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William Powers's avatar

I initially built my extensive Evernote system with tags, mostly because I wanted the infinite nesting ability of tags that notebooks lacked. (My brain works via outlines.)

But as Evernote has been developing in recent months, it's become apparent that Bending Spoons is more notebook oriented than tag oriented. E.g. you can now sort tasks by notebooks, but not by tags. You can now pin a note to the top of notebooks, but not to to the top of tags. And scrolling is faster in long notebooks than in long tags. These advantages (especially the scrolling) have convinced me to switch over to a notebook orientation, even though I really really miss the nesting ability of tags and pray it comes to notebooks.

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Jon Tromans's avatar

There is some thought around nested notebooks but I'm not sure if anything has been decided. I tend to only use tags as a status myself. Not sure how deep I'd want notebook, unlimited feels like an organisation mess!

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Paul's avatar

Scannable - I use Scannable often, but mainly for scanning multiple pages into a PDF document. I find Scannable does that better than the native Evernote app.

Tags - I used to base my Evernote organisation on tags, but it got confusing. I stick to notebooks now but with the odd tag for statuses.

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Jon Tromans's avatar

A lot of folk say Scannable is better than the built in scanner. Would be nice for it to be a part of the main app, especially for Android users.

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Angela Kudsk's avatar

I link my Todoist app with Evernote, so when I tag a note with checklist items in Evernote, the items sync to my Todoist app, along with the tag. I rely on tags in Todoist to help filter my tasks.

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Angela Kudsk's avatar

Oops, pleexy.com

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Jon Tromans's avatar

Cool. How do you do the sync?

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Angela Kudsk's avatar

I set it up with plexxy.com. I pay the $4 a month, but to me it’s worth it.

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Jon Tromans's avatar

Very cool. Not heard of that one before. Cheap as well!

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Matt Rhoades's avatar

I use tags quite a lot to categorise certain notes but also to let me know which tags need some action. I can then use a saved search to easily find notes I need to work on.

What irks me at the moment is that on desktop (Windows), tags are handily displayed across the bottom of the note, whereas on iOS and Android, only one tag is shown at the top of the note even when there's space to show more.

Tapping that tag brings up a dialog box where you can add and remove tags and the existing tags are shown at the top as labels, but with black text on a darkish blue background so they're almost illegible to my aged eyes.

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Jon Tromans's avatar

I think tags could do with a refresh. Not many folk use them and more should even if just as a status for notes. Would be good if managing them were easier.

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William Powers's avatar

On another topic ... has Evernote been acting slow and wonky the last few days ... or is it just me?

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Jon Tromans's avatar

A little bit. Its been mentioned and I think some of the EN experts have sent logs. I've not used the desktop for a couple of days as I've been away but seems OK now I'm back.

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Steven's avatar

I use a limited number of tags, which makes it easier to remember. And I use tags in a limited set of use cases, such as to classify my restaurant notes by the type of food they serve and geography (e.g. "Thai, Raleigh"). I find that makes search far more accurate.

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