Johnny 3rd Grade Class List – for example. In this case a descriptive title would probably help me find the exact list that I am looking for. Given the number of kids that I have, a search for “class list” may turn up at least four results and maybe lists from prior years as well. While Tags make it easy to find what you are looking for – Titles help YOU filter through the list of search results. How you title your notes in Evernote is also very important for finding what you need. Use Descriptive Note Titles for Your Notes So, loosely collecting related notes in an Evernote notebook is useful to me.
I use notebooks because sometimes I don't know exactly what I am looking for.īut really, sometimes I need to flip through a related set of ideas or documents, just like I would an offline notebook. Theoretically, you could just have one huge notebook with thousands of well tagged notes. You are probably asking why you need both notebooks and tags. ? Why You Should Use Both – Notebooks AND Tags – in Evernote To remember my core tags, I keep an offline list.īut theoretically you could just create a note in Evernote. In addition I might add tags like “calendar” or “report card” or “class list”. Then I add other, secondary, descriptive tags that I think are relevant.įor example, if something is school related – it always gets the “school” tag. I assign one of these core tags to each and every note. My solution to this is to create a core set of ten or so tags. Let's say that you tag the school calendar with the tag school, then you save an updated calendar and tag it with the word “calendar”.Įvernote is pretty smart and should be able to return both notes if you search for the words “school calendar”.īut if the thing that you are searching for is not quite so simple, you might start to wonder whether your search is turning up all possible results. The problem is that just like notebooks, if you create too many you might actually be making it harder to find what you are looking for. While tags are a very powerful tool, they can also quickly get out of hand. When you save the school calendar into Evernote, you can assign it a keyword called “school” and so on and so forth. So, when you save the soccer game schedule into Evernote, you can tag it with a tag called “soccer”. When you create a note in Evernote, you can assign it some descriptive tags. Tags in Evernote are how you will be able to find a set of related notes. This is because I can search based on titles and tags and keywords which we will get into in a second.īecause you can search Evernote, there is no need for several notebooks. Soccer stuff, school stuff, personal stuff – it all gets thrown into the same bucket or in this case, notebook. I file everything that relates to a particular child in that ONE notebook. Resist the tendency to treat Evernote like an offline notebook.įor example, I have ONE notebook in Evernote for each of my kids. You will end up spending way too much time filing all your notes into the appropriate notebooks. If you create too many Notebooks in Evernote, you are actually working too hard. To find something you would have to sift through each piece of paper, which would take a long time.įor my kids – I might set up a separate offline binder for theirīut in Evernote, creating all those separate notebooks would be overkill. You would do this because you have no search function offline. In the offline world, you might set up a notebook for all the different projects in your life.
Think of a a spiral bound notebook or a three ring binder – but not exactly. Notebooks should be a familiar concept to you. Use Notebooks to Collect a Bunch of Related Notes This stack is made up of 4 notebooks – one for each of my kids. These are basically a collection of Notebooks that have something in common.įor example, I have a notebook stack called “Kids”. Notebook stacks are at the very top level of collections in Evernote. Use Notebook Stacks to Collect Your Notebooks However, you will only stick with your organization system if you set up a structure that is not overly complicated.
The Evernote Premium service will perform OCR (optical character recognition) on PDF files – but the free version does not. You can keep your Evernote account organized by using Notebooks,, Notebook Stacks, Titles, and Tags.Ĭreating a solid structure inside Evernote is especially important if you use the free version of the app. Evernote Has Tools You Can Use To Keep Your Account Organized You should be able to search for a keyword about your note in the search box and have the thing you are looking for show up as a result.