Newsletter housekeeping: Current version for Mac & PC is 10.84.3 so head over to the download page and update. A new slash command coming soon in table of contents. I’ve posted more about this at the bottom of the page. Tags have been around in Evernote for a very long time.
Really looking forward to the ToC slash command. Not so much because it’s a slash command (even though that’s more convenient than clicking a menu), but because it will be a Table of Content of the content *within* the actual note (instead of being a Map of Content over different notes, as before), and a way of quickly navigating the note. The *note* ToC together with the collapsable headers make using longer note really much easier. I’m assuming the note ToC will be a dynamic ToC as well (ie headers added to the note after the ToC block has been created are added to the ToC).
I asked the question about them being dynamic a little earlier and waiting for a reply. I hope so or even a little refresh icon to update if headers are added. Looking forward to this one.
I use tags as status indicators too - makes it very easy to get a list of notes I need to work on. It's this functionality that's meant I've never migrated to OneNote.
I'd really like nested tags to automatically apply the top-level tag is you apply any of the lower-level tags. In my case, there are a number of tags that indicate a note has been fully processed, but it's useful to have a generic tag indicating completion too e.g. if I added completion-reason2 as a tag to a note, it'd also be tagged with completed too. It's sometimes useful to find all completed notes, not just for a specific reason.
I'd also like the ability to set tags as mutually exclusive so if a note has tag1 and you attempt to add tag2 you get a message asking you if you want to remove tag1.
Nice little system there. I always found OneNote tags to be a little strange. You could kind of tag each line which I didn't really have a use case for and as far as I remember you couldn't search for tags in an easy way.
I'm one of those power users with hundreds of tags. Yes, it is really difficult to keep track of the tags in Evernote. I basically ignore the "tags" section in the left navigation. Instead I rely on my memory and autocomplete to remember the tags for me. One technique that really helps me came from this article by Rob Nightingale: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/organize-evernote-tags/
I know that every note needs a minimum of three tags 1.Relating To, 2.Type, and 3.Topic. This gives the AI something else to ingest but it also is a lot easier to remember. Yes, topics and types sometimes aren't labeled consistently but they are close enough to help me find most anything that I've put in Evernote. (I have over 10,000 notes).
Tags - definitely a "marmite" tool - people either love them or hate them it seems. For my part, I've played with using Tags in EN over the years, but found the tendency was to continually create extra tags, which made it difficult to remember what the actual Tag name was, and the number of Tags just increased. U think the use you suggest, Jon, using them as a "status" is the best use of Tags in EN, given that EN's searching capabilities are so great, enabling text to be found swiftly.
Having said that, however, if you create Tasks within a note to record the activities you need to undertake to complete the "project" represented by the note, you can of course search/filter for notes containing uncompleted tasks or completed tasks to show the status.
Guess, I'm still trying to see if I have a real use for Tags in EN.
I'm one of those odd balls that has (likely) over a thousand tags and I couldn't live without them. If not for tags, I likely would have left EN for greener pastures during the dark days, but nobody else came close when it came to that capability.
Its a really powerful feature and a shame its not used as much. A few months ago Evernote were asking a lot of questions about tags and I think the plan for the future is to make them more useful and easier to manage and discover.
Really looking forward to the ToC slash command. Not so much because it’s a slash command (even though that’s more convenient than clicking a menu), but because it will be a Table of Content of the content *within* the actual note (instead of being a Map of Content over different notes, as before), and a way of quickly navigating the note. The *note* ToC together with the collapsable headers make using longer note really much easier. I’m assuming the note ToC will be a dynamic ToC as well (ie headers added to the note after the ToC block has been created are added to the ToC).
I asked the question about them being dynamic a little earlier and waiting for a reply. I hope so or even a little refresh icon to update if headers are added. Looking forward to this one.
I use tags as status indicators too - makes it very easy to get a list of notes I need to work on. It's this functionality that's meant I've never migrated to OneNote.
I'd really like nested tags to automatically apply the top-level tag is you apply any of the lower-level tags. In my case, there are a number of tags that indicate a note has been fully processed, but it's useful to have a generic tag indicating completion too e.g. if I added completion-reason2 as a tag to a note, it'd also be tagged with completed too. It's sometimes useful to find all completed notes, not just for a specific reason.
I'd also like the ability to set tags as mutually exclusive so if a note has tag1 and you attempt to add tag2 you get a message asking you if you want to remove tag1.
Nice little system there. I always found OneNote tags to be a little strange. You could kind of tag each line which I didn't really have a use case for and as far as I remember you couldn't search for tags in an easy way.
I'm one of those power users with hundreds of tags. Yes, it is really difficult to keep track of the tags in Evernote. I basically ignore the "tags" section in the left navigation. Instead I rely on my memory and autocomplete to remember the tags for me. One technique that really helps me came from this article by Rob Nightingale: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/organize-evernote-tags/
I know that every note needs a minimum of three tags 1.Relating To, 2.Type, and 3.Topic. This gives the AI something else to ingest but it also is a lot easier to remember. Yes, topics and types sometimes aren't labeled consistently but they are close enough to help me find most anything that I've put in Evernote. (I have over 10,000 notes).
I like it! Nice article as well. Do you use a lot of saved searches?
I do have around 10 saved searches. Not sure if that is a lot but it helps me to get to those frequently used combo-tag searches.
/table of content command - that sounds useful foe long notes; being able to see that list and then jump to the relevant section would be a neat bibus
Tags - definitely a "marmite" tool - people either love them or hate them it seems. For my part, I've played with using Tags in EN over the years, but found the tendency was to continually create extra tags, which made it difficult to remember what the actual Tag name was, and the number of Tags just increased. U think the use you suggest, Jon, using them as a "status" is the best use of Tags in EN, given that EN's searching capabilities are so great, enabling text to be found swiftly.
Having said that, however, if you create Tasks within a note to record the activities you need to undertake to complete the "project" represented by the note, you can of course search/filter for notes containing uncompleted tasks or completed tasks to show the status.
Guess, I'm still trying to see if I have a real use for Tags in EN.
Yeah. I don't categorise anything by tags, I use notebooks for that. I find if I organised using tags it would be more work.
I'm one of those odd balls that has (likely) over a thousand tags and I couldn't live without them. If not for tags, I likely would have left EN for greener pastures during the dark days, but nobody else came close when it came to that capability.
Its a really powerful feature and a shame its not used as much. A few months ago Evernote were asking a lot of questions about tags and I think the plan for the future is to make them more useful and easier to manage and discover.