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How Much Do You Worry About Your Note Titles? Change it or Roll with it?


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When I started scanning to PDFs many years ago I was very particular about giving my PDFs a useful title for instance "150202 OPPD Electric Statement" but the longer I have used EN the less I care about this, in fact I rarely edit the title of a note....it just is what it is.

 

Recently I have been helping a friend go paperless, they have started by using the Scannable ap which title everything "Scannable Document".  My friend is just starting to get the concept of EN but felt a need to change the titles to something more useful.  I've told her it's difficult to do and a hard concept to grasp but just leave it alone, through the use of tags and searching you will quickly find anything you need.  Am I leading her astray?  Do you worry about note titles or just roll with it?

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There's endless discussion in the forums about titles - vs - tags - vs - notebooks for organisation.  I settled on titles,  because if you have a lot of notes,  searching for a keyword will get you lots of false hits as well as the one(s) that you want.  It's true that searching for numbers - account / membership / invoice etc - will get you specific records,  but if you don't have something unique to one situation,  it can take a while to identify the particular notes you need.  

 

My standard title is:  <date> - <doc type> - <source> - <subject> - <keywords> where:

 

<date>          = yyyymmdd - the date of the document,  not the date I scan it (unless they are the same)

<doc type>   = letter / clipping / invoice / business card etc

<source>      = what company or individual sent this to me?

<subject>      = why did I get this document?

<keywords>  = anything else that I can think of.  It's usually not required,  because as you say the document is self explanatory.

 

The five items are easy to remember and apply consistently,  and using "intitle:<term>" I can find all gas bills regardless of where I bought it,  or I can select the bill I got last week.

 

You may decide that's way too specific for your needs,  but one of the benefits of Evernote is that you can try different methods for a while and change them when you need to. 

 

Ultimately it's user's choice what feels right for their situation.

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There's endless discussion in the forums about titles - vs - tags - vs - notebooks for organisation.  I settled on titles,  because if you have a lot of notes,  searching for a keyword will get you lots of false hits as well as the one(s) that you want.  It's true that searching for numbers - account / membership / invoice etc - will get you specific records,  but if you don't have something unique to one situation,  it can take a while to identify the particular notes you need.  

 

My standard title is:  <date> - <doc type> - <source> - <subject> - <keywords> where:

 

<date>          = yyyymmdd - the date of the document,  not the date I scan it (unless they are the same)

<doc type>   = letter / clipping / invoice / business card etc

<source>      = what company or individual sent this to me?

<subject>      = why did I get this document?

<keywords>  = anything else that I can think of.  It's usually not required,  because as you say the document is self explanatory.

 

The five items are easy to remember and apply consistently,  and using "intitle:<term>" I can find all gas bills regardless of where I bought it,  or I can select the bill I got last week.

 

You may decide that's way too specific for your needs,  but one of the benefits of Evernote is that you can try different methods for a while and change them when you need to. 

 

Ultimately it's user's choice what feels right for their situation.

I do understand why you would do it this way and it was part of her argument also but what I told her is that I have found since using EN that I have been keeping FAR more information than I really needed for way to many years.  Do I really  need to access my cable tv bill from 2012? 

 

Her worry was similar to your situation, what if I need to find a gas bill from a certain time period?  My comment to her was how often does that really happen you need that?  Maybe once a year? She agreed maybe once a year, so I told her you could spend hours a year making a single bill easier to find or you could spend an extra 5 or 10 minutes once a year to find that bill.

 

As you said everyone needs to find a method that works for them and no method is better or worse.  Just wondering what others are doing.

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My standard title is:  <date> - <doc type> - <source> - <subject> - <keywords> where:

 

I do understand why you would do it this way and it was part of her argument also but what I told her is that I have found since using EN that I have been keeping FAR more information than I really needed for way to many years.  Do I really  need to access my cable tv bill from 2012? 

 

Her worry was similar to your situation, what if I need to find a gas bill from a certain time period?  My comment to her was how often does that really happen you need that?  Maybe once a year? She agreed maybe once a year, so I told her you could spend hours a year making a single bill easier to find or you could spend an extra 5 or 10 minutes once a year to find that bill.

 

As you said everyone needs to find a method that works for them and no method is better or worse.  Just wondering what others are doing.

 

 

I think there is definitely a middle ground between doing nothing (and having a bunch of Notes titled "Scannable Document") and the extensive naming conventions used by Gaz and others.  So I give all of my Notes a descriptive Title that takes only a few seconds to type.

 

I do set the Creation Date to the date of the source document.

I don't generally put the date or special keywords in the Title.  I use the Note date and Tags.

 

As far as what info/Notes you might need in the future, it's hard to tell.  Of course there are some, like tax records, that we are likely to need.  But there are a lot of documents that you might never expect to need, but turn out to be really important sometime later.  Having a good, descriptive Title, and Tags, is not so much about finding it faster as it is about finding it at all.

 

Search is good, but as you collect more and more Notes/documents over time, the more important it will be to have properly coded the Note.

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@blackcows

 

I do both.  I leave the title as is for receipts that I scan into EN.  For everything else I scan I change the title to help me visually zero in on what I need from the results of a search.  For statements I use Company Name - yyyy.mm.dd.  For everything else I just use a title that makes sense (to me anyway) mostly without a date.  I use creation date for time orientation of notes..

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"I do set the Creation Date to the date of the source document".....assuming this is something you must do manually?

 

Actually, I have several methods to do this:

  1. Use the source file date (if correct) using an AppleScript to import files
  2. Use a date I have selected in the Note using AppleScript
  3. When all else fails, manually set date in the Note Info Panel
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 I leave the title as is for receipts that I scan into EN.  

 

Why is this?   ;)

 

Seems to me that receipts really need a good descriptive Title since often the text on the receipt is cryptic, abbreviated.  This means it might be hard to find in a search.   And, of course, you have to rely on a good OCR which is sometimes hard to get on receipts with light print.

 

For example, I have a receipt for a Cuisinart Coffeemaker DCC-100BK.  The receipt shows only "KITCHEN ELECT 086279013828"  Not very helpful in a search.

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 I leave the title as is for receipts that I scan into EN.  

 

Why is this?   ;)

 

Seems to me that receipts really need a good descriptive Title since often the text on the receipt is cryptic, abbreviated.  This means it might be hard to find in a search.   And, of course, you have to rely on a good OCR which is sometimes hard to get on receipts with light print.

 

For example, I have a receipt for a Cuisinart Coffeemaker DCC-100BK.  The receipt shows only "KITCHEN ELECT 086279013828"  Not very helpful in a search.

 

Why - volume and laziness. .

 

I batch scan receipts into single notes, batch tag them with Receipt and Fyyyy, and then put them in their own notebook,  Almost 3,000 of the little buggers in the 3 years I have been keeping them all  with yyyy_mm_dd_hh_mm_ss.pdf note titles more or less.  

 

It is true that there is no guarantee that the description on the receipt will be accurate and the quality of the OCR makes a difference.  However, the searches I do seem to be by company as opposed to item, which is safer for a hit.  Also, if I am looking for larger purchases I have credit card statements, user manuals, and sometimes a bill of sale of some sort to help.  So far I have been successful finding what I have been looking for.  Could just be lucky, who knows.

 

And if you couple all of this with the infrequency of the searches i execute, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze for me.  So yeah, laziness end of the day.  :)

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Why - volume and laziness. .

 

I batch scan receipts into single notes, batch tag them with Receipt and Fyyyy, and then put them in their own notebook,  Almost 3,000 of the little buggers in the 3 years 

 

Wow, that's a lot of receipts!  I only scan and make EN Notes for major purchases.  I don't see any need for storing receipts for gas, fast food, restaurants, groceries, etc.  My credit card statements capture those just fine.

 

EDIT:  

 

In fact that's what I use Quicken for -- it downloads and categorizes all of my bank accounts and credit cards in a flash.  I can even add a note to a particular transaction if needed.

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Why - volume and laziness. .

 

I batch scan receipts into single notes, batch tag them with Receipt and Fyyyy, and then put them in their own notebook,  Almost 3,000 of the little buggers in the 3 years 

 

Wow, that's a lot of receipts!  I only scan and make EN Notes for major purchases.  I don't see any need for storing receipts for gas, fast food, restaurants, groceries, etc.  My credit card statements capture those just fine.

 

EDIT:  

 

In fact that's what I use Quicken for -- it downloads and categorizes all of my bank accounts and credit cards in a flash.  I can even add a note to a particular transaction if needed.

 

Not sure I see the need either, but again laziness kicks in.  

 

Prior to 3 years ago I used to save the paper just in case of returns or whatever.  As I got more serious about paperless I decided to scan them.  Rather than spend the time sorting between consequential and not, I opted to scan everything.  In fact, I think for me it would take more time to sort out the groceries etc. than to just scan them all.  I just stuff 10 or so in the scanner and hit the button. bulk tag, bulk move to notebook.  Obviously not for everyone, but works for me.   ;)  

 

Yeah, I use Quicken as well, since dirt was brown.  Definitely provides better arithmetic than I get out of my Receipt notebook.

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@ blackcows

Some posters will disagree (euphemism :)) with me, but, apart from having usefully descriptive titles, I am also a firm believer in keeping my note database clean because, like you mention above, after a number of years a lot of rubbish has accumulated that clouds the picture.

Regular clean-up is not as difficult as it sounds if you have a system for it. Many people prefer to dump everything in EN because, hey, it will "remember everything", as the slogan goes. I see it slightly differently.

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@DutchPete,

 

If I am a some poster, I wouldn't disagree at all about descriptive titles and clean databases.  It's a world of free choice and we all tend to do things the way we like to do them.  I agree cleaner is better, and when/if the pain hits I suppose I will be doing some clean up.  In the meanwhile.... 

 

And now a joke which I think fits this forum from time to time:  As my brother in law says, "I would agree with you but then we both would be wrong".   ;)   I truly don't feel this way, people should use EN any way they want in my view, no right or wrong.  But I can't help but get a chuckle out of it.

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Prior to 3 years ago I used to save the paper just in case of returns or whatever.  As I got more serious about paperless I decided to scan them.  Rather than spend the time sorting between consequential and not, I opted to scan everything.  In fact, I think for me it would take more time to sort out the groceries etc. than to just scan them all.  I just stuff 10 or so in the scanner and hit the button. bulk tag, bulk move to notebook.  Obviously not for everyone, but works for me.   ;)  

 

Yeah, I use Quicken as well, since dirt was brown.  Definitely provides better arithmetic than I get out of my Receipt notebook.

 

 

It's interesting how we all develop habits to suit our style and needs, and then rarely re-think the habit.  I know it happens to me.

 

I used to keep all receipts, but now I only keep receipts for products of significant value:

  • For significant/major or products I might want to return (which I know at the time of purchase), I put the receipt in a special place in my wallet, which I pull out and put into the To Be Scanned folder when I get home.
  • All other receipts I throw into a Receipt Box, which gets emptied about once a month.  For these receipts I figure that if I haven't needed them within a month or so, I probably never will.

I find that most of my receipts are available electronically -- either via Quicken, purchased online, emailed to me for some in-store purchases.  So I really end up needing to scan very few receipts.

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My comment to her was how often does that really happen you need that?  Maybe once a year? She agreed maybe once a year, so I told her you could spend hours a year making a single bill easier to find or you could spend an extra 5 or 10 minutes once a year to find that bill.

 

As you said everyone needs to find a method that works for them and no method is better or worse.  Just wondering what others are doing.

 

 

When you accumulate thousands of notes, the time frame for search changes dramatically depending on structure.

I am up to 35,000 notes. I'd change the above statement to:

 

you could spend hours a year making thousands of notes easier to find; or you could spend an extra 5 or 10 minutes many times a year to possibly find a specific note or possibly never find it.

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Although this topic is specifically about what to put in your Note Title, I think the underlying issue is what do we need in a Note to quickly and accurately find it later.

 

I like and routinely use a combination of tags and Title to search on.

 

In my post above I mentioned a receipt for Cuisinart Coffeemaker DCC-100BK.

That is actually the Title of my Note for that product, which I consider an asset.

So it has a tag of "Asset" (as well as "Home.Appliance").

 

I have created a Saved Search that makes it easy and fast to find specific assets:

Tag:Asset intitle:

 

You might think it is incomplete and won't work since there is no text after the qualifier "intitle:"

But here is how it works:

  1. I select my Saved Search "Asset Search"
  2. This returns ALL Notes with a tag of "Asset", effectively ignoring the "intitle:" qualifier
  3. This makes it easy for me to append text to the Search in the Search box
  4. So I might add "Cuisinart"  (or I could add "coffee*")
  5. Thus, the Search box becomes   Tag:Asset intitle:Cuisinart
  6. This returns all of my assets that have "Cuisinart" in the Title

The great thing I like here is that I only have to type the text in the Title that I'm searching for.  Specifically I don't have to type "intitle:"

 

So I have a Saved Search that returns all of my assets, and can be quickly modified to find specific brand or type of asset.

 

This works in EN Mac (5.5.2 & 6.0.3), and I would assume it works in EN Win, but you will need to verify for yourself.

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I'm a completist when it comes to scanning.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=2033

But, I have stopped scanning receipts unless it is something of particular value or a payment of some kind (utilities). In a perfect world, I'd account for every single penny that comes in and out of my account, but the time spent on it is not worth it, so I just think in terms of returns and warranties nowadays. Otherwise, though, I scan a lot. On an average week, I could generate hundreds of pages of scans. Personally, I rely on titles a lot.

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

I find a good title saves time and effort in the long run. If I put something in Evernote, I don't bother with tags, notebooks, or changes to the metadata (created date). I will organize important stuff with note links into a personal wiki. I rely on searches for everything else.

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Apologies for shortening the quote.  

 

One thing - not sure about the rarely re-think bit for me.  Heck, I didn't scan any receipts for the first three years I used EN.  I tend to do a lot of tweaking as to how I use EN and other tools, even Quicken.  Not saying I am perfect at habit challenging by any measure, but I do like to be as efficient as I can be with what I do.  I tend to make change when a process starts to become cumbersome or inaccurate for me.

 

Relative to this receipt thingee, receipts are the only notes I have with "dumb" titles and they are isolated by tag/notebook.  Do I have some notes I probably don't need, yes.  Do I feel that it is more trouble to filter than just scan them all, yes.  Do receipt notes show up in my other All Notes searches, amazingly not.  Could I delete all receipts from 3 years ago in less than 30 seconds if I wanted, yes.  So inertia wins the battle on receipts for me and my use case.  From this thread others have different methods they are happy with as well.  Cool with me.  I like that the different views are presented.   :)

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Cal, I wasn't trying to pick on you.  The comment about habits wasn't pointed at you specifically.

 

For all EN users, my concern is that relying on just a scanned/OCR'd receipt without a good descriptive Note Title is, IMO, risky.  Maybe it's working for you Cal, but I wouldn't put it in the category of "best practices".

 

What occurs to me is that your practice of scanning 1,000 receipts/year has lead to not having time/interest of entering descriptive Note Titles.  To me, it is obvious which receipts are important, and which are not, and it doesn't take hardly any time to cull through them because I throw away most of the receipts when I get them.

So, for me, it's not really a burden to enter a good Title for each receipt.

 

But, in the final analysis, I agree that each of us need to select the process/system that works best for ourself.  

The only caveat is that IF a person goes years scanning into Evernote without a good Title, it may be too late (for those receipts) when he/she discovers that he/she can't find the receipt he/she needs.

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No worries, I didn't think you were picking on me.  You might want to consider not putting my method in the category of "JMichael's best practices".  Cuz now you are picking on me!   ;)

 

All joking aside, I've always been a better practice kind of guy as opposed to best practice, Pareto and all that.  Plus I've found subjectivity seems to enter into best practice which sort of defeats the exercise.  For me process is a balancing act between effort and result.  I'm happy with both at the moment.  My guess is I will start purging years worth of receipts on an annual basis at some point in time when the actual receipts don't matter anymore.  Call it Cal's better practice, no more no less.

 

I think we are still  on the edges of the OP, though maybe enough about receipts.

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You're right, my "best practices" was probably a subjective call on my part.  Although given the number of experienced users posting here that use some form of descriptive Title, it probably makes it to a nomination for "best practice"  B)

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How about creating a "tickler file" of sorts... except that you would simply have a tag just for each month of the year. Every bill due in January of 2015, for example, would get tagged accordingly... regardless of the title. You could tag each note with two separate tags (month and year). That way you'll save on how many tags you create. Over a ten-year period, for instance, you would only need a total of 22 tags.

Whenever you need to search for a bill from a specific month in a specific year (which in many cases should be easily identifiable by the thumbnail image in snippet/ card view), you'd only have to rummage through a handful of bills. I'm talking especially about personal household bills, etc. I doubt this would be very effective for a business.

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@Frank.dg:  I guess your "tickler file" approach might work, but it wouldn't for me.  I can almost always remember the event or purchase, but often can't remember WHEN, sometimes not even the year if it wasn't in the last year or so.  This is where I really buy into the Evernote motto of being your "external brain".   ;)

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My use of Evernote and the optimal situation for me seems to change with each passing year.  Traditionally with titles I would use something like "KY Utilities Bill (yyyy-MM-DD)" where the date is the statement date.  I used to use the Due Date of the bill but that convention changed as well.  Having the date in the title like this allows you to sort on title and get a nice chronological list.

 

Lately, I've been removing the date since it seems perfunctory considering each note has metadata.  Here's my current setup:

 

How-I-Handle-Note-Titles.png

 

In this example, the Created is the statement date and Updated is when I paid it.  I'm sure I don't really need all of these statements in Evernote, but I already have a lot of my other statements in there from FileThis, so it just seems appropriate and doesn't take much work.  It's easier than going to the site if I have any questions about my bills.

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