Be Gentle! Should I more files on dropbox, or evernote?

[AWB79 0]

First time poster - so I apologize in advance for "another one of those" posts.  (Wait - what?  This isn't reddit - and no one wants to take off my head for asking a stupid question?  Awesome!)

 

I am not 1000% sure I am using Evernote correctly, but it feels good - and I have never stopped anything that felt good.  I am mostly just creating notes, and tucking them in notebooks here and there.  I am mostly making generic notebooks for the various aspects of my life - and stacking notebooks within those, for the organization of those "aspects".  I am going to town with tags - so that I can find stuff later....

 

My question is - should I be trying to use Dropbox more, in conjunction with EN?  Specifically: 

 

I am in Sales - as well as Marketing.  In order to juggle both jobs separately, I am attempting to go as mobile as possible.  In my sales role, we use brochures (we call sell sheets) that are basically just 1-2 page PDFs about the product.  There is probably about 50-60 of them I would guess. 

 

Should I put each PDF into EN - in a "Sell Sheets" folder....or should I dump them into a DB folder, and grab them on the go from there?  I would be saving the additional cost of EN for now - but I know it is inevitable that I am going to have to go premium.  I like that I can send the sell sheets from my email in EN - but I probably should have those come from my company email account (so I would probably have to email them from DB anyway - right?)  I could change to my company email to be my EN email too - I assume. 

 

Anyway - I thought I would dip my toes into this forum, and see what the recommendations would be. 

 

 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I use both Evernote and Dropbox.

 

Evernote is a great PIM (Personal Info Manager), makes it easy to capture info of all types.

 

Dropbox is much better at file management.  It is much easier in DB to quickly scan a list of files that are well organized than it is to do the same in Evernote.

 

So, if you have a set of files (brochures/call sheets/price lists/etc) that lend themselves to classical hierarchical (folder, sub-folder) organization, then DB may be the best place for them.  DB also includes file version management which can be very useful.

 

The way I combine the use of both is to put links to the files in DB in EN Notes.  The links can be either/both to the Dropbox files on your PC/Mac or to the web site.

 

OTOH, the advantage of putting PDFs in Evernote is the Search feature, and the inline display of the PDF in the Note.

 

I'd probably suggest getting an Evernote Premium account on a monthly basis ($5/month) and test out the various options for organizing.

For a test, you could even put the same file (PDF) in both EN an DB to see which works best for you.

[jbenson2 2,147]

I use DropBox for some storage.

 

What prevents me from using it more frequently is that I have not found a way to search for a key-word or phrase inside a group of files. Perhaps it is possible, but I have not found the trick.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

What prevents me from using it more frequently is that I have not found a way to search for a key-word or phrase inside a group of files. Perhaps it is possible, but I have not found the trick.

 

JB, looks like DropBox can search inside files, but only for business accounts:

 

See:  How can I use full-text search to search the contents of my files?