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A huge thank you to David 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 11.39.2. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.38.7

A bits and pieces edition this week with some smaller Evernote improvements that might help your workflows a little.

First up is formatted mention links.

There are many ways to display an internal link in Evernote, preview (my default), title, text and mention.

A mention style internal link looks like this (pop up displayed).

Something new that’s been added to mention links is the ability to format them, change colour or make them bold.

This works when you link to notes, notebooks, spaces, stacks and people.

Here’s a link to a note in bold and italics with the colour changed.

Now, this got me thinking. If you link to a lot of notebooks or notes within certain projects, you can now set them as a certain colour. For example, project X could be green links and project Y could be yellow.

This could be a nice little visual identifier

Maybe you could set notebooks as one colour and notes as another.

The choice is yours how to format internal links.

Let me know in the comments if you’ll be using this and what system you use.

Preview markdown files complete with formatting

As you know we can drag files into Evernote and some of them create previews. I’m thinking PDFs, images, text files and CSVs.

One more has been added to the list. We can now preview markdown files complete with the formatting and it looks a bit like this.

Evernote already handles markdown fairly well. You can copy and paste markdown code into Evernote and it formats automatically in the note. You can also use the import function in settings to import many markdown files and have them arrive as fully formatted new notes.

This is something new and this is how I tested it.

I created an .md file with the following text and when I drag it into my note it displays fully formatted in the preview pane in Evernote.

Remember, you need to have the view set as preview to see this.

# Sample Markdown Document

This file demonstrates several common Markdown formatting options.

## Text Formatting

This text contains **bold formatting**.

This text contains *italic formatting*.

This sentence includes <mark>highlighted text</mark> using the HTML `mark` element.

### Combined Formatting

You can also combine ***bold and italic formatting*** when extra emphasis is useful.

## Bullet Points

- First bullet point
- Second bullet point
- Third bullet point
- A final item with **bold text** and *italics*

## Table

| Item | Description | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Headings | Organise content into sections | Complete |
| Links | Connect readers to another page | Complete |
| Tables | Present structured information | Complete |

## Links

Visit the [Markdown Guide](https://www.markdownguide.org/) to learn more about Markdown.

## Quote

> Good writing becomes easier to navigate when structure and formatting are used thoughtfully.

## Closing Note

Markdown is useful for notes, documentation, articles and project instructions.

If you want to test it out, copy and paste this code into a blank text document and save it as a .md file then drag it into Evernote.

It works well and renders tables, highlights and links just fine.

Why would this be useful?

A lot of folk, mainly technical people, use markdown files for documentation, software release notes and lots of other things.

They can now store these files fully rendered in Evernote which makes the markdown code much easier to read, especially with tables.

Will you use this? Let me know in the comments.

You can create a new note from the Evernote task bar icon

Something small and new.

If you right click the little elephant icon in the task bar of Mac’s and PCs you can create a new note.

When you click it Evernote opens and a new note is created in the open notebook.

If Evernote is open in the tasks or home window, or not open in a notebook then the note is created in your default notebook.

Useful? Let me know in the comments.

The AI Assistant shows you the context it works with

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, apologies If I have, but it is useful.

This feature came along a couple of weeks ago and if you open the AI Assistant, there’s a little banner that tells you what context the AI Assistant is working with.

This means it’s working with the entire note context. You can see the note icon and the name of the note at the top of the AI Assistant.

If you select some text, it tells you that is the context its working with.

I’ve found this a useful little indicator.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to share your tips and ask questions in the Taming the Trunk chat available for free and paid subscribers.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

This week’s short video is hopefully going to save you a little bit of time.

If you’re typing the same instructions into Evernote’s AI Assistant again and again, save them as a prompt in the prompt library and then reuse them with a slash command.

In this video, I’ll show you how to:

• Create a custom prompt in the AI Prompt Library

• Find it using a slash command in the Assistant

• And run it against different notes.

You can use this for repetitive tasks like creating summaries or restructuring a note.

Are you using the AI Prompt library? 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 Peter and Lillian 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 11.38.5. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.38.7.

There’s been a few changes to what constitutes a note update and this is going to please a lot of folk.

Make sure you’re on the latest desktop or mobile versions to see these changes.

When version 10 of Evernote came out back in the Summer of 2020 there were a few issues around what actions caused the ‘updated date’ to change.

This is important to a lot of folk including me, as you can sort your notes by when they were last updated which is my default.

Back in the day even viewing a note used to change the updated date, adding tags changed it, clicking on a note changed it. The whole thing was a mess.

If you want to see the updated date of a note just head to Note Info behind the three-dot menu of the note or use the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+I or CMD+SHIFT+I.

Over time a few of the irritating date updates were fixed but there was never a definitive list of what caused a note to update.

Over the last couple of years there’s been quite a lot of chatter within the Evernote Certified Expert community about this and the Evernote team created a list of what they thought could constitute a note update. There was lots of debate and the Evernote folk asked opinions of the main user base as well to help make the final decision.

There’s now been an update to change things.

What causes the Evernote updated date to change?

It’s basically an edit to the content of the note.

If you add an image, PDF, change some text, format something, all these types of changes mean the note’s updated date will change.

As a rule of thumb, anything that changes in the note editor itself will change the update date.

I think this pretty much makes sense. Let me know what you think in the comments.

What does not cause Evernote to change the updated date?

Quite a lot. Here’s the list.

• Expanding or collapsing toggles and headers

• Showing or hiding elements like calendar events and transcripts

• Showing or hiding image captions

• Changing table column/row widths

• Changing an attachment, image or link between preview, title or mention views

• Changing a mermaid diagram between code, split and preview views

• Setting or changing reminders

• Marking or unmarking a note as a template

• Marking a task as completed or editing its reminders or due dates

• Changing any note share settings or a collaborator’s access

• Publishing or unpublishing a note using the share system

• Deleting notes or restoring from the trash

• Adding, editing, replying, resolving or deleting comments

• Adding or removing tags

• Moving notes to another notebook

• Undoing or redoing any of the above

So, as an example, adding or removing a task from a note will change the updated date but completing, changing due dates for the task or adding a description won’t.

The list above isn’t exhaustive as I haven’t tested every change you can make. I’ve not looked into changes in spaces but it gives you an idea of the kind of actions that change the updated date.

The choices can be a bit subjective and different folk will have different ideas on what constitutes a note update but I think the main benefit of this is consistency. We all know how our notes will behave going forward.

What do you think of the changes? Let me know in the comments.

Evernote annotations get a colour picker

Another little change this week is the introduction of a colour picker tool to the annotation feature.

This works when you select the colour icon in the annotation bar.

The bottom right hand colour-wheel is the picker and when you click this you see the picker.

You can drag the little circles around to change the colour or use the eye dropper to select a colour from within the PDF or image you’re annotating.

This doesn’t work for the highlighter, just the pen or shapes tools.

I’m hoping they’ll bring this colour picker to the other colour selectors like fonts and maybe tags.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

And finally...

A new official video is out showing off the new annotation and PDF editing capabilities that we talked about a few weeks ago. Enjoy.

And Finally, finally...

Substack have just introduced Chat Groups so I can now split the paid subscriber chat from the main chat which will save folks having to scroll up and down forever!

If you’re a paid subscriber you can access the chat here. Feel free to post questions, screenshots, highlight issues etc.

If you’re a free subscriber then you can access the chat here. Again, feel free to ask questions etc.

I’m glad they’ve introduced this as it will help make the chat a bit easier to access.

Something else I would like to see is different topics within the individual chats... maybe for the future.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

In this weeks short video, I’m running through five ways to add headers to your note.

From the Insert menu and formatting bars to using Markdown symbols and my favourite which is the slash command.

I’ll also show you how to turn existing text into a header, collapse sections to hide their contents, drag a whole section to a different position, copy a link straight to a particular header and there’s also a header outline to help you jump around a long note.

How do you create your headers? 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 11.37.5. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.37.4.

Evernote are working on tags!

Not everyone uses tags, but for the ones who do, tagging is absolutely critical to the way they manage their notes in Evernote.

Go on, tell me how many tags you have?

They’re about to get an upgrade.

Yesterday the team shared a little video of a prototype they’re working on.

It’s only 30 seconds long, but it gives us a really good look at what they’re working on and I want to go through the video, explain what I’m seeing and make sure you let me know what you think.

Note: This is a prototype and not the final version, so things may change.

A full-page tag kingdom

This is something folks have been asking about for quite a long time and we’re finally getting a full-page tag kingdom instead of the little sidebar thingy which is awkward to navigate.

Notice at the top right of the page there is a toggle for Hierarchy, from the looks of it when the toggle is on you’ll see all the tags nested underneath their parents.

If you switch the toggle off you see all your tags.

From what I can tell you can also see the parent tag in small text to the right of each tag.

One of the other icons across the top is for search, I presume this will work like it does in tasks where you start typing and the tags are filtered.

There also looks to be icons for some sort of filtering and also an eye icon, maybe something to do with hiding or viewing, not sure, we’ll have to hang on until its finished.

Something else really interesting about this screen is the right-hand sidebar.

Notice how the recipes tag is highlighted on the screen and the notes tagged recipes appear in the right-hand sidebar. There’s also a little open icon at the top of the sidebar, so I’m assuming this will open the notes in a normal note list view.

I really hope we’ll be able to select multiple tags from the main pane and have the notes tagged with them appear in the sidebar. This would make it a lot easier to find notes tagged in very specific ways.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Coloured tags are coming

This used to be a feature of old Evernote and one of the few things I liked about it.

Coloured tags went away when version 10 came out. They’re finally coming back.

I only tend to use tags for priorities or next actions so just this one little thing will make a big difference to me. The higher the priority the stronger the colour.

From another part of the video we get to see the colour choices.

There looks to be a tick box for applying the colour to all the nested tags, so I presume if you’re changing the colour of a parent you can change its children colour as well.

I’m pretty sure this will please many folk so let me know in the comments if you’re happy.

There’s a grouped view

Directly at the top of the new tag kingdom I can see buttons for Table and Grouped views.

Table view is what you see above.

Grouped view looks a little bit like this.

The screen looks to default the group to A - Z, but there’s also options for grouping by colour, created by and number of notes.

It would be useful to be able to swap the sorting order for these, maybe that’s what’s behind the little icon next to search.

Is there anything you’d like to see here? Let me know in the comments.

Managing tags

When you hover over a tag you can see a three-dot menu which brings up some more options.

It looks like when you hover a parent tag there’s a little new tag icon appears which presumably adds a child tag.

Filter by tag with a little open icon may mean that it opens a note list with all the tagged notes.

We can edit the tag, change the colour, add a sub-tag, add the tag to shortcuts or delete the tag.

Take a look at the screenshot with all the colours to see the edit tag window. You can change the name, colour and move it to another parent if needed.

This is pretty cool. It’s nice to see tags being worked on.

Don’t forget what you see above is a prototype and not the final version. It may look very different and more polished when it goes live.

What would you like to see? How would you like to see tags improved? Let me know in the comments.

And finally . . .

Evernote has released a little video on the new table editing features.

That’s it.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

After 100 years of asking, Evernote tables can now sort and filter, which means those long lists of information are about to become far more useful.

In this video, I’ll show you how it works and why switching on a header row is the first thing you need to do.

You’ll see how to sort a column in ascending or descending order

Find out how to reset your sorting.

Filter table data by the values in the table.

I also run through a company purchase order example, including filtering by supplier and delivery status so you get an idea on how it can be useful.

The feature is rolling out on the desktop app, so make sure you’re on at least version 11.36.4 and give it a few days if it has not arrived yet.

Happy with this update? What would you use table sorting and filtering for? 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 11.36.4. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.36.3.

Quite a bit to get through this week and I think(?) we’re having an AI free episode today!

First up is some new functionality that’s gradually rolling out and I’m planning a deep dive on this very soon so watch out for it.

We can sort and filter tables!

I repeat, we can sort and filter tables!

Folks have been asking for this at least 100 times a day for the last 15 years and we’ve finally got it.

Tables have been revamped to offer basic sorting and filters plus a few other cosmetic changes.

One of the very useful changes is being able to switch on a Header row or column, which makes the top row or left column of the table a header and colours the background. You can change the colour if you want to.

Now we’ve set the header, let’s quickly look at filtering.

Here’s a table column with priorities. Click the three-dot menu at the top right of the column header and you’ll see this.

There’s an option to Filter column. Click this and you can see all the items in the column and you get the chance to filter them.

Deselect everything apart from Urgent and you’ll only see Urgent items.

Each column header also has a sorting icon. Click this and you can get the usual ascending/descending sorting options with a None for resetting everything.

There’s also a lot of new cosmetic options hidden behind various cell, row and column settings that control things like border style and width, background colours and text aligning.

There’s a lot to cover, so once this is rolled out to everyone, I’ll do a deep dive article.

If you see the update now, let me know what you think in the comments.

Note lists have had a bit of a revamp

Quick note. This is being gradually rolled out, so you may or may not have it right now. Everyone should see this in a few days.

I quite like this change and it’s pretty subtle. The cosmetic view of the note list has changed a little.

The style is softer and the items you see are more configurable.

Hit the little slider control at the top of the note list and you can control what you see in the snippet.

You can click the pills under Show in preview and show/hide the different options.

This is what it looks like for Side list view.

You get a slightly different set of options.

I quite like this small update. Let me know what you think in the comments.

More options for closing Evernote tabs

Are you a tab hoarder? On the odd occasion, I’ve found myself to have more tabs open that is healthy.

We now have a couple more options for closing unused tabs.

Right click a tab.

Choose Close other tabs to close all tabs apart from the one you’re clicking on.

Choose Close tabs to the right to surprisingly close all the tabs to the right.

At least once a day, I find myself with so many tabs open I don’t know what’s open and what’s not so I can quickly close a whole bunch and start again.

Let me know in the comments if you’ll be using this.

Export to PDF and printed notes are working much better

This has been a bugbear of mine for a while. I export a lot of training registers, which are in table format and the table always used to break, so I had to copy/pasta into Word and then export into a PDF.

Not any more. There’s been a lot of work done improving exporting notes as a PDF and also printing them so more elements are supported and everything looks how it should in the final copy.

We’ve also seen the introduction of the Page break Slash (/) command, which forces a PDF and printer to start a new page anywhere you want in the note.

Let me know how you get on.

Daily note bug finally fixed

If you use the daily note feature, you’ll most likely have been irritated by multiple notes being created each day. This bug is now fixed.

I’m only getting one a day now.

If you switched off daily notes because of this bug, try it out again and let me know how you get on.

A change to what updates a note

This is small but big as it’s been irritating me and other folk for a while.

Moving a note into another notebook or adding a tag to a note will no longer change the updated date of a note. This no longer constitutes an actual update.

I’m happy with this and I think the plan is to set some of the other actions within Evernote to update or not update the date much more consistently.

A small change when clicking images and attachments

A small workflow change here that makes sense to me.

If you now single-click an image or attachment, it selects it.

If you double-click an image or PDF it opens in the Evernote editor.

If you CTRL or CMD click an image or attachment it opens in your devices default editor for that file.

This makes sense to me and its more consistent. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Mobile Evernote gets a hide keyboard icon

Have you ever been irritated about not being able to close the keyboard when editing a note, you want to read or see something, but the keyboard is hiding it?

Not any more.

Just above the formatting bar on the right hand side is a new icon for hiding the keyboard. Just tap it.

And finally...

Mobile gets AI Edit mode! Oh no, AI... I thought this was going to be AI free... almost.

When you head into the AI Assistant on mobile, you can now put yourself into Edit mode and get the AI to sort, arrange and format your note.

You can read more about Edit mode here.

That’s it. Quite a lot to pack in this week, so let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Have a great weekend

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 11.35.6. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.35.3.

I’ve been converting my notes into Word documents. Why, I hear you cry!

It’s something I’ve been doing for a while as some of my clients want information in Word documents, they don’t like shared links or PDFs for some reason, probably an IT policy thing.

I’ve always hated using Word itself and feel much more comfortable writing in Evernote which I’m doing right now.

So, Evernote can’t export notes as Word documents (would be nice) but if you connect Evernote with a third party AI tool like ChatGPT or Claude then you can, plus you can do whatever formatting you want without faffing around in Word.

ChatGPT now has an official plugin for connecting Evernote and this has made it much easier to install the connection. Claude has a community connector available to install but you can always install the MCP manually.

Here’s a quick refresher on what the MCP is and how to set it up.

My new workflow has been to create a report or proposal in an Evernote note inside the clients notebook.

I might use the Evernote AI Assistant to clean things up, build a a chart and fill tables with data and generally help me get the report ready for the client.

If I want to turn what I have written into a Word doc then I head over to ChatGPT and throw in the following prompt (created for this article I’m writing).

It gave me the document to check and download.

This is useful, but everything gets even more useful when you provide a template or much more detailed instructions to the AI.

I have a standard template with my logo at the top and some footer information. If I give this to ChatGPT and tell it to put the contents of the note into the template, I get something I can send very quickly to a client.

You could use a prompt like this

You can also take this to the next level, which I did a few weeks ago.

I’m kind of writing a book that’s been a work in progress for something like 20 years, I will finish it one day.

I write it in Evernote with the draft having its own notebook and each chapter is a different note. The note title is Chapter 1, Chapter 2 etc.

What I did was tell ChatGPT to create a Word document from the notebook and compile it in chapter order. The prompt went a bit like this.

What you end up with is a nicely formatted book in Word format that you can start editing.

I write all my first drafts in Evernote, be it a client report, article for Taming the Trunk or my very dodgy book. I find Evernote easy to write in and with the MCP I can get whatever file format I want.

Have you tried this? Would you find it useful? Let me know in the comments.

Which brings me to...

I’ve cancelled my Office 365 subscription!

I always moaned about paying this as I only really used PowerPoint for work and Word for reading things. I never use Excel.

When I bought my Mac, I found out I have Pages, Numbers and Keynote all pre-installed, and you can open and save office files all day long with them.

If you don’t have a Mac use Libre Office.

So, Evernote plus the MCP and some free installed software has let me cancel the subscription.

I’m better off by at least one bottle of wine per month!

Which brings me to something else. The new features that Evernote have added over the last few years has let me cancel my Todoist and Otter subscriptions. I now use Evernote tasks and transcriptions.

Totting it up, new added features to Evernote have saved me around £115 a year give or take a few for currency changes.

Not really Evernote related but I’ve also recently cancelled my Canva and Descript subscriptions, which added up to around £330 a year. I’ve replaced them with the Apple Creator Studio at £12.99 a month. Pixelmator replaces Canva and Final Cut Pro replaces Descript. Another saving.

There’s always a few changes to workflow when starting using new tools but I’ve managed to adapt habits and save money.

That’s it. Let me know if you create files from your notes or if Evernote has saved you some subscriptions.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

Now this is a useful little new feature that will help you to split up PDFs and printed notes a lot better and make them more readable.

This quick walkthrough shows how the new Page Break slash command can turn one long note into clean, clearly organised pages.

In this video:

• How to add a Page Break with a slash command

• How page breaks affect PDF exports and printed notes

• Export and print settings for paper size and page numbers

• A quick look at the improved dark mode experience

This will help me a lot.

Printing and exporting notes as PDFs has been a bit broken for a while and these improvements have made a difference to me. I can just export from the note instead of copying and pasting long tables and content from the note to Word and then exporting.

Let me know what you think of page break in the comments.

Have a good rest of the week

All the best

Jon

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A huge thank you to jcm, Brian, Amy, Tony, wac, Michael, ohbeep, Ted and Barry who all became paid subscribers over the last week. Many thanks, its much appreciated. Also, thank you 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 11.34.8. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.34.3.

There’s been a huge in-flux of free and paid subscribers over the last week and I just want to thank you all for joining the herd. Don’t forget there’s paid subscriber chat here and free subscriber chat there.

So, we have a brand new PDF editor.

It’s the second time in the last couple of years its been updated, the first time was just cosmetic, this time you'll see some really useful new functionality like merging, splitting and reordering PDFs.

Let’s take a deep dive.

Quick note: Everything below relates to the desktop apps for Mac and PC. Hopefully, this new functionality arrives on mobile soon, especially tablets.

Updated annotation tools

The actual display of a PDF in your note hasn’t changed, but we do have a new edit and annotation icon.

It’s a little paintbrush. Not much else has changed from this aspect, you can still change the view from title only to all pages or single pages. You can also rename the PDF pretty quickly, just check behind the three-dot menu.

The big change is when you click the paintbrush.

We’ll talk about the sidebar later.

For now, let's take a look at the annotation tools as they’ve had a bit of an upgrade.

From left to right:

• Change the colour of the annotation tool

• Change the thickness of the annotation tool

• Pen tool

• Highlighter

• Text

• Stamps

• Shapes

• Eraser

• Move stuff around and select tool(!)

• Rotate pages

• Blur tool

The colour selector

We now get a slightly better range of colours to choose from when annotating our PDF.

I’m happy with the selection, it covers pretty much everything I would need.

I would like it to remember what colour I choose, right now, it goes back to its own default.

When you select the highlighter tool, you get a different set of colours appear that look like they match the note editor’s highlighter.

Are you happy with the colours? Let me know in the comments.

Thickness selector

This tool effects the pen, highlighter and shapes tool and increases the thickness.

You can see the range in the image above, from 1 to 5.

You can click on existing drawings or shapes and change the thickness whenever you want.

Pen tool

I won’t spend too much time on this as you can see it in action in the image above.

The pen tool lets us scribble all over or PDF free-style.

Once these new annotation features arrive on mobile and tablet, it will be interesting to see how it works with a pen.

Highlighter tool

This is probably going to be the most used tool in the annotation set, it is for me and we get the same thickness options as the pen tool.

It does what it says on the tin, highlights. I think the corners look a little rounder, which I like.

Let me know what you think.

Text tool

When you start typing with the text tool, a few more options appear in the annotation toolbar.

You can select a font size, strike-through, underline and bold.

This is what bold looks like, very similar to what we were used to before. It would be nice to see italics as an option.

We can also paste plain text into the text tool as well so if you have some text in a note just copy/pasta it into the PDF.

Happy with the text tool? Anything you’d like to see?

Stamp tool

This has not changed too much. I must admit I didn’t use it much at all so not sure if we have more options now.

You can point the arrow in the direction you want, add some text and move them around.

These are useful for pointing to specific information in a PDF and inferring an action or priority.

Shapes tool

Not too much has changed here. We still have access to the Evernote arrow that’s been famous across the internet for over a decade.

You can control the colour and thickness of the shapes using the options on the far left and you can move the shapes around to make whatever you want with them.

Eraser tool

This is pretty self-explanatory. Just click on it and select any of your annotations and it will erase them. Simple.

Hand, select or move tool

Another easy one that hasn’t changed. Click on the hand and you can then move all your annotations around the screen and place them exactly where you want. You can also select annotations, hit delete and they go away.

Rotate tool

You can rotate specific pages of your PDF and each page can be rotated separately.

Not 100% sure how useful it is, but someone will have a use case.

Blur tool

Finally, the blur tool and I think this has been improved slightly.

I always used to be a bit disappointed how it burred some text as it wouldn't always give you the blur look, it would just be off-white. This now seems to work a bit better.

It’s an improvement. I use blur a lot.

So, that’s the annotation bits done. Let’s head into the sidebar.

Splitting a PDF

This is new and very cool. I’ve used it a couple of times already.

You can see all the pages of your PDF in the sidebar on the left and we can now multi-select specific pages and perform actions on them.

One of those actions is the ability to download the pages selected as a separate PDF, hence splitting it up.

After you’ve selected the pages, you’ll see an action bar at the bottom, just click the download icon and the pages you’ve selected will download to your device.

Very useful. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Merging or adding pages to a PDF

Click the little Add PDF icon at the top of the sidebar and you can add another PDF on your device to the PDF in Evernote, merge them together.

One thing I will point out is that it adds pages to the bottom of the PDF so you’ll need to drag them to where you want them.

I’m thinking it would be nice to select a page and then import another PDF just below the page you’ve selected, this would save the dragging around.

Some more improvements

As I’ve just mentioned, you can change the order of the pages in your PDF by dragging them up and down, this is useful.

You can also select an individual page, delete it, or download it. There’s a small three-dot menu to the right of each page.

Some more useful options to mention.

There’s a three-dot menu at the top-right of the annotation window, click this and you’ll find the usual fit to window/width options, but you can also view only annotated pages or you can clear all annotations at once.

Phew! That’s about it.

PDF management has just become much more interesting. I really like the way we can now add/merge/delete pages within the PDF, this will be useful.

It will help me when I’m fussing around with client briefs, I can remove all the blah-blah pages and be left with what I have to do.

What do you think of these new features? Is there anything you’d like to see improved?

Let me know in the comments.

Have a good weekend

All the best

Jon

In this mid-week short video Evernote’s AI Assistant has picked up a few genuinely useful upgrades, including slash commands in the prompt window that give you a quicker way to run saved prompts, bit of a game changer.

There’s also the ability to add comments using AI.

I’m also going to show you how to turn plain lists into more visual, useful lists without spending ages formatting yourself.

Good for making a list pretty and setting priorities or importance levels.

The AI Assistant is getting more useful and easier to use!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments

Have a good rest of the week

All the best

Jon

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A proportion of this post is available to everyone, but a lot of the research I’ve done later on is for paid subscribers of Taming the Trunk. If you would like to become a paid subscriber and support my efforts, click the button above.

What we’re going to look at:

• Is Evernote really losing users?

• How much did Bending Spoons really pay for Evernote?

• How profitable is Evernote today?

• How many people are actually working on Evernote?

• What has Bending Spoons changed behind the scenes?

• How is AI being used to improve Evernote?

• What does Evernote need to do next?

The last few days has seen a bit of press for Evernote and some of the usual controversy on social media.

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal and a two hour sit down interview with the Bending Spoons CEO where he talked a lot about Evernote.

I want to go through the WSJ comments about Evernote and I’ve also pulled a lot of Evernote comments from a couple of recent interviews.

The first thing to go through is the ‘interesting’ article in the Wall Street Journal which is behind a paywall. I managed to find it as it is included in my Apple One subscription.

There’s only one short paragraph about Evernote which has generated the usual social media nonsense with one post on Reddit saying Evernote is dying, which is far from true.

Here’s the paragraph in question;

“Evernote, a note-taking app acquired in 2023, was among the holdings Bending Spoons profiled in its IPO prospectus. Evernote’s revenue was 30% higher in 2025 than in 2022, and during that time average revenue per monthly active user rose 150%. What the prospectus didn’t say: Those figures meant the number of users fell 48%. Revenue rose through price increases as the customer base shrank.” - Excerpt From “Analysis | At Bending Spoons, the Numbers Are the Real Mind-Bender - Jonathan Weil

From my research and chatting with a couple of people, the author is known to be a bit controversial, aiming at the shorts market and trying to stir things up.

Evernote has lost users, paid and free, but we need some context. The bulk of the losses have been from the free plan which has been severely restricted. Evernote is no longer a free app with a paid upgrade, its a paid app with a free version that’s really a trial.

Evernote is concentrating much more on paid customers and people who find value in the product. It’s no longer a quick note taker and something for your shopping list, its there for serious users, like us, who value the features and functionality.

Evernote is finally, after 20 years making profit and yes, with a smaller user base, but user numbers are not everything.

The online software market is very different now than 20 years ago, when the strategy was to get as many users as possible and then try and monetise them.

There are very few new software startups that run this strategy now. The norm is to actually build a business that generates break-even or profit from the start, which is why you see a lot of new apps offering free trials and subscriptions within the $15 - $30 price range.

The investor money is going into AI, so it can’t be used anymore to subsidise subscription costs, folks need to make some money right away, just like any normal business would.

Evernote has been happy to lose the free and low paying customer to retain the higher payer that values the product more.

I did the same with my own work during COVID. I had around 60 lowish paying consult clients plus my training work, I was busy as hell and earnings had reached a limit. I had time during COVID to reassess things and what I did was get rid of the low paying clients and replace them with around 10 clients who pay a lot more and see much more value in what I do. I now earn much more money for less work!

In my opinion this is similar to what Bending Spoons have done with Evernote. They’ve improved the app with new features they know the low payers don’t need but the value driven customers want. They now have less customers but better quality ones, like us, who find huge value in the product.

So, just like me, higher quality and more advanced work for fewer customers earns more money.

The key question now for Evernote is how they start growing this new type of customer.

Interestingly they are increasing new users.

Read more

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Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.32.5. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.33.4.

It’s never quiet in Evernote world so I’ve sifted through some of the improvements over the last week and found the most important ones, hopefully adding a bit of context.

First up is the ability to multi-select transcription speakers and change them or bulk delete them.

Next time you’re editing a multi-speaker transcription, click on the drop down arrow next to the speaker name and you’ll see some options, including Multi select blocks.

When you give it a click, you’ll see some select boxes appear and you can select a number of speakers, they can be the same or different.

Now, the idea is that you can edit your transcription a lot easier than before, maybe get rid of the waffle at the beginning and end.

If you want to delete a bunch of blocks then just select them and click the delete icon in the action bar.

If you want to rename some of the blocks as a different speaker, or maybe call your speaker Introduction or Waffle(!), just click the little edit box in the action bar.

This would also be useful if the AI misheard a few blocks and named them incorrectly.

Another quick something to mention is that you can also add a new speaker block to your transcription to add something new.

Take a look at the screen above of the drop-down options next to a speaker name and click Add speaker block.

This will put a blank speaker below the speaker you clicked and you can then name this speaker and type some content.

Are you editing your transcriptions much? Let me know in the comments.

Convert lists into toggles

I’m not going to go through this in huge detail as I recorded a quick demo video the other day, but I will quickly mention that toggles have had an upgrade and with one click or tap, it’s the same on mobile, you can convert text, bullet or numbered lists into toggles.

The main benefit of toggles is to shorten long notes by hiding sections that you’re not interested in right now. You can put pretty much anything into a toggle.

Are you using toggles? What are you using them for? Let me know in the comments.

Make your Evernote lists more interesting with some AI magic

Thanks to Allan for a comment in the toggle demo video mentioned above for the inspiration for the next bit.

With a little bit of AI Assistant magic, you can add emoji’s to your lists.

Here’s a boring shopping list.

Here’s the shopping list after I used this prompt in Edit mode of the AI Assistant.

You could use this type of prompt with any type of content that’s a list.

You could even create a very specific prompt that tells the AI to apply specific types of emoji to the beginning of a list. This could be to show importance or priorities, the choice is yours.

I’ve not tried this but have a go at adding this to your prompt.

You could build a prompt that does exactly what you want, save it in the AI Prompt library and then run it whenever you want.

Do you have pretty lists? Let me know in the comments.

Evernote mobile with improved photo quality

The latest version of the mobile app comes with an improvement in photo quality.

Evernote have introduced a little bit of post production to increase the quality of the image taken by the camera in the app.

Sometimes the photo’s could look a little blurred or not quite quality enough when you compare them to the phones camera app. They should now look much better.

It’s worth mentioning that there’s no compression going on, just some image quality enhancement.

It’s also worth mentioning that this improvement just applies to the images taken by the camera in the Evernote app. No processing happens to images inserted or dragged into a note.

I think this will help a lot with scans. I’ve found when scanning paperwork with my iPhone the quality is sometimes a little off.

Have you noticed any difference? Let me know in the comments.

And finally...

I updated my History of Evernote in Screen Shots this week with a screen from the standalone app Evernote Food which was released around 2013/14.

Would you want a food app now???

And finally, finally...

The official August recap video is out. Always a good watch, see what new features and improvements landed last month.

And finally, finally, finally...

The September paid subscriber chat is live... a bit late but better late than never!

All paid subscribers can access this thread and post questions and whatever else you want.

Free subscribers can also access the public chat here, make sure you stop by and say hello.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

Welcome to this weeks short video on how to do something in Evernote!

If you update your desktop app to at least 11.33.5 then you’ll be able to see some improvements to the toggle feature.

In the video, I’ll show you:

• How to create a toggle

• How to turn multiple paragraphs of text into a toggle

• How to turn bullet and numbered lists into toggles

• How to add text to a toggle and hide/show content

Toggles are really useful when you have a long note as it can hide big chunks of content.

Are you using toggles? Let me know in the comments.

Have a good rest of the week

All the best

Jon

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A huge thank you to Vanessa 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 11.32.5. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.32.4.

A few weeks ago I published a short video about cleaning up web clips using the Evernote AI Assistant, it was popular so I thought I’d expand on this and take it to the next level.

Web clips look messy and it can be difficult to find the information you need. Colours don’t always transfer over correctly and then there’s all the crud like social media icons, calls to action and other website rubbish.

The video used a really simple prompt but I’ve now taken this to the next level.

The idea of this new prompt is to create:

• A brief summary

• A list of main highlights

• The important information from the web clip without the crud

• Add extra context and further reading at the bottom

Here’s the prompt. Feel free to edit it and save it to your AI Prompt library.

Clean up and restructure the web-clipped content into a clear, useful reference note.

Preserve all genuinely important information from the original clip, but remove clutter such as navigation menus, cookie notices, advertisements, repeated text, unrelated links, social-sharing buttons, newsletter sign-up forms and broken formatting.

Use the following structure:

# [Create a clear, descriptive title]

Original source: [Include the original webpage URL, if available]
Author or publisher: [Include if available]
Published or updated: [Include if available]

## Summary

Write a concise summary of the clipped page in one or two short paragraphs. Explain what the page is about, why it matters and its main conclusion or purpose.

## Main highlights

- Provide the most important points as concise bullet points.
- Include key findings, recommendations, warnings, dates, figures or quotations where relevant.
- Prioritise information that will be useful when returning to this note later.
- Do not repeat points unnecessarily.

## Important content

Reorganise the valuable content from the original webpage into logical sections with descriptive headings.

Make the text easier to scan while retaining essential explanations, instructions, examples, evidence and context. Shorten repetitive passages, but do not oversimplify material that is necessary to understand the topic.

Use numbered steps for processes and bullet points for lists. Preserve useful links and clearly attribute any direct quotations. If part of the clip is incomplete, unclear or appears to be missing, identify this instead of guessing.

## Further context

Briefly explain the wider topic covered by the web clip. Add helpful background, related concepts or practical considerations that improve understanding without overwhelming the original material.

Clearly distinguish this additional context from information contained in the original clip. Do not invent facts.

## Further reading

Suggest three to five trustworthy resources for learning more about the topic.

For each resource, provide:

- The title
- The publisher or organisation
- A direct working URL
- One sentence explaining why it is useful

Prefer authoritative, original and up-to-date sources. Verify the links through web research if browsing is available. If browsing is unavailable, say that the suggested links have not been checked rather than presenting them as verified.

## Processing rules

- Use British English.
- Use clear, concise language.
- User Evernote call outs, code blocks, quotes and tables if needed. Don't use them randomly for the sake of it.
- Retain important nuance and context.
- Do not introduce unsupported claims.
- Do not silently correct factual inconsistencies. Flag them.
- Do not fabricate missing details, quotations, dates, authors or links.
- If the source URL is missing, state: “Original source URL not available.”
- Return only the finished, cleaned note without explaining the editing process.

Here’s a revised version of this prompt for recipes.

I clip a lot of pages from food websites and they always end up a mess and you usually have to read through a life story before getting to the actual recipe.

Clean up and restructure the web-clipped recipe into a clear, practical recipe note.

Preserve all useful information from the original clip, but remove clutter such as personal stories unrelated to preparing the dish, navigation menus, cookie notices, advertisements, repeated text, unrelated links, social-sharing buttons, newsletter forms and broken formatting.

Use the following structure:

# [Create a clear recipe title]

Original source: [Include the original webpage URL, if available]
Author or publisher: [Include if available]
Cuisine: [Include if stated or clearly identifiable]
Course: [Include if stated or clearly identifiable]
Servings or yield: [Include if available]
Preparation time: [Include if available]
Cooking time: [Include if available]
Total time: [Include if available]

## Recipe summary

Write a short paragraph describing the dish, its main flavours, texture and cooking method. Mention anything that makes the recipe particularly useful or distinctive.

## Main highlights

- Summarise the recipe’s most useful features.
- Include important dietary information only when stated or reliably supported by the ingredients.
- Mention notable cooking techniques, preparation requirements or specialist equipment.
- Highlight any advance preparation, resting, chilling or marinating time.
- Identify important warnings or common mistakes mentioned in the original recipe.
- Do not repeat information unnecessarily.

## Ingredients

Organise all ingredients into a clear list.

- Preserve the original quantities, measurements and ingredient details.
- Use British terminology, but do not convert measurements unless instructed.
- Group ingredients under descriptive subheadings when the recipe has separate components.
- Keep ingredients in the order in which they are used.
- Include preparation details such as chopped, softened, divided or at room temperature.
- Clearly identify ingredients that are divided and used at different stages.
- Do not invent missing quantities or ingredients.
- If a quantity is unclear or missing, label it as unclear rather than guessing.

## Equipment

List any essential or specialist equipment required. Omit ordinary kitchen equipment unless it is important to the outcome.

Include tin, tray or dish dimensions when provided.

## Method

Rewrite the instructions as clear, numbered steps in the correct order.

Each step should:

- State the action required.
- Include the relevant ingredient quantities where this improves usability.
- Preserve important temperatures, timings, visual cues and texture indicators.
- Make it clear when ingredients are divided or reserved for later.
- Include resting, cooling, chilling or marinating periods.
- Retain useful safety instructions.
- Avoid unnecessary storytelling or repetition.

Give oven temperatures exactly as stated. Include Celsius, Fahrenheit and gas mark values only when they appear in the original recipe. Do not invent conversions.

## How to tell when it is ready

Summarise the visual, textural or temperature cues that indicate the dish is properly cooked or prepared.

Only include cues supported by the original recipe or reliable food-safety guidance. Clearly label anything added from an external source.

## Serving suggestions

Include accompaniments, garnishes, presentation ideas or serving instructions from the original recipe.

Clearly distinguish any additional suggestions from the source material.

## Variations and substitutions

List variations, ingredient substitutions or dietary adaptations mentioned in the original recipe.

You may suggest a small number of additional practical substitutions, but clearly label them as suggestions. Explain briefly when a substitution may affect flavour, texture, cooking time or the final result.

Do not claim that a recipe is suitable for a particular allergy or dietary requirement unless this can be confirmed from every ingredient used.

## Storage and reheating

Include any instructions for refrigeration, freezing, make-ahead preparation and reheating that appear in the original recipe.

If adding external food-safety guidance, clearly identify it as additional information and provide a reliable source URL. Do not guess storage periods.

## Recipe notes

Preserve useful tips, troubleshooting advice, ingredient explanations and preparation notes from the original page.

Remove promotional material, repetition and information that does not help someone make the recipe.

## About the dish

Briefly explain the dish’s culinary background, traditional preparation or key technique where relevant.

Clearly distinguish this additional context from information contained in the original clip. Do not invent cultural or historical claims.

## Further reading

Suggest up to three trustworthy resources that would help the reader understand a key ingredient, technique or food-safety consideration connected to the recipe.

For each resource, provide:

- The title
- The publisher or organisation
- A direct working URL
- One sentence explaining why it is useful

Prefer authoritative, original and up-to-date sources. Verify links through web research if browsing is available. If browsing is unavailable, state that the suggested links have not been checked.

## Processing rules

- Use British English.
- Use clear, concise language.
- Retain all information needed to make the recipe successfully.
- Keep source material separate from added suggestions or research.
- Use Evernote call outs and tables if needed. Don't randomly or overuse them.
- Do not introduce unsupported claims.
- Do not silently correct conflicting quantities, temperatures or timings. Flag them clearly.
- Do not fabricate missing ingredients, measurements, timings, equipment or instructions.
- Do not calculate nutritional information unless specifically instructed.
- If nutritional information appears in the original clip, preserve it and identify it as supplied by the original source.
- If the recipe appears incomplete, explain what is missing.
- If the source URL is missing, state: “Original source URL not available.”
- Return only the finished, cleaned recipe note without explaining the editing process.

Feel free to edit this to how you want your recipe to appear and save the prompt to your AI Prompt library.

If the AI starts doing things that irritate you, edit the prompt and tell it off!

This is what a recipe ends up looking like using this prompt.

These prompts have saved me so much time processing messy web clips and when the prompt is in the AI Prompt library, the cleaning up is done in a couple of clicks.

Grab the prompts and let me know how you get in with them in the comments.

Evernote table improvements

The Evernote team have been working on tables and you’ll find some improvements in the latest version.

If you use tables to display images, resizing them and moving them around is much easier. It’s also easier to resize columns.

Now, this may not be new, but I’ve not seen it before. We can distribute columns evenly.

Right click anywhere in the table and you can see the option in the menu.

Another improvement is better handling of pasted information from Excel spreadsheets and Google sheets.

Copy some cells from a spreadsheet and paste them into your note and they look a bit like this.

It’s nice to see tables being worked on.

In the future, I would love to see some simple table sorting and maybe even some basic formulas like being able to add up columns.

Let me know if you noticed anything different. Also let me know what table improvements you’d like to see.

Uploaded images are auto captioned

Image captions arrived a few weeks ago and in the latest version, when you upload an image it gets auto-captioned.

It doesn’t display the caption by default. You still need to click the caption button, but the words in the caption are available in normal and semantic search

I quite like this. Not really for the caption but for the description of the image that’s searchable. It makes the 2nd brain concept of Evernote a little stronger.

If you don’t like the captions, you can turn them off in Settings -> Preferences -> AI -> AI Image Captioning.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

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A huge thank you to Jim 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 11.31.5. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.31.7.

Quite a bit to get through this week.

The first is something folks have been asking about for ages, the ability to find things in notes a lot easier.

On the desktop apps you can use CMD + F or CTRL + F to open the note search box.

You type something to find what’s in the note and click the forward/backward arrows to navigate to the search words.

The big change is that this now includes paging through PDFs so if the word is included inside a multi-page PDF you can navigate directly to that search word.

This example uses my copy of the GDPR regulations, fun eh!

Its 76 pages long and when I now search for a word(s) in the note it picks the results up in the PDF.

I’ve searched for GDPR.

When I click the forward/backward arrows, it not only navigates through the note but also the pages of the PDF and jumps to where the word is in the PDF.

In the screenshot below you can see I’ve clicked to the third occurrence of GDPR and the PDF has jumped to page 9.

This is a huge improvement for note search.

Search for inline tags in a note

Another big improvement is the ability to search for inline tags in a note.

We now have a little tag icon in the note search box and when you click it you can see the inline tags applied to that note.

When you click on one of the tags, they become highlighted in the note and you can use the forwards/backwards arrows to move through the tags.

This is going to please a lot of folk.

Let me know what you think about the note search improvements in the comments.

Automatic image captioning

This is something interesting. You can now apply an automatic caption to your images.

Here’s the image from last week’s article and you can see the caption icon in the toolbar at the top right.

Click this and Evernote uses its AI to look at the image and caption it.

It’s pretty accurate. It thought the suit was a vest, but it’s close enough and you can click your cursor into the caption and edit it.

The words in the caption will also show up in note search.

I didn’t think I would use this much, but I have, not for every image but for some.

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

AI Assistant is now working on the latest AI model

Over the last couple of weeks the AI Assistant has been bumped up to version 5.6 of ChatGPT so it’ll hopefully be able to find information and answer question a little better.

Remember Evernote has a deal with OpenAI so that no note data is used to train the ChatGPT and there’s no data retention.

Pin notes, add them to shortcuts and manage stacks using the AI Assistant

Some more improvements to the AI Assistant include being able to pin a note and add them to shortcuts.

Just use a simple prompt like this.

It does both quickly.

I must admit I’m finding it easier to use voice input when using the AI Assistant. A lot less typing.

Another little improvement to the AIA includes being able to manage stacks.

Here’s the prompt. I used the @ symbol to define the notebook and stack.

It did this really quickly.

An in reverse.

I’m going to find this very useful. It’s always been a faff adding and removing notebooks from stacks so being able to do this in natural language through the AIA will be much quicker.

Let me know what you think of these little improvements. Leave me a comment.

That’s it.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

How many web clips have you got? Are they a bit messy?

In this mid-week video I’m going to show you how to use Evernote’s AI Assistant to pull out the important information and turn it into a clear, useful note.

You’ll see how to ask the AI Assistant to summarise a web clip while you are in edit mode, review and accept its suggested changes, then use web search to add useful context.

• How to extract the key information from a web clip

• How to turn a cluttered clip into a tidy, readable note

• How to use AI-powered web search for extra context

• How to review, accept and organise AI-generated content in Evernote

If you want to do this in bulk then the MCP server might be useful when connected to ChatGPT, Claude or your AI tool.

Let me know if you try this out? What are the results like?

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon

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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.

This spot is usually reserved for the latest version numbers, but right now I’m in a tent in South Wales and it’s probably raining for the first time in months! I scheduled this post a while ago. Check the latest version numbers for the desktop apps here.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had a few questions asking about the difference between the Evernote AI Assistant and the MCP server so here’s a bit of a comparison for you which may help you decide which tool is best for you.

What is the Evernote AI Assistant?

The AI Assistant is around 12 months old now and you activate it using the icon at the bottom right of the screen.

A drawer slides out and you can interact with the notes and data in your Evernote account.

The AI Assistant uses ChatGPT but does not use any of your data to train the model and there’s no data retention.

It works like a conversational chat bot where you ask questions, give instructions and work back and forth with the AI to get the results you want.

You can search notes, create notes, edit notes, create tasks, set reminders, search the web and perform many other tasks using natural language.

Here’s an example of creating a task to call the doctor at 2pm this afternoon.

In Evernote’s settings, you can switch off the AI Assistant if you don’t want to use it and also track your usage. These limits are not published but I’ve never got near them, I think the most I’ve got to is 15%.

So that’s a quick overview of the AI Assistant.

What is the Evernote MCP?

I’ve written an article about how to connect Evernote to ChatGPT and Claude so have a read if you get chance.

The Evernote MCP is a way to connect your external AI tool with your Evernote notes and data.

If you use ChatGPT, Claude or other AI tools you can connect to Evernote and work with your notes inside the application itself. You don’t need to open Evernote.

It’s a little bit like a fancy API where you connect two different applications together.

You can create notes, save information to Evernote, create tasks and do most of the things you can do with the AI Assistant, you’re just doing it from within your AI software. You can do much more than this, you have the full power of your AI at hand.

Here’s an example where I asked ChatGPT to connect to my invoice software, find all paid invoices for May 2026, put them into a table with the total at the bottom and save it to Evernote.

What are the main differences?

The AI Assistant just works inside Evernote and only works with your Evernote notes and data plus any other information you upload.

AI software like ChatGPT or Claude can connect to many different apps so that you can bring your Evernote data together with data from another application and do something with that.

In my example above ChatGPT has an MCP connection to my invoicing software and Evernote so I can bring in invoicing information, format it in the AI and then save it to Evernote, essentially create a report very quickly.

Use cases for the AI Assistant

The AI Assistant is quite powerful, you can ask questions of your notes and PDFs, edit notes using natural language and do some basic organisation.

There are so many use cases and yours will be different to others, but here’s a few ideas:

Ask questions of your notes

This is one of the most powerful ways to use the AI Assistant and it works a little quicker than if you were using the MCP connection.

Let’s say you have a flight number in a note, just ask “what is the flight number to Paris’ and it should dig it out.

I have a very big PDF with all the GDPR regulations and I sometimes have to find a rule. I no longer have to read it all, I just ask the AI Assistant to find the information I need in the PDF.

I think of this as a power search. Instead of using keywords, you’re asking a question in natural language to find the answer you want. That answer would be contained in your notes.

Editing notes

I did a bit of a deep dive on the editing features in the AI Assistant the other week and also recorded a demo video, check them out if you get chance.

You can put the AI Assistant into Edit Mode and ask it to reformat a note, summarise, check grammar and speeling, translate or turn text into quotes or call-outs.

When you’re in edit mode, you’ll be able to approve or reject any changes made.

One excellent use for this is to tidy up web clips. Ask the AI Assistant to summarise and bring forward the main points of the clip and remove the rest. Much cleaner notes.

You can also use the AI Assistant to change the title of notes and base this on a specific naming convention.

Organisation

You can use the AI Assistant to add tags to your notes, move notes to different notebooks, add tasks, reminders and generally organise things.

I must admit I don’t tend to use the AI Assistant a lot for organisation. I find it quicker to just add a tag manually or move a note by right clicking.

Researching information from the web

You can activate Web Search mode in the AI Assistant and research almost anything you want. I’ve used it to plan short hiking or camping trips, bring in reviews about products I want to buy and I have a whole note dedicated to me buying a Mac Mini which I will get round to one day!

This saves so much time searching, compiling and formatting.

You can create comparison charts, find new places to visit, research hobbies or topics related to work and do this very quickly.

Use cases for the Evernote MCP

Connecting multiple apps together

A lot of apps now come with MCP servers or various connectors and plugins so you can connect them with your choice of AI software. This is where the power of an MCP comes into its own.

The example above that creates a monthly revenue report in Evernote pulls in data from my invoice software.

I also have my cloud drive connected and my CRM so I can pull in information, create documents, format things, do some maths and add stuff up and create what I want.

In the past I’ve pulled in information from a client brief in my cloud drive, summarised it and created an action list and then saved the information to the clients notebook in Evernote. In the past this would’ve been a manual job.

A lot of the multi-app use cases will probably revolve around work but let me know if you're connecting Evernote with other apps via an MCP for personal use.

One personal use case for me was to compare blood test results from 2025 to 2026 and see what had changed. All the information was in PDFs in Evernote and the AI got the data and compared it.

Bulk processing notes

This is where the MCP really shines.

The AI Assistant struggles when editing or changing many notes, like hundreds of them. It’s getting better, but it’s not really designed for this kind of bulk processing.

The MCP can use the power of whatever AI system you use and through that process many hundreds of notes.

Here’s an example.

I’m really bad at sorting out all the invoices and bills I send into my Receipts Dump notebook. I usually forward these via email. They sit there for ages, months on end and then I have to go through them one by one, change the title, give it a date and file it in the correct notebook.

Tedious.

So, I wrote a skill in ChatGPT to do this for me. It took a while to get this skill perfected but it’s worth it.

If anyone is interested, I’ve copied the full instructions for this skill right at the bottom of this article... they are long and very specific, but you need specific for AI’s to do their job properly.

So, in just under 15 mins, all 174 invoices in my Receipts Dump notebook had their titles changed using my own naming convention and moved to another notebook. This would’ve taken me hours.

I spoke to someone the other week who has a huge number of web clips and they got their AI to trawl through them, summarising them and titling them properly.

Deep research

This is something else the AI Assistant will struggle with. In ChatGPT and Claude you can ask it to deep research topics.

I ran a growth strategy for a project I’m working on. I gave the AI reams of information about current positions, competitors’ info and also uploaded sales data, web traffic analytics and a lot more.

It went away for just under an hour and produced an 80 page strategy document for me that I pulled apart and summarised.

A lot of this information was reformatted and transferred to the clients notebook in Evernote.

Conclusion

I use the AI Assistant when I want questions answered from my notes, I want to edit or work with a single note, or want to quickly create some tasks.

I use the MCP when I want to do bulk work with my notes or combine information in other apps with my Evernote data to create a new report or note or something.

Here’s a comment from the Taming the Trunk chat where Paul explained how he was using the MCP and AI Assistant.

I’d love to hear about how you use them. What do you use the MCP for? What do you use the AI Assistant for? Let me know in the comments.

Sorry this was long!

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

Here’s the really long skill instructions for processing my receipts using the ChatGPT MCP. If you use this, edit it, as it refers to my own notebooks and naming convention.

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Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 11.29.2. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 11.28.3.

Folks have been wanting this for years... I’ve been wanting it, you may have been wanting it!

We can now print PDFs and image attachments without opening them.

Before, if you wanted to print a PDF attachment you’d have to open the PDF first and then print it.

Now, behind the three-dot menu, you’ll find a Print option.

You don’t need to open the PDF.

I must admit, not the greatest new feature ever, but it’s a little thing that will make workflows just a little bit easier.

You can also print text files and images.

Limitations are that it doesn’t print complicated attachments like Word documents, so you’ll have to open them as normal and then print.

This is a nice little improvement. Let me know what you think in the comments.

I need to share something quite personal with you.

It’s a little embarrassing.

I’ve started talking to the Evernote AI Assistant.

Thankfully, I’m not sharing my deep dark secrets like how I enjoy watching reruns of Star Trek Deep Space Nine!

No, I’m just starting to dictate the changes I want to make to my notes.

Edit mode arrived a couple of weeks ago and has been a bit of a game changer for me. It’s saved me loads of time faffing and fiddling with my notes.

Yesterday, I spoke these words:

It did it. I would normally have to copy pasta them all one by one.

When I was writing a report I spoke:

It did this and changed the icon in the call-out to an ‘i’ emoji.

I find all of this amazing and it’s changing the way I use a computer.

No longer is a computer or an application a ‘technical’ thing where you use keywords to search for things or strict naming conventions. I don’t have to click icons in a certain order to get what I want.

I just say things in natural language and it happens.

This is also working for me outside of Evernote.

In ChatGPT I now say:

I would normally have to load my invoice software, click on invoices, click on invoice 3801, click add a payment, select bank transfer and save.

I now just say what I want and the AI does it.

I still create. I still think. In Evernote, the arranging of content in a note and formatting is now done quickly by AI without me having to fuss and fiddle.

I want to create. I don’t want to spend my time formatting and fiddling and fussing and organising. I want to create notes and content.

Just waiting for it to wash the car!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Is AI changing the way you use a computer?

Are you using voice input with the AI Assistant or other tools? How do you find it? Let me know in the comments.

You can transcribe and regenerate transcriptions using the AI Assistant

A small update to the AI assistant this week.

You can now kick off a transcriptions and regenerate a transcription from the AI Assistant.

I’m not 100% sure if this is useful. It’s pretty easy and fast to hit the three-dot menu and bring up the regeneration screen.

Maybe the thinking is that you can build transcription instructions into a saved AI Prompt that runs the AI on older, non-transcribed files.

I’m pretty sure there’s some good use cases.

And finally...

The official July recap video has been released. These are always worth a watch.

And finally, finally…

Bending Spoons, the company the owns Evernote has had their first earnings call since their IPO.

The headline is:

I’ve put together a shared Evernote note which holds a summary of the earnings call, specific Evernote related information and a transcript of the whole call.

Thanks to the AI Assistant for summarising this.

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon

I’ve spoken a fair bit about how recording and transcribing a meeting or call is just the beginning. The magic happens when you start working with the video.

In this weeks short mid-week video, I look at what you can do with an Evernote transcript once it has been created.

• Regenerate the transcript with speaker labels

• Rename each speaker throughout the conversation

• Transcribe a specific time range instead of the whole recording

• Change the transcription language

• Rename, download or edit the original audio or video

• Run saved AI Prompts against the transcript

• Create summaries in your preferred format

• Pull out action points or create social media posts

• Ask the AI Assistant questions about what each person said

• Collapse a long transcript when you do not need it on screen

In the demo, I used a copy of the most recent interview I did with fellow Evernote Certified Expert Stacey Harmon. If you have time, give it a listen.

I also mention the AI Prompt library a few times, check out the deep dive if you get chance.

Let me know how you use the transcripts in the comments.

Have a great rest of the week

All the best

Jon