EVERNOTE: HELPFUL NOTE PROGRAM
©2020 by Donald R. Snow
This page was last updated 2020-03-08. Return to the
Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .
ABSTRACT: EVERNOTE is a program with free and
commercial versions that stores your notes "in the
cloud" and synchronizes them on all your devices, so
you can read and edit them anywhere. You enter
notes by typing, drag-and-drop, capturing websites,
recording audio, and other methods. These go
into notebooks that you set up and can be private or
shared with others. Anything with text in it
will be indexed, so it is every-word searchable.
Notes are saved automatically and you can go back to
earlier versions, if you need to. We will
discuss and demonstrate some of these features. The
class notes for this presentation and related
information in other articles, all with
active URLs, are posted at
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow (snowd@math.byu.edu)
of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- The notes and related additional information in other articles is
posted at http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
, all with active Internet links.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your desktop for these
notes, or any webpage, just drag the icon from in front of the
address in your browser onto your desktop. (2) To open a
link, but keep your place in these notes, hold down the Control key
while clicking the link.
- The problem for today: Using EVERNOTE to save notes, images, webpages, files, and have them accessible on all your devices.
INTRODUCTION TO EVERNOTE
- To get EVERNOTE go to https://www.evernote.com/ , set up a free account with whatever user name and password you select; then download and install the program -- it's available for Windows, Mac, Linus, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and more. As you install it on other devices, you use your same user name and password, so they are all linked to your account "in the cloud".
- Free version has limitations, but is still helpful for many uses; free version can only be installed on two devices, e.g., your computer and a smartphone, but you can use the web version on all your other devices
- Premium version
($8/month) and Business Version have more features and can be installed on any number of devices
- Helps and video tutorials are at https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us
- Helpful "Unofficial Evernote Manual" is at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-use-evernote-the-missing-manual-full-text/
- MakeTechEasier Evernote Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet is at http://download.maketecheasier.com/MakeTechEasier_Evernote_cheatsheet.pdf
IDEAS FOR USING EVERNOTE IN FAMILY HISTORY
- Idea for using EVERNOTE in genealogy -- Details are below, in other notes, and in articles on Don's webpage
- Write notes and articles -- I write all my articles in EVERNOTE now, since it has the features I need and saves them automatically to all my computers and devices.
- Save webpages -- use the EVERNOTE Web Clipper described below or just use copy and paste
- Use for research logs for family history research -- can set up templates by just writing a note and then saving its form as a template or use one of their templates -- https://evernote.com/templates
- Save pdfs and screenshots and files about a person, location, or event, so they line up in chronological order
- Can automatically place images together side-by-side, e.g., parts of newspaper clippings; just copy the images to the clipboard and paste them into the note and it organizes them for you
- Save instructions, pdfs, How-To's, conference
- papers, manuals, and tutorials about research,
technology, programs, databases, hardware, etc.
- Make lists of contacts, phones, email addresses; use ToDo boxes to put checks in when item has been completed
- Save collections of letters, emails, ideas to try, recipes, so
they are searchable and available on all your devices
- Premium and Business versions have additional features including a Presentation Mode for notes and notebooks and allows more file formats
- For devices with cameras
- Use camera as a scanner since it squares up rectangular items and makes them clearer -- use for forms you fill out at doctor's office, etc.
- Take pictures of artifacts and describe them with audio in same
note
- Images are automatically copied to your computer at home; can then be copied elsewhere
- EVERNOTE is not very good for saving all photos and there are better programs for that
TYPES OF NOTEBOOKS IN EVERNOTE
- Notes are stored in two types of notebooks in EVERNOTE -- (1)
synchronized notebooks and (2) non-synchronized (local) notebooks
- Synchronized notebooks
- Stored in the cloud in your EVERNOTE account online at https://evernote.com/
- You can work on any note, even offline, and when it detects an Internet connection, it uploads the changes
and downloads synchronized notes from your other devices
- Can have up to 250 notebooks -- more than most people ever need
- Synchronized notebooks are available wherever you can get to the Internet, e.g. in a FHC, at church, on a research or vacation trip
- Synchronized notes or motebooks are sharable with anyone you choose; click on the Share button and email
the URL to your contacts; can give them permission to view or edit
- Synchronized notebooks are encrypted and backed up online, but anything sent over the
Internet is NOT private, even if encrypted.
- Can also backup synchronized notebooks to your own computer or a flash drive in various formats
- Non-synchronized (local) notebooks)
- Non-synchronized notebooks are private and stored only on your computer or device, so not available on the Internet
- Can have any number of non-synchronized notebooks
- Can manually back these up or transfer them to other devices by exporting to a flash drive
- Use non-synchronized notebooks for private data, passwords, financial, medical, and personal information
GETTING INFORMATION INTO NOTES
- Notes are formed by typing, copy-and-pasting text, images, or URLs, recording audio, using the EVERNOTE Web Clipper, and a few other ways
- Give a title to the note or it uses the first line of text as title; I use keywords at the start so they alphabetize together
- Free version will save text, photos, webpages, and pdfs; premium version handles many more types
- To save a file, such as a pdf in a note, just drag-and-drop it into the note
- Can send a whole collection of files into separate
notes in a notebook by using Tools > Import Folder and tell it which folder to import and where you want the files to go; it puts the entire collection into the notebook, each file in a separate note; very helpful to put all pdfs from a conference or lranscribed letters , etc., into an EVERNOTE notebook, each into its own note
- EVERNOTE indexes all text in notes, i.e. it OCRs (Optical Character Recognizes)
all
text in notes such as pdf's, so they become
every-word searchable, whether they were or
not before -- free accounts
only do the indexing late at night; paid accounts do it immediately
- Use EVERENOTE
Web Clipper browser extension to save entire
webpage or articles; or just copy-and-paste;
I sometimes run a "cleanup" program such as Print
Friendly -- before saving the webpage
- New Note icon (top middle) has pick arrow with various
options such as to make an audio note with the microphone;
it transcribes your dictation, but it isn't always
accurate
- Notes are saved automatically as soon as entered, so you never have to
worry about forgetting to save something
- EVERNOTE has many keyboard shortcuts, e.g. ALT+SHIFT+D puts date and time
into note where cursor is; see "cheatsheet" above
NAVIGATING IN EVERNOTE
- Drag a note or notebook to shortcuts panel (top left) to get to notes or notebooks you use often
- Ue the email address you get with your EVERNOTE account so anything
emailed to it automatically goes into a note; can use
this to save some, or all, emails automatically
- URL's in text notes become active links by placing cursor
at the end of the URL and pressing space bar
- Put ToDo check mark boxes anywhere you want for things like research lists,
shopping lists, and research logs -- Format > ToDo > Check Box
(keyboard short cut is CTRL+SHFT+C) -- Can later put checks in the
boxes for completed items; can search for ToDo items or checked or unchecked items
- With touch-screen you can do handwritten
notes
- Move notes to another hotebook by just drag-and-drop
- Tags -- can attach any number of words as tags to do searches on later but searches can be done for any words in text even without tags
- The panels to show notebooks, notes, shortcuts, tags, etc., can be moved the way you want
- Lists of notes can be sorted on any column by clicking in the column heading, e.g. alphabetically by title, or by date created, date last modified,
notebook, tags, etc. -- If you write the date in International Date Format
(YYYY-MM-DD) after a keyword, all those notes are listed chronologically; this is especially helpful for letters and items pertaining to an individual, since they are all in order
- Evernote Blog has helpful articles about using EVERNOTE
EDITING NOTES
- Editing synchronized notes or notebooks on any of your devices changes them on all your synchronized devices and on the web version
- As mentioned earlier, very helpful to write and edit articles in EVERNOTE, since they are saved automatically and can be edited on any of your devices
- Has an Undo feature to go back several stepsand Premium versin has a way to go back to any earlier version of the note on your web version -- Note Info > History; but deleting a note completely is usually not recoverable
- Deleted notes go into a Trash notebook in your account until you Empty the Trash adn are then not recoverable
- Built-in Spell Checker underlines misspelled words in notes
SEARCHING NOTES
- Search syntax for EVERNOTE is at -- https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313828-How-to-use-Evernote-s-advanced-search-syntax and
https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/search_grammar.php
- Can search through all notebooks or only selected ones;
can then search within result set for additional search terms
- Search syntax includes: space means AND; +[term] means [term] has to
be there; -[term] means [term] must not be there; "[term1 term2]" means exactly
those terms in that order; search terms are highlighted in the results pages
- Searching for "win" (no quotes) brings up results with "Win",
"Windows", "wind", etc.
- Searching for tag:[tag] brings up all notes with that tag
- Keyboard shortcut WIN+SHIFT+F from anywhere on your computer opens
the EVERNOTE window to search or enter notes
- Searching "todo:" (no quotes) finds all ToDo lists, "todo:true"
(no quotes) finds all completed check boxes; "todo:false" (no
quotes) finds all uncompleted check boxes
- Search feature is global for all notes or all notes in a notebook
- Global search-and-replace only works in a single note, unfortunately; no way to do global search and rplace in many notes; to
replace something in all notes use the global search and
then replace each hit individually
MISCELLANEOUS FEATURES OF EVERNOTE
- Clicking on Atlas (lower left side) shows a Google map of where
you were when you entered that note, if internal GPS was turned on -- may
be wiser for security reasons to turn off GPS, especially when
entering photos
- Exporting notes or notebooks -- right click on notes or notebooks
and select Export -- Export formats are the following:
- .enex format = EVERNOTE format -- for backup or transfer to another
computer without going over the Internet; especially useful for
non-synchronized (local) notebooks; copy to flash drive
and import into EVERNOTE on another computer; they go in as
Imported Notes and you can change the name of the notebook or move
them elsewhere
- .txt format = text format -- use this to put notes into a different
program, but if only doing a few notes, use copy-and-paste
- .html format = web format -- helpful even if not posting on the web; especially helpful for things like collections
of letters, since you can use all the power of a browser on the
exported files, even though they are only on your computer and not posted on the Internet
- Usage button (top right on free version) shows how much of your free space you
have used in the 30-day cycle -- free version includes enough space
for thousands of notes; plenty for most people
- Can set Reminder for any note, e.g. birthdays coming up -- click
on the Reminder check box (upper right side) and tell it the date
and time you want and that note appears at the top of the list then
- Commercial versions of EVERNOTE have a Presentation Mode
-- click on the Projection Screen icon (top right of the note); to
view a presentation of several notes highlight the notes or notebooks, right click, and select Present; can also click on the Start
Presentation button at bottom; shows them full-screen with larger
text; to move through a note use mouse wheel, up and down arrows, or Page Up and Down; to move to next or previous note use CTRL+(Right or Left Arrow); ESC takes
you out of Presentation Mode; simple, but effective, way to show notes without having to export them from EVERNOTE -- not available
in the free version
CONCLUSIONS
- EVERNOTE has many more features and there are many third party
programs to help -- see EVERNOTE Blog -- https://blog.evernote.com/
and the EVERNOTE App Center -- https://appcenter.evernote.com
.
- Many online tutorials on YouTube, etc. -- search for things like
"evernote tutorials" (without the quotes)
- EVERNOTE is a very useful program for family history and many
other things; free version is sufficient for many things
Return to the Utah Valley
Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .