This month’s focus is on Evernote. Next time we’ll look at the major upgrades to Todoist https://todoist.com and other ideas to make life easier.
Here are several useful Evernote Hacks (courtesy of Stacy Harmon an Evernote expert)
- Keep you default notebook easy to find by naming it .Inbox (you could name it something else, but this is a good name as it suggests it’s function. The “.” character preceding the “I” keeps it sorted to the top of your notebook list for ease of locating it. You can actually designate any Notebook as the Default. With Evernote open, go to Evernote in the menu bar, choose Preferences in the drop down, then the General Tab. The first line lets you select your default Notebook from the list presented in the dropdown.
- Your Evernote app on your desktop or laptop is the place to keep Evernote organized. Think of your handheld devices as tools to capture things. It’s much easier to name, tag and move notes on your laptop app than on a phone or tablet.
- Don’t use your .Inbox to hold information except briefly. Things you put there should be temporary until you have “processed” them and put them in the proper notebook. Getting Things Done methodology says to: Collect (your stuff – notes, stickies, letters, email, etc. and send it to the .Inbox), Clarify (what does it mean to you… what to do with it), Organize (put it in the proper notebook and tag it for context as “who, what, where, when”, Reflect on it at least weekly, and Engage with it… Do it
- If you share your work with others then agree on a naming convention for your Notes as well as agreed up Tags as it will make life easier. If you don’t share your work often then you are the boss and do what works for you.
- Look at Evernote’s advanced search capability and use the advanced search operators like: intitle:gophers (this search will only look at a Note’s title and will return any with the word gopher in the Title, or -tag:* which will find notes that have no tag. See this link for several more: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313828-How-to-use-Evernote-s-advanced-search-syntax
- I’ve mentioned this before and it’s one of Evernotes strengths, Copy Note Link in the Notes menu will let you select a Note title, copy the link and then paste in another note in a Master Note, a Table of Contents, or a Table or wherever you need it. Clicking on the hyperlink will take you to that Note immediately, Click the back arrow at the top of the task bar will take you back where you were.
- Need to share just one Note with someone who doesn’t have Evernote, just bring up the Note you want to share and click on the Note Menu and select Create Sharable Link. Paste this in an email and your recipient will be able to see that one Note (they cannot edit it, only view it).
- Getting things into Evernote while you are on the go:
- Use Scannable (IOS only) easy way to capture documents, even multipage. It goes right into your default .Inbox. Android users can use the photo function of Evernote on the mobile version.
- Use your camera on the mobile version of Evernote to take a picture of a sign, a whiteboard, notes on a napkin, etc. In a few minutes you can search for words that may appear in what you took a picture of. That’s handy.
- Evernote has just updated Webclipper for Mac Safari so that it works on the new OS Catalina. It’s seems to be quite a bit faster than the previous version.
As always backup, backup, backup. Use a local external drive for one back and always use a cloud version for backup too. You never know when disaster will strike. Lots of phishing emails out there, if something looks “phishy” it probably is. DON’T open an email that looks suspicious. It’s highly likely to be malware and will cause you to lose time/money/and data.
Let me know if you have questions or need clarification.
Have a great day and always be grateful.