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so i have started a new sport and take lessons 3 times a week . after each lesson i write down notes in EN in a specific notebook  and send them (chat) to  the instructor ,who then makes comments and suggestions . each note is organized by date written . at some point there is going to be a lot of notes . this sport has offense ,defense,footwork,strategy ,and maybe one or two other subheadings . each lesson covers multiple areas so a note may have offense ,footwork,and strategy,etc.

in the future i may want to search or call up  for example all of the offensive notes , but if each dated note has multiple tags for what  is in the note then when i do a search of tags ill get almost every note

 

so after that explanation i am trying to come with a way to somehow tag or identify one area (like offense) so in the future i can search for just that area

anybody have ideas

thank you and sorry for the confusing way i asked this 

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I have a similar area on my life: coaching debate. Many of the notes share common tags (types of debate, side of debate, portions of the round). But when I search using one tag, I will only get notes that have that one tag, and if I search with two tags then I get only notes that have both those notes. For instance I can search on one type of debate by entering this in my search bar "tag:LD". That brings up 197 notes, but if I want to zero in on cross examination for only LD then I had a second tag "TAG:cx  tag:LD". That zeros me in 3 notes. I might decide that I'll look at all cross examination notes and remove the LD tag "TAG:cx". That brings up 46 notes. 

 

In my view you'll find that people organize their tags in one of two ways in Evernote.

 

One is to "nest" them and drag some tags under other tags. This is what I do for the most part. I'll attach a picture of what that looks like.

 

post-87997-0-39162200-1440796907_thumb.j

 

Others like to have a prefix for each area and then add on the more specific to the end. So:

  • debate-cx
  • debate-ld
  • OR
  • debatecx
  • debateld

 

The nice thing about this second method is when you type in tags, you can begin typing in the area and then all the tags for that area will show up to choose from. 

 

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  • Level 5*

Create tags for offense, defense, footwork, strategy, and whatever else.  Only apply the tags that are pertinent to each note.  If you tag every note with offense you will get every note in search of the tag offense, can't do much about that. 

 

You could create a template note and organize it such that that it is organized by area, you could break the session into multiple notes, one for each type of area, and then combine them in a table of contents note for the day.  I doubt if either of those option sounds appealing for what you are doing, the second would cut down on the search results.  If you only want to see offense stuff when you do an offense search, the notes should only contain offense stuff.  Whatever you do, if you have date in the note title make it be the prefix with something like 2015.08.27.  This will create a friendly title sort.

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I have a "Recipes" tag. All notes that are recipes have this tag. Nested underneath the "Recipes" tag are tags by type of recipe. Because I have on occasion accidentally dragged a nested tag to another location, I prefix each of these tags with "Rec_xxxxx" so it is clear that it is intended to be a nested tag and that it belongs to "Recipes". So it looks like this

 

Recipes

   Rec__Tips & Compilations (This tag has two underscores because I want to force it to the very top of the list)

   Rec_Appetizers

   Rec_Beverages

   Rec_Breads

   Rec_Brownies

   Rec_Cakes

   Rec_Candy

   Rec_Chicken 

   Rec_Cookies

   Rec_Desserts NOS (NOS = Not Otherwise Specified for desserts that aren't, say, cookies or brownies, etc.)

 

A recipe can have more than one "type" tag but it HAS TO have at least one. So say I have a recipe for Chicken Salad with Potatoes. That'll be tagged Recipes; Rec_Chicken; Rec_Potatoes; Rec_Salads. That may seem redundant because the title of the note is Chicken Salad with Potatoes and, well, search dummy! BUT I try to minimize the number of notebooks I have so my 263 recipe notes are mushed into my default notebook with my 1472 other notes. If I search for "Chicken" in that notebook every note I have that has "chicken" in it will come up but I really only want recipe notes that are chicken-based so I click on the Rec_Chicken tag and there they are. Then I can search current context to narrow down, or just search for "chicken" and notes with tag "Rec_Chicken". Also, for my organizing purposes my recipe notes DO NOT contain any other tags besides the main "Recipes" tag and the type tags. If a recipe came from Grandma ("Family & Friends"), Some Awesome Restaurant ("Restaurants"), Good Housekeeping magazine ("Media"), or BlahBlah Blog ("Blog Posts") it will be noted in the note itself. When searching/browsing, I'm only ever gonna wanna find recipes by type; I'm never gonna try to find ALL of Grandma's recipes so I'm not going to tag that note with "Family & Friends". BUT...if I ever DO want to find all of Grandma's recipes, I just click on the "Recipes" tag and then search current context for "Grandma". 

 

 

Using my methodology you could set up tags like this (I've decided your sport is MMA):

 

MMA

   MMA_Offense

   MMA_Defense

   MMA_Footwork

   MMA_Strategy

   MMA_Other1

   MMA_Other2

 

 

ALL of your sport-related notes have the "MMA" tag AND one or more of the nested tags. At this point I think you have two options:

 

1. Give each note only ONE nested tag for what area the note predominantly covers.

2. If all of your notes are really going to cover multiple areas, you might be stuck with multiple tags and multiple search results. In this case I'd suggest carefully formatting your notes so that the body of the note is organized to clearly delineate the practice areas so you can easily find the information you're looking for within the note:

 

NOTE TITLE: 8/28/15 Lesson #12 - Learned Arm Bar Technique

 

Offense

Get opponents arm, pull on it until joint locks, keep pulling until opponent taps out. 

 

Defense

Don't let opponent get arm.

 

Footwork

Arm bar. Duh, no footwork. (Yes, I know there's legwork involved, just being a doofus here.)

 

Strategy

Work with Ronda Rousey to master technique but don't actually ever fight Ronda Rousey. 

 

 

Alternately, you might rethink how you organize your notes all together and just have one note for offense, one for defense, etc. You create your complete post-lesson note and once you've gotten the feedback from the instructor, you can copy/paste (if you want to keep/archive a copy of the original lesson note as-is) or cut/paste the relevant sections to the applicable note type:

 

NOTE TITLE: MMA Offense

 

8/28/15 Lesson #12 - Learned Arm Bar Technique

Get opponents arm, pull on it until joint locks, keep pulling until opponent taps out. 

 

9/1/15 Lesson # 13 - Blah Blah Blah

Here's where the text goes. 

 

 

 

The nice thing about EN is that you can organize it however it works for you and you can also change it if your needs change. I used to have large notes that contained content for one main subject and then subcategories/sections within the note. When I started having trouble finding the content I was looking for within the note I decided it was time to break those long notes into individual notes. Now the note title is "Main Subject - Subcategory" and they're much easier for me to find. My elephant brain is ever-evolving so I'd also like to note that I've changed my EN organization multiple times (one time even un-tagging and obsessively re-tagging EVERY. SINGLE. NOTE.) and also organize different content in different ways depending on what my needs are for that content. My suggestion here before really getting deep into note creation, editing, organization, etc. is to sit down and really think about the notes you'll be taking for these lessons and how you think you will reference them in the future which will give you an idea of how you might want to organize them. What's the most important feature of the notes? Do you have a need to reference them by date/time of lesson, or is the subject(s) of each lesson more important than the when?

 

 

(Sorry this is so long...I got carried away. This is why my coworkers no longer initiate EN conversations with me...)  :unsure:

 

 

 

 
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fantastic suggestions . thank you very much. learning a ton . not that it matters but the sport is fencing . i also do car racing and of course i also work a day job . for my brain notebooks work best . so i have a fencing notebook. i think that what i want to do is be able to search ,for example , all of the offensive techniques that we go over . but in every lesson we do a little offense or defense or basic skills . i dont know why but for some reason i think knowing the day of the lesson is important . 

i think what might work best (even though it might be more labor intensive ) is for each lesson create a separate not for offense ,defense etc. maybe tag it as such and use nested tags to help organize each area 

does that make sense 

may i ask a couple of questions 

i send these notes to my insructor . she critiques and sends these back to me . we use the EN chat function . so rather than sending her 3 or 4 notes after each lesson is there a way to "nest" the notes under the date or a way of combining the notes so i dont have to send her multiple notes 

second question is ,can yo direct me to a "how to " as it relates to how to nest tags 

thank you very much    great forum

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  • Level 5*

To consolidate the notes for your instructor you can use the merge function.  The problem is the notes that get merged are deleted and put in the trash.  You can restore them from trash right after, but this may be more work than it is worth to you.  In any case to do it,

  1. Highlight the notes for the day, either Shift-click if they are together in the view, or Alt-click if not,
  2. Right click and select Merge Notes. 
  3. A new note will be created with title bars between the notes. 
  4. Go to trash and restore the merged notes. 

Again, this may be more pain than gain for you

 

Nesting tags is a drag/drop function.  So if you create a parent tag called Fencing, you can drag your fencing tags on top of it and they will then nest below it.  Per the above post if you want to be able to do a search across all fencing tags it is a good idea to add the same prefix to those tags.  I tend to be lazy, so the fewer the characters the better.  If could be as simple as F.tagname.  That way a tag:f.* search will return all notes containing a fencing tag.  If you don't like the prefix idea, you can always create a saved search which contains all the tag names. 

 

Nice thing about EN is that you can rename the tags and change methods if you like without much if any pain.  Not so easy with note content as it relates to 1 for the day or many for the day.  You may find it easier to just have one note and scroll as opposed to the machinations required to have multiples.  So, I would recommend that you test drive a bit to see what works best for you.  FWIW

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fantastic suggestions . thank you very much. learning a ton . not that it matters but the sport is fencing . i also do car racing and of course i also work a day job . for my brain notebooks work best . so i have a fencing notebook. i think that what i want to do is be able to search ,for example , all of the offensive techniques that we go over . but in every lesson we do a little offense or defense or basic skills . i dont know why but for some reason i think knowing the day of the lesson is important . 

i think what might work best (even though it might be more labor intensive ) is for each lesson create a separate not for offense ,defense etc. maybe tag it as such and use nested tags to help organize each area 

does that make sense 

may i ask a couple of questions 

i send these notes to my insructor . she critiques and sends these back to me . we use the EN chat function . so rather than sending her 3 or 4 notes after each lesson is there a way to "nest" the notes under the date or a way of combining the notes so i dont have to send her multiple notes 

second question is ,can yo direct me to a "how to " as it relates to how to nest tags 

thank you very much    great forum

 

One way to handle this is to make each area a separate note, but then use note links to create an index note for each lesson. This way you only place the specific tag on the note with that content, but you have an overview of each lesson as well.

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