search directly for the location of a tag in a tree when you only know a part of the name of the tag

 

-  to reorganize a tags-tree by copy and paste (sub)tags (you have to drag them slowly by mouse)

 

- to reorganize a tags-tree by copy and paste easy, at the same moment, more then one tag

 

In my opinion this belong to one of the big shortcomings of Evernote. For me a reason perhaps to look for other solutions and not become a premium user. I regret this because the basic-idea of Evernote is very nice and helpful and I want pay for it when the basic functionality works well.

 

By the way “Select that tag, and it will not only search for that tag (displaying the relevant notes) but it will also highlight the tag in the left panel” in version 4.2 is not completely gone away in version 5.2 (but this is not really good solutions for above-mentioned problems):

 

step 1. click on the "Tags" header in the left pane

 

step 2. Mark in the search box “search current context”

 

step 3. Type (a part of) the name of the tag in the search box (it shows search suggestion and below tags)

 

step 4. Click on the tag in de section tags of the search box

 

step 5. Scroll in the left panel and you will see the tag (you have clicked on) is blue marked, in the same way as it was highlighted in version 4 of Evernote

 

so you can find a little bit laborious the location of tag in a tree (even when you only know a part of the name of that tag)

[Wordsgood 526]

Just saw this and it's a huge help for me, so thanks Jetfito!

In the version 5 series, that feature is indeed gone. You might find the Tags panel of use, though: click on the "Tags" header in the left panel, and the main screen will change to a view of your tags. You can select various subsets of the tags available to you (personal, business, etc.) and you can filter the list by typing in the search box. I'm not claiming that it's the same feature / functionality, but it's new to V5 and may help. I'd say that the "Search" control might better be labelled "Filter", and an actual search that located tags in the tree context might be more useful.

My guess -- based on fielding questions in the forums about the old tag tree-- is that the old UI and its associated interaction were confusing to users, however useful it was otherwise, but I could be wrong about the reason for the change.

[jbenson2 2,147]

james300,
You correctly pointed out several of the difficulties in searching for tags in the Left Panel. The only cavaet I would add is to be careful when using step #1. There have been some reported problems when clicking on the Tags header icon.


I've been using Evernote since 2008. So I have collected a lot of information over the past 6 years and now have 30,000+ notes with over 1,500 tags. Many of my tags have a 3 character prefix which makes them easier to locate.

For the tags that don't use the prefix, I keep them grouped under appropriate Parent tags. (I just edited an earlier post to explain this)
http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/16675-hierarchical-nested-tags/#entry82762
 

[jefito 5,589]

Thanks for discussing this topic. It is important. But this is not really a solution.

Not really sure who you're talking to, or what the 'solution' you're referring to is. Sometimes quoting can help to make context clearer.

 

I cannot understand why software based on notes and tags has not the functionality:

 

-  to search directly for the location of a tag in a tree

 

-  to search directly for the location of a tag in a tree when you only know a part of the name of the tag

 

-  to reorganize a tags-tree by copy and paste (sub)tags (you have to drag them slowly by mouse)

 

- to reorganize a tags-tree by copy and paste easy, at the same moment, more then one tag

I don't find the tag tree convenient to use most of the time. You might find it easier to use the tag panel, which I see that you know about. You can search for tags there by partial name, though the search filters the tags, it won't take you to a matching tag in the tree. You can multi-select tags and drag/drop them onto another tag.

My approach now, since my tag vocabulary is pretty well established, is to avoid mucking around with the tag tree as much as possible. I don't search using the tag tree, I don't tag notes using the tag tree, I don't need to reorganize it very often. Mostly I keep it collapsed (more room for notebooks and shortcuts). I realize that that may be how others may want to use it, but that's what works best for me,particularly because I've found alternative approaches. The main thing is that since we cannot take advantage of the tree hierarchy in searches, that hierarchy is only useful for organizing tags, but otherwise a tag works exactly the same no matter where it is in the tree. So no big gain in my use case spending a lot of time organizing them.

 

In my opinion this belong to one of the big shortcomings of Evernote. For me a reason perhaps to look for other solutions and not become a premium user. I regret this because the basic-idea of Evernote is very nice and helpful and I want pay for it when the basic functionality works well.

We all have different use cases, and the current way works well for some, but not for others. The tag tree could work better for your use case, without doubt.

[Synapsehead 0]

Menu -> view -> tags

This goes some way to giving me the ability to wrangle my unruly tags.  You can search part of a tag name.  It will show the location of all tags in the tree quite well.  I won't go in to how.  It will be evident when you look at it.

You still can't copy and paste (anything, let alone multiple tags).  If you have millions of tags and want to move one from its current place in the tree to somewhere else, a way to do this is to have the tag view open and the tag pane open.  You can drag from one to the other.  Almost as good as a cut and paste solution