(Archived) Change Dates on Multiple Notes

[mkachg 0]

I would lie to change the Created Date on multiple notes at one time ...

In the windows client, I can currently select multiple notes and edit tags, change notebooks, email, etc ...

I would like to be able also to change, in my case, the CREATED date ...

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Brett

[spg SCOTT 736]

Hi mkachg, welcome to the forum

There is no method to bulk change this field in one go as far as I know.

The best solution that I can think of, would be to use some select key presses to get to the created field.

I found that this procedure required the least buttons to press to press, and allowed me to change the date.

- Sort by some arbitrary option, that doesn't rely on dates or titles, so that you don't find the note list changing around when you edit them. (I suggest source and say not titles, in case you change them by mistake since that is a field that will be passed through when doing this process)

- Select the first note

- Press Tab twice - This should focus the title, then the created field.

- Change the date - it appears that you have to do all of the dates separately, by entering a date and then pressing left or right

- Press F2 Then Esc - This should focus the title, then escape should take you back to the note list, where you can select another note with the arrow keys.

- Continue with next note.

While it is not by any means a solution, it should at least help speed up the process a little for you.

Note: I suggest the F2 - then Esc method for two reasons:

- Once in the created date field, Hitting enter will unfocus it and navigating by keyboard is then not possible until selecting another position in Evernote.

- It requires less one less key press than pressing tab until you are in the note and then pressing Esc to return to the note list. It will also help avoid you adding extra tabs to your note.

Scott

[dlu 628]

I'm curious as to why you need to bulk change created date

[jbenson2 2,147]

Because there is no Due Date, I frequently change the Created Date to reflect the correct date for my task, appointment, reminder or memory.

But because I use Evernote constantly though the day, I don't have a need for a bulk change.

I just change the Created Date one note at a time.

Gee, if there was a Due Date field, I could use the Created Date as it was originally designed instead of jail breaking the program.

[mkachg 0]

Evernote Employee ... In my case, I have a bunch of stuff from an old eMail account that I want to archive into Evernote ... there are LOTS of emails so one by one is NOT going to work! :-(

Do you have a solution for this problem?

Reaver, I handle due dates with a tag ... I have to check it every day but it alows me to set up my saved searches to ignore those items with one of these CALENDAR tags ...

Thanks for the input everyone! Great product!

Brett

[jbenson2 2,147]

You could put all the old email account messages into a separate notebook named Old Emails.

And you could easily bulk tag all those in one shot with a tag named archive.

[spg SCOTT 736]

What format are the emails in?

Are they all separate?

Perhaps when adding them to Evernote you could do it using ENScript, since this allows a date argument that can allow you to specify an exact date. This could then be automated for the rest of them.

http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/local/chapters/Windows.php

[RobinAshworth 1]

Evernote Employee ... In my case, I have a bunch of stuff from an old eMail account that I want to archive into Evernote ...

I do this frequently on importing some files using import folder. I do it by the rather blunt method of setting the Windows system date before import and then re-setting it. Simples (or stupid?)

[FactMan 196]

I use a program that allows me to save my emails as PDFs. Each PDF is given the name of the email and a date that is the date the email was received. I can choose the format of the date, and whether the date is inserted before the file name or after. The file name is the subject line of the email.

I do change the subject lines of the emails to be more meaningful, but that is your choice. I can then search for all emails in 2010, for example. I also use a 2 digit designator for the month so today's date would be 2012-10-11. I did try using the date first but found that the sorting made more sense if I had the date at the end. I can also use tags to refine and locate the emails quickly in Evernote.

This works well on an ongoing basis, but you would need to have time available to go through your old emails. I also recommend that you turn off auto import into Evernote because if the email has attachments the import feature works too quickly.

[toolbear 1]

I'm curious as to why you need to bulk change created date

 

I've used Evernote + ScanSnap to go paperless, converting paper records to Evernote PDFs going as far back as 2003. I have a "retroactive paperless" mental model, meaning, I would like "created date" to approximate the actual date of the scanned document, as opposed to the date said document was scanned in.

 

I scanned the majority of my paper records, over 1,000 individual documents, on Nov 3rd and 4th of 2012. If I do nothing else, this "bubble" of mis-dated documents effectively ruins the chronological features of Evernote for that time period. In effect, the year 2012 is a "dark ages" where important documents are needles in a haystack.

 

For some of these documents, particularly monthly statements, I've manually assigned created dates that match the statement date. This is tedious and time consuming. For most of the documents I'd settle for having them dated as "midnight on Jan 1st" of that year, hence my desire for a bulk assignment of "Created Date".

 

I'm most of the way there. Every document from my bulk scanning days are tagged with a year, "2003", "2004", ... "2012". So here's what I was hoping to do:

 

1. filter notes tagged "2005"
2. sort by "created"
3. select only those notes created in Nov 2012 (thus omitting notes where I've already assigned a more precise date in 2005)
4. bulk assign a created date of "Jan 1, 2005 12:00 AM" on selected notes

Instead, here's what I have to do:

1. filter notes tagged "2005"
2. sort by "created", start at notes created in Nov 2012 (thus skipping over notes where I've already assigned a more precise date in 2005)
3. select one note
4. manually via keystrokes or mouse select the "created on" field
5. paste in "Jan 1, 2005 12:00 AM"
6. escape out
7. repeat steps 4-6 for hundreds of notes
8. repeat steps 1-7 for years 2006-2011 

 

Update:

 

Using AppleScript I was able to automate the most arduous portions. This assumes you have two notebooks named "haystack" and "needles". It will takes notes in "haystack" that have been tagged with 2003 through 2012, set the creation date to Jan 1st of that year, and move the note to the notebook "needles". Give Evernote a chance to update its index after the script has completed.

 

 

tell application "Evernote"    repeat with tag_year in {"2003", "2004", "2005", "2006", "2007", "2008", "2009", "2010", "2011", "2012"}        set filter to "notebook:haystack tag:" & tag_year        set haystack to find notes filter        repeat with needle in haystack            set new_date to my date ("1/1/" & tag_year & " 12:00:00 AM" as string)            set creation date of needle to new_date            move needle to notebook "needles"        end repeat    end repeatend tell 

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I agree that a way to change dates would be nice.

I know this won't work well for you, as you already have a system in place, but I prefer to title my pdfs and notes with the date. Most of my note titles are yymmdd + keywords. Of course, this means I cannot use some of the nice advanced search features associated with created dates, but it is a lot easier than changing the dates (hidden in a dialogue box on the Mac). For batch operations, yymm tags would work.

[jefito 5,589]

Using AppleScript I was able to automate the most arduous portions. This assumes you have two notebooks named "haystack" and "needles". It will takes notes in "haystack" that have been tagged with 2003 through 2012, set the creation date to Jan 1st of that year, and move the note to the notebook "needles". Give Evernote a chance to update its index after the script has completed.

Just as a side note, this topic is tagged as a Windows topic. If you want more visibility for your solution, we could split it out into its own topic -- your choice.