(Archived) only 3 layers deep?

[shallowz 0]

Hello I am new to Evernote only four days old so please bare with me.

I am a very organized person that places folders then place other folders in those folders that might hold other folder for better organizing.

Lets use taxes as an example

I would have a folder called House documents for important house notes

with in that folder I think that taxes are are house notes so i would place a folder taxes

well in the taxes folder i would like to place a different folder for each tax year.

then with in those folders i would keep the paper work for that year. maybe a folder if one place needed a lot of documents from a company etc.

so it would look like

House documents - Taxes - 2011 - (maybe other folders)

so far that is a minimum of 3 or 4 layers

With Evernote i am noticing only two layers

Stack then notebook

is that as far as a organized person can go with saving notes?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Hello I am new to Evernote only four days old so please bare with me.

I am a very organized person that places folders then place other folders in those folders that might hold other folder for better organizing.

Lets use taxes as an example

I would have a folder called House documents for important house notes

with in that folder I think that taxes are are house notes so i would place a folder taxes

well in the taxes folder i would like to place a different folder for each tax year.

then with in those folders i would keep the paper work for that year. maybe a folder if one place needed a lot of documents from a company etc.

so it would look like

House documents - Taxes - 2011 - (maybe other folders)

so far that is a minimum of 3 or 4 layers

With Evernote i am noticing only two layers

Stack then notebook

is that as far as a organized person can go with saving notes?

A note can belong to one notebook. A notebook can belong to one stack or none. Tags are the way to go. They are much more flexible than sub notebooks/folders. There is already a lot of discussion on the topic. Please search the board, should you need more info.

[shallowz 0]

So the answer is no

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

So the answer is no

It seems your question was:

is that as far as a organized person can go with saving notes?

So I'd guess the answer is yes. BTW, I'm very organized & have over 55,000 notes in my Evernote. And if I needed to call up my Cox cable bill from May of 2004, I could do it within 30 seconds in Evernote. So I guess the real answer is that if a person were truly organized, it wouldn't matter how many levels were available in Evernote.

[Wern 246]

Yes.

As BnF said, the way to go is TAGS.

If you spend some time thinking about how you are going to organize your info, getting used to TAGS, you will find your info much faster.

[redwoodtwig 4]

Hello I am new to Evernote only four days old so please bare with me.

I am a very organized person that places folders then place other folders in those folders that might hold other folder for better organizing.

...

is that as far as a organized person can go with saving notes?

A note can belong to one notebook. A notebook can belong to one stack or none. Tags are the way to go. They are much more flexible than sub notebooks/folders. There is already a lot of discussion on the topic. Please search the board, should you need more info.

Tags are useful if you can remember them. What the OP wants is what I would also like to see -- a nested hierarchy in the left hand panel.

Stacks, notebooks, and notes are three levels, which are fine for most work. If you go deeper than that in a typical management documentation effort, you run the risk of overlap and confusion. Or, in some cases, you are doing a careful and well thought out work breakdown structure, essential for medium to large scale project management.

However, tags do not provide a way to visually summarize your organization of an area. Suppose we have a stack called "House Renovation" and notebooks in there for "Living Room", "Bath", and inside those specific notes with images spelling out the plan for that room. suppose I want to track the work in each room with notes everytime work is done, or money spent. I'd much rather have another layer and consolidate all the progress steps into one sub-note collection.

I could tag the progress reports with "progress report", but I'll probably use that tag in other stacks and notebooks. Rather than doing a search, I'd very much prefer to have a mode where I can see an hierarchy not unlike most file mangers such as windows explorer. One approach would be to have an "explore" or "discover" mode so that the note list becomes a tag list with the notes underneath.

So in my House Renovation stack, in explore mode on the far left column, I can click on a notebook and see all the tags associated with notes in that notebook dropping down underneath the notebook line.

Another approach would be "virtual" notebooks, where you create a notebook and specify that you want all notes with X tag included in that notebook. Plus, of course, you can add actual notes to that notebook.

Just some thoughts...

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Tags are useful if you can remember them. What the OP wants is what I would also like to see -- a nested hierarchy in the left hand panel.

Stacks, notebooks, and notes are three levels, which are fine for most work. If you go deeper than that in a typical management documentation effort, you run the risk of overlap and confusion. Or, in some cases, you are doing a careful and well thought out work breakdown structure, essential for medium to large scale project management.

However, tags do not provide a way to visually summarize your organization of an area. Suppose we have a stack called "House Renovation" and notebooks in there for "Living Room", "Bath", and inside those specific notes with images spelling out the plan for that room. suppose I want to track the work in each room with notes everytime work is done, or money spent. I'd much rather have another layer and consolidate all the progress steps into one sub-note collection.

I could tag the progress reports with "progress report", but I'll probably use that tag in other stacks and notebooks. Rather than doing a search, I'd very much prefer to have a mode where I can see an hierarchy not unlike most file mangers such as windows explorer. One approach would be to have an "explore" or "discover" mode so that the note list becomes a tag list with the notes underneath.

So in my House Renovation stack, in explore mode on the far left column, I can click on a notebook and see all the tags associated with notes in that notebook dropping down underneath the notebook line.

Another approach would be "virtual" notebooks, where you create a notebook and specify that you want all notes with X tag included in that notebook. Plus, of course, you can add actual notes to that notebook.

Just some thoughts...

Yes, this can be done using tags in Evernote. The chances of Evernote adding any further "nesting" of notebooks/stacks is unlikely.

If you want to only see tags assigned to a notebook, select the notebook, right click tags (left hand column) & click 'hide unassigned tags'.

[shallowz 0]

Tags can get very confusing because i am a more of a visual person

I could use tag for taxes 2012 but then i have an account that needs to have taxes 2012 for another client.

there would be a need to remember a lot of what a tag was when the person makes it.

A visual hierarchy would enable people like me a way to tag AND visually see what is what

I have always heard of Evernote and always thought it is mostly hype. Well sadly it is. It seems to be a good note systems for simple stuff

I was hoping to use dropbox and Evernote but Evernote is to simple for my needs. Maybe someday they will add visual aspects. It has a lot of good ideas but now i understand more why the big players in the tech industry have shied away from it. It does seem like such a simple idea to add more than two layers. It is quite baffling why they don't. I guess greater minds than me know why.

Thank you all for the replies it is good to see so many enjoy Evernote and will help others who try it out.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Tags can get very confusing because i am a more of a visual person

I could use tag for taxes 2012 but then i have an account that needs to have taxes 2012 for another client.

there would be a need to remember a lot of what a tag was when the person makes it.

Please see the link to my website in my signature below, or the other threads that talk about how to organize your account.

A visual hierarchy would enable people like me a way to tag AND visually see what is what

Makes sense to me! But, that isn't how it works. Sorry.

I have always heard of Evernote and always thought it is mostly hype. Well sadly it is. It seems to be a good note systems for simple stuff

LOL. Well, if you consider my dissertation and nearly a decade of research to be "simple," or the many, many business professionals who use it (see the Evernote blog) to be "simple," then I guess simple is good. KISS

I was hoping to use dropbox and Evernote but Evernote is to simple for my needs. Maybe someday they will add visual aspects. It has a lot of good ideas but now i understand more why the big players in the tech industry have shied away from it.

Big players like...? I haven't heard about this. In fact, a lot of famous tech sites have embraced it and recommended it for years. Here's one: "Review: Evernote 5.0 for Mac improves an already-indispensable service" http://www.macworld.com/article/2019709/review-evernote-5-0-for-mac-improves-an-already-indispensable-service.html The title says it all.

It does seem like such a simple idea to add more than two layers. It is quite baffling why they don't. I guess greater minds than me know why.

Thank you all for the replies it is good to see so many enjoy Evernote and will help others who try it out.

Glad we could help! If Evernote doesn't work out for you, I hope you find a notetaking solution that will. It is definitely a personal thing that I have spent years and years agonizing over, so I know what it feels like to be in your shoes.

[jefito 5,589]

Tags are useful if you can remember them. What the OP wants is what I would also like to see -- a nested hierarchy in the left hand panel.

Nested hierarchies are useful if you can remember where you put your file.

Stacks, notebooks, and notes are three levels, which are fine for most work.

And tags.

However, tags do not provide a way to visually summarize your organization of an area.

Certainly they do. You can make hierarchies of tags, nearly to your heart's content.

I could tag the progress reports with "progress report", but I'll probably use that tag in other stacks and notebooks.

Amazingly enough, this is a good thing. It means you can look at progress reports across categories, if you want. Or narrow it down to your current project. One concept that hierarchies do not express very well is cross-categorization. Tags do.

Rather than doing a search, I'd very much prefer to have a mode where I can see an hierarchy not unlike most file mangers such as windows explorer.

You can certainly do this with tags. It's been done already.

Another approach would be "virtual" notebooks, where you create a notebook and specify that you want all notes with X tag included in that notebook.

You can already do this. They just don't live in the same UI area as actual notebooks. Or you can express a virtual notebook as any search.

[jefito 5,589]

A visual hierarchy would enable people like me a way to tag AND visually see what is what

Look at the tag tree; very similar to folders, visually.

I have always heard of Evernote and always thought it is mostly hype. Well sadly it is. It seems to be a good note systems for simple stuff

Are you saying that tags are not a good organizational tool? Is it good enough for GMail (labels are essentially the same concept as tags)? Outlook (which allows you to organize by Categories)?

[shallowz 0]

No i am not saying tags are not a good organizational tool.

It can be very helpful within a hierarchy. Instead of searching through your hierarchy if a person knew they placed a tag he or she could do a search. Evernote does not give a person that choice it only says do searches.

A visual representation has benefits and weaknesses

Tagging has benefits and weaknesses

So instead of narrowing a persons choice why not build both. They compliment each other, separate they are far from perfect but together it comes close to perfection. stubbornly sticking to only one holds back innovation

[gustavgi 308]

No i am not saying tags are not a good organizational tool.

It can be very helpful within a hierarchy. Instead of searching through your hierarchy if a person knew they placed a tag he or she could do a search. Evernote does not give a person that choice it only says do searches.

A visual representation has benefits and weaknesses

Tagging has benefits and weaknesses

So instead of narrowing a persons choice why not build both. They compliment each other, separate they are far from perfect but together it comes close to perfection. stubbornly sticking to only one holds back innovation

It seems like you are misunderstanding the fact that you can create a hiearchy of tags, which could work exactly like any folder/notebook hiearchy except that you have to make sure no two tags have the same name, which is easy with just a few more letters. And this opens up the world of benefits within Evernote.

To use the earlier example. The numbers show the layer.

(1)>ASAP

(1)>House renovation

(2)>Living room

(3)>Bills (Living room)

(4)>Paid bills (Living room)

(4)>Unpaid bills (Living room)

(3)>To do (Living room)

(3)>Ideas (Living room)

(2)>Bedroom

(3)>Bills (Bedroom)

(4)>Paid bills (Bedroom)

(4)>Unpaid bills (Bedroom

(3)>To do (Bedroom)

(3)>Ideas (Bedroom)

Three practical scenarios

Say you've found a lamp which you really like and plan to buy, but you have not yet decided if you want it in your living room or bedroom or in both. You would tag that note with both 'Ideas (Bedroom)' and 'Ideas (Living room)'. In a folder/notebook hiearchy you would have to make a copy of the note and put in both the seperate folders. And if you wanted to make a change to the note you would have to change both notes or copy it again etc. Here you just change the one note with both tags.

Say you want a quick way of finding all of the bills that are unpaid. You then create a saved search which shows both the tags 'Unpaid bills (Bedroom)' AND 'Unpaid bills (Living room)'

Say you need to find out what has to be done ASAP, like which bills that need to be paid now and what needs to be done now in the bedroom or living room. You would have tagged those specific important notes in 'To do (Living room)', 'To do (Bedroom)' 'Unpaid bills (Living room) and 'Unpaid bills (Bedroom)' with the tag ASAP as well. Then you can just press the ASAP tag at the top to show these notes. This is more convenient than going through the hiearchy and having another folder inside the 'Living room' and 'Bedroom' 'To Do' and 'Unpaid bills' folders named ASAP. If you need to know what has to be done ASAP in just the Living room you just browse to the 'To do (Living room)' tag, and press ctrl and the ASAP tag, to narrow it down.

This is just an example and everyone uses Evernote differently, but I would say it's only the creativity which stops you really...

Hope this helps at least a bit.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

So instead of narrowing a persons choice why not build both. They compliment each other, separate they are far from perfect but together it comes close to perfection. stubbornly sticking to only one holds back innovation

You say that like you think EN has a choice & just chooses to be "stubborn" & not implement nested notebooks. None of us know why EN has chosen this but I'd say there's a really good chance it has something to do with making the app work well across all the platforms it lives on, which is/was one of EN's main niches. (Talk about innovation!!!)

IMO & IME, the more notes/files you have, the more a nested folder system bogs you down. Since EN wants to be a 100 year old company, perhaps another reason they went with tags is b/c tags are much more flexible/less restrictin with more notes/files.

Having said all that, it's their product & their choice. Just as it's your choice if you decide you don't want your son to use the family car tonight. Users can either adapt or find a product that more closely fits their needs. Apparently, with 40 million users (in less than five years), they must be doing something right.

(And bowing out b/c I'm not going to get sucked into yet another tags vs sub notebooks thread...there are already way too many...)

[jefito 5,589]

It can be very helpful within a hierarchy. Instead of searching through your hierarchy if a person knew they placed a tag he or she could do a search. Evernote does not give a person that choice it only says do searches.

No, sorry, but this is not correct. You can browse through your notes in the (granted, limited) hierarchy of Stacks / Notebooks. You can also build a hierarchy in the tag tree and browse through that. Under the hood, all of those do generate search queries, sure, but they are available by using the UI in a straightforward way. You do have a choice, though you do not have the ability to make arbitrarily nested notebooks.