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A huge thank you to all paid subscribers and many thanks also to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.26.4. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.26.3.

The Evernote MCP server is out in public beta right now for folks on the starter and advanced plans. It’s coming soon to enterprise plans.

An MCP server is basically a way for you to connect your Evernote account to your favourite AI tool so you can work with your notes in the AI software itself.

I wrote about what an MCP is and how its useful a few weeks ago so have a read if you get chance.

Also check the AI section of Taming the Trunk for all AI related posts.

This article is not going to focus on what to use the MCP for, I’ll be writing more about that later. This concentrates on how to connect to the MCP.

First up are the instructions for ChatGPT, scroll down for the Claude instructions.

How to connect the Evernote MCP to ChatGPT

Connecting the Evernote MCP to ChatGPT is fairly straightforward, but you do need to check a few boxes along the way.

A few weeks ago, OpenAI released new versions of the ChatGPT web and desktop apps, so they are both very similar, this helps a lot.

All the screenshots below are from the web, it’s pretty much the same in the app.

The first thing you need to do is switch on developer mode so you can add the Evernote MCP.

Open up ChatGPT and go to Settings -> Plugins and then scroll down and click on Developer mode which is near the bottom.

Then scroll down and check the toggle that says Developer mode.

This lets you connect to third party MCP servers.

Next, click on Plugins in the sidebar and you should see a plus button towards the top right of the screen. Click this to add a new plugin.

This window appears.

You can ignore selecting an icon if you want, just give the plugin a name which would be Evernote and paste the following URL into the Connection box.

https://mcp.evernote.com/mcp

Don’t mess with anything else. Authentication should be OAuth, the connection toggle should be Server URL. Then all you need to do is check the disclaimer box at the bottom and click Create.

You should see a pop up similar to this asking yo to connect with Evernote.

Click Sign in with Evernote.

If you are not logged in you’ll see the usual Evernote login box.

Then you’ll be asked for some permissions.

Tick and untick what you want. If you don’t want the MCP to delete anything then uncheck this box. You can always revisit permissions later in the ChatGPT app.

Then check the disclaimer box at the bottom and click the Allow access button.

You’ll be redirected back to ChatGPT and away you go.

Try a quick prompt.

That’s it. A bit of a process, but it works.

This workflow is pretty much the same in the desktop ChatGPT apps.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments below. I use ChatGPT as my flavour of AI, so I should be able to help with questions.

How to connect the Evernote MCP to Claude AI

Here’s how to connect the Evernote MCP with Claude.

Just a note. I don’t use Claude as my daily AI, I’m a ChatGPT person, so I’ve signed up for the free plan to take a bunch of screen shots. Please let me know if anything is different in the paid plan regarding MCPs.

I used Claude web for all the screen shots, but it should be pretty much the same with the desktop apps, correct me if I’m wrong.

First step is to head into Settings -> Connectors and then from the Add dropdown menu at the top right of the screen select Add custom connector.

You’ll see this box.

Choose a name which would be Evernote and add this URL to the Remote MCP server URL box.

https://mcp.evernote.com/mcp

Don’t worry about the other boxes.

Next, click Add at the bottom right.

You’ll then see an option to connect with Evernote. Do this.

If you are not already logged into Evernote you will need to login.

After logging in, you then get to select the permissions you want to allow within Claude AI.

If you don’t want Claude to delete or create notes, then uncheck these boxes. Yu choose the scope of what the AI can do.

Permissions can be changed at any time within the Claude app.

Once you’re happy with the permissions, check the disclaimer box at the bottom and click the Allow access button.

You’ll be redirected back to Claude and you can go from there.

Try a quick prompt.

That’s it. Pretty simple.

Connect up and let me know how it goes. Leave a comment below.

Connecting Evernote MCP with other AI tools

You should be able to connect to the Evernote MCP with pretty much any AI tool but you will need to refer to your AI platforms documentation.

I know folk who have connected to Cursor and a few others, so give it a go and let me know what you connect and how you use it.

Also don’t forget to subscribe to Taming the Trunk as I’ll be writing a bunch of articles on what to use the MCP for.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

Something new in this weeks short mid-week video.

Evernote now lets you add relative dates to notes using the @ command.

Type something in natural language such as @today, @tomorrow, @last Wednesday or even @Christmas Day and Evernote turns it into an interactive date.

The clever bit is that the wording changes as time moves on. Today becomes yesterday, then last Wednesday.

In this video, I show you how to add and edit relative dates, change the date format and switch the feature off if you prefer the old behaviour.

Relative dates work inside your note content, note titles and notes created from calendar events.

You will need version 11.26.4 or later of the Evernote desktop apps.

Do relative dates make more sense to you than fixed dates? Prefer the old school method? Let me know in the comments.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

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A huge thank you to Rory, Mike and Marty who became paid subscribers over the last week and many thanks to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.25.6. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.25.6.

OK, let’s get this little change out of the way quickly.

A few weeks ago Evernote changed the colours in the text highlighter tool and a few folk found them a little bit too pastel, so with the new release this week we can now chose between the new colours and the old ones which are a bit brighter.

Head to Settings -> Notes, and you can select which ones you want to use.

I must admit my old man colour-blind eyes can’t really tell much difference between the two, but for those whose eyes still work, this may be helpful.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Working with file attachments in the Evernote AI Assistant

One of the slightly hidden features of the AI Assistant is the ability to attach files to a chat.

This is different to having the file in a note and there could be a few occasions where you want to work on a file but not have that file in the note itself.

When you open the AI Assistant, you can add a file or photo to the conversation by clicking the plus button and selecting Add photos & files.

I’ve been having a play to see what it can do.

Turning a handwritten chart into a Mermaid chart using Evernote AI

This was cool. I attached a photo of a crappy drawing of a simple flow chart and asked the AI Assistant to convert it into a Mermaid chart. The image itself doesn’t need to be kept, but it’s nice to have the chart.

The prompt I used was:

This was the response.

The Mermaid chart it produced looks like this.

This is pretty cool, converting my rubbish drawing. I like the way the AI can see the image.

This will be useful if I take photo’s of slides or whiteboards.

I wrote about creating charts and diagrams using Mermaid in Evernote a few weeks ago.

Crunching information inside a spreadsheet

A part of my day job is to run AI Marketing training sessions, so I have some sample spreadsheets setup that I use in lessons.

In this example, I’ve used some sample online store sales data.

I attached the spreadsheet and used the following prompt:

This was the response.

Pretty cool. Being able to upload CSV spreadsheets and analyse them is really useful, especially if they’re holding a lot of data.

You can also add multiple files to a chat, so it would be easy to ask the AI to run comparisons for you.

Note: This only works with CSV files and not Excel. You can export your Excel files as CSV before using them.

Pulling information out of a PDF document

In this example I’ve attached a PDF with all the GDPR rules. I really don’t want to read all this, but I want the rules regarding business to business email marketing.

This was the prompt:

This is part of the response (it was long):

If you have big PDFs that you want to summarise and create notes out of, attach them as a file and ask the AIA to create the note for you.

One thing to mention again is that you can add multiple files to the chat window so the assistant could bring together information from multiple places and combine it into a report or new note.

Another quick thing to mention is that you can also tell the AI Assistant to add the file you’ve attached to the note. Most of the time, it would be easier to drag the file in, but I’m sure there are use cases for this.

The examples above are very much work related and I think the AI Assistant works best when its analysing data or long text, maybe we don’t do that quite so much in our personal projects.

That said, I’ve used the assistant to compare yearly blood test results, work out backpacking itineraries and plan home projects.

Adding files to the chat window is useful, not as useful as adding them to the note but if they are files that you don’t need to keep in Evernote it’s another option for you.

Let me know if you’ve added files to chat in the comments. What was the reason? I love to hear about different workflows.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

Evernote recently introduced inline tags, which means you can add tags right in the middle of your note simply by typing a #.

If you’ve ever ignored tags because they felt a bit hidden away at the bottom of the note, this feature might change that. I’ve been using tags a little bit more.

What the video covers

I walk you through how inline tags work and where they can be used, with a few practical examples.

• How to add an inline tag

• Inline tags still tag the note

• Removing the inline tag removes the note tag

• Where inline tags work

• Where they do not work

• How to turn it off

I also share a few ways you might use inline tags day to day, like marking a note as ready to edit, flagging actions that need doing, or quickly labelling a note as an invoice, bill, research, email, or anything else that fits your system.

Are you using inline tags? Let me know in the comments.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

Subscribe now

A huge thank you to all paid subscribers and many thanks also to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.24.3. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.24.2.

A lot of folk have been waiting for this for a long time and it’s finally here! We now have access to the AI Assistant on mobile.

And it works pretty much the same as on desktop.

Make sure you’re using the latest version of the mobile app.

Just a quick note, this article is not about what to use the AI Assistant for, just how to operate the mobile version. I’ve written miles of text about what to use the AI for on Evernote and you can read them all in the AI section of Taming the Trunk.

How to open the Evernote AI Assistant on mobile

Open the app and you should see a new icon at the bottom of your screen.

Tap this and the AI Assistant will slide up from the bottom. It looks pretty much the same as it does on desktop.

At the top of this window, there’s the usual icon for seeing your chat history and an X to close the window.

At the bottom of the prompt window you’ll find the + button and behind that is Add photos & files, Search the web and Evernote help centre.

At the bottom right there’s a microphone for voice input, more later.

How to move the Evernote AI Assistant Icon

Now, a lot of you may have noticed that by default, you lose a navigation slot at the bottom of the screen. The AI Assistant has replaced one of them. Not so good.

A big shout out to Allan in the Taming the Trunk chat who spotted a setting under AI Features to customise where the AI Assistant icon is positioned.

Go to Settings -> AI Features -> Choose position.

You see these options.

The minimal navbar is default.

Compact navbar adds the AI Assistant to the right of the standard navigation bar and make it a little more compact.

The top right option sticks the icon at, surprisingly, the top right of the screen. I’ve gone for this as my default. I like it easy to get to but out of the way.

One thing I would love to see arrive is the chance to customise the icon. I much prefer using Mads the elephant on my desktop app.

Prompting the AI assistant by voice

I think this is probably more useful on mobile than desktop.

We all hate typing on mobile. It’s a pain and it’s much easier to speak into your phone.

The icon at the bottom right of the prompt window lets us dictate our prompt.

Disable the Evernote AI Assistant on mobile

If by any chance you don’t want to use the AI Assistant on mobile, you can disable it in settings.

Go to Settings -> AI Features and toggle off AI Assistant.

How to use Evernote AI Prompts on mobile

It’s a little bit hidden, but it is there. I would love to see an easier way to get to this on mobile.

One important thing to mention is that all the AI Prompts that you create on desktop automatically sync to mobile.

If you want to learn more about what AI Prompts are for, then check out last weeks article and this video.

So, there are two ways to get to AI Prompts. The first is to create a new note and then scroll the AI note suggestions to the far right, where you’ll find More AI Prompts.

The second way is to select some text in an existing note and then scroll to the far right of the AI Prompt menu, which looks the same as above.

When you tap on More AI Prompts you’ll see all your prompts in the library and you can search them.

You can then run a prompt against some selected text or within the new note. This works the same as on the desktop app, so check out the article and video mentioned above.

Now, when you select See all Prompts, you go to the entire AI Prompt library.

From here you can browse all your own custom prompts and the pre-installed ones from Evernote.

You can also create a new custom prompt by clicking the blue plus button.

Again, this works the same as on desktop, so check out the video mentioned earlier on how to create a custom prompt.

Improvements I would like to see

I would very much like a web search button next to the + and @ icons in the prompt box.

I’ve been testing the Evernote AI Assistant for a few weeks and use it almost as a search engine. It’s faster to open and easier to use than ChatGPT and if I want to make a note about what I’ve searched for, I can.

I would also love to see an easier way to get to the AI Prompts section. Maybe a diamond icon at the top of the chat window, similar to how it is on desktop.

What do you think? Have you used the AI Assistant on mobile yet? What improvements would you like to see? Let me know in the comments.

There’s an AI section of Taming the Trunk so make sure you head over and you can find lots of articles about how and what to use the AI Assistant and AI Prompts for.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

The AI Assistant in Evernote just got a whole lot more useful.

A bit longer than the usual mid-week videos as it’s a big feature… sorry!

I’m going to walk you through Evernote’s AI Prompt Library and show you how it can change the way you use the AI Assistant. If you’ve ever wanted the assistant to format things in your voice, pull the right info, or run your own reusable workflows, this is the feature you’ve been waiting for.

In the video:

• Where to find the AI Prompt Library (and the two quickest ways to open it)

• What the pre-installed prompts are good for

• How to create a custom prompt from scratch

• How to run a prompt on selected text and an entire note

• How to run a prompt with no note context at all

• How to run a prompt against a recording or transcript, including making your own meeting summary format

Let me know if you’re using AI prompts in the comments and what you’re using it for.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

Subscribe now

A huge thank you to all paid subscribers and many thanks also to Sven, who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.23.2. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.23.2.

A couple of weeks ago AI Prompts dropped as a new feature in Evernote and I’ve been hanging on for everyone to get this before doing the deep dive.

I think this is a bit of a game changer for the AI Assistant.

What are Evernote AI Prompts

It’s basically a library where you can save prompts that you use all the time.

It saves you typing them in over and over again.

It’s also somewhere you can start building workflows using the AI Assistant.

The easiest way to get to the AI Prompts is to click the little diamond-ish icon at the top of the AI Assistant window. There are other ways to get to it and we’ll cover them later.

AI Prompts is where you can search your prompts, run them against a note, or just run them, they don’t have to be dependent on a note.

Existing pre-installed prompts

Your newly minted AI Prompt Library comes with a whole bunch of pre-installed prompts.

You can’t edit these, but they are there if you need them.

They cover researching, planning, daily briefs and general rewriting of content.

There’s also a category designed to work with the transcriptions that you create, this section is very useful.

To give you an idea here’s the pre-installed prompt for pulling key items out of a meeting transcription.

These pre-installed prompts are really helpful but sometimes you may want a response in a specific style or format and this is where you can create your own custom prompts.

Tip: Copying the text of a pre-installed prompt is a great starting point for your own custom prompt.

Creating a custom AI prompt in the library

Open AI Prompts and click the Create button toward the top left and this screen appears.

You can also create a new prompt by going to the three-dot menu by the new note button in the left sidebar.

To create your custom prompt, select an emoji icon, a title for your prompt, a description and then you can put the prompt into a category.

Right now, we have categories for:

• General

• New note ideas

• Text edit

• Meeting Summary

• Transcription follow ups

At the bottom of the prompt creation window, you’ll find a place to put your instructions. This is the prompt that you want to run.

It’s important to be specific. To tell the AI exactly what you want, in what format and in the voice and tone you want.

All AI prompts work better when you‘re absolutely specific with the instructions.

I created the eBUILDE Evernote prompting framework to help you get the most out of your prompts.

One of the custom prompts in my library is for creating YouTube video descriptions based on the transcription of the videos I create for Taming the Trunk.

I also have a simpler prompt for telling me ‘what’s happening today’.

Experiment. You can edit and update a custom prompt at any time, so if you find you’re not getting exactly what you want, go into the AI Prompts library and edit your prompt to be even more specific to what you need.

Finding your custom prompts quickly

There’s a couple of ways to filter out your custom prompts.

The first is to click the Created by me button and this gets rid of all the pre-installed prompts and shows your own creations.

You can also hover over a prompt card and click the pin icon at the top right. You’ll pin the prompt to the top of the category.

Running a prompt against a note

There’s a couple of ways to do this.

The first way is to open the AI Assistant and go to the diamond icon and open AI Prompts.

Then click on the prompt you want to use and a window like this appears.

Click Try AI Prompt and a box appears with all your notes in it, most recent at the top.

If the note you want doesn’t appear, search for it and click it.

The prompt will run in the AI Assistant window.

The other way to run a prompt is to select some text in a note and run the prompt from the new floating formatting bar which I recorded a short video on the other day.

You can then search for the prompt you want and run it against the selected text.

This is really useful for editing text or simplifying a sentence.

Running a prompt on its own - no note

Now this is interesting. You can run a prompt on its own, not referring directly to note content and this opens up a different way to use the AI Assistant.

A good example of this is my ‘whats happening today’ prompt that tells me what I have to do today.

When I run this, I go to AI Prompts from the diamond icon at the top of the AI Assistant window, click on the prompt and then instead of clicking on a note I click on Try without note context.

It then runs the prompt in the AI Assistant window and tells me what’s happening today.

Ideas for reusable prompts

The whole idea of this library is that you can store prompts and use them as much as you want without the typing.

Here’s a few ideas for custom prompts:

• Rewrite text, but in your specific voice and tone - based on note content.

• Write social media posts based on note content in your voice and tone.

• List all the notes created today/yesterday - run without note context

• A meeting transcription summary how you want it. Here’s my master meeting prompt - based on note content.

• A daily briefing in exactly the format you want - run without note context.

Each one of us will probably have specific use cases for the prompts we create, so have a play and remember if you don’t get exactly what you want from the AI, go back and edit the prompt.

Will you be using AI Prompts? What kinds of prompts will you be creating? Let me know in the comments.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

Do you want to get ideas out of your head and into Evernote faster?

In this little mid-week video I’m demoing Evernote’s new dictation feature, how it differs from a normal voice note and how to start using it in seconds.

What you’ll see:

• How dictation works across devices (PC, Mac, iPhone and Android)

• The quickest way to start dictation using the /dictation slash command

• Where to find it in the Insert menu if you prefer clicking

• What the dictation block looks like and how it behaves while you speak

• How Evernote adds punctuation and line breaks automatically

• A quick look at switching languages while dictating

The quality of the dictation is generally very good. On the improvement side, I would like to be able to dictate checklists and bullet lists, that would be useful.

If you give it a try, let me know how you get on. Leave me a comment below

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

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A huge thank you to Len, Harry and Hal who all became paid subscribers over the last week and many thanks to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.21.5. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.21.4.

A couple of months ago Evernote announced they were working on an MCP Server and invited folks to sign up to a wait list.

That wait is over and folks who filled in the form should’ve had an email telling them how to test out this new feature.

It’s going to be a bit of a game changer for a lot of people.

This article is meant to be more of an introduction than a how to. Things may change before it’s released to everyone, so I’ll do one of my deep dives demoing how to connect it all up once it’s fully released.

What is an MCP

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol and its a standard that allows any AI tool like ChatGPT, Claude etc to connect to your Evernote account and retrieve/add/edit notes.

It’s a bit like a fancy API.

It doesn’t matter what AI service you use, just connect to the Evernote MCP and get access directly to everything in your Evernote account inside the AI tool.

This is what the connection looks like in ChatGPT.

With this connection live I can ask ChatGPT to perform all sorts of different actions on my Evernote account.

When you connect things up for the first time, you can choose to allow certain actions like adding/editing/deleting.

For example, you could only allow read only permissions so that the AI can only retrieve information and not add/edit or delete it.

This is what the permissions window looks like when connecting.

Once its all connected you’ll be able to prompt your AI with phrases like “Save this information to Evernote” and it will create a new note with whatever info you’ve been getting from the AI.

What can you do with the Evernote MCP?

Lots of things.

I’ve had it connected for around a month now and have used it quite a few times to either save information to Evernote or work with Evernote data inside my AI.

My AI of choice is Codex for Work which is made by OpenAI, its very similar to Claude Co-work.

The other day, I asked it to do some research for me on how to create some call-outs using Apple Pages, plus another bunch of formatting information. I told it to save the information to Evernote.

It didn’t really take almost 3 minutes to do this, it was my fault not paying attention and approving write permission for the first time it tried to create a note.

So, the AI did some research, collated it and formatted it how I wanted and then saved it into Evernote.

If I’m honest this kind of research could easily be done using the Evernote AI Assistant with a web search. You’d get pretty much the same results and it may be easier. It depends on how you work.

It all gets a lot more exciting and much more powerful when you start adding all your other apps to your AI service. It’s like connecting them all together.

Right now along with Evernote’s MCP, I’ve added my invoicing and CRM apps, cloud storage, social media app, project management software, Slack and my email.

I can now work with all of them in Codex and bring information from many places together.

Here’s something I did earlier.

I asked the AI to go to my invoice app and get all the paid invoices from May, add them up and store the results in an Evernote note.

I now have a paid invoices report for May. If I wanted to, I could specify the notebook I want it to be saved into. If you don’t it goes into the default notebook.

I’m not a big fan of social media, so I tend to get Codex or Evernote’s AI Assistant to write posts for me. I’ve created a specific skill in Codex with the Taming the Trunk brand voice and tone, which is basically how I sound.

This prompt goes to Evernote and looks at the Copy for 2027 calendar template note and then creates some social posts based on the social skills I’ve taught it.

Final example is a skill that I’ve taught Codex for renaming and processing all my receipts.

Every now and then, I’ll be asking it to look at my Receipts Dump notebook, rename the note titles based on who this invoice is from, what its for and when it is. I then tell it to move the note to my Receipts 2026 notebook.

I’m really lazy at processing my receipts manually, so teaching Codex this skill will save me hours of work. There were 175 notes in my Receipts Dump notebook... not any more!

I invoked the Evernote Rename Receipts skill that I created and it processed 147 of the notes.

The 23 left over were because I told it to ignore notes where it couldn’t work out what it was for.

This is huge. Manually renaming so many notes and moving them takes me ages. I just ask my robot to do it now.

So, there we go. These are some of the ways I’m using the Evernote MCP. Others will do different things with it.

If you’ve got access to it, let me know what you’re up to and what you think.

If you haven’t, either hang on a little longer for the public rollout or fill in the waitlist form and see if they are still taking entries.

And finally…

Bending Spoons have published a fascinating blog post explaining how they created the technology for semantic search.

It throws out a lot of stats like 9 billion notes, 5.7K notes processed per second.

If you want to go super technical and find out how they did it, then check out the article here.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

It took me a while to get used to this and I almost switched it off, but I’m glad I didn’t as I’m now using it all the time.

In this mid-week video, I’m testing out the new floating formatting bar and showing you exactly how it works.

• Where the new pop-up formatting toolbar appears and what’s included

• How to favourite formatting items like quote so they show up in the bar

• How to remove tools you never use (goodbye Comments, for me)

• One improvement I’d love to see next

What do you think of the new floating formatting bar, love it or not?

Let me know in the comments.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

Subscribe now

A huge thank you to Ben who became a paid subscriber over the last week and many thanks to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.21.5. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.21.4.

OK, stand by for a long one. Sorry.

There’s been a lot released and I’ll be doing some deep dives over the next couple of weeks that will go into more detail about some of these new features, with some good use cases.

Here we go. First up is...

AI Prompt Library

We now have a place to keep the prompts we use repeatedly.

Don’t underestimate this. It’s a game changer for the AI Assistant.

This is desktop and web only right now.

You get to AI Prompts by selecting some text and going to the new AI Prompt button at the side of the new floating formatting bar (more on this later). Click See all prompts.

I believe there’s a new button coming soon in the sidebar that will speed up getting to the prompts.

The idea is that you store reusable prompts and then use them whenever you want.

To create a new custom prompt, just hit the Create button at the top left. You’ll see this window appear.

You can change the icon, give the prompt a name and description, select a category and add your prompt.

This is what it looks like.

To run a prompt, head to the AI Prompt library, click on the prompt you want and then click Try AI Prompt.

You then get to select a note to run the prompt against, or just run the prompt without note context.

So, for example, my “What’s happening today” prompt which you can see above in the screen shot, doesn’t need any specific note context to run as its just telling me what I have to do today, so I’ll select Try without note context.

If I was using my custom meeting transcription summary prompt, I would select the note I want to run this prompt against.

The AI Assistant will open and automatically run the prompt.

Have a play with this. I’m planning a deep dive post around it as I think this is probably one of the most important improvements for the AI Assistant.

One note. It is awkward to get to right now. I’m hoping that another point of entry appears soon either in the sidebar or the AI Assistant window.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

We have a new inline formatting editor

This is something that has been in testing for quite a while now and when I first played with it, I wasn’t sure I liked it. It was a change.

After using it for a few weeks, I’m now getting used to it and using it almost all the time. I don’t really go to the main toolbar at the top of the note anymore.

This is what it looks like.

When you select some text, the toolbar pops up and you can change the formatting to whatever you want.

Now, before you say, “Half the icons are missing”... you can customise this and have whatever icons showing in the toolbar that you want.

Click on the three-dot menu to the right of the floating toolbar and all the formatting options appear.

To customise the toolbar, just scroll and find the formatting you want and click the yellow favourite star to the right hand side.

In the screen shot above, I’ve just added the quote format to the tool bar.

If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the list, you’ll see all the favourites in the toolbar and you can remove them if you don’t want them there.

There’s a bit more to this toolbar than just formatting. You can click the AI icon at the far right and get access to a whole bunch of AI prompts, including your custom prompts.

I’m hoping to record a video on the new toolbar soon, so watch out for that.

There’s also a new setting to switch this off under Settings -> Preferences -> Notes and look for Hide floating toolbar.

Don’t be too quick to turn it off. It is a big visual change, but after a week or two, I’ve got used to it and find it helpful.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Will you be using it?

New AI meeting recorder and live transcription

The AI Meeting Notes feature has proved to be really popular, I know of a lot of folk joining Evernote just for this.

It’s just been updated with a bunch of new things.

For a start, the recorder now appears at the bottom on the screen and looks like this.

You can pause, restart and stop the recording the same as before, but we have a couple of new features.

On the right hand side, there’s a new microphone icon. Click this and you’ll be able to select which microphone to use for the recording.

It gives you a list of all the microphones connected to your device so you can pick the one you want and there’s also an option for system audio, which is the audio coming from your computer like your browser, Teams, Google Meet, Zoom and any other apps. If you select remote recording, this is already ticked for you.

Now for the exciting bit.

Click the icon to the left of the voice recorder and you can see a live transcription as you talk.

Once you hit stop Evernote still goes through the normal transcription process.

I’m struggling to understand all the use cases for this, but I think one benefit of the live transcription is that you can grab little bits of text from the conversation as it’s happening and paste them somewhere. Saves doing it afterwards.

I also believe the backend transcription process has been upgraded. When you transcribe, it now says things like “adding punctuation” and “cleaning up background noise”. The quality of the transcription is getting much better.

Let me know what you think of these changes in the comments and if you have a use case for live transcriptions.

Dictate your notes with live speech to text

We have a new slash command.

Do slash (/) Dictation and you’ll be able to talk and have the words appear as you’re speaking.

This is really cool and I think when I get the hang of it, I’ll be using this quite a lot.

I just dictated this sentence.

When you’re speaking there’s a little mini audio recorder thingy at the bottom of the screen where you can stop the dictation.

I know this is something folks have been asking about for a very long time.

The text that appears will automatically insert commas, full-stops, question marks, etc. But there is no way to start a new paragraph or add something like bullet points for dictating a list. I hope this gets improved soon.

The quality of the voice recognition does seem very good.

Will you be using it? Let me know in the comments.

Rich text in task descriptions

This is something very useful, especially if you paste links into your task description.

We now have a rich text area to play with.

I’ve spotted a bug when adding links inside the box. They appear but move around. I’ve mentioned this, so I hope it gets fixed soon.

This will please a lot of folk as having web or Evernote internal links in the task description will be very useful.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Inline tags is now a thing

Folks have been asking for this for years, if not decades.

Wherever you are in a note, just type a # and a tag selector appears.

Pick a tag and it shows inline in the note.

The tag will also appear at the bottom of the note in the normal tag section.

This may have made tags much more useful for a lot of folk.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Sorry this was a long one. I’ll be sharing more deep detail on some of these new features soon, so keep an eye out for the next posts and don’t forget to subscribe.

Have a great weekend.

All the best

Jon

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Each year, I produce a calendar template that a lot of folk seem to like and use within their Evernote.

So, here is the free template for 2027.

There are two versions.

One with the week starting on a Monday and another where the week starts on a Sunday.

Downloaded them as ENEX files and double click them or drag them into a notebook and they’ll get converted into an Evernote note.

You can import them into the PC, Mac and Web apps.

Just head over to the free templates page and download the bundle that includes these new calendars and a lot more.

Download the Templates

Let me know what you use them for.

Have a great rest of the week.

All the best

Jon

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A huge thank you to Mark, KMM and Amanda who became paid subscribers over the last week and many thanks also to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.20.2. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.20.3.

I’ve not done a “features you may not know about” article for ages, so I thought it was about time.

Forgive me if I’ve mentioned some of these before. They tend to be some of the little things that when I mention them, folks say “I never knew you could do that.”

So here we go.

They all work on desktop. I’ll write a mobile version of this in a few weeks.

You can create a note even when you’re working in another app

As long as Evernote is minimised or the elephant is showing in the Windows/Mac task bar, there’s a keyboard shortcut for creating a new note anywhere.

Use ALT + CTRL + N for PC or ^ + ⌥ + ⌘ + N on Mac.

No matter what app you’re in, a new note will be created.

In the screen grab above, I’m in my browser viewing my calendar and have opened a new note.

The note will always appear in your default notebook and make sure other software doesn’t take over the shortcut.

Paste clipboard contents directly into a new note anywhere

Copy something to your clipboard, some text, an image or even a file and then use the keyboard shortcut ALT + CTRL + V or ^ + ⌘ + V and it turns up in a new note where ever you are.

In this screen grab, I was in my file explorer, I copied a zip file to my clipboard, did the shortcut and the file appeared in my default notebook as a new note.

I use this quite a bit.

Get to Evernote search from anywhere

On the same theme there’s a global shortcut to open Evernote search.

No matter what app you’re playing with (as long as they don’t take over the shortcut) just do a Shift + Ctrl + K or WIN + SHIFT + F for PC. On Mac use ⇧ + ⌘ + K or ^ + ⌘ + E.

Evernote will open with the search box in full focus.

Drag all the contents of a header around

We have collapsible headers, which are pretty cool, they help hide content in long notes and make them a little easier to navigate.

One cool thing you can do is close the heading, which collapses its contents and then using the little drag handles to the left of the heading, you can move all the contents around the page.

I’ve used this quite a bit to rearrange the structure of a note.

Copy multiple internal note links in one go

This is useful if you want to create a Table of Contents note.

Just multi-select a bunch of notes ( I believe up to 100) and then use the keyboard shortcut Alt + Ctrl + L or ⌘ + L to copy the note links or Ctrl + Alt + Shift + C or ^ + ⌥ + ⌘ + C for the internal note links.

In the screen grab above, I’ve multi-selected three different notes and pasted the links in preview style.

One little note! A copied note link will start https:// and this usually opens in Evernote web. An internal note link starts evernote:/// and will only open in the app itself.

Look at your note version history going back years

Find your note history using CTRL + SHIFT + I or ⇧ + ⌘ + I, or picking it from the three-dot menu at the top right of a note.

Near the bottom of the pop-up, you’ll see a little text link for note history.

Click on it and you can view the note history going back years, not just 30 days like in a lot of apps.

I created the note above back in 2022 and I can still go right back to the beginning.

You also get the chance to export the old version of the note as an ENEX file or restore the note to an earlier version.

It’s a very cool feature that can get you out of a pickle.

So, did you know all of these little tricks? Had you forgotten about any of them? Let me know in the comments.

And finally...

The official May update video is out.

These are always worth a watch and cover improvements and updates that happened during May.

That’s it

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

This is a cool new improvement and you’ll need to be on at least version 11.20.2 for Mac, PC, Android or iPhone. Same versions for all.

You can now link to Evernote notebooks, stacks and spaces inside a note, which makes building dashboards, project hubs and simple table-of-contents notes much easier.

In the video I’m going to show you:

• How linking to notes has always worked

• What’s new, and how to add links to a notebook, a space and a stack

• A couple of ideas for using this for projects, clients and general navigation

Let me know what you think in the comments if you’ll be using this. I’d love to hear about use cases.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

Subscribe now

A huge thank you to Ole and Bill who became paid subscribers over the last week and many thanks also to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.19.4. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.17.3.

I had a message from Dave, one of Taming the Trunk’s paid subscribers the other day with a cool problem.

He wanted, like many others, the floating table of contents feature on mobile so it makes it a lot easier to scroll through long notes. I’d love this as well.

Right now, the only option is to use a fixed table of contents, but that means on the desktop or web, a fixed TOC is showing when the floating TOC works just fine. It’s duplication and taking up room.

Here’s the TOC on my reading list.

On desktop and the web, I get the cool floating table of contents that looks like this.

On my phone, I need to keep the text TOC so I can get to the different authors quickly, but it’s a pain looking at this on my Mac.

The perfect solution would be for floating TOC to work on phones, but until that happens, you can hide/show the text TOC using a toggle.

When the toggle is open it looks like this.

When the toggle is closed, it looks like this.

The reason for using a toggle instead of a header is to stop the table of contents heading appearing in the main TOC and messing it up.

Not perfect, but an interesting use for the new toggle feature.

Let me know in the comments how you’re getting on with toggles and TOCs.

Two really useful Evernote AI prompts

The first is my ‘What’s happening today” prompt.

I run this at the start of each day.

This has been working well and it gives me a summary of my day so I know what’s going on.

The response I got for today looks like this.

I’ve found this very useful, especially right at the start of the day.

A quick note on the tag Flow. These are notes that have been emailed in from my invoice software, things like recurring invoices that need checking before sending and any payments made.

The second little prompt I’ve been using has saved me time, but there is a small bug with it. I’ve mentioned the bug to the Evernote team and hopefully it will get fixed.

When I first boot up Evernote each morning I usually have a bunch of overdue tasks. Things I didn’t get round to the day before. I’ve then, very tediously, changed the due date on all these overdue tasks to Today. Boring!

Here’s the prompt.

This is the response I got.

I’m pretty sure you could also do this at the end of each day and tell the AI to change the due date of all tasks with the due date of Today to Tomorrow.

Important! I would make sure you’ve not got any recurring tasks overdue as the dates could get messed up. Maybe try asking the AI to ignore recurring tasks. All mine get completed each day as they are the most important tasks for me.

Now the little bug I mentioned. When the due date is updated, it shows in the task kingdom as X hours ago and still appears in the overdue section.

The date is correct, but it shows in the UI wrong. The solution is to open the task and then click save. A bit of a pain but still quicker than changing all the task dates manually.

I’ve mentioned this bug and hopefully it will get fixed.

One other thing to mention. These types of prompts are going to become MUCH easier to run very soon when they launch a new feature I’m testing. Can’t say anything else right now🤐

Let me know what you think in the comments? Have you got any variations of these types of prompts?

I’ve been categorising the Taming the Trunk articles

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while as there are now over 300 articles and none of them are in actual categories. It was a bit tedious, but I’ve finished the last 12 months. I’ll work on others over the weekend.

So, on the home page of Taming the Trunk, there’s a new [START] page that points new and existing readers to the achieved content a bit quicker and easier.

The categories I’ve picked are:

• Evernote AI

• Organisation

• Workflow

• Interview

I wanted to keep the categories to a bare minimum, so there’s a bit of a crossover as some articles are talking about many things, but hopefully this will help folks find articles and videos about the areas they are interested in.

Let me know what you think.

And finally...

The paid subscriber chat thread for June is open and you can get to it using the link below. Feel free to ask questions, post screens and have a moan.

Don’t forget all free subscribers also get access to the Taming the Trunk chat, so feel free to ask questions.

That’s it

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

This week’s short mid-week video looks at how to use the AI Memory feature that was released a few weeks ago.

If you prefer to read, here’s the article.

The AI Memory is a way to add global instructions that the Evernote AI Assistant and the AI Title Generator look at every time you prompt them.

You give the AI specific instructions that you want it to follow.

In the video you’ll see where to find AI Memory in Evernote, what kinds of “global instructions” it can store.

I run a few simple instructions and also tell it how to structure invoice and bill titles when I use the Ai title generator.

I hope this is useful.

Let me know if you’re using the memory feature yet and what you’ve told it to remember.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

A huge thank you to John who became a paid subscriber over the last week and many thanks also to those who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.18.1. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.17.3.

Thanks for all the nice feedback and messages about the interview with Stacey Harmon last week, loads of folk found the conversation useful and I’m going to try and get Stacey back on in a few months.

This week is a bit of a mismatch of new small features I’ve forgotten to mention and some more use cases for Evernote’s AI Assistant.

We start with...

A New What’s New Page

You may have noticed that down the bottom of the sidebar, we now have a little megaphone icon that looks a bit like this.

This icon appears blue when there’s something new to read.

Click it and you go to a brand new “What’s New” page, which is much more informative than the basic release notes.

It’s a nicer way to tell you about new features and improvements and there’s also a learn section, which I believe will be expanded on.

You can also file a bug or suggest a new feature pretty easily.

I’d like to see the whole ‘Help and Learning’ section from the website built into this as it would end up being a one-stop shop for help and advice.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Search box gets a kingdom bar

This dropped a few weeks ago. If you open the search box you’ll now see a thin bar at the top which gives you easy access to all the Evernote kingdoms like Tasks, Calendar, Home etc.

I’ve not found myself using it that much, but I can see how it could be useful.

Maybe the ability to customise it? Add notebooks and spaces to it? Would you find this useful? Let me know in the comments.

The AI Assistant can delete notes

Not automatically!

So, you can ask the AI assistant to delete a note or multiple notes and you also get the chance to undo, which is kind of important.

Here’s the conversation for deleting an open note.

There’s an option to undo as well.

Now you may be thinking, it’s much easier to just delete it than go through all this conversation and you’d be correct. I don’t see this context being useful.

But, if you ask the AI to find lots of notes within a certain criteria and then delete them it could be useful.

You could ask the AI Assistant to find all your notes in a notebook that have the title “Untitled”, which means they could be empty.

Then ask it to delete them all.

I created a bunch of notes and didn’t title them. Here’s the conversation.

Now this is much more useful. You can use the AI Assistant to find a bunch of notes you don’t want and then get rid of them.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Mermaid charts for a family tree

I had an email from Dany who’s one of the TTT paid subscribers and has been using Mermaid charts quite a bit. He created a lineage chart and this inspired me to create a family tree chart using the AI Assistant.

So, I asked the Evernote AI to create a fake family tree for me starting in 1760 and includes births, marriages, children and deaths. It did a really good job and provided me with perfect Mermaid code to build the chart.

It came up with this.

Now the chart is great, the problem is the resolution. You can’t read the names in the boxes.

Any charts that are big, horizontally, will look like this.

What you see above is the maximum size.

There was an Evernote Expert call yesterday and I mentioned this to them so I really hope improving resolution is on the to do list.

I reckon Mermaid in Evernote could be very useful for genealogists. Let me know what you think.

I’ll leave the code for this Mermaid chart at the bottom of the post in case you want to play with it.

Slash commands now work in lists

This little improvement dropped this week, so make sure you’re all up to date.

You can now use the slash (/) command in a list.

It works in check, bullet, or numbered lists.

I know a few folk have been asking for this.

And finally...

I’ve given the AI Assistant a name!

Awaken EVE!

I always thought this would be a great name for the assistant and now we have the AI Memory feature we can name the Evernote Assistant, we can also tell it our own name as well.

This is what my AI memory looks like.

A few ideas for a name:

• Skynet (Terminator movies)

• Edgar (Electric Dreams movie)

• Max (from Max Headroom fame)

• Pris (Bladerunner)

• HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey)

• Orac or Zen (Blakes 7)

• K9 (Dr Who)

I asked EVE to introduce herself to me.

Have some fun with the AI Assistant. Have you named it? Let me know.

That’s it

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

Here’s the really long Mermaid code for the made up family tree

Have a play with this. Do a /mermaid and copy paste the code.

graph TD
  %% ====== Styles ======
  classDef person fill:#f7f7ff,stroke:#4b4b7a,stroke-width:1px,color:#111;
  classDef marriage fill:#fff6e5,stroke:#a66b00,stroke-width:1px,color:#111;

  %% ====== Generation 1 (born ~1760) ======
  A["Thomas Whitcombe\n*b.* 1760 • York, England\n*d.* 1821"]:::person
  B["Eleanor Marsh\n*b.* 1764 • Leeds, England\n*d.* 1833"]:::person
  M1((⚭ 1784)):::marriage
  A --- M1 --- B

  %% Children of Thomas & Eleanor
  C["Samuel Whitcombe\n*b.* 1786\n*d.* 1852"]:::person
  D["Hannah Whitcombe\n*b.* 1789\n*d.* 1861"]:::person
  E["Edward Whitcombe\n*b.* 1793\n*d.* 1847"]:::person
  M1 --- C
  M1 --- D
  M1 --- E

  %% ====== Generation 2 ======
  F["Mary Alden\n*b.* 1788\n*d.* 1869"]:::person
  M2((⚭ 1810)):::marriage
  C --- M2 --- F

  %% Children of Samuel & Mary
  G["Clara Whitcombe\n*b.* 1811\n*d.* 1888"]:::person
  H["Joseph Whitcombe\n*b.* 1814\n*d.* 1870"]:::person
  I["William Whitcombe\n*b.* 1818\n*d.* 1891"]:::person
  M2 --- G
  M2 --- H
  M2 --- I

  %% Hannah's marriage branch
  J["Robert Kershaw\n*b.* 1787\n*d.* 1859"]:::person
  M3((⚭ 1812)):::marriage
  D --- M3 --- J
  K["Eleanor Kershaw\n*b.* 1813\n*d.* 1902"]:::person
  L["Matthew Kershaw\n*b.* 1816\n*d.* 1884"]:::person
  M3 --- K
  M3 --- L

  %% Edward's marriage branch
  N["Agnes Ford\n*b.* 1796\n*d.* 1878"]:::person
  M4((⚭ 1819)):::marriage
  E --- M4 --- N
  O["Henry Whitcombe\n*b.* 1820\n*d.* 1899"]:::person
  P["Lucy Whitcombe\n*b.* 1824\n*d.* 1910"]:::person
  M4 --- O
  M4 --- P

  %% ====== Generation 3 (Victorian era) ======
  Q["Eliza Hart\n*b.* 1822\n*d.* 1896"]:::person
  M5((⚭ 1840)):::marriage
  I --- M5 --- Q

  %% Children of William & Eliza
  R["Arthur Whitcombe\n*b.* 1842\n*d.* 1916"]:::person
  S["Beatrice Whitcombe\n*b.* 1845\n*d.* 1928"]:::person
  T["Frederick Whitcombe\n*b.* 1849\n*d.* 1933"]:::person
  M5 --- R
  M5 --- S
  M5 --- T

  %% Joseph's marriage
  U["Sarah Molyneux\n*b.* 1817\n*d.* 1901"]:::person
  M6((⚭ 1838)):::marriage
  H --- M6 --- U
  V["Thomas Whitcombe II\n*b.* 1840\n*d.* 1908"]:::person
  W["Edith Whitcombe\n*b.* 1844\n*d.* 1920"]:::person
  M6 --- V
  M6 --- W

  %% ====== Generation 4 (turn of the century) ======
  X["Mabel Grant\n*b.* 1846\n*d.* 1922"]:::person
  M7((⚭ 1867)):::marriage
  V --- M7 --- X

  %% Children of Thomas II & Mabel
  Y["Harold Whitcombe\n*b.* 1868\n*d.* 1943"]:::person
  Z["Florence Whitcombe\n*b.* 1871\n*d.* 1957"]:::person
  AA["George Whitcombe\n*b.* 1875\n*d.* 1962"]:::person
  M7 --- Y
  M7 --- Z
  M7 --- AA

  %% Arthur's marriage
  AB["Nora Pritchard\n*b.* 1846\n*d.* 1930"]:::person
  M8((⚭ 1869)):::marriage
  R --- M8 --- AB
  AC["Evelyn Whitcombe\n*b.* 1870\n*d.* 1949"]:::person
  AD["Charles Whitcombe\n*b.* 1873\n*d.* 1936"]:::person
  M8 --- AC
  M8 --- AD

  %% ====== Generation 5 (World Wars era) ======
  AE["Lillian Bates\n*b.* 1872\n*d.* 1951"]:::person
  M9((⚭ 1893)):::marriage
  AA --- M9 --- AE

  %% Children of George & Lillian
  AF["Alfred Whitcombe\n*b.* 1894\n*d.* 1978"]:::person
  AG["Margaret Whitcombe\n*b.* 1898\n*d.* 1986"]:::person
  AH["Stanley Whitcombe\n*b.* 1902\n*d.* 1972"]:::person
  M9 --- AF
  M9 --- AG
  M9 --- AH

  %% Harold's marriage
  AI["Rose Bennett\n*b.* 1870\n*d.* 1948"]:::person
  M10((⚭ 1891)):::marriage
  Y --- M10 --- AI
  AJ["Catherine Whitcombe\n*b.* 1892\n*d.* 1975"]:::person
  AK["James Whitcombe\n*b.* 1896\n*d.* 1965"]:::person
  M10 --- AJ
  M10 --- AK

  %% ====== Generation 6 (post-war) ======
  AL["Irene Shaw\n*b.* 1904\n*d.* 1991"]:::person
  M11((⚭ 1926)):::marriage
  AF --- M11 --- AL

  %% Children of Alfred & Irene
  AM["Peter Whitcombe\n*b.* 1927\n*d.* 2009"]:::person
  AN["Joan Whitcombe\n*b.* 1930\n*d.* 2018"]:::person
  AO["Michael Whitcombe\n*b.* 1934\n*d.* 1999"]:::person
  M11 --- AM
  M11 --- AN
  M11 --- AO

  %% James's marriage
  AP["Dorothy Lane\n*b.* 1899\n*d.* 1988"]:::person
  M12((⚭ 1921)):::marriage
  AK --- M12 --- AP
  AQ["Richard Whitcombe\n*b.* 1922\n*d.* 1995"]:::person
  AR["Sylvia Whitcombe\n*b.* 1925\n*d.* 2004"]:::person
  M12 --- AQ
  M12 --- AR

  %% ====== Generation 7 (late 20th century) ======
  AS["Margaret ‘Maggie’ Cole\n*b.* 1931\n*d.* 2016"]:::person
  M13((⚭ 1954)):::marriage
  AM --- M13 --- AS

  %% Children of Peter & Maggie
  AT["David Whitcombe\n*b.* 1956"]:::person
  AU["Helen Whitcombe\n*b.* 1959"]:::person
  AV["Andrew Whitcombe\n*b.* 1963"]:::person
  M13 --- AT
  M13 --- AU
  M13 --- AV

  %% Michael's marriage (and divorce)
  AW["Carolyn Hughes\n*b.* 1937\n*d.* 2010"]:::person
  M14((⚭ 1960)):::marriage
  AO --- M14 --- AW
  AX["(div. 1971)"]:::marriage
  M14 --- AX
  AY["Simon Whitcombe\n*b.* 1961"]:::person
  AZ["Rachel Whitcombe\n*b.* 1966"]:::person
  M14 --- AY
  M14 --- AZ

  %% Remarriage
  BA["Janet Ellison\n*b.* 1942"]:::person
  M15((⚭ 1974)):::marriage
  AO --- M15 --- BA
  BB["Clare Whitcombe\n*b.* 1976"]:::person
  M15 --- BB

  %% ====== Generation 8 (present day) ======
  BC["Priya Desai\n*b.* 1960"]:::person
  M16((⚭ 1985)):::marriage
  AT --- M16 --- BC

  %% Children of David & Priya
  BD["Sophie Whitcombe\n*b.* 1988"]:::person
  BE["Oliver Whitcombe\n*b.* 1992"]:::person
  M16 --- BD
  M16 --- BE

  %% Oliver's partner + child
  BF["Amelia Clarke\n*b.* 1993"]:::person
  M17((⚭ 2018)):::marriage
  BE --- M17 --- BF
  BG["Maya Whitcombe\n*b.* 2020"]:::person
  BH["Noah Whitcombe\n*b.* 2023"]:::person
  M17 --- BG
  M17 --- BH

  %% Helen's family
  BI["Gareth Price\n*b.* 1958"]:::person
  M18((⚭ 1982)):::marriage
  AU --- M18 --- BI
  BJ["Leah Price\n*b.* 1984"]:::person
  BK["Tom Price\n*b.* 1987"]:::person
  M18 --- BJ
  M18 --- BK

  %% Andrew's family
  BL["Caroline Frost\n*b.* 1965"]:::person
  M19((⚭ 1990)):::marriage
  AV --- M19 --- BL
  BM["Ethan Whitcombe\n*b.* 1995"]:::person
  BN["Zara Whitcombe\n*b.* 1998"]:::person
  M19 --- BM
  M19 --- BN

This weeks quick video demo shows how to create Mermaid charts in Evernote using the AI Assistant. Charts in seconds!

You’ll see two quick demos:

1. Create a Mermaid bar chart from a CSV spreadsheet

- Upload a CSV to your note

- Type /mermaid to start a Mermaid block

- Ask Evernote AI to read the CSV and use the correct columns

- Copy the Mermaid code into the block and preview your bar chart

2. Create a Mermaid flowchart from natural language

- Describe a process in plain English

- Let Evernote AI turn it into a Mermaid flowchart script

- Paste it into a Mermaid block and preview the finished flowchart

The original deep dive on Mermaid charts can be found here.

Have you used this new feature yet? Let me know in the comments.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

Read more

A huge thank you to HK who became a paid subscriber over the last week and many thanks also to Nick who bought me a coffee. Taming the Trunk is 100% reader supported, no ads or commission links and your support is really appreciated.

Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.17.3. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.17.2.

Welcome to this special edition of Taming the Trunk where I’m chatting to fellow Evernote Certified Expert Stacey Harmon.

This is a long chat with an extra 20 minutes of bonus content for paid subscribers which you'll find at the end of this post.

Grab a coffee/beer/wine and dig in.

There’s no screen sharing in the video, just two people talking, so this is ideal to listen to just like an audio podcast. Listen whenever and wherever you want.

Don’t forget to sign up to Stacey’s Evernote newsletter.

The video covers:

• Evernote V11. How it’s progressing and the pace of new releases

• AI in Evernote. Where it’s genuinely useful, what you can turn off and where it fits day to day.

• AI Meeting Notes + transcription. How Stacey uses it.

• AI Titles + naming conventions. Keywords vs consistency and how to reduce the admin.

• Tabs are back. How Jon uses tabs to structure his day and what Stacey still wants improved.

• Newer non-AI features like callouts, floating table of contents and Mermaid charts.

The bonus content for paid subscribers of Taming the Trunk covers:

• Has AI changed how Stacey collects/captures info vs how she creates work?

• How Stacey uses Claude alongside Evernote.

• Practical Claude workflow like turning transcripts into outlines, brainstorming newsletter angles, business/revenue analysis and reporting, etc.

• MCP explained (in plain English).

• What MCP could enable.

• Features Stacey still wants in Evernote.

Once again, don’t forget to sign up to Stacey’s Evernote newsletter.

Let me know your thoughts and comments on what we talked about.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon