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Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 10.152.1. You can grab it from the download page. Latest mobile version is 10.152.1.
I try and clean up my Evernote twice a year, usually when I'm quiet in July and December, a little late this year as I've been unseasonably busy!
Why clean up, you may ask. I mean, the whole idea is to store everything in Evernote just in case you need it in the future.
I agree but I still clean up and here's why.
Generally speaking the more notes you have the harder it is to find things so you need to be more specific in the way you organise.
I'm very much the sort of person who doesn't like spending ages organising. I do organise, but I want my system to be simple so it’s based on Notebooks and a simple Naming convention.
The more notes I gather there's a bigger chance of irrelevant and out of date notes ending up in search results.
Also.
Do I really need to keep the receipt for the windscreen wipers for a car that I no longer own?
This is what I've cleaned this time round:
Deleted all Trash up to the end of July 2023. I keep 2 years’ worth of notes in trash just in case. I'm now down to 2415 notes in trash.
Deleted anything in my screenshot notebook over a year old. I really don't need them anymore.
I've exported a receipts notebook that's over 10 years old. Archived it as an ENEX file just in case. I don't need to see 10-year-old bills in my search.
I've gone through my Archive notebook and removed any notes that are totally irrelevant. I found one with a bunch of train times from 2018.
I also looked through my client and project notebooks and deleted any meeting notes that are older than 12 months or I really don't need anymore.
Brand new for this clean-up is a look at my daily notes. I started using them on 24th June 2024 and I think I'm going to keep them for two years and then delete them, another year to go before I clean.
A couple of little tips if you want to have a clear out.
You can reorder your notes in Trash to find the oldest. Just use the sort filter in the desktop app.
On mobile you'll find Trash behind your little avatar at the top left of the screen.
You can also reorder the notes by date using the three-dot menu at the top of the Trash view.
We can now multi-select in the phone apps so deleting in bulk is much easier.
When you're looking at reordering notes in notebooks on the desktop app, it's a good idea to swich the view to top list or side list.
You can expand the width of the sidebar in side list to see Updated and Created dates and just click on the Created column title to reorder.
It took me about an hour to have a good sort through and I got rid of a couple of thousand notes (most of them in trash).
My note count now stands at 2862.
Do you clear out your Evernote? What do you delete? Let me know in the comments.
Change to the Live Calls for paid subscribers
I've decided to scrap the Live Calls benefit for paid users and replace it with a Premium Chat thread.
There's two reasons for the change.
Time zones are not helping with numbers on the call and chatting with some of the US paid subscribers, being able to take part during their day on a Sunday is tricky.
The second reason is that I'm finding 6pm UK time on a Sunday hard work right now. I'm travelling a lot for work and find myself in hotels or staying with relatives on a Sunday evening and it’s been difficult.
What I've decided to do is create a Paid User Thread in the TTT chat area where paid subscribers can ask questions, upload screen shots, video etc.
I think this will be better for folks who just want to ask a quick question immediately.
I’ll be posting to the new thread with anything I can share from the Evernote team so you may be first to know a few new things.
I'll post a link each month to a new premium thread and you'll also be able to get to the thread from the Substack app or website.
Here's the link for September's chat in the web.
Let me know if you have any questions about this at all.
Have a great weekend
All the best
Jon
Unrelated by just in case you have a suggestion. The the speed of Evernote has increased significantly and is pretty good now. However, I quite often find that a linked note will take ages to open if at all (sometime Open in a New Window will fix it somehow) which drives me a bit spare. If I recreate the link then normal speed so seems to be related to some change they made in linking perhaps? Don't want to have to fix all the links one by one so wonder if there is some other approach that would help - perhaps reinstalling or something? Thanks
I really don't trash notes much at all even if there are probably plenty that could be trashed.
For curiosities sake I too a look at my trash folder, there are 205 notes in there and in looking at them I was confused for a moment.
You might be interested in this little tidbit, especially if you use the "note merge" feature.
When you merge notes, a new note is created and the original notes are trashed.
Thus my confusion in looking at notes in the trash, "hey wait a minute, I need that... oh OK, it's in a new note, phew!"