Notebook limit for Premium subscribers

[Evercurious 3]

As I recall there was and still may be a limit of 250 notebooks.  Will this ceiling be raised (or has it been)?

[jbenson2 2,147]

It is still 250. I have not seen any indication the number will be raised.

https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/23283158

 

That is why some heavy users of Evernote try to use a small number of notebooks.

Each notebook (work, home, leisure, miscellaneous, archive, etc. ) covers a wide range of topics.

The detailed level of specificity is obtained with the use of tags, consistent title structure, and keywords.

[Analyst444 182]

Evercurious - I'm with jbenson2. If you find that the limit of 250 Notebooks is holding you back, it implies to me that you haven't used EN Tags enough.

 

If that is the case, then here's a workaround that will give you the impression that you have thousands of Notebooks. - - - Create Tags named Folder001, Folder002, Folder003, etc. Click on one of those Tags on the Tag window and you will get a list of Notes with that Tag. It will all operate pretty much like (but not exactly like) a bunch of Notebooks.

[Evercurious 3]

I don't mean to sound presumptuous (sure EN gave it some thought in creating the limit), but suggesting workarounds, and limiting the number of notebooks (while adding more tags instead) is a tad counter-intuitive...if one happens to be a librarian, which I am; and yes, even if one is an EN power user.

 

The purpose of having a theoretically unlimited number of notebooks as well as an actual unlimited number of tags, I believe, is to allow the creation of what I call a UDO, or User-Defined Ontology.  This requires the ability to create one's own hierarchical taxonomy as we now can do using the stack-notebook-tag system.  Over time, with constant use, however, this can become problematic, leaving one wanting (though not necessarily needing) more.

 

Analyst444, you suggested that perhaps I haven't been doing enough tagging.  In fact, as I'm nearing 9,000 notes after 6 years as a Premium user, I can tell you that each of those notes contains at least 2 tags on average, so that ain't the answer, nor is your Folder001 etc. workaround...for me at least (glad it works for you though).

 

Phil Libin recently ruminated on the composition of EN users.  Those of us who've loved the tool from the start, and who have had few problems (while having many, many suggestions for improvement) with it over the years are bound to ask questions such as mine in time.  The reality is, however, that the vast majority - like 95% - are using it for free, which is just fine, but it does little to motivate EN devs to enhance the product.

 

I envision even greater applications of EN - Google Glass made a point of integrating its API during the Explorer testing phase - but don't expect it to occur any time soon unless there's some mammoth merger on the horizon.  So I'll just hope for the best, post my suggestions to the forum, and, to use a favorite sports cliche, just take what they give me.

 

Thanks for listening (if you've made it this far).

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

This is somewhat academic, since it seems unlikely that Evernote will ever offer us a large number of hierarchical Notebooks (sub-notebooks), but I thought I'd mention that perhaps some people think large number of NBs are unmanageable because they are thinking of a flat structure.

 

If one could use a system of hierarchical NBs, like we have hierarchical folders on our PCs/Macs today, a well-organized structure could easily (and does on our computers) support thousands of NBs that are very manageable.  This is done simply by self-limiting (i.e. by user's design) the number of NBs at each level to a relatively small number.  10 is a good target.  3 levels gets you to 1,000 NBs.  A good example is Clients > Projects > Tasks

 

If with this you provide a user friendly UI to expand one, or all, at any level, then you can quickly navigate through them.

Of course you still have, and can use, Tags and searching to cut through/across all Notebooks to quickly find stuff common to multiple Notebooks.  IMO, the combination of hierarchical NBs, hierarchical Tags, and full boolean search would be hugely powerful and flexible.  But I suppose that's just a dream.  

 

As I said, while this may be interesting, it is mostly likely purely academic.  

[CalS 5,280]

One of the big differences between notebooks and tags is that notes are stored in notebooks, not in tags.  So you may be thinking who cares or so what?  IMO, EN is more about finding things than storing things, so you should store things in a way that helps you find them.  A nested notebook structure is good for storage since it is so familiar, but can make a real PITA out of searching, other than perhaps in an all notes context. 

 

Since I don't want to work hard to find things, my logic is to have as few notebooks as possible and the "right" number of tags.  It's worked so far for me.  With the usual caveat, it is how I think, not how everyone does, so if you want nested notebooks fine by me.  But not needed here.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

One of the big differences between notebooks and tags is that notes are stored in notebooks, not in tags.  

 

Yep, and sub-notebooks (if EN had them) would be just like dividers in your physical notebooks.

Search is good ONLY when you know what terms to search for.

Opening up a NB, and looking at the divider tabs give the reader an instant about the major contents of the NB (assuming it's well designed).

 

Hierarchical NBs would be great to use when you want to just browse, not sure of exactly what you're looking for.

Searching (with tags, NB Title, etc) is great when you have a more specific idea of what you want, and maybe don't know where it's located.

 

I like both.  

 

Evernote search is NOT like Google search.  Google can take a wide variety of alternate keywords to help find the same topic.

[Bill Myers 458]

One of the big differences between notebooks and tags is that notes are stored in notebooks, not in tags.  So you may be thinking who cares or so what?  IMO, EN is more about finding things than storing things, so you should store things in a way that helps you find them.  A nested notebook structure is good for storage since it is so familiar, but can make a real PITA out of searching, other than perhaps in an all notes context. 

 

Since I don't want to work hard to find things, my logic is to have few notebooks as possible and the "right" number of tags.  It's worked so far for me.  With the usual caveat, it is how I think, not how everyone does, so if you want nested notebooks fine by me.  But not needed here.

 

That is a really useful insight. I've avoided tags until now because I'm so used to thinking in terms of putting things in a folder. But that's a concept carried over from physical paper and doesn't take full advantage of the capabilities made possible by digital tools. I think I am going to try to pare down my notebooks and do some tagging. Thanks for sharing!

[CalS 5,280]

Bill,

 

You are welcome.  I hope it works well for you as well.