(Archived) How do I search for a tag in a notebook?

[sdtxst 1]

This may be the most ridiculous question ever, but when I click on a tag in the left hand pane, it brings up all of my notes that are tagged with that tag.   So, for example, I click my “Events” tag, and it brings up all events in all notebooks.   (I’m using the Secret Weapon/GTD system, so I have 2 main notebooks: Action Pending and Completed). 

It looks like this:

 

 

Great, we are now: “Viewing 9 notes from All Notebooks matching All of the following: tagged with Events”

 

Now when I use the Notebooks drop down (as seen above) to drill down to the Action Pending notebook, it clears everything and looks like:

 

Dang, we are now: “Viewing 79 notes from Action Pending”

Is this the intended action?  Really?  Is it a bug?  Why have changable search parameters if a change in one wipes all the others?!  Or have I missed something stupidly simple?

 

How do I search for a Tag in a Notebook or my Events in Action Pending?

[jefito 5,589]

Click on the magnifying glass that appears in the search control on the right side of the toolbar, and select "Search Current Context". Now you should be able to do what you want: pick a notebook, and then add a tag (or multiple tags) to your search.

[sdtxst 1]

No, that doesn't seem to make a difference.  It does make both the tag and the notebook name highlighted in the left pane, making that seem reasonable, but selecting a tag and then changing the notebook takes me to all notes in the notebook even if the "Search Current Context" is highlighted.    Chosing the notebook first and then the tag also does not make a difference.

[jefito 5,589]

You always need to select the notebook first (just as in your example), and you cannot pick the tag from the left panel (pick on the blue tag icon next to the current notebook). This works for me. A notebook (or stack) is your current context; a tag (or text search, or date term, etc.) filters that context. Picking a notebook or tag in the left panel always resets the current context back to "All Notes"

[sdtxst 1]

So, instead of having a perfectly functional drop down work in a normal way, I have to first select my notebook, and then type out tag:possiblyreallylongtagnamecompletely (since the search dropdown doesn't work)?  And once I have done that the search bar now works exactly as I want it to, but only if I get there in a certian way?

 

That's ridiculously dumb.  

 

I mean, It's good to know how to do it, but geez, if you have exactly the same interface, it should work the same, regardless of how you got to it.

[jefito 5,589]

??? It's all right there in the search panel (the one that's directly above your note list), and it does exactly what you're asking about (how do I search for a tag in a notebook?). You don't need to type out any long tag names, and it's not "ridiculously dumb":

* Select the notebook from the dropdown in the the panel.

* Then click the blue tag icon that's to the right of it; it should drop down to give you a list of tags (and they should be tags that are relevant to the notebook context you've selected). Pick a tag, or start typing to winnow down the list. If you want to add more tags, click where it says "Click to filter by tag..." -- it should filter the tag list to relevant tags based on your prior selections.

I don't know what you're referring to with the comment about "exactly the same interface". The search control is a different interface that allows you to add other types of search filters (e.g. text, date/time, etc. that you need to type in) -- I'll grant that it could be better in any number of ways; I generally leave those comments for the beta topics. The tag tree? That's something else altogether.

[sdtxst 1]

After playing with it more, I guess the most frustrating thing is that it does work with all notebooks.  I can't seem to drill down from All Notebooks to a specific note book while searching a tag.  I also cant go from a specific notebook to All Notebooks while keeping a tag seleted.  I can move between notebooks though.   The only way to have this work with All Notebooks is to type out the tag:name in the search bar.    Heres an example:

 

The top one will not let me move between specific and all.  The bottom will.   Why does this double search language make sense?

 

 

What I mean by same interface is that that yellow bar (with all options still visually presenting as viable filters) is brought up whether I search from the search bar, click the tag icon, choose a tag in the hierarchy, or choose a notebook from the hierarchy.  And it acts differently based on how I got there.  That's failing UI 101, right there, and why I thought I must be missing something. 

[jefito 5,589]

Ah, OK, I see what you're saying now. By "yellow bar", I guess you mean the Search Explanation panel (which I see as light brown). It's a separate piece of the UI, left over from the v4 days and separately displayable. I generally don't interact with that; it's pretty useful to see what Evernote thinks it's searching for and for that reason, I keep it open, but as I understand it, it almost went away in the move to v5 -- that's what we were told during the betas.

I've been recommending that you interact with the controls directly above the search explanation. I do see what you're saying, though -- the search explanation is the only control that lets you switch to All Notes or All My Notes. On the other hand, it doesn't have a tag chooser.

What I've been describing is the set of controls immediately above the search explanation. Do it that way, and you can take care of your original scenario: choose a notebook, and then choose a your tags. Since you can't pick a new notebook without losing the selected tags, you might as well just use the "new search" shortcut F6 to start anew which takes you back to the "All Notes" starting point. I understand that that's not optimal.

So I see your confusion, and I think it's worth another mention in the current beta topic.