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7/28/2019 10 Must Know Tips to Become an Evernote Power User
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10 Must-Know Tips to Become an Evernote Power User Christopher Null, PC
World
April 10, 2013
You can already bend Evernote's notes, notebooks, and stacks to your will.
And maybe you've directed your team to use Evernote Business. Evernote is
friendly when you're getting started with it, but the more you use it, the more
your notes can pile up, threatening your productivity.
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Now that you've excelled at the basics, it's time to dig into Evernote's arsenal
and charge ahead like a true note-taking, to-do-list-tackling warrior.
Use checkboxes in notes
Checkboxes
One of the more popular uses for Evernote is to create lists, such as to-do
lists, shopping lists, enemies lists, and the like. A simple text list is fine, but
you can enhance the utility of your list by adding checkboxes to the items on
it.
Checkboxes are simple to add but easily overlooked. When creating a text
note, look at the toolbar across the top of the screen. You'll see an icon that
looks, well, like a checkbox. Simply click this icon wherever you'd like to add a
checkbox in your list.
These checkboxes are functional. Just click or tap them in any device to turn
them from blank to checked and back; checkmarks are persistent across
multiple devices when you synchronize, too.
Save frequently used searches
Save
If you find yourself hunting for the same thing in Evernote over and over
again, you can save your search to make it easier to replicate. First, create
your search. Next, in the Windows client, click the small drop-down arrow to
the immediate right of your search term to reveal the advanced search bar, if
it's not appearing already. Click the blue magnifying glass to open the Saved
Search dialog box. There, click OK to save the search. It will now appear in
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the left-hand navigation pane under the Saved Searches header.
Instructions for saving searches on mobile devices are similar. Look for the
magnifying-glass icon any time you've completed a successful search (that is,
a search with at least one result) to save it.
Clip Web pages with Evernote Mobile
Because of the vagaries of smartphone Web browsers, Evernote's mobile app
can't clip Web pages by default, dulling its utility. There's no easy workaround
for the iPhone, but Android users have a couple of options to make Web
clipping possible. Dolphin: Evernote is a free add-on that lets you grab Web
pages and pull them into Evernote, although it can only grab entire pages,
not partial selections. EverWebClipper ($2.88) gives you more flexibility in
what you can snag, if you're willing to pay for the privilege.
Use offline notebooks (Premium only)
The offline option on an iPhone
Because Evernote syncs content among your devices and the cloud, many
users don't realize that mobile devices do not by default store copies of
documents for offline use. Instead, every time you access your documents on
an iOS or Android device, Evernote downloads them on demand. If you're at
30,000 feet or out in the sticks and you need to check a note, that can be a
problem.
If you're an Evernote Premium user, you can configure individual notebooks
to be accessible offline, whether you have an Internet connection or not. Inyour device's Evernote Settings panel under the Offline Notebooks option,
just select the notebooks you want to keep stored on your phone or tablet.
Access note history (Premium only)
If you tend to revise notes over and over--or share them with other people--
having access to older versions of your documents can be a lifesaver, should
something critical get changed or deleted. Premium account users can access
older versions of notes by logging in to Evernote on the Web, clicking the
note attributes drop-down arrow for an entry, and then clicking View note
history. A list of archived notes and their timestamps will appear.
One important caveat: Evernote does not save a copy of every version of
every note, but rather makes a backup of your notes on a schedule that runs
every few hours. If you make multiple changes to a note over a short amount
of time, only the most recent version is likely to be saved. Don't rely on note
history to save you if you accidentally erase your entire document 10 minutes
after you create it.
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Archive webpages, in whole or in part
Web Clipper
Emailing a webpage or its URL to yourself for later retrieval never seems to
work right. This task is especially difficult if you're trying to save a password-
protected webpage or a news story that may simply vanish at a later date.
Evernote's Web Clipper lets you copy webpages in full to Evernote, but power
users know that you don't have to grab the entire screen. When you use Web
Clipper, it will automatically attempt to determine where the "meat" of a
webpage is, encircling it in a yellow border and graying out the detritus. Use
the arrow keys on your keyboard to grab more of the page (Up Arrow) or less
of the page (Down Arrow), or to pick a different selection on the page (Left or
Right Arrow). When you're done, press Enter to finalize your clipping and save
it.
Master Evernote's search tool
Evernote has search tags and much more to help you unearth your best
notes.
As your Evernote database begins to fill up, you'll have to rely more and more
on searches to find what you're looking for. You can search for simple
keywords, but this tactic will start to turn up a larger number of results,
especially if you tend to use Evernote to save lots of information about a
narrow set of topics.
Fortunately, Evernote's search system offers an advanced syntax that givesyou more control over how you search your notes. Here's a quick guide. (You
can dig deeper on this blog post or at Evernote's official Knowledge Base
entry.)
To search only within your tags, type tag:tagname or tag:"multiple-word
tagname" into Evernote's search field. To find an exact phrase that comprises
multiple words, use quotation marks just as you would in a Web search.
You can use a structure similar to the tag search above to search only for
notes within notebooks that contain specified terms in their names. Type
notebook:notebookname or notebook:"multiple-word notebookname" into thefield.
If you want to find notes that contain your term in the note's title, try either
intitle:term or intitle:"multiple-word term" in your search.
To return notes that contain any of the specified terms inside, type any:term1
term2 term3 in the field. (A standard search for term1 term2 term3 would
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return only notes containing all three terms.)
You can even perform searches based on content-creation date, using an
eight-digit number to represent the date (or even more advanced syntaxes),
like so: created:yyyymmdd
If you'd rather get results based on the last time a note was revised, type
updated:yyyymmdd into the search field.
Learn advanced email syntax
Visit Account Info in the desktop app for your Evernote email address.
A quick and easy way to get something into Evernote is simply to email it to
your Evernote address. The problem: If you don't specify where the email
should go, it will create a note in your default notebook, with no tags.
When sending an email to Evernote, you can manipulate the subject line todetermine where it should end up. Here's an example of a subject line that
covers all the bases:
The Hobbit @Movies #review #4stars #dwarves
This creates a note called "The Hobbit" in your Movies notebook, with tags of
"review," "4stars," and "dwarves." Note that you must put the notebook (@)
and tags (#) identifiers in the above order. Also, the notebook and tags must
already exist before you attempt to use them in an email to Evernote.
Transcribe voice notes
You can get notes into Evernote through any number of methods. One of
Evernote's big advantages is that it can convert one file type to another,
letting you search PDFs and OCR-converted images for text.
Although Evernote can now convert voice recordings directly to text on
Android devices, it can't do that trick on iOS devices or via recordings made
on your PC. You can get around this and make audio notes searchable
through a couple of methods. First, you can use a smartphone app like
Dragon Dictation to record a voice memo, and then copy the text into
Evernote.
Alternatively, you can use a third-party add-in called Voice2Note to do the
translation for you directly from Evernote. Just register for Voice2Note online,
and record voice notes within the Evernote app normally. They'll be
transcribed and saved behind the scenes. You can also call a special
Voice2Note number to create new notes via a simple phone call--something
that you can't do without an add-in on any platform. (Voice2Note is free for
five transcriptions per month, or $3 per month if you need more.)
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Pick up keyboard shortcuts
Only a rube uses the mouse to get around desktop apps. The following
keyboard shortcuts help you use Evernote even more efficiently on a PC. (The
commands are similar on a Mac. And you'll find even more shortcuts on
Evernote's site.)
Ctrl-Alt-N: Start a new note. (In Windows, this is a global shortcut, meaning
that it works from any application as long as Evernote is open.)
Windows-A: Pastes selected text into a new or open note. (Global shortcut.)
F9: Synchronize.
Ctrl-N: New note.
Ctrl-Shift-N: New notebook.
Ctrl-Shift-T: New tag.
Ctrl-Shift-E: Send a note or notes by email.
Ctrl-Shift-C: Insert a checkbox.
Alt-Shift-D: Insert the current time and date.
You can redefine global shortcuts for Windows from within the Evernote
desktop application under Tools > Options > Hot Keys.
2012 PC World Communications