Change order for combining notes

[Pete248 9]

There is this nice preview of a stack of notes, when you select multiple notes for combining them into a single note.

 

Would it be possible to change the order of the notes in the stack by clicking on a note? I.e. bring the note I am clicking on to the top of the stack? That would be an easy way to change the order of the stack and thus the order of the notes in the new combined note (or anything else I'll do with the stack).

 

Currently I have to temporarily change the order in which the notes are displayed as this is the basis for the order of the notes in the combined note. This is cumbersome and an arbitrary order, for which there is not sort criteria, is not possible at all.

 

Peter

[pgdahl 133]

I agree.

It has been requested before to make the preview window more useful in terms of making sure notes are sorted in the right order as they're merged. Right now, I concur, the pile of notes showing is pretty, but useless. It is also a problem that the window is getting rather cluttered with options which are not easily discernible form each other by way of the signature Evernote washed out, grey-on-grey presentation of stuff.

[Just_Wayne 1]

Hello all,

 

After suffering the same problem as you all, I eventually found a solution that works 100% of the time for me and isn't really any hassle at all.

 

I simply sort by Title and prefix a number 1, 2, 3 etc to the notes i want to merge.

Once i merged the notes i just remove the number from the title and bingo, the result i wanted.

 

This is how i will have to work until the feature is built into Evernote. 

 

Hope this helps.

[Rizz31 3]

I personally find ordering notes to merge into a single note stinks.  It is really frustrating not being able to merge notes in the proper order.  I thought at first you had to just add them to the merge file in the order you wanted them to merge.  That worked well before the update in december. Now it is useless trying to merge them in order. This to me is a big issue seeing I rely on merging notes on a monthly basis to keep notebooks in order. I hope Evernote looks into bringing about a way to easily order them in order to merge. This randomizing of note merging is really killing an otherwise pleasurable app.  

[megsaint 441]

What seems to work for me is first sorting the notes by date updated. I can then force the notes into the order I want by making nondestructive edits (e.g. typing and deleting a space). Yes, it's a kludge but it seems to work for the small number of notes I need to merge. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I don't merge notes very often. I don't see the point. I recommend opening a new note in a separate window, dragging your existing notes into it (to create note links), and using that to order things. It helps if you have your notes titled in a way that automatically orders them. I use yymmdd in my titles. A table of contents is a one-touch way to generate these (again, it helps if you have titled your notes in a way that will enable them to be ordered properly). There is a video on this page:

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=488

[megsaint 441]

I have a few things that I want to see in the same note. I don't want links to other notes. The reason I have two notes in the first place is because both of them were created by either information being mailed into Evernote or by some other automated process. For example, I have an app I use for running that allows me to share a picture of some data I email that to Evernote. I have another app that pulls some data from another app I use to track different information when I run and automatically sends it to Evernote. I want to be able to see all the information in one note. Yes, I can copy and paste the picture from one note into the other and then delete the first note, then delete the note with the picture. But merging is neater if I can get it to work. 

 

I do similar things with other information that gets automatically sent to Evernote that I want all in one daily journal note. One of the reasons that I want things all in one note rather than as links is because I like to be able to print things to a PDF. 

 

Obviously not a deal breaker of a feature but it would be nice if merging allowed me to more easily select the order in which things are merged. 

 

Best of luck. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I have a few things that I want to see in the same note. I don't want links to other notes. The reason I have two notes in the first place is because both of them were created by either information being mailed into Evernote or by some other automated process. For example, I have an app I use for running that allows me to share a picture of some data I email that to Evernote. I have another app that pulls some data from another app I use to track different information when I run and automatically sends it to Evernote. I want to be able to see all the information in one note. Yes, I can copy and paste the picture from one note into the other and then delete the first note, then delete the note with the picture. But merging is neater if I can get it to work. 

 

I do similar things with other information that gets automatically sent to Evernote that I want all in one daily journal note. One of the reasons that I want things all in one note rather than as links is because I like to be able to print things to a PDF. 

 

Obviously not a deal breaker of a feature but it would be nice if merging allowed me to more easily select the order in which things are merged. 

 

Best of luck.

My use case doesn't involve printing (I've gone paperless), so that probably explains why I don't use the merge feature very often. I typically create a journal note for every day and it has links to relevant notes, which I think of as virtual note cards. Today I might want to have all of my journal entries for this week tied to one another (note links at the bottom of my note). In another context, I might want just one of the journal entries tied to another project that draws upon data in the journal entry. I like to have this kind of flexibility, but it does mean that I tend to generate several notes a day, and it adds up to a lot of notes (at least 1,000 a year for journal-related notes alone)! Technically speaking, I have many tens of thousands of notes more than the limit of 100,000, I just don't have them all in my account (a long story for another thread). At some point, though, if I were to put everything into Evernote, I'd have to merge some stuff in order to keep myself under the 100,000 limit.

Anyhow, that is my use case. Merging (and sorting in general) could be made more efficient. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a manual sort of some kind. If you are merging, wouldn't it be cool to select ten notes, then drag them around into the order you want them to merge?

[megsaint 441]

 

Merging (and sorting in general) could be made more efficient. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a manual sort of some kind. If you are merging, wouldn't it be cool to select ten notes, then drag them around into the order you want them to merge?

 

 

Yup, that would be about perfect! 

 

I'm not willing to go entirely paperless just yet. I still have some journal entries on a floppy disk that got mislaid for a while, causing me to miss my window of opportunity to easily move them to the next format. And that makes me a little sad. Perhaps someday I'll manage to assemble the right hardware, software and block of free time to do the project. 

[betteabdu 3]

Perhaps is more folks express their desire to have a simple way to affect the order of Merged NOTES the developers will respond with a solution.  Having to artifically trick Evernote but editing to change the Date of the note is not efficient or desirable.  

[WishIWasFishin 13]

Maybe it's just me, but I seldom have to merge notes and when I do I'm merging one or two page PDF files.  Which I then view in Preview and arrange the pages how I want them, save it, and it saves to EN.  Simple.  

[megsaint 441]

Maybe it's just me, but I seldom have to merge notes and when I do I'm merging one or two page PDF files.  Which I then view in Preview and arrange the pages how I want them, save it, and it saves to EN.  Simple.

Simple, perhaps but also not a solution to the problem of merging notes that are not PDFs and controlling the order.

Best of luck.

[Ann R 5]

Okay, I seemed to have solved my problem with getting notes to merge in order so perhaps it will work for others.  It's very simple but I shouldn't have to do it this way.  Simply reverse the order that they're inserted into the ScanSnap--last page becomes the first after it's merged and all pages are in the order they should be.   It would be really good if Evernote would fix this software problem for us.  I've only had my ScanSnap a couple of weeks and have already amassed almost 1500 notes but I've dumped a LOT of old files.  The scanning doesn't take long at all but it's the titling and adding tags that take so long.

 

My husband was so impressed by what I was doing that he ordered one for himself.  We couldn't figure out a way to have two seperate Evernote accounts even though I have read some discussion on how some people are doing it.  Didn't think it would work for us.

Ann

[megsaint 441]

Glad you solved the problem for scanned notes. Hopefully that will be useful to others. Nice to hear that you're finding Evernote so useful 

 

 I don't use a scanner and the notes I try to merge come from a variety of different sources. I guess I'm stuck with changing the updated date for now. 

 

Best of luck. 

[kkaland 0]

This topic is also relevant for Presentation Mode. Presentation Mode bases itself on the order of notes. Also, another workaround would be to use the list view and sort by tags. Then put in appropriate tags. You probably have to start with 001, not 1, since otherwise it'll sort 11 after 1. I like this approach because it at no point messes up the titles, but it's more practical for presentations where the order will never change.

[Kirby Krieger 72]

Hi.  Just jumping into the thread, with the hope that this small splash registers on the beaches of Evernote Island.  I, too, would like to be able to sort my notes _easily_ and manually — and re-sort them as needed — when merging Notes.

 

Follow-up: is there a _complete_ guide to how Note metadata is handled in a merge?  Clearly there is an algorithm for it.

 

@megsaint: the non-destructive editing is a useful kludge — thanks.  My default sort in the Notes List is "Date Updated; Most Recent First".

[megsaint 441]

Glad it helped a little! 

[malcolm.b.anderson 13]

Here are my 3 requests

 

1) be able to re-order the images inside of a merged set

 

2) be able to un-merge the set at a later date (currently the only solution for this is "don't merge them in the first place")

 

3) I'd also like the ability to remove a single image out a merged set

 

Right now, I don't use the merge feature because working with images in evernote is agonizing.