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Tagging & Alternatives to EN


WeCanLearnAnything

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Is there any way to replace Evernote's awesome hierarchical tagging system on any of Evernote's alternatives?

Now that Evernote has reduced their "seamless access on all devices" to "seamless access on 2 devices", I am thinking of switching to something else.

The main thing I'd miss about Evernote is managing my learning. I tag every note with:

  1. Discipline. Some things are multidisciplinary. For example, my notes on the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" are tagged with "Summaries", "Cognitive Biases", "Key Mental Models", and "Education - General". I can easily synthesize my learning across disciplines and sources by clicking on a single tag now.
  2. Dates at which I'm going to review the material to ensure I really master it for the long-run. I'm going to quiz myself on "Thinking, Fast and Slow" on all the dates I tagged the note with: a few times in July 2016, once in August 2016, December 2016, and once in 2017. Clicking on "July 2016" tells me everything I need to review this month. Super convenient!

Is there any way to do this on any of Evernote's alternatives?

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14 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Is there any way to do this on any of Evernote's alternatives?

Perhaps better posted in one of the alternative's forums?

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1 hour ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Is there any way to replace Evernote's awesome hierarchical tagging system on any of Evernote's alternatives?

Now that Evernote has reduced their "seamless access on all devices" to "seamless access on 2 devices", I am thinking of switching to something else.

I know a great alternative to the Evernote Basic Account

The Evernote Plus Account

For a reasonable cost, you get all the Basic features, plus no limit on devices, plus ...
It works for me

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Don't know that I could recommend one, never been on any alternatives that have been discussed here.  However, One Note and others have been mentioned in the Changes to EN Pricing thread, if you can wade through 60+ pages.  ;)   

Not for me though, I'm sticking with EN, too much invested and what I've gleaned from those who have tested other products says the others don't fit my use case.  

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21 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I know a great alternative to the Evernote Basic Account

The Evernote Plus Account

For a reasonable cost, you get all the Basic features, plus no limit on devices, plus ...

Evernote is a couple of orders of magnitude too buggy for me to pay for. I mostly use (what appears to be) the worst-in-class note editor. As I posted in the pricing change thread:

 

22 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I still deal with plenty of random font size changes, incorrect default font sizes, bizarre behavior with tables (up key=left, down key=right, strange and random column width, content of rows swapping for no reason, etc.), weird print preview images, nearly unreadable print jobs, inability to print a selection of pages, misplaced bullets and checkboxes, extra outlines on checkboxes, total failures with backspace and deleting... and that's just what I can think of right off the top of my head because I got frustrated enough to write about most of them on these forums.

Searches led me to discover that many of these bugs date to ~2009 and are still going strong.

And those are just the bugs I've experienced only over the past few months since I became a regular user, only on Windows, and only from the note editor alone! I can't even imagine how many bugs I'd encounter if I used more of the advanced features. David Pogue and other posters in these forums have been reporting many bugs on all versions of Evernote for many years.

Perhaps there have been tons of bugs squashed but tons more remain.

 

I need software that I can trust, software that does not annoy me persistently. I need features that correspond to the core marketing messages to not suddenly disappear. That I would pay for.

Especially annoying is knowing how hard the Evernote employees have worked on WorkChat, branded socks, interface redesigns, etc. while "permabugs" permeate so much of the basic Evernote experience.

I want to use software that works. I want the company that makes such software to focus on making basic features reliable instead of adding new features.

Evernote does not fit the bill.

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6 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I mostly use (what appears to be) the worst-in-class note editor.Evernote does not fit the bill.

Yes, I do find the Evernote editor quite basic.  For serious work, I switch to dedicated apps

>>I need software that I can trust

I trust Evernote completely.  And I have my backup processes if/when things go wrong.

>>Evernote does not fit the bill.

Then why are you using this app/service.  
Personally, if I felt the same as you, I would have found an alternative solution long ago

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16 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Yes, I do find the Evernote editor quite basic.  For serious work, I switch to dedicated apps

>>I need software that I can trust

I trust Evernote completely.  And I have my backup processes if/when things go wrong.

It sounds like you haven't experienced many of the 7-year-old trust-busting bugs that I have.

I feel like Evernote should, in theory, be sufficient since I mostly just type things into Evernote and tag them. I don't use WorkChat, or optical scanning, or fancy searches, or anything like that. Amazingly, despite being note-taking software, Evernote admits that it needs to improve the way it handles typing, hence the giant note editor revamp. I shouldn't need "dedicated apps" or any other app for typing, but Evernote's ubiquitous and persistent bugs have created that need.

The fact that Evernote's typing experience has been such an unreliable experience on all platforms for so many years is what has mostly eliminated my trust in this company.

 

16 minutes ago, DTLow said:

>>Evernote does not fit the bill.

Then why are you using this app/service.  
Personally, if I felt the same as you, I would have found an alternative solution long ago

It's only now that I'm starting to realize how buggy Evernote is and always has been. That's why I'm searching for an alternative now.

Had I discovered this sooner, I *never* would have invested in Evernote and obviously would have switched sooner. Unreliable and bloated software is one of my biggest pet peeves and, sadly, this means Evernote is now a pet peeve.

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55 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Evernote admits that it needs to improve the way it handles typing, hence the giant note editor revamp.

I've been using Evernote for several years,  and have 22K+ notes and a humungous database to show it.  I run the beta channel for both desktop and mobile,  and have certainly experienced problems from time to time with Evernote.  Just as I have with most other software I use.  The "internet" (not just one thing,  but a mass of interconnected services) is not an exact science;  my own,  and many other web pages have behaved erratically,  and only today a very IT literate colleague swore like a sailor for 2 straight minutes when a long post to <another service> disappeared unexpectedly - then started retyping the content again (into a word processor this time) with frequent saves.

As the nice alien from Predator puts it "Stuff Happens".  More with computers than anywhere else.  Get used to it,  work around it,  and get on with life.  Or find another way to do it.

The Editor 'revamp' - just for accuracy - isn't because Evernote wants to improve on its previous attempts.  When different teams were working on different OS's and devices,  the individual team brief was to make the app behave in the best way possible on that specific device.  So each editor was written by each team to take best advantage of that OS.  Then those pesky users, 1 who like Oliver,  keep on wanting MORE,  complained that indents in iOS didn't work in exactly the same way as indents in Mac OS or Windows. 

The only way to bring all those different behaviors in line was to get a team to rewrite the editor in such a way that Android / iOS / WIndows and MacOS (all of which have updated themselves several times since the project started) can all use the same module.  I'd imagine writing an editor with basic Word functionality from scratch in even one of those languages would be quite labour intensive.  Making it available to all four?  (Not to mention the many different candy flavors of Android).  Interesting.

1 hour ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Unreliable and bloated

It isn't.  The app has improved considerably over the past few years on Windows and Android,  and AFAIK on the other OS's too.  If you find otherwise and you're a paying customer,  use the support links.

Unlike Word or Adobe or Firefox or Quicktime,  Evernote has a few different payment levels so you can choose something closer to your needs.  Once you've chosen,  the package has a specific number of features.  It will get improved over time,  but what you see is what you got.  You can't complain that it doesn't boil your eggs for you too.

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1 hour ago, gazumped said:

... You can't complain that it doesn't boil your eggs for you too.

 

When you say things like "You can't complain that it doesn't boil your eggs for you, too." it makes me think that you have not read this thread.

What did I say that is even metaphorically comparable to egg boiling? If anything, I said the *opposite*, that I want Evernote to focus on making old stuff work instead of working on new features. See this quote from this thread:

2 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

...

Especially annoying is knowing how hard the Evernote employees have worked on WorkChat, branded socks, interface redesigns, etc. while "permabugs" permeate so much of the basic Evernote experience.

...

I also have posted elsewhere saying Evernote should not make new features and focus on fixing bugs instead.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

... The "internet" ... is not an exact science... 

"Stuff Happens".  More with computers than anywhere else...

Of course it isn't an exact science but here's one thing we know for sure: If you prioritize branded backpacks, socks, and paper notebooks, recipe sharing, WorkChat, color tagging, and many UI redesigns over bug fixes, then bugs are more likely to endure.

This ongoing weird prioritization is what I object to.

 

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

....  Get used to it,  work around it, and get on with life.  Or find another way to do it.

I am trying to find another way to do it. That's why I started this thread!     *forehead slap*    :)

 

 

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

[Bloated and unreliable]

It isn't.  The app has improved considerably over the past few years on Windows and Android,  and AFAIK on the other OS's too.

The note editor isn't buggy? Read below.

 

On 6/30/2016 at 0:35 PM, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I still deal with plenty of random font size changes, incorrect default font sizes, bizarre behavior with tables (up key=left, down key=right, strange and random column width, rows swapping for no reason, etc.), weird print preview images, nearly unreadable print jobs, inability to print a selection of pages, misplaced bullets and checkboxes, extra outlines on checkboxes, troubles with backspace and deleting... and that's just what I can think of right off the top of my head because I got frustrated enough to write about most of them on these forums... David Pogue and other posters in these forums have been reporting many bugs on all versions of Evernote for many years.

Perhaps there have been tons of bugs squashed but tons more remain.

I believe every single one of the bugs I mentioned in that list are many years old. Some date to 2008. Is this acceptable because it has to do with computers and "Stuff Happens"? I'll ask the same questions here that I've asked in other threads:

 

1. Evernote employees haven't fixed these bugs over the past 8 years because _______________________.

2. Evernote users must tolerate these bugs for ____ more years while new features are developed, such as _________________________________________________________________________.

 

So far, no Evernote employee or supporter/user/defender has even acknowledged these questions, not to mention answer them.

 

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

... If you find otherwise and you're a paying customer,  use the support links.

I've started many threads in this forum and a few support tickets. Only one of the threads has solved a problem. When I asked Shane (Evernote employee) if I'd still be frustrated by the same bugs in 2021, 2031 and perhaps forever, he closed the support ticket with a vague promise along the lines of "We might fix this in the future, but we don't offer timetables." 

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47 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Anyways... coming back to the whole point of this thread...

Does anybody know of other programs that can handle the type of tagging I want to do?

The tagging you described seemed fairly simple - no hierarchies?

I don't think you'll find this an issue - my Mac OS can handle that when I export my notes into html file format.  
I'm sure that 
most note apps could handle it (except for Apple Notes)

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8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

The tagging you described seemed fairly simple - no hierarchies.

I don't think you'll find this an issue - my Mac OS can handle that when I export my notes into html file format

This is how I'm shaping my tag structure. I expanded the "Behavioral Sciences" part to show how detailed I would ultimately like my tagging to be.

I guess I could do it without hierarchies, but the subject area tags would almost have to be far less specific.

I agree that I do not really need any hierarchy for the review schedule part.

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