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(Archived) Finding missing tags? (Related to GTD)


EdH

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Does anyone know if it is possible to search for a series of missing tags? In my @Pending Actions notebook, I want all notes to be tagged with one of the following:

 

1-now

2-next

3-soon

4-later

5-someday

6-waiting

 

I'd like to ensure that is the case. If I search for the following, I'd get all notes with any of those tags:

 

any: tag:1-* tag:2-* tag:3-* tag:4-* tag:5-* tag:6-*

 

What I want is the opposite of that, which logically would be:

 

-any: tag:1-* tag:2-* tag:3-* tag:4-* tag:5-* tag:6-*

 
However, that just looks for those tags that don't contain the word "any" which isn't what I want at all.
 
I also tried -tag:*-* but that finds nothing. I have a note in there that it should have pulled up as a test.
 
I'd be ok with an OR operator too, like -tag:1* OR -tag:2* etc, but I don't think EN uses And/Or/Xor operators.
 
I could rename the tags to -1 Now, -2 Next, etc, but I shouldn't have to.
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btw, the following doesn't work either. I tried it because any is supposed to be EN's OR, but not really.

 

any: -tag:1-* -tag:2-* -tag:3-* -tag:4-* -tag:5-* -tag:6-*

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  • Level 5*

Does anyone know if it is possible to search for a series of missing tags? In my @Pending Actions notebook, I want all notes to be tagged with one of the following:

 

1-now

2-next

3-soon

4-later

5-someday

6-waiting

 

I don't think this can be done.

However, if you rename all of these Tags to start with the same prefix, like "PA.", then you could do a search for:

notebook:"@Pending Actions" -tag:PA.*

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Or put them under a sub tag of something like GTD!

Regards

Chris

I don't think putting the Tags under a sub-tag will help.  The Tag hierarchy is only used for organizing the Tag list.  It has NO effect on Searches.

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Or put them under a sub tag of something like GTD!

Regards

Chris

I don't think putting the Tags under a sub-tag will help.  The Tag hierarchy is only used for organizing the Tag list.  It has NO effect on Searches.

Good point.

 

Regards

 

Chris

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  • Level 5*

Does anyone know if it is possible to search for a series of missing tags? In my @Pending Actions notebook, I want all notes to be tagged with one of the following:

 

1-now

2-next

3-soon

4-later

5-someday

6-waiting

 

I don't think this can be done.

However, if you rename all of these Tags to start with the same prefix, like "PA.", then you could do a search for:

notebook:"@Pending Actions" -tag:PA.*

Yeah, that is what I was afraid of. I'll probably preface them with a "-". All of my other GTD tags are like this so even on iOS, they are sorted together. I use ".", "!", "#" and "@" for my who/what/where/project (not in that order).

 

Evernote search capabilities are really lacking for an app that is designed to be searched with. Searching for *test* cannot find "attesting", something DOS could do 30 years ago, and the AND/OR/XOR features really don't exist. I don't want GREP or regular expressions, but it would be nice if basic search terms every search engine on the web uses worked in EN.

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btw, the following doesn't work either. I tried it because any is supposed to be EN's OR, but not really.

 

any: -tag:1-* -tag:2-* -tag:3-* -tag:4-* -tag:5-* -tag:6-*

I don't think that this is an "any:" search. I made a simple test case, and labelled all notes except one with one of your tags. The search you give above didn't isolate the note with the missing tag, but if I searched without the "any:" term, the untagged note appeared. The former says: "give me all notes that are either untagged by tag '1-*' or untagged by '2-*'  or untagged by '3-*' or untagged by '4-*' or untagged by '5-*' or untagged by '6-*'". That would match the untagged note, since it is tagged by none of those tags (actually, it should match any note whatsoever, unless it's tagged by all of those tags). The second search says "give me all notes that are untagged by '1-*' and untagged by '2-*' and untagged by '3-* and untagged by '4-* and untagged by '5-* and untagged by '6-*".

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That is IT Jefito!

 

-tag:1-* -tag:2-* -tag:3-* -tag:4-* -tag:5-* -tag:6-*

 

is an AND in and of itself.

 

Thanks. I'd much prefer explicitly saying AND and OR, but at least this works, and I don't have to rename my tags.

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That is IT Jefito!

 

-tag:1-* -tag:2-* -tag:3-* -tag:4-* -tag:5-* -tag:6-*

 

is an AND in and of itself.

 

Thanks. I'd much prefer explicitly saying AND and OR, but at least this works, and I don't have to rename my tags.

Me too, actually. Glad it worked for you (cost me a couple of brain cells to think it through :)).

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