9 tips for Evernote users
Every week, Look At Me offers advice on how to get the most out of popular apps. The new release features Evernote, one of the most famous applications for storing notes. Evernote does a lot of things, so mastering it can be challenging. And although the application developers write that there is no right way to use the application, we offer several approaches that experienced users find most effective.
1. Take more notes and notebooks than you are used to.
To use Evernote at 100%, you need to constantly fill it. Searching notes works quickly, even if you create one notebook for each topic and one note for each component of that topic. Notebooks can be combined into stacks (for example, “Work”, “Study”, “Home”): to do this, in the menu with a choice of notebooks, transfer one book to another. Consider headings at each level of the hierarchy to make it easier to navigate. If you feel that there are too many notes in one notebook, you can easily cross them with each other: select them via CMD/CTRL + right click, then press SHIFT + CMD/CTRL + M. To quickly navigate between notebooks, use the combination CMD/CTRL + J keys.
2. Save frequently used search queries.
Evernote not only lets you select recent searches, but also save those that you do often. To do this, enter a search query, press ENTER, then go to the Edit - Search menu and press Save Search. This query will now be stored in the search dropdown menu under your recent queries. Don’t forget about advanced search commands: you don’t have to memorize them, but add them through the drop-down list located at the bottom of the search menu.
3.
Try to visualize each note
and add attachments.
One of the main advantages of Evernote is that that in one note you can store different types of data: text, images, sound, PDF files. Try to use them as often as possible. To speed up your work, use the Web Clipper extension, which helps you quickly save sites in Evernote as screenshots or text, and the Skitch app for creating annotations on images. Also, do not forget that important parts of the text can be highlighted with a marker, and with the click of one button you can create several types of lists and tables - all this is in the formatting bar. Evernote also has a web extension Clearly, in which you can mark important places in the text while reading - only the highlighted ones will be saved in the note.
4. Think about your tag hierarchy.
Collections of hundreds and thousands of notes cannot do without a well-thought-out tagging system. To get started, select a few tag categories (e.g. thematic, descriptive and project-specific), then place all existing tags into each of these types. To do this, in the tags menu, move one tag to another: this will make them members of the same group. Also, don’t forget that Evernote has personal and shared tag types: the second allows you to tag other people’s notes without affecting the tags of its owners.
5. Convert all the paperwork you have into digital form - including business cards.
Instead of storing an insane amount of paperwork in your desk drawers, You can digitize them all and throw away those that are not needed in the original. Remember: the more you store in Evernote, the more convenient it is, so feel free to put business cards, documents, receipts, invoices and everything else there. Moreover, the application can quickly read data from them and convert it into text format.
6. Link notes with internal links.
You can share notes not only with app users - To get the public link to the browser note, press CMD/CTRL + /. If one note is not enough, you can add internal links between notes: in the menu called up by right-clicking on a note, select Copy Link Note, and then select the desired part of the text in another note, right-click and select Link - Add from the context menu, then Then copy the link from the clipboard into the field that appears and press Enter.
The most convenient way is to create a table of contents note automatically by selecting all the necessary notes using the combination CMD + left click and clicking on the Create Table of Contents Note button. Evernote will create a separate outline note, which can be supplemented with main points, links to articles, photographs and other attachments on the topic that will be useful to the audience of your presentation or colleagues with whom you have a meeting. Unlike emails, notes can be easily supplemented and corrected - this also applies to their attachments. Table of contents notes are best placed in a sidebar or toolbar, depending on how your interface is organized.
7. Create templates for different types of notes.
Surely you often have to create posts of a similar format. To avoid wasting time on their design, create a template note and save it as a separate file in ENEX format (you can simply move the note to the folder you need). After that, all you need to do is copy the contents of the template into a new note of the same type. If you need a more powerful template tool, try KustomNote, which easily links with Evernote.
8. Add notes to Evernote from email and other sources.
In the Summary tab located in the Account Settings menu, there is an email address that turns received letters into Evernote entries. It is enough to send a letter with the contents of the note in its body and the subject of the following format:
[note name] ![reminder date YYYY-MM-DD] @[notebook name] #[tags separated by commas]
For Google Chrome and Gmail users, the Augment extension is suitable. If you use Sunrise Calendar, be sure to link it to Evernote so you can quickly find meeting notes on your calendar. Also check out some helpful recipes on IFTTT: for example, you can automatically save posts tagged in Pocket to Evernote.
9. Hide the text of notes under a password.
While there's nothing stopping you from protecting your Evernote account with two-step authentication, this doesn't eliminate social engineering - or even the fact that your notes can be seen by people nearby. To avoid inconvenience, place the text of your notes under a password. To do this, select the desired part of the text, right-click and select Encrypt Selected Text. If you wish, you can configure the application to remember your password for the entire current session. Most importantly, don't forget your password - Evernote won't store it and won't be able to help you recover it.
