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REQUEST: Increase limit on number of notebooks


rnjstevens

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2 Notebooks would be enough for me, really. As long as I could share Tags and have offline Tags.

I think "Notebooks" is actually a poor name for this feature because it kinda misleads people into thinking that this is THE way they should organise Notes. Which isn't actually the case in Evernote.

Offline tags. Shared tags. These would make a huge difference for me. I don't know if Notebooks are misleading. I'd say they are an easier organizational metaphor to understand than tags. Who doesn't have a real life binder of something?

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  • Level 5*

No more than using the term "Folders", say -- you learn a new program, you need to learn the basic organizational tools/language. You learn GMail, you learn "labels". You learn Outlook, you learn "Categories". And so on...

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It doesn't really matter how things are named but the problem is that new users tend to think that Notes should be organised in Notebooks, since this is how things work in real life, and Tags are just something additional. And then they run into issues and don't take the full advantage of Tags in Evernote. IMHO, of course.

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  • Level 5*

Actually, they do need to be organized into notebooks, since every note belongs to exactly one notebook. :) And I'm guessing that a fair amount of people use notebooks as their only organizing facility (I'm sure Evernote has the stats on this sort of stuff). But for folks who need more organizing power, an Evernote user needs to learn to use tags.

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Sure each note goes into some Notebook by default. So what? It might as well just go into "No notebook" by default, or to "unfiled/unorganised" section (which doesn't exist). :) whatever.

Here's one of my notes for example:

8192125450_05d9a41d23_b.jpg

It has 7 Tags which will help me to find it in future. Actually, the more Tags a Note has the better, as long as those Tags are really relevant, of course.

Things have their places, not a single place.

The problem with Notebooks is that, again, you can't apply multiple Notebooks to a Note which makes a workflow based on only notebooks kinda painful in my view.

If you put things only in a single place instead of as many relevant places as possible you're just making it harder for yourself to find it later on. And the more Notes you add the more painful it's going to get.

Every time you organize matters in one single way, you are disordering them in all others.

And I'm guessing that a fair amount of people use notebooks as their only organizing facility (I'm sure Evernote has the stats on this sort of stuff).

Again, that's just an example of poor/inefficient workflow, not a good point IMHO.

A quote from David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous book:

"When we come across the paper photo from 2005 of Aunt Sally on a beach in Mexico at sunset celebrating cousin Jamie’s birthday, with the twins in the background playing badminton, we have to decide which one spot in one album we’re going to stick it into.

If it were a digital album, we wouldn’t have to make that choice. We could label it in as many ways as we could think of: Aunt Sally, Mexico, 2005, beach, birthday, twins, badminton, sunset, trips, foreign countries, fun times, relatives, places we want to go back to, days we got sunburned. "

In physical world we have to think carefully about which metadata we’ll capture because the physical world limits the amount of metadata we can make available.

In a digital world this is no longer a problem... Unless you rely on Notebooks in Evernote. I mean using mainly Notebooks to organise notes in Evernote is like taking the main organizational problem of a physical world and unnecessarily carrying it over to a digital world. It's just a poor practice.

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  • Level 5

@May This how things FAIL TO WORK in real life. :-)

We're trying to "slip the surly bonds" of how things work IRL here. We have, through the computer revolution, the ability to do it.

Actually I agree that the disorientation caused by Future Shock is unhelpful to many. Hence we have notebooks (by any other name). But I would hope we could lead people gently beyond the paradigm limitations of the physical world.

That possibility is one of the things that got me into computers probably as many decades ago as it did @BnF. :-)

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OK, I won't ask for EN to get rid of the 250 notebook limit...

Instead I will ask for some way of knowing how many notebooks I actually have OR some warning message when I sync and I have more than 250 notebooks. I recently found out on the forum (and experienced it myself) that EN does weird things to notes over the 250 notebook limit (some get deleted, some go to different notebooks...).

I REALLY don't want to discuss tags. I swear, I have tried but notebooks work best for my data and workflow.

Hugh

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  • Level 5

At the moment the 250 notebooks limit is what we have. I suggest you ask yourself again, HOW you are organizing your notes and your setup. If you don't want to use TAGS, that's fine. There are other ways to organize, using naming schemes or reserved words and numbers.

Still, there are many power users here who have LOTS of notes (> 10,000) and have only one notebook and doing just fine.

Wern

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It's great to hear that so many of you make EN work with your data in so few notebooks. In my case I need to use more notebooks. Can I compromise my workflow and shift over to lots of tags? Sure but I want to stress the word compromise. My current setup is PERFECT for me, except I occasionally hit the 250 notebook limit. I have 2500 notes, mostly images (floor plans, photos, etc). As I said, I can manage the 250 notebook limit. The problem is I have no way of knowing my total notebook count without adding them all up.

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  • Level 5*

Well, you know that there's a fixed limit currently, and there's no indication that it's going to change any time soon, so it's either struggle to stay in bounds, or find a new workflow, I'm afraid.

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I understand. That is why I really just want EN to give me a notebook count to let me know when I am at 250. My EN system is very fluid and the way I don't end up with 10,000 notes is by archiving notebooks to a cloud account. This way I can always retrieve notebooks for a specific project as needed in the future. I suppose I could do this with tags but it seems counterintuitive. Once again, this is the system that works for me. Your mileage may vary...

This question of tags vs notebooks may come up as EN switches to their Business mode. We ( a large architectural firm) are evaluating EN Business as a possible tool. Letting everyone an a team pick or name their own tags may get a bit crazy. It will be interesting to watch.

Hugh

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  • Level 5*
That is why I really just want EN to give me a notebook count to let me know when I am at 250.

Got it -- I don't think that that's unreasonable.

This question of tags vs notebooks may come up as EN switches to their Business mode. We ( a large architectural firm) are evaluating EN Business as a possible tool. Letting everyone an a team pick or name their own tags may get a bit crazy. It will be interesting to watch.

I seem to be the only one around who doesn't mind people on a team choosing their own tags. Of course, it's probably a good idea for a team to start with a specified (maybe agreed-on) tag vocabulary, so that at least there's some common ground.

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  • Level 5*
Letting everyone an a team pick or name their own tags may get a bit crazy. It will be interesting to watch.

Hmmn. I managed a Wiki at one stage which had a (fairly large) team of users picking their own categories (Wiki categories = Evernote tags)

It was a slo-mo car crash of a system with duplicated entries, multiple changes, missing information.. we eventually had a small pool of 'expert' moderators nudging information into a sensible order so we could still find stuff.

Maybe it was just that situation, or maybe folks are just designed that way - I can only recommend that you keep your head down!

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Does anyone have any ideas on how to get around the 250 limits on sync notebook.

At the moment, I export the notebooks when I reached the maximum but this is not my long term solution as I need to access these notebooks.

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  • Level 5*

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get around the 250 limits on sync notebook.

At the moment, I export the notebooks when I reached the maximum but this is not my long term solution as I need to access these notebooks.

Hi. Welcome to the forums. I've merged your thread with an existing one that discusses this at length. I hope you find your answers here, but if you do not, please post, and I am sure people will be happy to help out. For myself, I am about 249 notebooks away from reaching this limit, and I have my own (somewhat radical) approach for dealing with notebooks, tags, and organization (http://www.princeton.edu/~cmayo/evernote-organization.html).

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Does anyone have any ideas on how to get around the 250 limits on sync notebook.

At the moment, I export the notebooks when I reached the maximum but this is not my long term solution as I need to access these notebooks.

This has already been discussed at great length, including the thread GM merged your post into. Quite simply, you need to rely upon tags, descriptive titles & keywords in addition to notebooks.

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just reached this limit today and i googled this thread. 

 

i'd like to add one more thing that books do but tags don't, which is an unimaginably huge pain in the ass for me. that is, notes can only belong to one book. yes, sometimes this is useful, people. i'm a researcher and i use evernote to track my experiments. each of my stacks represents one experiment. each book in a stack is a phase/step/test in the experiment. and each note is a sample. man do i have a lot of samples. now, after a sample have passed a test/gone through a phase...etc, i move it to another book. this usually happens to hundreds of samples simultaneously. with books i have no problem. when i move the notes from one book to another, they disappear in the old book and appear in the new book. but if i use tags instead of books, here it comes: when i "move" hundreds of samples to a new tag, they are not actually "moved". the new tag is simply added on besides the old tag. i have to go through these hundreds of samples one by one to remove the old tag. and i can't just delete the old tag because i still have other samples under that test/phase/procedure.

 

i can't use local books either because i need to access the information on many different computers. 

 

so, is there another way to do this or am i just screwed?  

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  • Level 5*

just reached this limit today and i googled this thread. 

 

i'd like to add one more thing that books do but tags don't, which is an unimaginably huge pain in the ass for me. that is, notes can only belong to one book. yes, sometimes this is useful, people. i'm a researcher and i use evernote to track my experiments. each of my stacks represents one experiment. each book in a stack is a phase/step/test in the experiment. and each note is a sample. man do i have a lot of samples. now, after a sample have passed a test/gone through a phase...etc, i move it to another book. this usually happens to hundreds of samples simultaneously. with books i have no problem. when i move the notes from one book to another, they disappear in the old book and appear in the new book. but if i use tags instead of books, here it comes: when i "move" hundreds of samples to a new tag, they are not actually "moved". the new tag is simply added on besides the old tag. i have to go through these hundreds of samples one by one to remove the old tag. and i can't just delete the old tag because i still have other samples under that test/phase/procedure.

 

i can't use local books either because i need to access the information on many different computers. 

 

so, is there another way to do this or am i just screwed?

Not that I know of -- that's just how tags work. Unlike notebooks, you don't "move a note under" (or "to" a tag, you "apply" a tag to a note, and as you relate, you can have more than one tag per note. That's really the descriptive power of tags, since it allows you to cross-categorize notes according to separate schemes, which a truly hierarchical system doesn't accommodate so easily. If you need to enforce a one-tag-per-note regime, you might find the mass-tagging facilities of Evernote to be helpful, though. If you're using the Windows, you can multi-select a group of notes, you can tag them all identically using the Assign Tags dialog (Ctrl+Alt+T), or use the panel that appears where the note display is for single selection. Also, if you take a step back, you may be able to come up with a strategy that uses both notebooks and tags in combination.
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  • Evernote Expert

See, here's what I am hearing from Evernote since day one:

We want you to use the app to put ALL THE STUFF YOU WANT TO REMEMBER in it.

We want you to use our app FOR A LONG TIME.

The more people will have in it, the more likely they will be to stick to it because they will have invested so much important data in to. Basically, they will NEED it.

And that's exactly what I have done. Two years , thousands of hours of research filed in this app.

And I did this because I was under the impression, from listening to Phil Libin that this was an app that was dedicated to follow its users through many years, if not life.

So now , that Evernote is indeed crucial to my life because I have invested all this time and data in it, NOW it lets me down and tell me I can not keep on using it?

I seriously think I have a reason to be pissed here. Also this limit might be written somewhere but it surely is not advertised a lot. I never heard of it and I'v been keeping a very close eye on Evernote BECAUSE I have so much invested in it.

When you encourage users to commit so much into your app you have a responsibility towards them.

There's nothing that says you can't continue to keep adding stuff to Evernote for years to come. Evernote emphasizes using tags rather than relying upon so many notebooks or even subnotebooks (which don't exist in EN.) Like I said, if you read some of the tag vs notebooks threads and calm down a bit, I think you'll see you can very easily reduce the number of notebooks you have & with no loss of functionality. I've been using EN since 2008 & have over 52,000 notes. There's not a day that goes by that I don't add notes & most days I add probably at list 15 or more. I've never reached the 250 limit. Yeah, everyone works differently. But I have to say, IMO, the tag thing is brilliant. But it does require thinking a bit differently than one has in the past.

 

What your basically telling the other person is that he has to mould his organizational structure to suit the shortcomings of a serious issue that Evernote hardly stresses upon, and also a respondent tells him that he must find another place. This person is a premium user and has spent 2 years using Evernote and he finds himself in a mess, and people are suggesting that he turn to tags. It is of no relevance to him that you have 52000 notes or i have 5000. What concerns him is that his organizational structure which he deems best for his needs well within the frame work of what EN offers is basically screwed. And EN is not an app, where you say, Ok Dude, Am quitting and just quit. True, EN may give you back your notes, but it doesn't give back the amount of hours that you spent organizing them. So, if you have invested 6 or 7 months with likely 2000+ notes, well, your not going to quit Evernote, just because some mod tells you to quit. ( I don't mean you, but some responders do tell you this)

 

I think that tags Vs Notebooks is a matter of personal convenience. I started off with tags and my 90% of my workflow deals with a specific topic which has a number of subtopics all of which i was using the same tag. But when i wanted to search for a particular topic 90% of my notes were tagged with the same thing and nothing to differentiate. I soon changed my work flow to notebooks and find it much better and TAGS are now redundant for me. Another person may choose the other. So, tell a user who has used EN for 2 years to change his organizational flow within EN's parameters really doesn't sound right.

 

Or, atleast EN needs to make these upper limits more prominent, like each time a new Notebook is added, say 38/250 - 39/250 and so on..

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just reached this limit today and i googled this thread. 

 

i'd like to add one more thing that books do but tags don't, which is an unimaginably huge pain in the ass for me. that is, notes can only belong to one book. yes, sometimes this is useful, people. i'm a researcher and i use evernote to track my experiments. each of my stacks represents one experiment. each book in a stack is a phase/step/test in the experiment. and each note is a sample. man do i have a lot of samples. now, after a sample have passed a test/gone through a phase...etc, i move it to another book. this usually happens to hundreds of samples simultaneously. with books i have no problem. when i move the notes from one book to another, they disappear in the old book and appear in the new book. but if i use tags instead of books, here it comes: when i "move" hundreds of samples to a new tag, they are not actually "moved". the new tag is simply added on besides the old tag. i have to go through these hundreds of samples one by one to remove the old tag. and i can't just delete the old tag because i still have other samples under that test/phase/procedure.

 

i can't use local books either because i need to access the information on many different computers. 

 

so, is there another way to do this or am i just screwed?  

 

I'm not going to wade into the notebooks argument underlying this thread, but there is a way of adding and removing tags in bulk, as @jefito suggests.  If it helps, I've summarised it stepwise below:

  1. select all of the samples you wish to operate on (this can be done by a search involving date, tag, keyword, etc.
  2. In Windows, select Note/Tag... (or [CTRL][ALT]-T.
  3. Uncheck the tag you wish to remove and check the tag to add.

This effectively 'moves' the notes from one tag to the other.

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  • Level 5*

The simple ways are the best - I've actually been using temporary notebooks for retagging in bulk;  find notes to retag / move temporarily to new notebook / tag,  retag etc / move back to general store.  Ctrl-Alt-T is better.  Doh.

 

And on this total notebook thing: aren't local notebooks exempted from the 250 max?  Or is that just upload limits I'm thinking about...

 

(I appreciate local notebooks have lots of limitations when it comes to sharing,  OCR,  mobile use etc.,  but that was my intended fallback if I ever got to the limit.  Current highest total notebooks active: 15, for sharing,  sorting and general maintenance purposes.)

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The simple ways are the best - I've actually been using temporary notebooks for retagging in bulk;  find notes to retag / move temporarily to new notebook / tag,  retag etc / move back to general store.  Ctrl-Alt-T is better.  Doh.

 

And on this total notebook thing: aren't local notebooks exempted from the 250 max?  Or is that just upload limits I'm thinking about...

 

(I appreciate local notebooks have lots of limitations when it comes to sharing,  OCR,  mobile use etc.,  but that was my intended fallback if I ever got to the limit.  Current highest total notebooks active: 15, for sharing,  sorting and general maintenance purposes.)

 

I can't find official word on it, although I seem to recall either Dave or Heather posting it.  Anyway, I *think* 250 (which includes stacks & notebooks) includes local notebooks.  Another reason I think this is b/c when people reach the 250 limit, the course of action is to find a notebook, tag the notes appropriately & move them to another (existing) notebook.  You can now delete the empty notebook.  If I find the post, I will link to it.  It may have been on the old message board & not survived the migration to the new one.

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Lol.. was already going to say it's good to know I can still learn new stuff about Evernote by hanging around the Forums - looks like that applies to both of us!  Thanks for the input anyway - we'll have to wait and see whether someone who actually knows the answer...

 

Oops - interrupted mid post.  Thanks!  That's a very good link to be Evernoted (done) and maybe a partial help to those pushing the 250 total.  Maybe someone at that level can confirm that they can still create local notebooks over and above the synced limit.

 

:)

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  • Evernote Expert

 

This is like the "Fair Usage Policy" gimmick done by ISP's in India. They advertise 4 Mbps unlimited plan, the user gets awed, purchased the plan and a week later, his plan became slow. The plan was to give the user only 4-5 GB of data with speeds of 4 Mbps, and then shrink it to 256kbps, and they can always tell the user, we only promised you unlimited. Here, you go - you can browse all as much as you want at 256kbps, but we continue fooling the public by advertising unlimited speeds @ 4 Mbps.. :D ..

 

I just don't see how a unlimited local note book is relevant to a limited synchronized cloud notebook. People here should just admit, hell, yeah, EN does not provide more than 250 notebooks, so learn to live with it, instead of telling the already frustrated user, dude, no problem if your 250 syncd notebooks are over, you can still use unlimited local notebooks which wont sync across the cloud anymore, making the already frustrated user think to himself - "Dude, if i wanted to stay local, i would not have come to the cloud, and worse, if i have exhausted my quota of 250 books, i have also paid for it, and am now stuck up with no where to go." :rolleyes:

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This is like the "Fair Usage Policy" gimmick done by ISP's in India. They advertise 4 Mbps unlimited plan, the user gets awed, purchased the plan and a week later, his plan became slow. The plan was to give the user only 4-5 GB of data with speeds of 4 Mbps, and then shrink it to 256kbps, and they can always tell the user, we only promised you unlimited. Here, you go - you can browse all as much as you want at 256kbps, but we continue fooling the public by advertising unlimited speeds @ 4 Mbps.. :D ..

I just don't see how a unlimited local note book is relevant to a limited synchronized cloud notebook. People here should just admit, hell, yeah, EN does not provide more than 250 notebooks, so learn to live with it, instead of telling the already frustrated user, dude, no problem if your 250 syncd notebooks are over, you can still use unlimited local notebooks which wont sync across the cloud anymore, making the already frustrated user think to himself - "Dude, if i wanted to stay local, i would not have come to the cloud, and worse, if i have exhausted my quota of 250 books, i have also paid for it, and am now stuck up with no where to go." :rolleyes:

If I ever find a post of yours that appears to be anything other than trollish, I'll spend time answering. As it is, I've yet to see one & have a tendency to ignore your posts. Just FYI, so that in case you think I'm ignoring you, you're right.
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  • Level 5*

 

This is like the "Fair Usage Policy" gimmick done by ISP's in India. They advertise 4 Mbps unlimited plan, the user gets awed, purchased the plan and a week later, his plan became slow. The plan was to give the user only 4-5 GB of data with speeds of 4 Mbps, and then shrink it to 256kbps, and they can always tell the user, we only promised you unlimited. Here, you go - you can browse all as much as you want at 256kbps, but we continue fooling the public by advertising unlimited speeds @ 4 Mbps.. :D ..

 

I just don't see how a unlimited local note book is relevant to a limited synchronized cloud notebook. People here should just admit, hell, yeah, EN does not provide more than 250 notebooks, so learn to live with it, instead of telling the already frustrated user, dude, no problem if your 250 syncd notebooks are over, you can still use unlimited local notebooks which wont sync across the cloud anymore, making the already frustrated user think to himself - "Dude, if i wanted to stay local, i would not have come to the cloud, and worse, if i have exhausted my quota of 250 books, i have also paid for it, and am now stuck up with no where to go." :rolleyes:

 

Wow - conspiracy theory much?  You may have noticed that the initial question about this was a top of the head query from me...

 

Since the fix for a notebook overload is to 'merge notebooks' and users usually kick off about that,  I wondered whether

  1. the limit applied to local notebooks because the monthly upload limit doesn't,  so it seemed possible that the overall limit would not,  and
  2. users might be able to sort notes into local books to aid tagging and merging if they wanted to switch from notebook-centric to tag-centric,  or something in between.

..and since there was no definite resolution to my query (although we seem about 80% certain this works),  I'd mention this only as a possibility if it arises again.

 

I don't see Evernote making this a major marketing issue anytime soon.

 

And I'm not an alien.  Honest.

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  • Evernote Expert

 

This is like the "Fair Usage Policy" gimmick done by ISP's in India. They advertise 4 Mbps unlimited plan, the user gets awed, purchased the plan and a week later, his plan became slow. The plan was to give the user only 4-5 GB of data with speeds of 4 Mbps, and then shrink it to 256kbps, and they can always tell the user, we only promised you unlimited. Here, you go - you can browse all as much as you want at 256kbps, but we continue fooling the public by advertising unlimited speeds @ 4 Mbps.. :D ..

I just don't see how a unlimited local note book is relevant to a limited synchronized cloud notebook. People here should just admit, hell, yeah, EN does not provide more than 250 notebooks, so learn to live with it, instead of telling the already frustrated user, dude, no problem if your 250 syncd notebooks are over, you can still use unlimited local notebooks which wont sync across the cloud anymore, making the already frustrated user think to himself - "Dude, if i wanted to stay local, i would not have come to the cloud, and worse, if i have exhausted my quota of 250 books, i have also paid for it, and am now stuck up with no where to go." :rolleyes:

If I ever find a post of yours that appears to be anything other than trollish, I'll spend time answering. As it is, I've yet to see one & have a tendency to ignore your posts. Just FYI, so that in case you think I'm ignoring you, you're right.

 

I come here most of the time to vent my frustration when something goes wrong with EN, or i believe that something is lacking in EN. There is a substantial percentage of people like me, who come for the same. I think I am representative of such users, who like EN as much as you do, but will say that "wrong is wrong".  If you think that i troll and won't respond, so be it. I'll be most happy. :)

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This is like the "Fair Usage Policy" gimmick done by ISP's in India. They advertise 4 Mbps unlimited plan, the user gets awed, purchased the plan and a week later, his plan became slow. The plan was to give the user only 4-5 GB of data with speeds of 4 Mbps, and then shrink it to 256kbps, and they can always tell the user, we only promised you unlimited. Here, you go - you can browse all as much as you want at 256kbps, but we continue fooling the public by advertising unlimited speeds @ 4 Mbps.. :D ..

 

I just don't see how a unlimited local note book is relevant to a limited synchronized cloud notebook. People here should just admit, hell, yeah, EN does not provide more than 250 notebooks, so learn to live with it, instead of telling the already frustrated user, dude, no problem if your 250 syncd notebooks are over, you can still use unlimited local notebooks which wont sync across the cloud anymore, making the already frustrated user think to himself - "Dude, if i wanted to stay local, i would not have come to the cloud, and worse, if i have exhausted my quota of 250 books, i have also paid for it, and am now stuck up with no where to go." :rolleyes:

 

Wow - conspiracy theory much?  You may have noticed that the initial question about this was a top of the head query from me...

 

Since the fix for a notebook overload is to 'merge notebooks' and users usually kick off about that,  I wondered whether

  1. the limit applied to local notebooks because the monthly upload limit doesn't,  so it seemed possible that the overall limit would not,  and
  2. users might be able to sort notes into local books to aid tagging and merging if they wanted to switch from notebook-centric to tag-centric,  or something in between.

..and since there was no definite resolution to my query (although we seem about 80% certain this works),  I'd mention this only as a possibility if it arises again.

 

I don't see Evernote making this a major marketing issue anytime soon.

 

And I'm not an alien.  Honest.

I really don't have a problem with limits on number of notebooks and notes. The thing is that EN advertises you to go totally paperless and bring every facet of their life, which means once They start using EN, EN becomes indispensable for them. What they don't know is about this restriction. They choose an organization structure that suits them best. ( For instance the researchers may have be having 100s of subtopics.) So, to force them on tags is kind of ***** up their organization structure of information.

 

What i think is EN needs to make this important info clear - like 5/250,6/250,7.250 .. etc.. and 51/100000, 52/1000000. That way the user understands at beginning that only 250 notebooks and 100,000 notes maximum.

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  • Level 5*
 

This is like the "Fair Usage Policy" gimmick done by ISP's in India. They advertise 4 Mbps unlimited plan, the user gets awed, purchased the plan and a week later, his plan became slow. The plan was to give the user only 4-5 GB of data with speeds of 4 Mbps, and then shrink it to 256kbps, and they can always tell the user, we only promised you unlimited. Here, you go - you can browse all as much as you want at 256kbps, but we continue fooling the public by advertising unlimited speeds @ 4 Mbps.. :D ..

 

I just don't see how a unlimited local note book is relevant to a limited synchronized cloud notebook. People here should just admit, hell, yeah, EN does not provide more than 250 notebooks, so learn to live with it, instead of telling the already frustrated user, dude, no problem if your 250 syncd notebooks are over, you can still use unlimited local notebooks which wont sync across the cloud anymore, making the already frustrated user think to himself - "Dude, if i wanted to stay local, i would not have come to the cloud, and worse, if i have exhausted my quota of 250 books, i have also paid for it, and am now stuck up with no where to go." :rolleyes:

 

Wow - conspiracy theory much?  You may have noticed that the initial question about this was a top of the head query from me...

 

Since the fix for a notebook overload is to 'merge notebooks' and users usually kick off about that,  I wondered whether

  • the limit applied to local notebooks because the monthly upload limit doesn't,  so it seemed possible that the overall limit would not,  and
  • users might be able to sort notes into local books to aid tagging and merging if they wanted to switch from notebook-centric to tag-centric,  or something in between.
..and since there was no definite resolution to my query (although we seem about 80% certain this works),  I'd mention this only as a possibility if it arises again.

 

I don't see Evernote making this a major marketing issue anytime soon.

 

And I'm not an alien.  Honest.

I really don't have a problem with limits on number of notebooks and notes. The thing is that EN advertises you to go totally paperless and bring every facet of their life, which means once They start using EN, EN becomes indispensable for them. What they don't know is about this restriction. They choose an organization structure that suits them best. ( For instance the researchers may have be having 100s of subtopics.) So, to force them on tags is kind of ***** up their organization structure of information.

 

What i think is EN needs to make this important info clear - like 5/250,6/250,7.250 .. etc.. and 51/100000, 52/1000000. That way the user understands at beginning that only 250 notebooks and 100,000 notes maximum.

I am a researcher. I have a single notebook. I am paperless. It works fine.

Evernote does tell you the limits.

https://support.evernote.com/link/portal/16051/16058/Article/532/Overview-of-Account-Data-Limits

It's mentioned in blog posts.

http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2012/12/18/8-power-ways-evernote-can-help-you-get-more-from-your-research-in-2013-and-a-new-ambassador/

It's easily Google-able.

https://www.google.com/search?q=evernote+notebook+limit&aq=f&oq=evernote+notebook+limit&aqs=chrome.0.57j0l3j62l2.3892&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Could they do better at educating people? Yes. Is it a conspiracy to ruin the lives of researchers. No :)

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And I'm not an alien.  Honest.

 

But isn't that what you'd say if you were an alien?  ;)

That was cute, the both of yez. :)

@gazumped, what a difference an 'an' makes...

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Surely a researcher competent enough at their job as a professional information gatherer to be able to fill 250 notebooks is more than capable at educating themselves about a piece of software or service that depend on so heavily. I'm another researcher who keeps all of their work in one notebook. And I know the company policies on notebook, note, and upload limits because I looked for it. All of the information is available if you just look or ask.

 

The company isn't trying to trick anyone or employ bait and switch. Evernote can only do so much to make their policies known. At a certain point, the user needs to educate themselves and take responsibility for understanding the products they choose to rely on. Especially if it contains something as valuable to them as research for work. I've already put close to a decade into my studies. I don't just shove all that information into a software without understanding exactly how it works, what kinds of policies the company has, and what kinds of limits they impose on my usage. (And without keeping proper backups.) If the user finds the company's limits don't fit their workflow, they can either adapt to the software as it is or they can choose another product to use. 

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Surely a researcher competent enough at their job as a professional information gatherer to be able to fill 250 notebooks is more than capable at educating themselves about a piece of software or service that depend on so heavily. I'm another researcher who keeps all of their work in one notebook. And I know the company policies on notebook, note, and upload limits because I looked for it. All of the information is available if you just look or ask.

 

The company isn't trying to trick anyone or employ bait and switch. Evernote can only do so much to make their policies known. At a certain point, the user needs to educate themselves and take responsibility for understanding the products they choose to rely on. Especially if it contains something as valuable to them as research for work. I've already put close to a decade into my studies. I don't just shove all that information into a software without understanding exactly how it works, what kinds of policies the company has, and what kinds of limits they impose on my usage. (And without keeping proper backups.) If the user finds the company's limits don't fit their workflow, they can either adapt to the software as it is or they can choose another product to use. 

 

I understand that all of you are intelligent enough to know EN's policies. More that matter, even i know that EN has a limit of 250 books. But, sadly, not everyone has the same amount of intellect, and that is why this thread has been started by someone in the first place.  :) EN publishes facts like Note Size, monthly usage and stuff very well, but it does not mention about its upper limitations, and as a regular user, until and unless you hit upon this stumbling block, you won't know its limitations, because i presume that the Users who posted in this thread may have thought that limitations exist only monthly as far as usage is concerned. Unlike usage bandwidth or storage, there is no rational logic to say why the notebooks must be 250 or notes 1,00,000. It is just some random number for an upper limit. So, if EN is going to put note restrictions even for premium users, i don't think there is any harm in mentioning it better.

 

And this issue has been raised several times in the past, so i don't EN can make simple changes to their interface to let things known. Secondly, i dispute the fact that the OP said that he is involved in research and does not need 250 books. Research was just one random example. There may be a teacher who manages information for 500 students and wants a seperate notebook for each student info or some other example like that case. Any person is free to choose and organize stuff within the framework of what the software offers as per his/her need and requirement. 

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The company isn't trying to trick anyone or employ bait and switch. Evernote can only do so much to make their policies known.

I did hear a rumor that they were going to change the name of their product to "Evernote Which Only Allows 250 Notebooks and 100000 Notes So Enough Already". :)
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Nonsense. :) Working in an academic or research field doesn't magically possess someone with a higher intellect. I'm not a member of Mensa; I just work hard. Nor does it take a gifted individual to use Google, send an email, or use a forum. The point still stands: if you want to use something whether it be a service, a piece of software, or some kind of heavy machinery, it's up to you the user to educate yourself on what you're using. We're all adults here. We're all capable of taking responsibility and familiarizing ourselves with the products we use, work with, and eat on a daily basis. Particularly in the case of your teacher who's managing 500 students. No teacher worth their salt should be just randomly dumping 500 students worth of information into a program without knowing exactly what they're doing first.

 

I don't dispute your efforts to want to improve Evernote as a piece of software and as a service. There's nothing wrong with that. All of us here have our quibbles — some larger than others. But you might want to consider picking your battles a little more wisely. The information your arguing about is neither hidden nor remotely difficult to find. I'm sorry to people who have found out the hard way that Evernote has limits to what you can do with it but not everything can be provided for us. Sometimes we need to take the time to seek out the information we require.

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And I'm not an alien.  Honest.

 

But isn't that what you'd say if you were an alien?  ;)

 

Ah but you see that's part of my master plan to take over the world..  If I say what you'd think I'd say if I were an alien,  you'd think that a being with a brain the size of the universe wouldn't make such a silly mistake,  so I must not be an alien,  but all the time I am an alien,  plotting World Domination mwahahahahah...

 

..What was the question again?

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Ah but you see that's part of my master plan to take over the world..  If I say what you'd think I'd say if I were an alien,  you'd think that a being with a brain the size of the universe wouldn't make such a silly mistake,  so I must not be an alien,  but all the time I am an alien,  plotting World Domination mwahahahahah...

 

..What was the question again?

Why is the sky blue?
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It's not misleading for you, but I bet it is misleading for new users.

 

Agreed.  It's a term people associate with a method of organization that other evangelists keep telling us in irrelevant in the EN world.

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It's not misleading for you, but I bet it is misleading for new users.

Agreed.  It's a term people associate with a method of organization that other evangelists keep telling us in irrelevant in the EN world.
Kindly point out a single quote that where an evangelist says that notebooks are irrelevant in the Evernote world. As far as I know, nobody is saying that. Not that what you are arguing has much to do with that part of the conversation.

What May was replying to (but you didn't quote) to was about the notion that using notebooks is -- by the very use of the name "Notebook", apparently -- was therefore "THE way they should organise Notes", particularly for new users. New users might somehow have that notion, maybe, but but tags are not a hidden feature of Evernote, so they're bound to run into them at some point. And eventually, they might come to find out that tags are better than notebooks at some categorization tasks. That does not make notebooks irrelevant in Evernote; indeed, anyone who knows anything at all about Evernote understands that currently notebooks are crucial to the sharing model, local notebooks and offline notebooks.

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2 Notebooks would be enough for me, really. As long as I could share Tags and have offline Tags.

I think "Notebooks" is actually a poor name for this feature because it kinda misleads people into thinking that this is THE way they should organise Notes. Which isn't actually the case in Evernote.

 

 

 

There's nothing misleading about the term "Notebook". It is what it is, a convenient way to partition your notes, just like with physical notebooks. But categorization is a different topic; tags let you categorize across your note collection, regardless of notebook.

 

 

 

It's not misleading for you, but I bet it is misleading for new users.

 

 

Here's the way the convo flowed.  And I would disagree that the term 'notebook' is misleading except possibly for a minority of users who are pretty new to the whole computer experience.  Again, that would be a very small minority of people, I would think.  The rest of us are used to calling a rose by any other name.  Notebook, folder, node, directory, etc.  Possibly EN chose the term 'notebook' since they weren't incorporating nesting capability.  This kind of differentiates it between a directory/folder/node.  Just like they chose the term 'stack' for the grouping of notebooks. 

 

Actually, I even seem to recall someone pointing out notebooks were a better term b/c in real life, you don't nest notebooks inside other notebooks.  But you do stack notebooks on top of notebooks.  I think that was from May, too.  I quickly tried to find this post, but was unsuccessful.  If the forum were not so slow today, I'd look harder.  :(  But then again, this isn't really the topic of the thread anyway.

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@BnF Re your "non-nesting IRL" comment:

 

Isn't this almost always the way...  Adopt a real life paradigm and then diverge from it as the user base gets used to it. The ability to tag things IRL would be a lovely one. In fact I've many times thought about how to do it but concluded it'd be unpopular (at least in MY house). :-) To be fair organisations' Asset Management techniques often DO lean heavily on naming assets - down to individual doors and beyond.

 

But I digress: I just think Notebooks / Folders are closer to the "real life" experience than tags. But I prefer tags as they allow multiple assignment to what we today call a note. But to me the online / digital life is just as much a part of real life as atom-based stuff is. :-)

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I cannot remember what I have said on this very long thread so I may be repeating myself.

 

Software is designed and built around what the developers think they and users want. It gets altered over time.

 

Anyone who wants 'bespoke' software can get it, at a price.

 

Otherwise look at what you do, look at how others use it, thank your lucky stars if the company who designed the software decide to have a forum and ask for advice.

 

Of course ask for changes that you may see useful.

 

Don't spit your dummy out because you don't get your way.

 

Remember, 'work within the limitations of the software' and 'adapt your workflow to suit' or pay a very large amount of money to get 'exactly' what you want!

 

Best regards

 

Chris

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What your basically telling the other person is that he has to mould his organizational structure to suit the shortcomings of a serious issue that Evernote hardly stresses upon...

 

As you can tell by the conversation in this thread, this is debatable. Most of the users here think it's not a serious issue if you actually look into Evernote's capabilities. Sure, if you want to organize your own way, you'll have to make do or might run into problems - but if you use Evernote to the strengths with which it was built, you'll probably find that there isn't a shortcoming, unless you need to share with 250+ people.

 

What concerns him is that his organizational structure which he deems best for his needs well within the frame work of what EN offers is basically screwed.

 

Obviously, it's not well within the framework of what EN offers if he's hit a limit. He's pushing right against the border of the framework. And by choosing to use a workflow that has such a limit, he's "screwed" by his own choice, unfortunately. The notebook limit isn't exactly hidden, and someone who plans to use the software to such an extent should really do a bit of reading up on it before becoming invested, or be willing to make changes to his/her workflow to continue using the app.

 

So, tell a user who has used EN for 2 years to change his organizational flow within EN's parameters really doesn't sound right.

 

If you try to fit a square peg in a round hole...

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@chirmer Just as my 'to do' list won't be empty when I die :-) Evernote's 'development tasks' list won't ever be empty...

 

... And, as this thread has shown, it's highly debatable whether upping the limit would be a good thing.

 

And, as somewhat of a scalability expert, I know just changing the number doesn't necessarily lead to a satisfactory experience.

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And, as somewhat of a scalability expert, I know just changing the number doesn't necessarily lead to a satisfactory experience.

What do you mean? The '11' on my stereo makes it full of ~~AWESOME~~!!
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For all you fervent tag users, thanks again for all your tips.

My whole point was never to declare notebooks better than tags, but rather to point out that while one might fit the needs of one particular person, the other might be much better for another person's needs.... And that it would make a lot more sense if we were able to use both in an unlimited manner... Everyone would be happy.

 

1+

 

In the end, this all boils down to how the user's brain processes info. For me, as a visual person, hierarchal stacks/notebooks/notes is the perfect fit, and a thousand times easier/faster/cleaner than tags.

 

For someone whose brain processes information differently, tags are easier/faster/cleaner.

 

No one's right. No one's wrong (although, sadly, I have seen a couple of EN forum threads where the person asking about the notebook limit was mercilessly text-bludgeoned by tag fans who apparently think otherwise).

 

I'd be the first person in line to pay for an additional 250 notebooks, if that was an option. My first dreaded Notification of Notebook Doom landed on me last night, with a big, fat :::whump!:::

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For all you fervent tag users, thanks again for all your tips.

My whole point was never to declare notebooks better than tags, but rather to point out that while one might fit the needs of one particular person, the other might be much better for another person's needs.... And that it would make a lot more sense if we were able to use both in an unlimited manner... Everyone would be happy.

 

1+

 

In the end, this all boils down to how the user's brain processes info. For me, as a visual person, hierarchal stacks/notebooks/notes is the perfect fit, and a thousand times easier/faster/cleaner than tags.

 

For someone whose brain processes information differently, tags are easier/faster/cleaner.

 

No one's right. No one's wrong (although, sadly, I have seen a couple of EN forum threads where the person asking about the notebook limit was mercilessly text-bludgeoned by tag fans who apparently think otherwise).

 

I'd be the first person in line to pay for an additional 250 notebooks, if that was an option. My first dreaded Notification of Notebook Doom landed on me last night, with a big, fat :::whump!:::

 

Maybe the forum's "expertise" is a little slanted - and prone to be caustic when subjects come up over and over again - but the fact remains you're in a Library,  asking for a burger.  We don't serve those here,  so sorry: you'll have to try elsewhere.  It's really not that tags are better (though IMHO they are) but just that to use Evernote you really REALLY have to make the adjustment.  There's lots of discussion around - if you'd like any help trying,  we'll be pleased to try and assist.  I promise most of us will play nice.

 

I can't reliably comment on how easy or otherwise a change might be - but Evernote has 50M users to look after so they're likely to be cautious with any fundamental issues like this one...

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No one's right. No one's wrong (although, sadly, I have seen a couple of EN forum threads where the person asking about the notebook limit was mercilessly text-bludgeoned by tag fans who apparently think otherwise).

I think you'd be hard pressed to find any posts saying someone is "wrong" by wanting more notebooks and/or sub notebooks. What *has* been said repeatedly is that's the way Evernote is built & if you want to use EN, one will have to adapt to that. It's a pretty factual statement & applies to not only Evernote but any piece of software. If ____ doesn't work for you, then you find something that does. Pretty simple.
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Isn't this almost always the way...  Adopt a real life paradigm and then diverge from it as the user base gets used to it. The ability to tag things IRL would be a lovely one.

I think that once everyone gets Google Glasses, this will be doable, and then we'll wonder how we ever got around without the capability, and by the way, what was all the ruckus about these stupid one-dimensional notebook/folder thingies anyways? :)

But I digress: I just think Notebooks / Folders are closer to the "real life" experience than tags.

No question there, but...

But I prefer tags as they allow multiple assignment to what we today call a note. But to me the online / digital life is just as much a part of real life as atom-based stuff is. :-)

...we certainly have the mental ability to apply more than one adjective to an object (e.g. those low-down, dirty, snake-in-the-grass tag freaks), and it's hard to argue that mental processes are not real, so, yeah, ultimately it all comes down to personal preference; not everyone likes Brussel Sprouts, or Dixieland jazz, or plaid.
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There's lots of discussion around - if you'd like any help trying,  we'll be pleased to try and assist.  I promise most of us will play nice.

 

You're a kind voice in a wilderness of tags, gazumped. Thanks for exemplifying what's best about the EN forums. :)

 

We visual folks trying to wrap our heads around tags appreciate voices from the "How we can help?" camp, as opposed to the negative "This way or the highway" response: 

 

 

What "has" been said repeatedly is that's the way Evernote is built & if you want to use EN, one will have to adapt to that. It's a pretty factual statement & applies to not only Evernote but any piece of software. If _____ doesn't work for you, then you find something that does. Pretty simple.

 

Guess that's one way to approach someone struggling with a challenge (not my way, but hey). No need to debate or reply.

 

To fellow notebook fans:

 

I sooooo feel your pain. Just spent five hours overhauling my stacks/notebooks/notes strucutre in response to the Dreaded Notification of Notebook Doom alerts received the night before last. While EN looks all nice-n-pretty now, it's taking me longer to locate documents that were at my fingertips 48 hours ago...plus duplicated notes are appearing in the Default notebook...plus EN suddenly refuses to sync large notes it's been successfully syncing for nearly a year....

 

Hang in there. We'll all make it through, one way or the other. :)

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What "has" been said repeatedly is that's the way Evernote is built & if you want to use EN, one will have to adapt to that. It's a pretty factual statement & applies to not only Evernote but any piece of software. If _____ doesn't work for you, then you find something that does. Pretty simple.

 

Guess that's one way to approach someone struggling with a challenge (not my way, but hey). No need to debate or reply.

 

 

Love the "drive by". 

 

Another way to look at it (if you will) is if you are struggling with a challenge, maybe it's already been addressed & answered.  Maybe/possibly (and often probably) many times over.  Takes a bit more work on your end to do the search but you're the one with the question & you just may learn something else along the way. 

 

With the exception of those who are labeled "Evernote Employee", the rest of us volunteer our time here.  It's not at all unusual for us to post very detailed & exquisite replies to someone on how to do something.  So when someone new to the board simply posts the question w/o searching, I know I'm hesitant to repost my detailed reply when it's already out there.  To use & modify Gaz's example (from another thread), it's like you walk into a library & walk up to the desk & ask the librarian if they have a book on using tags in Evernote instead of sub-notebooks.  The librarian may walk you over to the perfectly good card catalog & show you how to use it & then let you know if you have any problems to ask.  But unlike the librarian, we are not paid.  So yes, you may get a reply you think is curt or "text -bludgeoning" but is just pointing you to the perfectly good card catalog.  (shrug) 

 

"No need to debate or reply."

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Why are the number of notebooks limited at all?  I would like to see the limit removed or at least increased to some large number.

 

In my case, I separate my research notes by the resource they came from.  Each source is a separate notebook.  250 is not sufficient for my use.

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Why are the number of notebooks limited at all? I would like to see the limit removed or at least increased to some large number.

In my case, I separate my research notes by the resource they came from. Each source is a separate notebook. 250 is not sufficient for my use.

The search function is your friend.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/28516-250-notebooks-is-not-enough/

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/34434-if-not-more-than-250-notebooks-then/

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Why are the number of notebooks limited at all?  I would like to see the limit removed or at least increased to some large number.

 

In my case, I separate my research notes by the resource they came from.  Each source is a separate notebook.  250 is not sufficient for my use.

The search function is only your friend if you are willing to quietly accept the limitations of the program.  I agree that the 250 notebook limit is too low.  I also think it is made worse by the fact that (at least on the Mac & iOS versions) there is no way to know your current notebook/stack count.  EN also does not notify you of exceeding the limit when syncing and simply does not sync notes that exceed the limit.

 

So even if you find a very thorough discussion of an issue, you should still make your voice heard or Evernote will think we are all as happy as the evangelists...

 

Hugh

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The search function is only your friend if you are willing to quietly accept the limitations of the program.

 

 

The search is not the best, but in some cases (like this one), it's very useful.

 

post-48228-0-79749800-1364409182_thumb.j

 

or Evernote will think we are all as happy as the evangelists..

 

 

Please elaborate. Pretty much every (every?) evangelist has things they wish EN would do.  If you're such an unhappy user, perhaps EN is not the app for you. Nothing worse than staying with an app that doesn't work for you & that you feel the need to constantly/regularly complain about.  (shrug)

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Thanx Hugh.

 

I did search, but for whatever reason, did not see the previous discussions.  Nevertheless, I agree with Hugh, the more comments the more likely that changes will come.

 

It isn't a matter of not liking Evernote.  As with any feature requests, it is the hope that Evernote will be an even better fit for our use.  I wrote software for 20+ years before returning for my PhD.  I am well aware that user feedback does have an impact on design (or at least should have).

 

Thanx

Tim

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Thanx Hugh.

 

I did search, but for whatever reason, did not see the previous discussions.  Nevertheless, I agree with Hugh, the more comments the more likely that changes will come.

 

It isn't a matter of not liking Evernote.  As with any feature requests, it is the hope that Evernote will be an even better fit for our use.  I wrote software for 20+ years before returning for my PhD.  I am well aware that user feedback does have an impact on design (or at least should have).

 

Thanx

Tim

 

 

No where did I say it should not be discussed.  I *did* point out that searching the board is helpful as it will show several threads on the topic already, including ideas on how to use tags rather than notebooks so that you do not encounter this issue.

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Nevertheless, I agree with Hugh, the more comments the more likely that changes will come.

I'm not so sure that I would agree with this. The "we want Evenote for Linux" topic is quite long, but so far there's been no sign that Evernote is interested in providing one.

I am well aware that user feedback does have an impact on design (or at least should have).

It is, to some degree (and these forums are not the only way that Evernote gets that feedback), but it's no guarantee that it will move them on any particular issue. The feedback is fine, for sure, but Evernote cannot do everything that they are asked to do.

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The search function is only your friend if you are willing to quietly accept the limitations of the program.

 

 

The search is not the best, but in some cases (like this one), it's very useful.

 

attachicon.gif250 notebooks.jpg

 

>or Evernote will think we are all as happy as the evangelists..

 

 

Please elaborate. Pretty much every (every?) evangelist has things they wish EN would do.  If you're such an unhappy user, perhaps EN is not the app for you. Nothing worse than staying with an app that doesn't work for you & that you feel the need to constantly/regularly complain about.  (shrug)

 

Not true... if you are unhappy with a feature in an otherwise wonderful program this seems like the best place to voice your concerns.  I also think that just because an issue was discussed some months ago and the conversation ended, I do not consider the issue resolved.  Since EN does not make official announcements about features (understandable) they have to put up with ongoing complaints.

 

My comment about the evangelists expresses my concern that people who admit they do not officially speak for EN and who have their own points of view about how the program should be used could cause new users to limit their complaints about EN.  EN needs to hear these comments even if they have heard them before.

 

I LOVE this program and that is why my posts over the years have included concerns or suggestions to make a great program better.

 

Hugh

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My comment about the evangelists expresses my concern that people who admit they do not officially speak for EN and who have their own points of view about how the program should be used could cause new users to limit their complaints about EN.

So...it's ok for people to regularly post what they want to see changed but not for other people to post workarounds, suggestions or even express *their* own point of view...??? As far as I know, ALL users are allowed to post their POV whether it's a complaint, praise, suggestion, workaround or even "yes, this has been discussed before."
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I had done some searching on the Evernote forums on this topic prior to contacting Evernote Support Chat because I was concerned, as many of you in the thread are, about the 250 limit on notebooks. I couldn't find the answers to all of my questions about it, so I ended up chatting with an Evernote Support rep today. I'm sharing the info I got because many of you seem to have the same questions. Hopefully, this will help you :)

 

 

Currently, free and premium Evernote accounts have a limit of 250 notebooks, 10,000 tags and 100,000 total notes. These limits only apply to synchronized services.
Local notebooks and notes are unlimited for all users.
Per Will @ Evernote Support: There is no limit for the local notebooks as those are saved in your computer and not the server.
 
 
In addition, if you find that you need more than 250 synchronized notebooks, you can upgrade to an Evernote Business Account.
Evernote Business Accounts can have 5,000 synchronized notebooks.
Per Will @ Evernote Support: # of Business Notebooks: 5000 synchronized
 
So, Evernote does have a plan to meet everyone's needs. People who need more than 250 synchronized notebooks may pay the higher cost of a business account, but they will get more for their money. Currently, Evernote Premium (250 notebooks synchronized) is $45 per year and Evernote Business (5,000 notebooks synchronized) is $120 per year.
 
My premium account more than meets my needs now that I know I can have unlimited local notebooks. I store a lot of data in Evernote that I really only need access to on my MacBook. For instance, I don't need access to all my saved PDFs of utility bills and receipts from my mobile devices. Many of you are probably the same :)
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My premium account more than meets my needs now that I know I can have unlimited local notebooks. I store a lot of data in Evernote that I really only need access to on my MacBook. For instance, I don't need access to all my saved PDFs of utility bills and receipts from my mobile devices. Many of you are probably the same :)

This goes along with the general caveat that you should remember to have a back up routine your local notebooks' notes (the method differs by platform), so that they are safe in case of drive problems.
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Thank you all for your research.  I am still confused about limitations on notes and notebooks in the business edition, and I am wanting to promote Evernote for use in my company.  I don't feel Evernote has made this clear in the documentation, and I have spent a fair amount of time looking.

 

From a business webinar recap (4/19 I think), there was a statement that you can have 250 personal and 250 joined/linked notebooks.  In the developer documentation, there are references to 5,000 notebooks and 500,000 notes per business "account".  From the support call above the term "synchronized" has been added to the mix.

 

Here is my interpretation of all the above.  Someone please clarify where I am mistaken.

 

A user can have 250 personal notebooks and 100,000 personal notes, which matches the premium account limits.

The 250 personal notebooks can all either be shared or linked to.

The business library can have 5,000 notebooks and 500,000 notes independent of an individual user's account.

All content in the business library (5,000/500,000) is available to be synchronized, and by inference joined, back to a business users desktop client

 

Thanks

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Thank you all for your research.  I am still confused about limitations on notes and notebooks in the business edition, and I am wanting to promote Evernote for use in my company.  I don't feel Evernote has made this clear in the documentation, and I have spent a fair amount of time looking.

 

From a business webinar recap (4/19 I think), there was a statement that you can have 250 personal and 250 joined/linked notebooks.  In the developer documentation, there are references to 5,000 notebooks and 500,000 notes per business "account".  From the support call above the term "synchronized" has been added to the mix.

 

Here is my interpretation of all the above.  Someone please clarify where I am mistaken.

 

A user can have 250 personal notebooks and 100,000 personal notes, which matches the premium account limits.

The 250 personal notebooks can all either be shared or linked to.

The business library can have 5,000 notebooks and 500,000 notes independent of an individual user's account.

All content in the business library (5,000/500,000) is available to be synchronized, and by inference joined, back to a business users desktop client

 

Thanks

I agree that the documentation (for everything, not just Business) is woefully inadequate, but then again, in an earlier career I wrote manuals for colleagues and took on a lot of translation projects for manuals, so I am one of those people who (even if I don't always read it) wants to have every single thing written down somewhere for reference.

It's probably unrealistic, but what I'd like to see Evernote do is hire someone full-time to write this documentation and keep it updated for every single iteration of the apps, with screenshots and all the other nice things that makes a user's life easier. All of these limits ought to be spelled out (I have been advocating for this for a while, and I know the Evernote staff have heard me on this!), and I am hoping they eventually will be.

Take heart: I think you just spelled out the limits in the clearest and most concise way possible. Maybe you should apply for that position I suggested :)

For the time being, I am promoting your post to an "article." I don't know what that means quite yet (a moderator tool), but I'll experiment with it and see where it goes!

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Hmm, 100,000 notes * 100 MB, is what? Like 10 TB of storage for $5/mo? Sounds fair as hell to me to have some limits on the backend strain.

 

I find the probability that I will require 100k notes, unlikely in so much as assuming I live that long, I can always export paperwork to e.g. Dropbox to make space, or you know, just ditch receipts I haven't needed in twenty years.

 

250 notebooks is something I concern myself with but I know I can easily consolidate my organization to cope, by e.g. using a "Programming" notebook and tagging entries instead of a Programming Stack with a notebook for each domain of interest and any tags of interest for cross reference. It's just convenience of scroll vs if I was smart, I'd search smarter and scroll less. Usually it's smarter to add tags but i find notebooks convenient for preventing "Aww *****, I forgot to add tag xyz to note zyx from nn months ago" syndrome.

 

I've already got about 50 notebooks and closing in on 600 notes. My only beef is I can't do things like make a notebook called "Quux" in stack "Foo" and then make another notebook called "Quux" in stack "Bar". I have to use constructs like "Quux Foo" and "Foo Stack". That is what irks me.

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250 notebooks is something I concern myself with but I know I can easily consolidate my organization to cope, by e.g. using a "Programming" notebook and tagging entries instead of a Programming Stack with a notebook for each domain of interest and any tags of interest for cross reference. It's just convenience of scroll vs if I was smart, I'd search smarter and scroll less. Usually it's smarter to add tags but i find notebooks convenient for preventing "Aww *****, I forgot to add tag xyz to note zyx from nn months ago" syndrome.

Some folks just forgo using other notebooks altogether (GrumpyMonkey being a notable exemplar). I have a minimal number of notebooks, just two main notebooks really, one for personal notes and one for work, with a few extra ancillary notebooks (e.g. Inbox for receiving imported notes that need tagging, @Test for Evernote test cases, plus one that's intended to be used as an offline cache on my Android devices). Seems to work pretty well for me in most cases.

 

I've already got about 50 notebooks and closing in on 600 notes. My only beef is I can't do things like make a notebook called "Quux" in stack "Foo" and then make another notebook called "Quux" in stack "Bar". I have to use constructs like "Quux Foo" and "Foo Stack". That is what irks me.

Yeah -- there's really only one notebook name space (ditto for tags). I'd just have a notebook named "Quux" and tags "Foo" and "Bar". But that's just me.
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I have :

22 personal notebooks

26 business notebooks

14 personal tags (Lots more to come)

27 business tags (Lots more to come)

11,000 notes

Chris

How did you get a count of your notebooks and tags? (Please don't tell me you visually scanned your list and manually counted them...)

 

Thanks.

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I have :

22 personal notebooks

26 business notebooks

14 personal tags (Lots more to come)

27 business tags (Lots more to come)

11,000 notes

Chris

How did you get a count of your notebooks and tags? (Please don't tell me you visually scanned your list and manually counted them...)

 

Thanks.

 

Why not? 22 notebooks would take 22 seconds (at the most) to count, right. I could count that faster than it took me to write this post :)

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Tags can get unruly in a hurry and end up being more confusing than they're worth. It's increasingly important to have some kind of methodology that exists outside EN and use EN in keeping with that methodology. I'm skeptical that one can approach EN without some theoretic approach and manage to stay "organized" just slapping tags willy-nilly.

 

Notes can be shared. Notebooks can be shared. Tags can't - they aren't that great!

 

However, I'm curious  - what makes it advantageous for using a notebook for a reference source...? Does that mean that, for a single topic, you could have notes across 250 notebooks if your bib includes 300 titles?

 

Or, do you have research assistants who work in specific library locations and want to interact with each of them through a shared notebook that allows them to pull titles off a shelf where they are?

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Some folks don't like tags.

 

Me - well, I've got 1,400 tags and they work great. I have a system to manage them. The system works so well, that I keep the Left Panel closed 99% of the time.

 

Many of my tags are grouped using a 3 character prefix. a few examples at:

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/28840-question-about-tag-levels/#entry155962

 

Some additional tips from GrumpyMonkey, which I now use.

All tags are in lower case

No tag has spaces - two word tags always have a dash.

 

These are done to make the tags easier to remember, and avoid confusion in the format.

 

BitQwik is also helpful, especially the built in TagHunter.

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Tags can get unruly in a hurry and end up being more confusing than they're worth. It's increasingly important to have some kind of methodology that exists outside EN and use EN in keeping with that methodology. I'm skeptical that one can approach EN without some theoretic approach and manage to stay "organized" just slapping tags willy-nilly.

 

Notes can be shared. Notebooks can be shared. Tags can't - they aren't that great!

 

However, I'm curious  - what makes it advantageous for using a notebook for a reference source...? Does that mean that, for a single topic, you could have notes across 250 notebooks if your bib includes 300 titles?

 

Or, do you have research assistants who work in specific library locations and want to interact with each of them through a shared notebook that allows them to pull titles off a shelf where they are?

 

Hi. I was confused by what you said about notebooks for reference sources. Did someone say that in this thread and I just missed it? Personally, it sounds like an unwieldy system, but I would be interested to see how someone (whoever mentioned it) is implementing it. 

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Currently, free and premium Evernote accounts have a limit of 250 notebooks, 10,000 tags and 100,000 total notes. These limits only apply to synchronized services.

Local notebooks and notes are unlimited for all users.
Per Will @ Evernote Support: There is no limit for the local notebooks as those are saved in your computer and not the server.

 

I haven't known this and I have now reached my limit of 250 sync notebooks.

Now I would like to change some EXISTING notebooks from sync ones to "local" ones, which I don't need at the tablet, so that I can create new sync notebooks, that I need at the tablet, too.

 

I haven't found anything, how to change synchronized notebooks back to "local" ones - any idea?

Thanks.

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I haven't found anything, how to change synchronized notebooks back to "local" ones - any idea?

You can't & this is displayed in a dialog box when you create the notebook. What you'll have to do is move all notes from one sync'd notebook to another & then delete the now empty notebook.
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All in favor of raising the notebook limit for all our us 'old-school' thinkers who have faithfully paided our Evernote premium group membership ... :)  I am not having to change my entire scheme of organizing notes to accomodate this 'setting' change.  

 

Please let us choose :)   Thanks!  Erick

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All in favor of raising the notebook limit for all our us 'old-school' thinkers who have faithfully paided our Evernote premium group membership ... :)  I am not having to change my entire scheme of organizing notes to accomodate this 'setting' change.  

 

Please let us choose :)   Thanks!  Erick

Not sure what setting change you are referring to -- the only change to number of notebooks that's occurred in the past couple of years is an increase from 100 to 250.

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Why Evernote continues to allows BurgerNFries to be an evangelist is beyond me.  At least in this thread one of the employees had the good sense to show up and try to blunt her nonsense.  I've never seen a person who is supposed to be an "evangelist" work so hard to constantly piss off users who are doing nothing more than post politely.

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Why Evernote continues to allows BurgerNFries to be an evangelist is beyond me.  At least in this thread one of the employees had the good sense to show up and try to blunt her nonsense.  I've never seen a person less adept at being an evangelist...unless you're idea of an evangelist is to constantly piss off users who are doing nothing more than post politely.

If you have a problem with any of my posts in this thread, please feel free to use the report button.

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ZZZ, your statement of posting politely is undone by calling out, in a personal nature, the work of someone who has done a ton of good in these forums. A polite discussion would have stuck to the pros and cons of increasing the number of notebooks.

Let's all tone it back and keep it to the issues and not personal attacks against each other or Evernote... It's much easier to get things done that way.

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I called it out accurately, impolite or not, it needs to be called out, as I know it has been done many times before by others.  I am amazed that EN allows it to continue.

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At this point, Evernote knows that some customers want a higher notebook limit. I doubt that anyone is being helped by personal attacks. Locking the thread.

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I upgraded to Business but it still says limited to 250. If I create a new personal notebook, it says it right away; when I create a business notebook, it lets me create a name but as soon as I hit return it says limit of 250. I thought it was 5,000?

 

 

Thank you all for your research.  I am still confused about limitations on notes and notebooks in the business edition, and I am wanting to promote Evernote for use in my company.  I don't feel Evernote has made this clear in the documentation, and I have spent a fair amount of time looking.

 

From a business webinar recap (4/19 I think), there was a statement that you can have 250 personal and 250 joined/linked notebooks.  In the developer documentation, there are references to 5,000 notebooks and 500,000 notes per business "account".  From the support call above the term "synchronized" has been added to the mix.

 

Here is my interpretation of all the above.  Someone please clarify where I am mistaken.

 

A user can have 250 personal notebooks and 100,000 personal notes, which matches the premium account limits.

The 250 personal notebooks can all either be shared or linked to.

The business library can have 5,000 notebooks and 500,000 notes independent of an individual user's account.

All content in the business library (5,000/500,000) is available to be synchronized, and by inference joined, back to a business users desktop client

 

Thanks

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You can create 5000 Notebooks in your Business Library, but only be joined to 250 of them at a time.

 

You will need to "check in" any notebooks not currently in use and then "Leave" them.

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Hi heather,

 

I contacted support and they clarified that the 5,000 quota is for all users combined; it's still 250 per user under a business account. Oddly enough, it doesn't even mention 5,000 in advertising, but maybe I missed it. Evernote suggested I start using tags, so that's what I'm doing. Guess what, you can have up to 100,000 tags! That should do just fine. I'm downgrading from Business to Premium again.

 

Thanks

 

SoFresh_SoClean

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Hi heather,

 

I contacted support and they clarified that the 5,000 quota is for all users combined; it's still 250 per user under a business account. Oddly enough, it doesn't even mention 5,000 in advertising, but maybe I missed it. Evernote suggested I start using tags, so that's what I'm doing. Guess what, you can have up to 100,000 tags! That should do just fine. I'm downgrading from Business to Premium again.

 

Thanks

 

SoFresh_SoClean

 

Hi. Glad to hear you got it all worked out. If you are interested, I have a post that lists as many of the limits (published and unpublished) that I know about for Evernote.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

 

One thing to note is that the 5,000 is in the Business Library. What that means is that all of the users in the Business can put those 5,000 notebooks into their own accounts, but only 250 notebooks at once. 

 

Tags are a great way to organize, and that is really what Evernote is built to do best. Here is a page with suggestions and links to useful systems.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=437

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I'm a reporter and I use premium because Evernote is essentially my steno pad and I need all my notes automatically synced on all my computers and devices.

I was creating a notebook for each story I was working on, with a number of notes within them, but I reached the 250 synced notebook quota. I've just started to transition all of my stuff over to tags by creating a new tag with the name being the issue of the paper I'm working on (8/20/2013), hoping organizing notes into specific dated tags will help group my notes with the right edition of the paper. I'm retagging everything and deleting empty notebooks as I reorganize.

Grumpy, let me me know if this makes sense. I'm not as experienced with tags as you are.

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I'm a reporter and I use premium because Evernote is essentially my steno pad and I need all my notes automatically synced on all my computers and devices.

I was creating a notebook for each story I was working on, with a number of notes within them, but I reached the 250 synced notebook quota. I've just started to transition all of my stuff over to tags by creating a new tag with the name being the issue of the paper I'm working on (8/20/2013), hoping organizing notes into specific dated tags will help group my notes with the right edition of the paper. I'm retagging everything and deleting empty notebooks as I reorganize.

Grumpy, let me me know if this makes sense. I'm not as experienced with tags as you are.

 

Hi. I'm actually not a big tag guy myself (I have more on my site about that), but given your situation, here is one approach I would suggest:

 

1. Name everything with YYMMDD, because the notes, tags, and notebooks will automatically arrange themselves in chronological order.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=367

 

2. Start a notebook for 8/20/2013 called "130820-article"

 

3. Consider using keywords and dates for titles. For example, every note for an issue gets 130820 in the title somewhere (I prefer the front). Research notes (clippings, etc.) get "research" as a keyword in the title, writing gets "writing" in the title, and correspondence gets "correspondence" in the title. It would look something like this:

130820 writing article nasa space station

130820 correspondence director nasa station program 

130820 research white paper nasa station

 

4. When you are done, select everything and make a table of contents note (label it appropriately with "contents").

https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#b=2b3f5418-2ab1-4ee6-8ff4-5cd977fb19ea&st=p&n=a808397a-bdee-41b3-954e-e144a45f306c

 

5. Select everything and apply the tag "130820" to it. 

 

6. Select everything and drag it to your "archive" notebook.

 

7. Rename your "130820-article" notebook "130821-article". 

 

8. Rinse and repeat.

 

The idea here is that you have multiple hooks for browsing, finding, and discovering information. If you remember when you did something, you could search for "intitle:1308* intitle:contents" and find every table of contents for every article you worked on in August neatly lined up AS IF they were all in a notebook. This is the beauty of Evernote. You can filter your notes to show you certain information, and so the notebooks become unnecessary. Why did I ask you to make that first one? Well, it helps in the early stages of a project to lump stuff together without worrying about doing anything but dumping it in a notebook. The tags, table of contents, etc. can come when you are finishing up and moving on. There is no point in having 5,000 notebooks if everything is clustered together chronologically and even has nice, neat tables of contents to go along with them. 

 

You could also search for "tag:130820" and find everything connected to 130820. If you are ambitious with your tags, you could have additional categories like "political", "science", etc. to enable searching later for themes. One thing I recommend is to either capitalize every word or use lower case (I use lower case), use the singular, and never use spaces (dashes if you must). The idea here is to maintain consistency and make sure you don't have tags for "grumpy monkey," "Grumpy Monkey," "Grumpy-Monkey," etc. If you do, then things will get quite messy.

 

That's my advice.  

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250 notebooks is not enough, I am finding myself having to delete notebooks and as a premium member the limit should be more

like 500 or limitless

Regards

Rob

I'd be interested in hearing about your note to notebook ratio and how that settles out. This is an honest question--I have about 16 different notebooks and a little over 700 notes--I couldn't imagine having that many notebooks. Do you have a pretty large number of notes? Does the infrastructure support lots of different automated note creation?

 

 

When you have your personal knowledge base and then you add in genealogy which adds a lot of notebooks I have hit it very easily - if you try and use evernote fully you will find out very quickly that 250 is way toooo small

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250 notebooks is not enough, I am finding myself having to delete notebooks and as a premium member the limit should be more

like 500 or limitless

Regards

Rob

I'd be interested in hearing about your note to notebook ratio and how that settles out. This is an honest question--I have about 16 different notebooks and a little over 700 notes--I couldn't imagine having that many notebooks. Do you have a pretty large number of notes? Does the infrastructure support lots of different automated note creation?

 

 

When you have your personal knowledge base and then you add in genealogy which adds a lot of notebooks I have hit it very easily - if you try and use evernote fully you will find out very quickly that 250 is way toooo small

 

I think there are a lot of ways to user evernote fully, some of which might run into the 250 notebook limit, many other ways of using it fully (however that is defined) will not necessarily encounter that limit. 

 

I'm not saying you are wrong for encountering this limit (in your other post, I recognize how your use case might be challenging), but rather just to point out that using Evernote to its fullest and using a great many notebooks do not necessarily go hand in hand. 

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When you have your personal knowledge base and then you add in genealogy which adds a lot of notebooks I have hit it very easily - if you try and use evernote fully you will find out very quickly that 250 is way toooo small

As has been stated many times, use more tags, descriptive titles & keywords & less notebooks. I've yet to see any example (and there have been many posted) where tags would not work.

Having said that, I would also say Evernote may not be the best tool for doing your family tree, just like it's not the best tool for balancing your bank account.

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