Increase notebook limit

[Dereck 9]

I've already read the multitude of posts on this topic. I've been an Evernote user since the beginning and I've always thought it was a great product. As soon as I thought of a feature, the Evernote folks have already been cooking it up. Recently I ran up against the notebook limit, I contacted customer support and they gave my the "you should use tags instead" line. I am a Developer myself, and while I do not purport to know how Evernote is built or the whoas of maintaining a system with so many users, I can't imagine any reason why arbitrarily setting a limit of 250 notebooks, improves system performance or usability. It seems that a decision was made that people should use tags rather than notebooks without any regard for how current users prefer to work. In particular, the fact that I choose to be a premium user and and still limited to 250 notebooks seems absurd. At least choose a number that very few people would run up against like 1000, or make the free limit 100 and the premium limit 1000, that way if the limit really bothers someone it will incentivize them to pay for your service. 

[DTLow 5,736]

6 hours ago, Etonreve said:

I hate to think of doing this, but what is the impact of archiving a notebook or deleting a notebook? I assume the notes first have to be removed and moved elsewhere.

There is no archive feature so it's hard to comment on the impact.  What actions would you be planning to take?

Deleting a notebook would delete the notes; yes, I would want to save them in some form

[Etonreve 188]

4 hours ago, DTLow said:

Like the IKEA package that comes with all sorts of parts to be assembled.

I can see needing extra parts if you're using parts differently than intended.
I usually go with the Connect A to B instructions; not that I'm defending Ikea 

It is ridiculous to argue that customers using the notebooks are not using the product as it is intended. Assigning subjects, clients, etc. to individual notebooks is not some kind of weird hack.

[DTLow 5,736]

4 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

I'm also concerned about the storage capacity of the free accounts.

Good point.  Not so much storage capacity but the upload limits can be easily exceeded
Even though a paid account is uploading notes, it's charged against the allowance of the notebooks owner

[DTLow 5,736]

6 hours ago, Etonreve said:

I use them when they are appropriate.

 

51 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

It is ridiculous to argue that customers using the notebooks are not using the product as it is intended. 

 

I'd suggest Evernote does not intend for you to use more than 250 notebooks in a personal account

Plan accordingly 

[CalS 5,280]

14 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

I'm also concerned about the storage capacity of the free accounts.

Yup, you have to plan it.  I bought Premium for a month when I archived a whole bunch of project notes, 5 GB worth.  I didn't do it for notebooks, I don't have many.  I did it to simplify project searches.  It has worked well ever since.  I don't share with my prime account.  The notes are from older projects and it is easy enough to open the backup account in conjunction with my prime account.  If I had a request it would be for EN to let you set on demand sync by account so as not to have download the free account.

23 minutes ago, Etonreve said:

I search by notebook and keywords. Using Evernote is supposed to be easy.

Different styles.  I search by tags and keywords, and it is easy for me (36k notes and 400 tags).  Lucky me.  No doubt should EN ever decide to add more notebooks it would become easier for you.

[Etonreve 188]

24 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Good point.  Not so much storage capacity but the upload limits can be easily exceeded
Even though a paid account is uploading notes, it's charged against the allowance of the notebooks owner

Quote

 

Thank you for acknowledging that.

[Etonreve 188]

5 minutes ago, CalS said:

 

Different styles.  I search by tags and keywords, and it is easy for me (36k notes and 400 tags).  Lucky me.  No doubt should EN ever decide to add more notebooks it would become easier for you.

 

Yes, people have different styles. My style is not uncommon. I admit that when I first heard of the 250 notebook maximum I wasn't concerned. But I've been using Evernote for about eight years. I use it every day, several times a day. That's a lot of notes and notebooks.

[wahlink 3]

I totally agree with those who feel that 250 is too small for a Premium paid account. I have a small university research lab and its very important to create folders based on different levels of access. I have used Evernote Premium for as long as I can remember an now that I'm up against that 250 notebook limit it is severely impacting teh way we share information. Tags are confusing and not an option especially since it doesn't lend itself to different levels of access. MS Onenote has no such limits and unfortunately if I can't add more notebooks I will have to switch over to that until evernote management addresses this. Kind of sad that the Evernote Premium account has become a second class citizen and offers less value than free Onenote

[DTLow 5,736]

24 minutes ago, wahlink@hotmail.com said:

its very important to create folders based on different levels of access.

That's my primary use of notebooks; sharing data with different levels of access.  
It looks like this shared access function is being replaced by the new Spaces feature.
I'm also looking foward to notes existing in multiple Spaces.

I think the limit issue has more to do with using notebooks to create different views of the data collection.

>>Tags are confusing

Please explain.
In many ways, Tags and Notebooks are interchangeable (attributes assigned to a note)
For example, with a note about insurance; you can have an Insurance Notebook, or an Insurance Tag

[rezecib 98]

I'm not actually sure why it's limited to 250 notebooks-- given that tags are limited to 10k and content uploads, note sizes, and note counts are also limited, it seems a bit superfluous to me. I'm looking into it a bit to see if I can get a better explanation.

Edit:

Asked around, there were historical reasons to have a limit at 250, having to do with client UI and such. Those reasons have since been solved. It's still not as simple as changing a number, but it's easy enough now that it could happen. I don't think there are any plans to do it but I personally would like to see it.

[tavor 668]

4 hours ago, rezecib said:

I'm not actually sure why it's limited to 250 notebooks-- given that tags are limited to 10k and content uploads, note sizes, and note counts are also limited, it seems a bit superfluous to me. I'm looking into it a bit to see if I can get a better explanation.

Edit:

Asked around, there were historical reasons to have a limit at 250, having to do with client UI and such. Those reasons have since been solved. It's still not as simple as changing a number, but it's easy enough now that it could happen. I don't think there are any plans to do it but I personally would like to see it.

New EN employee is about to become the most quoted person on this forum by walking right into the forum's notebook limit maelstrom.  

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

4 hours ago, rezecib said:

I'm not actually sure why it's limited to 250 notebooks-- given that tags are limited to 10k and content uploads, note sizes, and note counts are also limited, it seems a bit superfluous to me. I'm looking into it a bit to see if I can get a better explanation.

Edit:

Asked around, there were historical reasons to have a limit at 250, having to do with client UI and such. Those reasons have since been solved. It's still not as simple as changing a number, but it's easy enough now that it could happen. I don't think there are any plans to do it but I personally would like to see it.

Wow. This is a big change from the last decade. I don't remember when anyone ever tried to explain why it is 250, said that it's possible to change it, and even wanted to see it happen. It'd be nice to see more of this candor

But, we actually have a lot of limits in place. It's a bit outdated (for reasons mentioned in the post), but I once tried to figure it all out.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

As you can see there, the limit for tags (as far as I know -- untested by me) is 100,000 per account. While we're at it, in addition to the 250 notebook limit, I'd also recommend bumping up the maximum note size limit and note count limit. Those would be some really nice changes.

Back to the topic at hand, though, personally I've never found the notebook limit to be any problem at all, because I find I can easily stay organized without using more than a handful. This isn't to say that the 250 limit shouldn't be changed -- there are lots of different workflows, and the more flexibility Evernote incorporates the better. However, it is possible to manage tens of thousands of notes in a single notebook (or a handful to make offline notebooks on iOS more manageable). 

[DTLow 5,736]

21 minutes ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

I'd also recommend bumping up the maximum note size limit and note count limit. Those would be some really nice changes.

The notebook/tag limit seem to be artificial; I'm interested in reading an explanation.

However, I can see the note size/count limits are based on real technical concerns.  There are request  posts for this but its not a high priority for me.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

48 minutes ago, DTLow said:

The notebook/tag limit seem to be artificial; I'm interested in reading an explanation.

However, I can see the note size/count limits are based on real technical concerns.  There are request  posts for this but its not a high priority for me.

I have no idea what is a real technical concern or not, but the note size limits are a daily problem for me. I can work around them by splitting up PDFs, but that is definitely not ideal. As for the number of notes, after a decade of producing many, many notes every day, I'm well past the 100,000 mark. It's a bit of a pain. Several times I have had to move everything out of my account. We'll see what happens in the future. The old suggestion from Evernote staff was to just create a new account, but with device limits and so forth, this is not a viable option anymore (if it really ever was).

As mentioned in my post, Evernote says it is unlimited, but that is not true. The limits on note size and count ensure that you can't actually have too much data in Evernote. Granted, this isn't a concern for everyone, but it is for some of us, so a solution (perhaps the ability to better integrate multiple accounts) would be appreciated. Priorities, of course, differ from person to person. Personally, I wouldn't even notice if reminders disappeared tomorrow, except to note that the interface got a little bit better -- I'm not recommending Evernote ditch reminders, but they have never been a priority feature for me (see discussions a few years back when it was implemented for more).

[rezecib 98]

@GrumpyMonkey DTLow is correct, note size/count limits are real technical concerns. Notebooks are different because, given that note size and count is constrained, notebooks are just some number of buckets in which to put them; it's not that much overhead to have more. But given that the notes need to be stored, and their entire edit history, and indexed so that they can be searched, and synced between devices, etc... it adds up. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe at some point there was a brief test of no limits (this was mentioned to me when investigating notebook limits), and this caused some problems where very large attachments were being added to notes.

At some point we have to decide what's worth working on, and if it's something that's affecting very few users it's hard to give it priority. My understanding is that aside from the upload and device limits, most of the limits were designed to affect extremely few users and mainly constrain extreme cases (e.g. regularly attaching huge files, having automated dumping of large amounts of data into our service, etc) that could cause problems for us.

Not sure what kind of PDFs you're dealing with, but Premium allows for 200 MB notes, which seems pretty generous to me. PDFs much larger than that are pretty unwieldy, and I've only encountered ones that large that are entire textbooks.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

1 hour ago, rezecib said:

@GrumpyMonkey DTLow is correct, note size/count limits are real technical concerns. Notebooks are different because, given that note size and count is constrained, notebooks are just some number of buckets in which to put them; it's not that much overhead to have more. But given that the notes need to be stored, and their entire edit history, and indexed so that they can be searched, and synced between devices, etc... it adds up. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe at some point there was a brief test of no limits (this was mentioned to me when investigating notebook limits), and this caused some problems where very large attachments were being added to notes.

At some point we have to decide what's worth working on, and if it's something that's affecting very few users it's hard to give it priority. My understanding is that aside from the upload and device limits, most of the limits were designed to affect extremely few users and mainly constrain extreme cases (e.g. regularly attaching huge files, having automated dumping of large amounts of data into our service, etc) that could cause problems for us.

Not sure what kind of PDFs you're dealing with, but Premium allows for 200 MB notes, which seems pretty generous to me. PDFs much larger than that are pretty unwieldy, and I've only encountered ones that large that are entire textbooks.

Thanks again for the detailed response. It’s nice to have reasons, even if I don’t agree with the rationale for some of them  After all, if the idea is to constrain “extreme” use cases, and the extreme case is basically me (I don’t automate any “dumping,” but I easily churn through my 10GB of uploads a month)... I don’t feel very welcome around here!

As for the PDFs, if you go paperless, it’s pretty easy to build up large ones, and this is especially true if you are a researcher. My PDFs tend to be between 100 and 500 MB in size. The papers from a faculty meeting tomorrow will probably add up to about 200 MB, and I am working on a report today that is already over 200 MB (high quality photos and the like needed in it). In the old days I had to split things up a lot. Raising the limit to 200MB helped, but it’s still way too low for me. 

Are PDFs this size unwieldy? Not at all. I think you are wrong there (unless you are talking about reading your PDF on a Kindle or something). In fact, I’ve found things work fine up to about 1GB, even on the iPad nowadays (the first generation iPad apparently lacked sufficient RAM to deal with my stuff).

Am I an edge case? Maybe. But, I’m one of your premium members and have been off and on for about a decade, so you can calculate how that works out for you compared to the 190 million or so free users. Not only am I a better investment, I’d be happy to pay more if you want to give us larger note size limits.

Is this kind of stuff technically possible? Sure. I know of a couple of your competitors in the note / database space that handle massive PDFs without breaking a sweat  I’d recommend you up your game and consider increasing the size / number of notes. But, that is a calculation you need to make at Evernote. 

I think, in the end, it isn’t really about me and how much of an edge case I am. The calculation doesn’t need to depend on people bumping up against limits and complaining until things get changed. It’s about making the service flexible  (admittedly, within some limits) in order to accomodate as many use cases as possible without straying too far from your core competencies. 

 

 

[Etonreve 188]

16 hours ago, wahlink@hotmail.com said:

I totally agree with those who feel that 250 is too small for a Premium paid account. I have a small university research lab and its very important to create folders based on different levels of access. I have used Evernote Premium for as long as I can remember an now that I'm up against that 250 notebook limit it is severely impacting teh way we share information. Tags are confusing and not an option especially since it doesn't lend itself to different levels of access. MS Onenote has no such limits and unfortunately if I can't add more notebooks I will have to switch over to that until evernote management addresses this. Kind of sad that the Evernote Premium account has become a second class citizen and offers less value than free Onenote

It’s almost time to renew my Evernote subscription. I may try One Note again even though I don't like it as much. 

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

Are PDFs this size unwieldy? Not at all.

I know we've hijacked @etonreve's discussion and gone off topic, but I'm interested in the handling of extra large pdfs.

While my devices have no problem displaying the pdfs; they have limited storage.  
I have no choice but to offload the pdfs to network storage.  
Instead of a note attachment, I insert a link.

This bypasses the Evernote size limit and works well; but fails when I'm offline.

[gazumped 11,664]

Not sure what kind of PDFs we're talking here,  but all of my content is within the 200MB limit,  and most of it is below 50MB - there are plenty of compression and optimization tools around for that format,  and -depending on your likely use case- a number of choices you can make about the resolution of images / backward compatibility of PDF formats and whether or not the document has been saved as a readable PDF.  I generally find,  when OCR-ing a batch of PDF files (as I do) that the size automatically drops by 30-50% just because the content is now text rather than images.  I don't ever remember having to split a file into sections.  I did have a phase of moving PDFs from attachments to Google Drive,  but as @DTLow points out,  that's less good if you're offline...

Maybe I just don't collect 'serious' documentation... 

And just for the record,  my take on limits has always been that

1. the Notebook max exists and given them's the rules,  we kinda have to observe them by whatever means.  Higher would be nice,  but in practice my brain can't handle a huge number of choices.  And who says how many is enough?  250 is more than enough for me*,  but it would be nice to have 500 or 1000,  sure.  Want to bet how long it would be before someone exhausts that limit and demands more? (* 95% of my 40k+ notes are normally in one notebook. Extras were created 'only where I had to' for shares, WIP projects, mobile use, and local notebooks.  A current project took me up to about 50 while I do some serious data sorting,  but that is only temporary.)
    
2. the upload limits and note sizes are there because while we all play by the rules (mostly) Evernote represents cheap online secure data storage -even if you're paying for it- and as they found out during the brief heady 'unlimited' period,  a few users will happily move their media storage,  backups and all future downloads into Evernote given half the chance.  I'd imagine that Evernote biggest ongoing issue is traffic - worldwide we're all syncing multiple devices to one server 24/7.  If a few users start to monopolise the bandwidth,  the rest of us will see a general slowdown in everything.  If more join in we could easily move from molasses to paint drying.  Evernote has to make it streamlined and quick.  Hence limits!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks Gaz, for the comments. As I recall, the unlimited period was not note size, but upload amounts per month, so it is a red herring. I’m not asking for unlimited uploads or unlimited note sizes. I actually think 10gb is fine for a month of uploads. At the time of the unlimitd thing (not even something requested by users), it may have been just 1 or 2gb, so we’ve come a long way. also, as i recall, i recommnded against the unlimited idea, even though i’m one of those data hoarders, because i do think some limits are a good idea. 

 

1. How do you make a big PDF?

In practice, 200mb per note is too small for my use case. Why? I get a couple hundred pages of meeting materials per meeting, I scan them at 600 dpi grayscale (a nice balance of readability + ocr accuracy) and then I OCR (optical character recognition) the PDFs using Adobe Acrobat Pro (why not Evernote? That’s another discussion). This is often over 200mb, but sometimes the documents are full of color, so I have to do the whole thing in color, and that will make it even bigger. I have gone 99.9% paperless for about a decade now, so some of the PDFs include books, dictionaries (one of my research topics), etc.

2. Optimization?

Could I reduce the quality of the PDFs? Sure. I’ve done that in the past, and written about how I tried to optimize stuff for Evernote. But, the Chinese characters literally become smudges, and photos of old manuscripts and so forth (already difficult to read in manuscript form) become illegible. Big PDFs are perfect for legibility, and I can now search my own database of hundreds of thousands of files to find even the most obscure references (hampered a bit by OCR quality, but it’s still pretty good), so I’ve got no interest in ruining the quality of my PDFs or a workflow that I’ve been using successfully for so many years in order to fit myself into an arbitrary limit (it used to be just 25mb per note) that is good for the majority of folks (most of whom don’t pay or use the app that much). It doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve accepted that it’s a lot of data in aggregate that will never fit into Evernote (especially without selective sync on the Mac), but there are certain individual files that are simply critical for my work. In those cases, I begrudgingly turn to other apps.

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

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127

3.Alternatives

In my case, using Devonthink (database / note competitor available on Mac and iOS) is the best solution. It smoothly syncs through Dropbox (Dropbox has no problem with more users than Evernote and more data flowing through it, so I don’t buy the “bandwidth” argument, especially now that Evernote is housed inside Google, one of the largest and most powerful server farms in the world). It also syncs with encryption. The app even has a password / fingerprint lock on iOS that works seamlessly. I am not aware of an upper limit with the app or Dropbox, but I’ve found it best to limit things to a few dozen gigabytes per database (equivalent to Evernotes notebooks). My mobile devices have 256GB storage, so we are good to go. Sounds perfect, right? And, it even costs less per year (no subscription cost for Devonthink and Dropbox costs less than Evernote). There’s just one problem. Devonthink is phenomenal with searches in romance languages, but CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean) is hit or miss. Facepalm here. All of this data, and I can’t rely on the searches! Dropbox? It doesn’t search inside of files. Drive? It only indexes the first 100 pages of PDFs. So, here we are

Whatever faults Evernote has, search has (with many exceptions reported and discussed in these forums over the years) generally been quite good. And, the OCR for handwritten notes is OK as well. This is really nice, especially on iOS. Yesterday in a meeting I could pull up notes at three different points that were helpful for the discussion and would have been impossible to locate in a timely manner if I had been working with paper. Thanks Evernote! What I am trying to say is that Evernote works really well, but it could be better, especially for those of us who have gone paperless. IF it doesn’t degrade the experience of other users, why not raise the note size limit? 

4. Limits

The same could be said for notebooks. I’m fine with 10.But, that’s just me. If it doesn’t degrade the experience, why not have 100,000? It sounds great to me. In fact, as I recall, the Mac team experimented with something like this, but there was a UI issue or something. Maybe I’m wrong. But, I think priorities and design direction have changed so much it’s worth revisiting.

As for note size limits, if there aren’t so many of us that need them raised, and we are (by definition) paying users, why not raise it? There shouldn’t be a significant impact on anyone. I’m happy. Everyone else is happy. And, then we can move on and talk about selective sync

[from92714 6]

I'd really like to be able to have more than 250 notebooks too.
In my case, I upgraded my account to Business and started using and moved notes there since it has higher limit for things except the note size. So I'd also like to see note size limits go a little higher too.

[Paul A. 620]

On 3/3/2018 at 5:14 PM, from92714 said:

I'd really like to be able to have more than 250 notebooks too.
In my case, I upgraded my account to Business and started using and moved notes there since it has higher limit for things except the note size. So I'd also like to see note size limits go a little higher too.

 

On 2/28/2018 at 7:40 PM, Etonreve said:

I reached the 250 notebook limit. What should I do now? I often use tags, but they are not a substitute for notebooks.

 

 

 

 

 

On 3/1/2018 at 4:14 PM, wahlink@hotmail.com said:

I totally agree with those who feel that 250 is too small for a Premium paid account. I have a small university research lab and its very important to create folders based on different levels of access. I have used Evernote Premium for as long as I can remember an now that I'm up against that 250 notebook limit it is severely impacting teh way we share information. Tags are confusing and not an option especially since it doesn't lend itself to different levels of access. MS Onenote has no such limits and unfortunately if I can't add more notebooks I will have to switch over to that until evernote management addresses this. Kind of sad that the Evernote Premium account has become a second class citizen and offers less value than free Onenote

 

One option (albeit at a cost) for people who hit the 250 notebook limit is to upgrade to Evernote business. Business accounts can have up to 10,000 notebooks, if I'm not mistaken. I can certainly understand why the price might rub you the wrong way when OneNote can handle more than 250 notebooks and is free (at least for now), but it is an option.

[DTLow 5,736]

23 hours ago, Paul A. said:

One option (albeit at a cost) for people who hit the 250 notebook limit is to upgrade to Evernote business.

I did suggest that; but it was with tongue in cheek.  edit:  I consider the price to high just for the increase in Notebook limit.

Wihout paying for a Business Account

The fact is, if users wish to continue using Evernote; they must adjust their method of processing
250 notebooks is a hard limit (for now).

When a user posts they organize notes using folders/subfolders, they get the same advice

Evernote has a workable solution for handling both issues

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

With apologies for continuing to drift the thread.... @GrumpyMonkey, I'm trying to wrap my head around your scenario. I'm a retired academic, still doing research, and a very long way from paperless. But if I wanted (as I get the impression you're trying) to move not only all my notes from committee meetings (I'm retired! I'm freeee!) and academic conferences, but my entire research library, into digital storage, I'm not sure I'd pick Evernote as the venue. I keep coming back to the Evernote part, rather than Everstore. For entire books (e.g., dictionaries!), wouldn't something like Dropbox be more effective? (I know nothing about Devonthink.) Leave EN for your committee and conference notes, scans of articles and chapters, brilliant breakfast-table inspirations, etc., where, as you say, they are so readily searchable; let Dropbox do the heavy lifting; and maybe sometimes shift a large PDF into EN temporarily for a specific project, especially if you need to search CJK? Just trying to get the picture.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi Dave. Thanks a lot. I agree.

In fact, Evernote in its current state is not so great for the thousands of PDFs I’ve amassed. It would be great IF there were no note size limits and IF we had selective sync. Then, a search for a historical person I am researching would turn up not only my notes but also everything that anyone else has written about the person. That’s pretty powerful. Dropbox doesn’t index the content of PDFs. Neither does Google Drive. There are very few options for searching a bunch of PDFs on the iPad (PDF applications do it, but it takes ages for them to finish indexing it all). Evernote is still one of the best at getting search right.

What you described is somewhat similar to what I do now. Evernote is mainly for notes of mine. Stuff that other people write goes elsewhere (Devonthink, or an external drive for searching on the Mac). Granted, it might seem like “storage,” but I don’t see it that way. Someone in business might have a proposal that they put into a note, and then they take notes on it there, and use that data to work on the project. I’m basically doing the same thing when I research, except I am taking notes on books instead of memos or draft proposals (I do this too, of course, for the administrative stuff). The difference, from my point of view, is simply length / size.

Just like with the 250 notebooks, other limits also limit the potential of the app. If they are there because the service will collapse under its own weight, then by all means, keep them. But, as with the notebook limit, if raising the limits can be done without inducing any unpleasant side effects, then that’s the way to go. 

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

Thanks, @GrumpyMonkey. It's good stuff for me to think about, as I do try to reduce my paper footprint. I have quite a few PDF articles from various sources, related to various projects. I use a word processor/research system called Nota Bene which is fantastic at indexing them and other documents and notes, but is not as portable or completely cross-device as Evernote (it is about to add cloud features, though this is not yet publicly announced). Anyway, thanks; and apologies again, @Etonreve, for aggravating the thread-drift!

[gazumped 11,664]

42 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

my entire research library, into digital storage

Hi Dave - for information (vague pun intended) I was in your position a few years ago.  I've mentioned this (a few times) already,  so apologies if I'm telling you what you already know;  but I used to be an insurance underwriter - one of the guys who guess how much you need to pay to cover any losses you incur and make a small profit for the insurance company. To do that job effectively it's necessary to know a little bit about everything,  and in the bad old days I'd rip pages from magazines,  acquire books,  clip newspapers and fill shelves and boxes with background information. 

Since it was a dynamic library - I needed to find and file things daily - it occupied a lot of shelf space,  plus a couple of file cabinets and several boxes.  For practical reasons I wanted to digitise the information;  it was increasingly difficult to find anything,  even when I knew I had it somewhere - and it was harder and harder to file things away properly.  The hoard had just gone past the critical mass of what one person (plus occasional reluctant helpers) could control.  Plus it occupied an office,  then a bedroom,  then a garage to itself.  Plus some idiot had invented the interweb,  and more and more things were popping up online

That was the start of my interest in Evernote.  Over a 2-3 year period I converted all my paper into notes - as you'll know it's an ongoing process so I'm still curating the stuff and adding new items.  I'm also doing other things,  so the library is still growing.  But instead of occupying a room,  it can travel with me on my laptop while its duplicate relatives are safe at home on external drives.

All my stuff went into Evernote,  and while the ride hasn't always been smooth,  my 17GB database of all types of material is still a lot easier to deal with than the equivalent RW paper...

Sorry for extending the drift here - I'll shutup now. 

[Paul A. 620]

19 hours ago, DTLow said:

I did suggest that; but it was with tongue in cheek

The fact is, if users wish to continue using Evernote; they must adjust their method of processing
250 notebooks is a hard limit (for now).

If a user posted they organize notes using folders/subfolders, they would get the same advice

Evernote has a workable solution for handling both issues

Am I missing something? I think it should be a serious consideration.

They don't have to adjust their method of processing if they're willing to pay $14.99/month for Evernote business. It's all a question of how much they value continuing to use Evernote the way they always have while exceeding the 250 notebook limit of the consumer plans. For some people, $180/year (or possibly less if there are discounts available) wouldn't be excessive for the value they would derive.

[DTLow 5,736]

4 minutes ago, Paul A. said:

They don't have to adjust their method of processing if they're willing to pay $14.99/month for Evernote business. 

This is true.  It's just that I consider the price to high just for the increase in Notebook limit 

I will edit my post to include my explanation

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

4 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Am I missing something? I think it should be a serious consideration.

They don't have to adjust their method of processing if they're willing to pay $14.99/month for Evernote business. It's all a question of how much they value continuing to use Evernote the way they always have while exceeding the 250 notebook limit of the consumer plans. For some people, $180/year (or possibly less if there are discounts available) wouldn't be excessive for the value they would derive.

As far as I know (I used to have a business account), the limit is still 250 active notebooks. At any one time, you can only have 250 in the account, and the others are stored in a library. I was perfectly fine with this (I’m OK with just a couple of notebooks myself), especially because this functioned as a kind of selective sync, but the library could not be searched. Now that was a problem. A deal breaker, in fact. 

Is it still the same system now? I don’t know.

Earlier in the thread, an Evernote employee also mentioned that they may be open to removing this hard limit of 250. If that might happen, there isn’t much of a reason to upgrade to business. 

[rezecib 98]

@GrumpyMonkey The limit on Business is 10k.

This was a little before my time, but my understanding is the intent of the different limits is definitely not to pressure people into upgrading to business if they hit the limit, it was just that 250 was a much bigger problem for businesses because it uses a different system for accounts-- all content in an Evernote Business is tied to a single pseudo-account, and normal users in the business simply have access to those. So when you have a business with 300+ employees, 250 notebooks in the business isn't even one notebook per user . Even as it stands 10k is only ~33 notebooks per user in that case (although on the flip side the demand for notebooks is a bit lower because more of it is shared).

Both numbers are ultimately arbitrary, it's just a good idea to have a number picked at some point to prevent abuse of the system. I'm not saying 250+ notebooks constitutes abuse, but you could imagine if someone had tens of thousands of notebooks that would be pretty excessive; the line gets drawn somewhere and then if it starts becoming a problem it will get redrawn. I can't guarantee that it will or is getting redrawn in either case (I believe it affects very few users, although I'm actually curious to see if I can get access to some metrics on that and maybe use it to make a stronger case), but it is something we would like to do.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

15 hours ago, rezecib said:

@GrumpyMonkey The limit on Business is 10k.

This was a little before my time, but my understanding is the intent of the different limits is definitely not to pressure people into upgrading to business if they hit the limit, it was just that 250 was a much bigger problem for businesses because it uses a different system for accounts-- all content in an Evernote Business is tied to a single pseudo-account, and normal users in the business simply have access to those. So when you have a business with 300+ employees, 250 notebooks in the business isn't even one notebook per user . Even as it stands 10k is only ~33 notebooks per user in that case (although on the flip side the demand for notebooks is a bit lower because more of it is shared).

Both numbers are ultimately arbitrary, it's just a good idea to have a number picked at some point to prevent abuse of the system. I'm not saying 250+ notebooks constitutes abuse, but you could imagine if someone had tens of thousands of notebooks that would be pretty excessive; the line gets drawn somewhere and then if it starts becoming a problem it will get redrawn. I can't guarantee that it will or is getting redrawn in either case (I believe it affects very few users, although I'm actually curious to see if I can get access to some metrics on that and maybe use it to make a stronger case), but it is something we would like to do.

I didn’t mean to imply the limit was there to upsell folks. I happened to be at the Evernote conference the day they rolled out business, and my general impression was that it was more focused on collaboration and sharing in the early days. The 250 limit has never bothered me. Making the library searchable, though, would really make a difference. That would solve my selective sync issue.

My point is that limits (notebooks, notes, note sizes, etc.) should be relaxed as much as possible as a policy. The policy up until this point seems to have been to wait for users to encounter friction and complain about it. In my opinion, that’s too late. If the limit could be raised (regardless of whether it only affcts a few users), it should be. Obviously, if 251 notebooks would crash the servers, then let’s not go there

[Rey San Pascual 4]

I've been a premium member now for several years. I have resisted moving to OneNote because I'm already familiar with Evernote. I have just bumped against the 250 notebook limit.

I am used to Stacks > Notebooks > Notes. I've reviewed my notebooks and I've deleted a few but it's going to take a big reorganization. I would like to put in my voice to increasing the 250 notebook limit. Even Excel broke their 600,000 row limit.

Otherwise, I'm going to consider the worth of redoing my Evernote organization versus learning OneNote.

[DTLow 5,736]

15 hours ago, Rey San Pascual said:

I would like to put in my voice to increasing the 250 notebook limit.

Please also add your vote to the feature request linked below.  Voting buttons are in the top left corner of the discussion.

>>I am used to Stacks > Notebooks > Notes.

Evernote provides two fields for note organization: Notebook and Tags
Tags can be organized in an unlimited hierarchy (Mac/Win/Web)of the form:  Tag > ChildTag > ChildTag > ..
The tag limit is 100,000

 

[jefito 5,589]

For some perspective on this by an Evernote employee: 

 

 

I seem to recall another post by an Evernote employee that suggested that the notebook limit might be lifted, but couldn't find it. No timeframe on any of this.

[Rey San Pascual 4]

2,500 Notebooks should be a minimum. I suppose Evernote can make it 25,000 and make it a non-issue for just about everyone.

[DTLow 5,736]

2 minutes ago, Rey San Pascual said:

2,500 Notebooks should be a minimum. I suppose Evernote can make it 25,000 and make it a non-issue for just about everyone.

Notes have two attributes; Notebooks and Tags

The limit for Tags is 100,000

[SeanJaySD 0]

I need unlimited notebooks. Use of tags is NOT INTUITIVE. As someone else mentioned in a different post, if Evernote is to become our "brain" (paraphrased), it needs to operate like the way we are mentally wired.

Imagine if Leonardo da Vinci and other greats had left behind a bunch of "tags" (essentially, Post-it Notes), instead of their detailed notebooks.

There are many requests for this. Can someone from Evernote please respond and let us know when this will be implemented?

I have neatly stacked all my notebooks into different Stacks. I don't have any "unStacked" notebooks. This system is working extremely well for me.

Evernote is a great tool and has become my "go-to", more so than  email. I don't want to see the day when I've reached limits, especially in this day and age when cloud services are constantly and seamlessly adding storage and capacity.

Thanks in advance for your response.

[Roman Luks 4]

I have just reached the 250 limit! I also pay for Evernote and this makes me really angry.

[TK0047 422]

26 minutes ago, Roman Luks said:

I have just reached the 250 limit! I also pay for Evernote and this makes me really angry.

You can vote here on the above link.

I can understand people using a lot of notebooks although I don't. But what I don't get the "This makes me really angry" part. The 250 limit was not hidden or unknown. It has been known for a long time. 

So I decide to buy a car and there is a speed limiter on it at 150 mph. They tell me about it, I still buy it and when I try to go 155 mph, I get really mad and I say I paid for it! It does not make sense.

I would agree 100% if this was being misrepresented or Evernote was trying to not make the information accessible to everyone. But again, it has been a known limitation for a while. 

Again, vote for it, voice your opinion why there should be more than 250 and listen to others why they think 250 is more than sufficient, debate, listen, debate and listen....then come up with a solution until (if) the limit is raised.

[gazumped 11,664]

The 250 notebook limit has been a standard for years,  on both paid and free account levels.  There need to be some limits on account size,  as there are for uploads each month,  note size,  and total tags.  Two ways around the limit are - as discussed above;  use tags,  and/ or Local Notebooks which (I don't believe) count toward the total used.  It's also possible to upgrade to a (more expensive) Business account to by more space,  or to archive older existing notebooks to ENEX files or additional free Basic accounts.

I think there's a votable thread somewhere in feature requests asking that Evernote increase this limit,  which AFAIK is completely arbitrary - someone in history just chose a reasonable-sounding number.  Sadly I don't have the link to that post.

[gazumped 11,664]

1 minute ago, TK0047 said:

You can vote here on the above link.

TK'd !! ?

[Rey San Pascual 4]

For those arguing against increasing the maximum notebook count and using some other work around like tags or a second albeit free account, I don't understand why you would argue against it. No one's going to force you to stop using tags or creating a second account or to start having more than 250 notebooks. 

People have different ways to think and organize their thoughts/information and how they wish to see it displayed in an app such as Evernote. I'm not one who creates notebooks willy nilly. As someone pointed, the maximum notebook count used to be 100 before being bumped up to 250. I supposed some "elite" users at the time were harrumphing and arguing they were able to do everything they needed with just 3 notebooks and offering workarounds to address the 100 maximum notebook count issue.

We have some users who are asking for the maximum notebook count to be once again increased. I'll settle for 500 at this point. Unless you're an Evernote employee and the costs to enhance this particular feature will be taken out of your bonus, you have no reason to oppose this request. You can keep your tags. You can keep your multiple Evernote accounts. I just want to have more than 250 notebooks.

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, Rey San Pascual said:

 For those arguing against increasing the maximum notebook count 

No one is arguing against increasing the notebook limit.  It's a  number arbitrarily set by Evernote.

We are against the concept that Evernote is not useable with this limit. 

[Rey San Pascual 4]

14 minutes ago, DTLow said:

No one is arguing against increasing the notebook limit.  It's a  number arbitrarily set by Evernote.

We are arguing about the concept that Evernote is not useable with this limit.

For those who can live with less than 250 notebooks, it's perfectly usable. For those like me who are needing more than 250 notebooks at this point, Evernote is less than perfectly usable. If the 250 maximum notebook limit is arbitrarily set by Evernote when it was increased from the also presumably arbitrary limit of 100 notebooks, then Evernote can arbitrarily increase it again.

I don't see anyone arguing that that Evernote isn't usable with the 250 notebook limit. I do see people requesting that Evernote's usability be enhanced by increasing the notebook limit.

My other recommendation in the mean time to help users still under 250 notebook limit is to set a flag or warning or message at some arbitrary point when a user has created a certain number of notebooks, perhaps at 125 notebooks and again at 200 notebooks. People have pointed out that the limits are published and available. But either I didn't read that part or glossed over it during my learning curve. I placed a lot of thought in how I arranged and structured my information. A reminder of the limit would have been helpful so that I could have adjusted my information map a lot earlier on to account for the limit than having to deal with the limit at a time when I need to create my 251st notebook. And I'm not going to start a new thread/request on this idea. I'll let an Evernote employee do it if they want to; I'm busy trying to deal with the 250 notebook limit.

[gazumped 11,664]

Part of the current Beta release notes... (my emphasis)  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/113550-evernote-for-windows-613-beta-1/

Note: Version 6.13 is supported in Windows 7 and higher.

Improved (cumulative changes since version 6.12):

• We inform the user if we're unable to continue recording audio (e.g., out of disk space)
• Users are prevented from making content changes when the Evernote client database is locked by another process (e.g., antivirus scanner)
• Evernote client asks once and remembers when you don't want to see a "note move" notification.
• More easily manage and navigate your notebooks from the Notebooks View. You can access this by selecting 'Notebooks' from the left panel.
• Messaging to alert the user when they're approaching their notebook limit

(and I was assured this won't just be 'you just ran out'...)

[Rey San Pascual 4]

12 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Part of the current Beta release notes... (my emphasis)  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/113550-evernote-for-windows-613-beta-1/

Note: Version 6.13 is supported in Windows 7 and higher.

Improved (cumulative changes since version 6.12):

• Messaging to alert the user when they're approaching their notebook limit

(and I was assured this won't just be 'you just ran out'...)

'you just ran out'

Thanks for the chuckle. I think I actually had to contact support when I couldn't add another notebook in conjunction with my separation lines not showing up on the desktop app.

[gazumped 11,664]

Yeah - I complained bitterly when I tripped over the upload limit (back in the bad old days when you had to buy an extension if it went over the -then- much smaller levels that applied) 

I stressed then that I appreciated Evernote had to have limits,  but not to see any warnings on the way to having some (in my case) seriously exciting times because you just fell over one of them was downright unfriendly. 

Support said then that they were looking at ways to make the apps more communicative if users were heading for an issue - looks like they finally got around to it. 

Remains to be seen how effective the warnings are,  though they have said that while some of them will be optional with a 'don't show this warning again' tickbox,  when you get close to the wire the warnings will not be optional - to make the point that "next time you do this it will be a very bad idea..."  

[Don Dz 165]

For me, note links is the best solution, more so than Notebooks or even tags, even though I use all of them.  I have created wiki-like structures in my system that strongly resemble what I used to do before Evernote.

But I have found that sometimes note links can break, under circumstances which I have not been able to recreate yet.

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, Don Dz said:

For me, note links is the best solution, more so than Notebooks or even tags, even though I use all of them. 

Just wondering what is the issue you're solving with the note links.
edit: Answered - Notebooks are used for active notes; the Notebook is dropped when no longer active

I use notebooks and tags to return a list of notes for a specific criteria.  
An example is to identify notes for a subject like "home insurance".I would be using a notebook or tag.  
I can see using  note links in a Table-of-Contents note; however the list would be static.  I need  a dynamic list.

>>But I have found that sometimes note links can break, under circumstances which I have not been able to recreate yet.

if these are in-app links, they are not random numbers.  The link based on the note id.

[Don Dz 165]

8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Just wondering what is the issue you're solving with the note links.

If i understand your question correctly, I use note links for structure, and to preserve the organization of my notes from a previous platform.

[Rey San Pascual 4]

32 minutes ago, Don Dz said:

For me, note links is the best solution, more so than Notebooks or even tags, even though I use all of them.  I have created wiki-like structures in my system that strongly resemble what I used to do before Evernote.

But I have found that sometimes note links can break, under circumstances which I have not been able to recreate yet.

I use note links also to funnel information/priorities from several notes to a collection note to manage the priorities. I have links on the notes going to the collection note and I have links on the collection note going to the individual notes.

But I disagree that using note links is the best solution to deal with the 250 notebook limit. The best solution at this point is increasing the maximum notebook limit to at least 500 if not more (preferably 5,000 to make a non-issue). And to add warnings/reminders at reasonable points regarding Evernote’s maximum limits.

[Don Dz 165]

22 minutes ago, Rey San Pascual said:

But I disagree that using note links is the best solution to deal with the 250 notebook limit. The best solution at this point is increasing the maximum notebook limit to at least 500 if not more (preferably 5,000 to make a non-issue). And to add warnings/reminders at reasonable points regarding Evernote’s maximum limits.

By all means, the more tools they can give us, the better, I was only sharing what works for me, since it had not been mentioned in the discussion. 

As I mentioned, I use all available solutions as needed, but links just happen to be the most flexible tool for my situation, since a wiki approach makes the most sense to me.

[Don Dz 165]

1 hour ago, DTLow said:

An example is to identify notes for a subject like "home insurance".

I would be using a notebook or tag.  The only way I see to use note links is with a Table of Contents; however the list would be static.  I need  a dynamic list.

For that I would use a combination of tags and links, all related notes would share a tag or two, but links would relate the different notes together in more minute detail. 

I generally only use table of contents for brain storming with my tags, because I tend to create links and tags as I create notes, to preserve some GTD logic that makes sense to me (I use a Start note, from which I link notes such as Errands, Calls, Computer/Online, Waiting For, At Home, At Work, Someday/Maybe, Projects, etc, as needed).

I tend to create a new notebook only when dealing with a large or urgent/hot project, and only while working on it (like "Taxes" or "Work Project" or "Overseas Trip"), but once I am done with the project, I delete the notebook, and any notes that remain are moved into one of my preexisting notebooks, like "Cabinet" or "Personal" or "Online Resources", etc. 

For smaller projects I often use a "Temp" notebook, for current but unrelated projects.

I used to have a "Done" notebook, but found a tag a better solution.

[jasecutler 4]

What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

 

•  

[jbenson2 2,147]

1 hour ago, jasecutler said:

What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

 

•  

This is a user forum. It is unlikely Evernote will address your question. It has been asked several times over the years.

My guess is the 250 limit for notebooks is partially designed to keep Evernote customers focused on using a critical part of Evernote. That is the ability to use up to  10,000 tags on notes stored in a variety of notebooks.

There are plenty of programs that offer the ability to create thousands of notebooks (aka folders). 

Evernote created an alternative method to address data control and retrieval. 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

5 hours ago, jasecutler said:

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

From past experience

• Evernote increased the notebook limit from 100 to 250.
• They also added a Business Account tier, with a limit of 100,000 notebooks.

>>What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

The note limit could be resource based; our devices tend to choke at high volumes.

The notebook limit is an arbitrary number.  
The Evernote focus has always been on note retrieval instead of organization. This is tag based instead of folder based,

[jefito 5,589]

4 hours ago, jasecutler said:

What's the actual reason why EN refuse to increase the limit (Notepads + Notes)? 

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel? Is it an option EN are open to explore?

It's just an arbitrary number, but if you think about it, you might see that there's an actual practical aspect to this limit. The only way that you have to organize those 250 notebooks is via stacks; there's no notebook nesting at present. So with 250 notebooks, you have 5 stacks of 50 notebooks? 50 stacks of 5 notebooks? Or (the balance point) 15 stacks of ~15 notebooks? These are barely palatable options, in my opinion, with respect to physical (on screen, i.e.) organization/searching, not to mention how it all plays out on screen-size limited mobile devices.. Increase to 500? 23 stacks of 23 notebooks? 1000 notebooks? 32 stacks of 32 notebooks? Now I'm not saying that all users would fall prey to this (I can imagine a user who has a small number of active notebooks and a large number of archived notebooks, leading to two stacks, one manageable, and one ungainly. But just something to think about, given that the original reason for adding stacks was to make management of the (then) limit of 100 notebooks easier...

[iRQ 5]

On 5/30/2018 at 11:38 AM, jefito said:

These are barely palatable options, in my opinion, with respect to physical (on screen, i.e.) organization/searching

FWIW, my interface to finding notes, notebooks, and tags, in Evernote for Mac is Command J and I haven't hit its limits of scalability yet. It works as well with one note and several thousand notes.

The points about UI constraints is well made, just in my case the UI I use scales well filtering down thousands of items.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

39 minutes ago, iRQ said:

FWIW, my interface to finding notes, notebooks, and tags, in Evernote for Mac is Command J

My interface for assigning a tag is to start typing and a filtered list appears. My 300+ list gets chopped down, and with just a few characters typed I pick from a list of 10 or so items.

[Seattlitte 5]

When I started , I used Evernote for myself, synched across multiple machines.  I used  a mixture of tags and notes.  Once I was confident with how useful Evernote was, I started using it will collaborators.  I quickly realized a) Evernote sharing mechanics were horrible b) could only share notebooks, not tags.  Evernote really improved their sharing mechanics, but left us in the lurch with no tag sharing and the 250 notebook limit.  I maxed out three years ago.  

Problems with living with this limit:

a) as someone above wrote, Evernote does not make it clear which were the added notebooks that put you over the limit.  If you deleted notebooks to make room, the synch gets stuck if it you added 1 notebook having deleted 5, but it saw the add as happening first..  And as i synch across multiple machines that I work on simultaneously, , thing can get horrible.

b) I just spent an hour with a colleague trying to figure out why i couldn't see his newly shared notebook.  We're pretty sure now that though I had made room by deleting some notebooks, sync is convinced I'm over limit again again.  But what really bugs me is that he didn't get any message that the Notebook had failed to share, and I got no message that someone had tried to share a notebook with me but couldn't.  He is an older gentleman and assumes that he erred somehow when tech doesn't work.  

I'm assuming that EN wants us to use EN to collaborate.  i've brought them 6 paying customers  over the last 3 years.    Its how you grow a paying network.  But I am now open to new knowledge organizing and sharing products  - i just haven't found one half as good as EN.  OneNote -- ha, ha, ha:-(.

Philip

[DTLow 5,736]

14 minutes ago, Seattlitte said:

Evernote does not make it clear which were the added notebooks that put you over the limit.

The latest release provides a warning when the notebook limit is being reached

 

[Jim Finn 4]

Just a quick Query. 

I know that there is a 250 Notebook limit in Evernote but I am wondering does this limit only apply to Synced Notebooks and are local Notebooks in the Windows client exempt from this. I know that Evernote and many of the blogs really push the Tagging option but I find it does not work for me and prefer Notebooks as a primary organising structure with tags as a secondary consideration.

[s2sailor 2,193]

6 hours ago, Jim Finn said:

I am wondering does this limit only apply to Synced Notebooks and are local Notebooks in the Windows client exempt from this.

I'm pretty sure notebook number and note size restrictions apply to both local and sync'd.

[TK0047 422]

I had a seen a post about Local Notebooks not going towards the quota but he was not certain either. If you are there at the limit, just experiment with it.

Also, without going into Tags vs. Notebooks arguments | discussions, I recommend everybody to evaluate their "thinking" and "habits" as we all are used to the folder structure since Windows 3.1 (if not MS DOS 6.x versions) and our thinking is just mimicking that. I am a firm believer of what works for you is the best system whether notebooks or tags, but if there is a limit by the developer and now it is going to interfere with your workflow | system, it may be time to re-evaluate and maybe try something new. Just a recommendation.

[Jim Finn 4]

58 minutes ago, TK0047 said:

Also, without going into Tags vs. Notebooks arguments | discussions, I recommend everybody to evaluate their "thinking" and "habits" as we all are used to the folder structure since Windows 3.1 (if not MS DOS 6.x versions) and our thinking is just mimicking that. I am a firm believer of what works for you is the best system whether notebooks or tags, but if there is a limit by the developer and now it is going to interfere with your workflow | system, it may be time to re-evaluate and maybe try something new. Just a recommendation.

 I liken it to Drawers in a Filing cabinet with the Notebooks sub-dividers in this drawer which were around long before DOS and Windows and this suits me better. I did experiment with Tagging as an alternative and while it has it's uses I found it cumbersome particularly when it came time to share to share notes with a third party. Tagging becomes useless at this point.

Evernote sells itself as a second/external brain and it is important that we as individual learn what works for us. I know that Evernote are proponents of tagging. Well if that is the case then allow tagged notes to be shared by tags. Otherwise you have to go down the Notebook route at least partially. I agree with you about software limitations and workflow but I have tried other applications and none of them match Evernote features. It has its "quirks" and we have to learn to work around them.

As a teacher I show my student multiple ways of working out things as what works for me will not work for everyone. I tell them there are 4 ways of doing anything, The right way, the wrong way, my way and your way and if 3 of those produce the same result they are the right way. I would encourage everyone to take the time to try new ways of working and organising but don't fall into the trap that there is only one way that works. I regularly see proponents of Dave Allens Method, structuring Evernote as a productivity tool. Tried it and hated it. I see Evernote as a storage and Reference hub in my workflow not a productivity tool per-say and Notebooks suit this better IMO.

[DTLow 5,736]

17 minutes ago, Jim Finn said:

I liken it to Drawers in a Filing cabinet with the Notebooks sub-dividers in this drawer which were around long before DOS and Windows and this suits me better

Are you sure Evernote is the best product for you to use?  It doesn't support drawers, folders, subfolders, dividers.

>>allow tagged notes to be shared by tags

This has my vote.  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/107800-sharing-notes-using-tags/

>>proponents of Dave Allens Method, structuring Evernote as a productivity tool.

I read Allen's GTD book and learned much about task management.  I use Evernote to manage my task, and implemented many GTD aspects.

 

[Jim Finn 4]

3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

7 minutes ago, Jim Finn said:

I liken it to Drawers in a Filing cabinet with the Notebooks sub-dividers in this drawer which were around long before DOS and Windows and this suits me better

Are you sure Evernote is the best product for you to use?

As a paperless based note and information storage system yes. I not only use it for web clippings, I also use it to store receipts and other important documentation in pdf format (both Synced and Local for more personal documentation such as bank statements etc.) Is there an alternative you might suggest as I have tried many of them and stay with Evernote.

I currently have 60 Notebooks and over 5000 notes across a wide range of categories.

One example of a use is I recently had to make an insurance claim against a builder that caused damage in mu home. I had copies of every document and email exchanged with builder as well as notes on every phone call and was able to share all this information with my insurance company who were able to successfully recover most of the costs from the builders insurance.

I also use it to keep track of both my progress in teaching topics as well as students progress via an attached Excel spreadsheet. When I had a subject inspection a few years ago I was able to share this notebook with the inspection team as my class records. 

[DTLow 5,736]

13 minutes ago, Jim Finn said:

I currently have 60 Notebooks and over 5000 notes across a wide range of categories.

12,000+ notes; minimal notebooks, 300+ tags

I use notebooks for the Share/Local/Offline feature

Beyond basic notes, I use file attachments; Word/Pages for word processing, Excel/Numbers for spreadsheets, ...

No ideas for alternatives.  None of them offer the same filing services as Evernote.

[Jim Finn 4]

3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

No ideas for alternatives.  None of them offer the same filing services as Evernote.

That we can agree on ?

And the superior Web clipping.

[DjBea 7]

I'am still waiting evernote team to listen for their customers... 
In the futur you will remove this limit, why waiting more ?
This limit is absurd and don't have sense.

I've just read a text Evernote sent me from Stacy Harmon : She prefer Notebook... ( https://blog.evernote.com/fr/2018/06/08/sorganiser-avec-carnets/?utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EVN-ENG-NLS-EM-88-8888-Newsletter_062718&utm_content=button )

I don't like answer from support : It's a technical limit, we can't do more ! 
In software limits are where you to place it...  

Maybe some of users dont need more than 250 notebook, i think i'am not the only one that would like more than 250.

I'am not happy with the choice of evernote team : 
Adding features that i don't need, and don't add basic missing features (like search & replace expressions across notes).
It's seems to have no collaboration between evernote team and users. 

Notes and data store in evernote are not private.

When i tell to support My data on evernote servers are not encrypted, so evernote team can read my notes....
The answer is : "data are encrypted between your computer and our server". 
And they may say " we have strict policy.... no one in evernote team will read your notes", how many times it happen in lots of company with same policy, private user data have been stolen by member of the team or pirat ?
If notes was encrypted on the evernote server, it would be more secure. And also encryption may be done in local files.

As i told before, i like the evernote concept. i think it as a great potential, but now it's going wrong.

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

I'm planning to go for the premium but no encryption thing (only text encryption is *****) and the privacy thing is making me cold feet. I know EN in their policy pledged to not look at user notes but once they did and that still raises questions and does not give peace of mind. Now another thing I came to know is we have a limit of 250 Notebooks in premium. 

So, currently, my issues are: 
1) No PROPER ENCRYPTION thing. Text encryption is *****. It does not even let encrypt bullet point and automatic numbers. I have manually written "1)" and then "2)" in another line below and then goes like "10" or "15", depending on the number of important points. It does get boring right? Text encryption won't encrypts bullets or automatic numbers, wow as if they put the option, users won't like lol.

2) Privacy Issue. I very well know that EN pledged NOT to look at user notes but my question is why would they even look at the first place and then pledge later by releasing a new privacy policy? That does still leave doubt and we don't get complete peace of mind.

3) Limiting to 250 Notebooks in premium. I'm a guy that needs to have max notebooks as I sort down business as well as personal things too so we should get unlimited in premium.

I'm still considering to get premium but I am getting cold feet. It's such a great app but this Encryption and Privacy issue is kinda ruining it to be honest. And now came to know 250 limits, more amazing lol.

You DON'T even listen to your fans who love your app and WANT to continue using your app. You still DON'T care about full encryption and privacy issues.

At least GIVE the option to encrypt whole Notebook or individual notes like your BIGGEST COMPETITOR -> ONE NOTE!

[Eldorado 26]

Yes, Stacy Harmon's text was made available in all important countries (also in German, English, ...) and made me think "OK - typical marketing thing: They do not talk with the technical staff ;-)"

A limit of 250 is typical in many other circumstances (not only in EN): if a byte (8 bit) is used to point to any data, you can distinuish only between 256 states. Using a maximum of 250 notebooks means that the current data structure in EN's database format forsees only one byte to represent a notebook. Widening this limit needs to change the database structure on server and ALL supported client environments. Might be a nightmare...

Regarding "Notes and data store in evernote are not private.": I got the same answer from support - together with a further argument: On some clients, data is synced only on demand. In this case, a search is processed on server site. If data would be encrypted on server site, a search would be impossible.

This is true - but if a user knows about this and decides to used data encryption on servers, it's his choice. So I'm with you: EN should offer a possibility to encrypt data on server site. Users may use clients with full data replication (like on Windows and on Mac (AFAIK)).

In my opinion (as a developer), it would be easier to implemement data encryption than opening a 250 notebooks limit. And it would help to convice customers that EN will never read note contents ;-). Living with less than 250 notebooks IS possible. 

 

[TK0047 422]

46 minutes ago, Eldorado said:

Living with less than 250 notebooks IS possible.

Yes indeed it is possible. I understand that everybody's needs and usages are different, I get that! But the notebook structure is such a linear, and "old school" way of filing. It is how we were programmed since we started messing with computers. Things | Files belong in one location...that's how folder structures worked and that's how our physical environment work. You have a letter you need to file, you will put in a filing cabinet, one drawer, one location!

But electronic files do not need to follow that at all. Proper indexing and tagging is all what we need. We don't know where exactly it is on the hard drive, right? It just has to be retrieved when we need it. Similarly, as long as you can retrieve it, notebooks can be irrelevant too. Our brains however work a lot differently..in categories and many different categories. One item belongs to many categories depending on the situation, context etc. A fire truck could be things that are red, or emergency vehicles, things with sirens on etc. I would recommend (which I posted before) Organized Mind book by Daniel Levitin, he explains the categories and how our brains work way better than I would. This is why the tagging will work better than the notebook structure. You can combine both of course but again the solution is not the number of notebooks to the organization problem.

I know people will still say I need my more than 250 notebooks etc. but if there is that limit and Evernote seems to be sticking to it, I would recommend everybody to get out of their comfort zone and look for solutions. To me this is not a deal breaker. There are other issues and concerns for sure that takes precedence in my opinion.

Security and encryption are big concerns for many so I definitely get that. So I would harp on that before the 250 notebook limit.

My 2 cents on the issue!

Happy Friday Eve!

[Riggar 51]

This is a continuous issue / problem that crops up regularly and I suspect is probably discussed at Evernote HQ fairly frequently. It's a fundamental design problem (did someone say some time ago '250 is fine; people will need need more than that'). Evernote themselves know in their hearts they are going to have to face the consequences some day. The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled. Actually, I'm well versed in risk analysis and subsequent mitigation having worked for a large Banking outfit in UK - so hire me to get the ball rolling! Joking aside, we are being fobbed off with 'tags' - which is not a solution. Tags are a really useful tool - but that is what it is - tool. The situation is a shame as the rest of Evernote is very good and while I've mentioned costs - we don't know the real cost of those people who don't use Evernote in earnest due to the 250 limit. I'm looking elsewhere to see what's about - I'll keep an eye on Evernote and we'll see what happens.  

[DTLow 5,736]

6 hours ago, Riggar said:

The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled.

You may have more details than me.  My guess is 250 Notebooks is an arbitrary number; it used to be 100.

Notebooks were not set up to be a primary organization tool.  
Their use was related more to sync/local, private/share, offline/online.

Having many notebooks causes an organization problem.  
Evernote recognized this and implemented the Stacks feature; it's a bit of a hack

>>Tags are a really useful tool - but that is what it is - tool.

I'm not sure what this means.
Notebooks are also a really useful tool.
I have 10 shared notebooks, 1 Local, 1 Offline, 1 sync'd, and my default Inbox Stack
I have 350+ tags and make use of the hierarchy feature to keep them organized

[Etonreve 188]

On 12/13/2016 at 8:09 AM, GiacomoLaw said:

Whilst I believe that more notebooks would be great, don't you find its a little cluttered with all of them? IMO, i think that if you hit the limit, it would start working against you, not with you.

My notebook system is not at all cluttered. It's a very efficient system for me and I need more than 250 notebooks. 

[Etonreve 188]

6 hours ago, Riggar said:

This is a continuous issue / problem that crops up regularly and I suspect is probably discussed at Evernote HQ fairly frequently. It's a fundamental design problem (did someone say some time ago '250 is fine; people will need need more than that'). Evernote themselves know in their hearts they are going to have to face the consequences some day. The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled. Actually, I'm well versed in risk analysis and subsequent mitigation having worked for a large Banking outfit in UK - so hire me to get the ball rolling! Joking aside, we are being fobbed off with 'tags' - which is not a solution. Tags are a really useful tool - but that is what it is - tool. The situation is a shame as the rest of Evernote is very good and while I've mentioned costs - we don't know the real cost of those people who don't use Evernote in earnest due to the 250 limit. I'm looking elsewhere to see what's about - I'll keep an eye on Evernote and we'll see what happens.  

I use tags, but I'm not always in a position to add them. I also am not always interested in re-Googling Evernote's peculiar search syntax to find them. I want to go to my notebook.

[Etonreve 188]

Whenever I read the posts of people who say "Why don't you just use tags?" I'm reminded of how Microsoft kept telling everyone how great Windows 8 was when it was awful. Finally, it came out with 8.1.

An organization app that prevents many customers from organizing their information in the way that seems most natural to them is not pursuing a winning strategy. And stop telling those of us who want more notebooks that we're dumb. We're not. Insulting the customer is another bad tack.

 

EDITED TO ADD

This comment has "-1" ranking. That's odd because I don't have the option to downvote other people's posts, only to upvote them. I'm still right about notebooks.

 

[jefito 5,589]

11 hours ago, Riggar said:

This is a continuous issue / problem that crops up regularly and I suspect is probably discussed at Evernote HQ fairly frequently.

It's a static issue in that it hasn't changed in 7 or 8 years or so. I doubt that they have weekly meetings over it.

11 hours ago, Riggar said:

It's a fundamental design problem (did someone say some time ago '250 is fine; people will need need more than that').

It used to be a hundred, before stacks came along, and was deemed to be a practical limit for the one-dimensional list of notebooks. Stacks were added, so they raised the limit to 250, since you could now do some limited nesting. The thinking behind all of this seemed to be that that tags  are a better, more flexible way to organize content.

11 hours ago, Riggar said:

Evernote themselves know in their hearts they are going to have to face the consequences some day. The trouble is - undoing this flaw is no small exercise and likely expensive, not to mention the various risk factors that need to be tackled.

Which is it:-the fact that there's a limit to number of notebooks or that nested notebooks don't exist? I'd say that the former option would be a lot less risky; the latter would mean a large change across Evernote's architecture on server- and client-sides, and the API that ties them together. Do some folks at Evernote regret this architecture? I'm pretty sure that they do. But it's not something that they're going to attack lightly, if they do.

[Shane D. 1,818]

Hi All,

You may have noticed that all threads requesting an increase of the 250 Notebook Limit have been merged into this thread, regardless of platform specificity. 

This was done in order to better enable us to quantify and qualify user requests, and amplify their voice.

While this does not mean this is a feature that will be coming, we certainly want to relay user feedback/sentiment to our various teams.

Moving forward, please put all commentary and votes for an increase of the 250 Notebook Limit here!

[DTLow 5,736]

On 8/28/2018 at 8:53 AM, Etonreve said:

My notebook system is not at all cluttered. It's a very efficient system for me and I need more than 250 notebooks. 

Can you provide details on  your notebook organization?

Some users are asking for nested notebooks.  I use a prefix naming system so my entries organize alphbetically.

[Naveed 1]

Hi All, its 2018 and i been reading this thread for the last few days from it inception listed date of 2015.

I have just hit my limit of 250 notebooks, im a plus user. Is there a way of increasing the number notebooks now?

[DTLow 5,736]

13 hours ago, Naveed said:

Is there a way of increasing the number notebooks now?

Currently (2018) the limit is 250 notebooks  https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005247-What-are-the-system-limits-of-Evernote-
For additional notebooks, you can open a second account

You may have noticed the limit is 100,000 tags.

[iRQ 5]

16 hours ago, Naveed said:

Hi All, its 2018 and i been reading this thread for the last few days from it inception listed date of 2015.

I have just hit my limit of 250 notebooks, im a plus user. Is there a way of increasing the number notebooks now?

Hi Naveed,

The only option for going over 250 notebooks is through an Evernote Business account (~360/year). Those accounts allow up to 10,000 notebooks.

https://evernote.com/compare-plans

 

RQ

[OneDrop 5]

Absurd and Absolutely ridiculous they would limit to 250 notebooks!!

 

PLEASE ?? PLEASE =>INCREASE THIS LIMIT!  IAM at 215 notebooks right now!  : ( .. . .

?

[debodeem 8]

I guess about 3 years ago I reached my 250 limit by surprise since there was no warning that I was getting close and no way to check how many notebooks I have. The whole thing was a real time waster because of the glitch when finally figure out you have to delete notebooks, it doesn't sync and release more notebooks to you for awhile.

Anyway, I remember proceeding here on the forum with long drawn out discussions about tags and how I must conform to tags or delete notebooks. See, the thing is, I like nesting. Nesting works for me. Tags?... meh.

Fast forward to today and I was curious if this restrictive limit on notebooks has changed. Surely it has, right? But sadly, no. And, here I am reading the same requests over and over - and the same vague reasoning as to why we can't have more notebooks, and the same cheerleaders trying to rationalize why Evernote doesn't listen to their users.

I would like to be officially counted as a user that wants more notebooks.

Bottom line though , I would happily PAY for this product if my account could have unlimited or practically unlimited notebooks. I know the business plan says 10K, but the individual account limit of 250 remains, so the only way to have more notebooks is to open additional accounts.

So, my 'workaround' was to go to OneNote. I can't really say I like it better. It's a horse of a different color and probably a bit too robust.

Evernote has a simplicity that attracted me. I really wish I could have continued with Evernote with 251, 500, even 1000 notebooks if that's what I needed.  And I wish that Evernote would have evolved to understand that long time users would by logic, need more than 250 notebooks.

I will check back again in 3 years to see if this feature is updated for the 21st century. See ya later.

[DTLow 5,736]

39 minutes ago, debodeem said:

See, the thing is, I like nesting. Nesting works for me.

Not sure where thIs comes in on this discussion.  There are requests posted for Notebook Nesting, but so far no indication that Evernote's interested.  

It would be a useful organization tool for users having many notebooks.  I manage using a prefixed naming standard for my notebooks and tags.

>>there was no warning that I was getting close

Evernote recently implemented a notification when the notebook limit is reached.

>>I would like to be officially counted as a user that wants more notebooks.

There are voting buttons at the top left corner of the discussion

[KenSc 1]

I too would like to call for more notebooks. The limit is baffling from both a technical and a usability point of view.

[michaelzapun 8]

I am absolutely seething about this.  I'm heavily invested in Evernote at this point as far as time and resources that it took to restructure my law practice.  I'm a sole practitioner and don't have an IT department on deck.  So the choice is to stick with 250 notebooks or make another leap to "business application" for $14.99 a month? But wait --- I was considering that until I saw two person minimum which means about $30 bucks a month.   It's really unacceptable.  This is not a free application.   I have a fear that if Evernote doesn't listen to its customer base for something so essential like this, the company will go the way of Gavel and Gown -- their once flagship product for lawyers Amicus Attorney eventually faded into obscurity because it failed to address the needs of its paying customer base.  I'm seriously going to have a look at Microsoft One Note again -- I'm wondering if that product also has such a limit. 

[DTLow 5,736]

29 minutes ago, michaelzapun said:

So the choice is to stick with 250 notebooks or make another leap to "business application" for $14.99 a month?

Or use another method to organize/archive your data.

[michaelzapun 8]

On 5/16/2018 at 10:42 AM, Rey San Pascual said:

For those who can live with less than 250 notebooks, it's perfectly usable. For those like me who are needing more than 250 notebooks at this point, Evernote is less than perfectly usable. If the 250 maximum notebook limit is arbitrarily set by Evernote when it was increased from the also presumably arbitrary limit of 100 notebooks, then Evernote can arbitrarily increase it again.

I don't see anyone arguing that that Evernote isn't usable with the 250 notebook limit. I do see people requesting that Evernote's usability be enhanced by increasing the notebook limit.

My other recommendation in the mean time to help users still under 250 notebook limit is to set a flag or warning or message at some arbitrary point when a user has created a certain number of notebooks, perhaps at 125 notebooks and again at 200 notebooks. People have pointed out that the limits are published and available. But either I didn't read that part or glossed over it during my learning curve. I placed a lot of thought in how I arranged and structured my information. A reminder of the limit would have been helpful so that I could have adjusted my information map a lot earlier on to account for the limit than having to deal with the limit at a time when I need to create my 251st notebook. And I'm not going to start a new thread/request on this idea. I'll let an Evernote employee do it if they want to; I'm busy trying to deal with the 250 notebook limit.

 

3 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Or use another method to organize/archive your data.

HI DTLow.  Easier said than done since as I said, I'm heavily invested in the notebook (and notebook stack) hierarchy.  But you are right about using another method.  I'm exploring migrating to OneNote.

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, michaelzapun said:

HI DTLow.  Easier said than done since as I said, I'm heavily invested in the notebook (and notebook stack) hierarchy.  But you are right about using another method.  I'm exploring migrating to OneNote.

If you were to describe your stack/notebook system, someone might be able to help you to reorganize, presumably to some system using tags. But if you're unwilling to try that (I'm guessing that you're using a notebook per client and don't feel certain about how that might work with tags), there are many other products. You mentioned OneNote, and that might suit your needs -- it didn't work for me, and the OneNote import from Evernote was a horrible disaster, so be a little cautious there. Good luck.

[DTLow 5,736]

2 minutes ago, jefito said:

I'm guessing that you're using a notebook per client and don't feel certain about how that might work with tags

Still guessing; for an Evernote solution possibly archive non-active clients.  
Either an archive account, or tag with the client and move to an archive notebook.

[michaelzapun 8]

6 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Still guessing; for an Evernote solution possibly archive non-active clients.  
Either an archive account, or tag with the client and move to an archive notebook.

 

12 minutes ago, jefito said:

If you were to describe your stack/notebook system, someone might be able to help you to reorganize, presumably to some system using tags. But if you're unwilling to try that (I'm guessing that you're using a notebook per client and don't feel certain about how that might work with tags), there are many other products. You mentioned OneNote, and that might suit your needs -- it didn't work for me, and the OneNote import from Evernote was a horrible disaster, so be a little cautious there. Good luck.

Guys thanks for your suggestions.  I use one notebook per client but if a client has multiple matters, I identify the client by stack and then the individual matters by notebook and then use notes such as: Players/People in the File; Status Report; Timesheets, etc.   and this has been a great fix for me till I got the dreaded "approaching 250 limit."  My toes curl at the 250 limit as a paid subscriber. People can make any excuse they want for the company but this is a fix-request for the last several years that hasn't been fixed even though the premium pricing has gone up.    Who knows?  Maybe I'll be back if OneNote doesn't do the trick either. ..

[debodeem 8]

2 minutes ago, michaelzapun said:

 

Guys thanks for your suggestions.  I use one notebook per client but if a client has multiple matters, I identify the client by stack and then the individual matters by notebook and then use notes such as: Players/People in the File; Status Report; Timesheets, etc.   and this has been a great fix for me till I got the dreaded "approaching 250 limit."  My toes curl at the 250 limit as a paid subscriber. People can make any excuse they want for the company but this is a fix-request for the last several years that hasn't been fixed even though the premium pricing has gone up.    Who knows?  Maybe I'll be back if OneNote doesn't do the trick either. ..

Hi Michaelzapun, I am sorry to hear of this issue frustrating you. 3 years ago it frustrated me and there were similar responses to me on how to change my entire system to work around this Evernote limitation. So I sympathize with your situation.

As I see this conversation continuing to this day, and although some folks may believe they are being helpful by suggesting you redo years of work and change your method of organization - I feel they are not understanding that each person's situation is different and the complexity of converting to the tag system is not always preferred or optimal. Bottom line is that this is not going to be fixed in your lifetime and there is little support within the Evernote cheerleading team to extend the notebook quantity.

Luckily, there is a method (a free importer) to import Evernote into Onenote and it is offered on the Onenote website. My unsolicited advice is to not waste your time here being resisted, but to invest your time into the transfer. 
 

[DTLow 5,736]

12 hours ago, debodeem said:

As I see this conversation continuing to this day, and although some folks may believe they are being helpful by suggesting you redo years of work and change your method of organization

I responded to the post, but at no time did I suggest "redo years of work and change your method of organization"
My suggestion was to archive non-active clients

[michaelzapun 8]

Well, I tell you that so far, I'm liking One-Note.  I set up the evernote stacks as notebooks, the notebooks as sections and the sections as pages, etc.  What I'm liking so far about One Note is that I'm not forced to sort the Order in the limited ways Evernote forces.  I can move sections and notes to any order I want.  That's huge for me.  I will report further findings as I go along. 

[DTLow 5,736]

On 9/27/2018 at 4:17 AM, KenSc said:

I too would like to call for more notebooks. The limit is baffling from both a technical and a usability point of view.

Voting buttons for this request are at the top left corner of the discussion.

Not clear about the "baffling"
imho  There is no technical reason for the limit - it's an artficially set number.
Useability is an issue because Evernote originally didn't intend tnotebooks to be the primary organization method
They did not include any hierarchy; the tag feature has an unlimited hierarchy.  These are technical issues.
An attempt was made to enhance usability by adding Stacks, but it only provides a single level.

[michaelzapun 8]

Guys I have to tell you I'm working with OneNote for last 24 hours and so far I'm liking it a lot.  A LOT.  I think its got more robust features that I use (maybe not you) but definately worth a second look if you haven't considered it lately.  I also like that there's a way to "close a notebook" to get rid of clutter on files that I'm not using in a particular week.  I may wind up doing a full length review at some point for those that may want to consider.