After I accidentally threw my Macbook out of a moving car and couldn’t afford another one, I’d suffered with a Windows machine for 2 years before getting a Mac again. I made a solemn oath never to use Windows software again, but last week, I did something that really shocked me. I enjoyed using a Microsoft product. I enjoyed using it even when there was a viable non-Microsoft alternative. Then why, I ask myself, am I submitting myself to a Microsoft product when I don’t have to ever see Microsoft again? Two reasons:.
Jan 1, 2017 - The layout of Onenote on my Mac doesn't have tabs across the top of the. For organizing their notebooks, sections, and pages across devices. How to organize 'Too Many' notes in 'Too Many' notebooks (self.OneNote) submitted 4 months ago by PeaceLoveBuccees Been using OneNote off and on since early days, but the past few years I've really made it the only place things 'live'.
I have made a terrible mess of my Evernote. OneNote is actually quite good. In this post, I’m going to share my experiences with and, compare them, and give you an idea of how I get value out of them as a writer and note-hoarder spending all my waking hours on a laptop. Evernote: The ‘Everything Bucket’ My Evernote has been reduced from a well-indexed scrapbook of research to a heap of Untitled Quick Notes thrown 1000-deep into the default notebook.
While searching around for a way to fix this, or an Evernote alternative, I found a great piece by Alex Payne making the case against apps like Evernote and why they encourage us to be more disorganized: Computers work best with structured data. Everything Buckets discourage the use of structured data by providing a convenient place to commingle “structureless” data like RTF and PDF documents. Rather than forcing the user to figure out the rhyme and reason of their data (for example, by putting receipts in a financial management application and addresses in an address book), Everything Buckets cry: “throw it all in here! Search it!” —, Alex Payne Yes, Evernote is a fantastic tool because of it’s features, but it does nothing to encourage you to get into good habits. Armed with the screenshot hotkey, you’ll quickly run up piles of unindexed data and bury any you were planning on referring back to. The Major Problems with Evernote For all it’s good points (getting to that in a moment), Evernote has a lot of flaws. The first of which is that for an organizational tool, it’s not particularly easy to organize.
It gets rammed full of crap Around 90% of my notes are screenclips. I use Evernote precisely because I don’t want to go through the process of saving the image file somewhere, then opening it and uploading it to its destination. As Alex Payne says: Everything Buckets are selling you a filesystem, and removing the step of creating and saving a new file within that filesystem Thanks to that setup, if you’re not careful your Evernote will end up looking like this: Notebooks are not the way to go There comes a moment where there’s no point in organizing all your rubbish. It would take several hours to go back and undo the damage caused by almost a year of abuse, so I’ve taken to using even poorer methods to fix it. Namely, using notebooks instead of tags.
As ‘notes’: What you do not want is too many notebooks. Notebooks become difficult to scroll and hard to make sense of once you get above 30 notebooks. — And that was my mistake. The way I saw it, a notebook stack was the perfect place to house God-knows-how-many notebooks.
What I didn’t work out from the outset was that tags were the way to go. With all it’s focus on clipping, it neglects actual writing While Evernote isn’t the most pro in a master blogger’s toolkit, the fact that it’s so valuable for organizing research means that it’s a good idea to store drafts and research in same digital space. Makes sense, right? But here come the problems. No H1, H2, etc. No markdown support.
No distraction-free writing mode. Everything’s locked to a grid How to Improve Your Evernote Experience Don’t worry! Almost every major Evernote problem has a solution. And that solution isn’t just ‘switch to OneNote’ — as I’m going to get to in a moment. Push all of your screenclips into their own notebook The mistake I made with Evernote was creating a default notebook for myself called ‘Inbox’ then never processing it because it was too full of rubbish. If, like me, most of your notes are screenshots, then your default notebook should be called ‘Screenshots’ and automatically save your clips there.
Unless you plan on using the screenshots for anything other than saving or dragging into Slack once, leave them in the default notebook. Unfortunately there’s no way to tell Evernote to only put your screenshots in that notebook and your other notes elsewhere, but that’s a fix I’ll get to in a minute.
Create one notebook per ‘life vertical’ and use tags instead At first, it seemed like a good idea to create a notebook for every blog post I write. I made a notebook stack called ‘Blog Post Scrapbook’ and stored it all in there. As Jason Frasca said, when you get to over 30 notebooks it’s difficult to properly organize your notes. Use tags because:. Notes can’t be in two notebooks at once, but they can have two tags. Scrolling through a list of tags is easier than remembering the note’s title or content for search. Tags are unlimited, notebooks are limited to 200.
When you have thousands of notes, it’s tough to remember which notebook you put it in Examples of notebooks that represent life verticals are: work, family and university. Inside your work notebook, you could have tags such as ‘link building project April 2016’. As an example, here’s my improved structure organized in (more on Alternote later): I use — a Mac client for Evernote — to enable selective sync and get anything that isn’t going to be referred back to out of the way. I also use it because it’s more of an enjoyable writing experience for drafting, and closer to my favorite writing app,. Use Alternote for the ‘actual note’ side of things Go ahead and clutter your Evernote up with all the stuff you like. As long as it’s not in one of the notebooks you sync and organize with Alternote, you’ll be fine.
Alternote uses your data from Evernote and help you create a second, distraction-free instance of the app with better writing capabilities. As well as being a minimalistic alternative for important notes only, it also has:. Markdown support (woohoo!). H1 & H2.
Distraction-free writing mode Here’s the beauty itself in action: By keeping your Untitled Quick Note clutter out of Alternote, you make it the perfect place to organize research and write, whether that’s project proposals, blog posts or meeting notes. Microsoft OneNote: Honestly another solution for these problems (not joking) OneNote is a skilled deception on Microsoft’s part. You open it up, have a quick laugh, think it’s shit and never bother with it again. Had I not decided to use it to write an Evernote comparison blog post, I would have never known its usefulness. At first glance, it looks like Microsoft Word (shudder) with a sidebar (stomach churning) and 2005 interface (heart attack). After spending the better part of last Saturday playing around with Evernote and OneNote back to back, it was refreshing the way it organized notes.
Unlike Evernote, where notebooks are shown to be the best way to segment your notes, here we have segments within a notebook, like old-school tabs inside manila folders. Inside these tabs are another way to organize — tags. This structure works better for me that Evernotes, partially because I’m starting over with a blank slate and being careful to organize properly, and partially because I’m discouraged from creating 1,000 notebooks full of rubbish.
OneNote’s paper-like layout makes it easier to informally sketch out ideas The thing I like most about OneNote is how you can write anywhere on a page instead of being awkwardly locked to a left, right or center alignment. This solves my problem of shying away from planning and drafting in an environment that feels too formal. (It’s also for notes and drafting.) And it’s great for collecting and organizing research on a single page I like how I can use one page to paste on (literally like a clipping glued to a page) boxes of information, and keep them visible and accessible without clicking. Putting boxes off-center or over to the right of the main layout section is a lot more in key with my brain than switching to another note in the notebook. Here’s an example of OneNote used as a scrapbook: But search is sadly lacking OneNote’s search isn’t as powerful as Evernote’s. See the difference: When you search a keyword in OneNote, you’re shown the relevant notes.
But for some damned reason, you can’t search or filter by tag on OneNote for Mac. Here’s Evernote’s superior search: With Evernote we have suggested searches, in-text searches, tag searches, recent searches and the ability to save and filter searches, too. With OneNote, we’ve got section searches, and in-text searches. That’s a sad lack in comparison.
In reality, Evernote and OneNote have 2 drastically different uses As I said before, Evernote is an Everything Bucket. It’s a ‘we don’t need no organization’ briefcase stuffed full of unmarked papers. Let’s look at what it’s best for: Evernote is best for clipping and organizing web resources Set your default notebook to something you don’t mind populating with dross, and use the tag feature instead.
(Yes, I do indeed have 22 active browser extensions. And yes, I only ever use 1.) Since this clip went into my generic clippings folder, it isn’t cluttering up space. And I tagged it with the name of the project it’s part of so it’s really easy to find. We’re onto a winner! If you want to use it for writing, use Alternote The busy Evernote environment can play havoc with your eyes if you spend 6 hours/day writing in there.
While researching, I tag the clips with the name of the article I’m working on. Then, I open up Alternote, click the tag and start organizing my research into a structure for the post.
OneNote is no good for proper organization, but it’s a great freeform scrapbook OneNote’s search sucks. It’s tagging is barely even cosmetic, never mind about functional.
The way you organize notes (search and tagging aside) is a little better than Evernote’s but, all things considered, what it’s truly useful for is:. Brainstorming. Freeform note-taking. Informal layout planning. Creating a one-page scrapbook I’m surprising myself that I recommend it at all, but in reality it’s a great tool for that purpose, whether or not that’s what Microsoft intended. Overall, I’m going to use both.
OneNote for grabbing things together on one page and organizing them in a way that fits with the way my brain’s wired. And Evernote/Alternote for collecting and organizing clippings and screenshots, and writing final blog post drafts.
Maybe this will teach me to be less critical of Microsoft than I have been? Probably not. Bonus: Use Evernote to Improve Your Writing Workflow Evernote works great for note-taking, but it’s one of the most valuable tools a writer or blogger could ask for. Grab this free guide and find how to organize your research, write faster, and get your workflow into the cloud. In an interesting twist I recently moved away from Evernote and more interestingly I started using Trello for taking notes. I like the always ready instant search + having lists of my note categories and I never have notes that need much formatting or text that’s super long.
I mean it would be quite cool if Trello did these 2 as well but over time search becomes super-duper critical and Evernote just doesn’t cut it. Previously than Evernote I used Google Keep which dies if you have many notes as it loads everything in the browser’s javascript engine ?. Hey Jana, Alternote is just an interface for Evernote. I like it because it selectively syncs notebooks, but it’s my fault that I need it because my actual Evernote is a total mess!
I’d say there’s no need for it if you keep your Evernote in line. And yes, about WorkFlowy, I use it to quickly rough out structures and notes because it has templates in it.
For podcast show notes, for example, I have a template list that I just duplicate every time and then rename to the title of the podcast. Inside the list is headings (keyword, title, intro, etc.) and that helps me quickly rough out the notes. ? As long as you don’t get confused where you’ve saved what, I’d say you’re using an ok amount of apps. Does that help? I use OneNote every day and I must say, I find it far superior to Evernote.
The main advantage that I see is the ability to draw and write with a pen. Maybe for Mac users, this is not an option, but for the main part of the users using Windows, this will get more and more important over time.
Using OneNote, I am able to go completely paperless in my university. I write down notes, draw equations (oh and there is a neat new feature for that too) and sketch diagrams all with a pen. This would not be possible in Evernote, and this is what makes up a real note tool for me.
Something that can replace my notebook. For me, every note app that can’t do this is just a partial note app. The biggest con of onenote is that for PC there are two Apps. One UWP (mobile) and the normal desktop app. They both have different functionality and usually I always miss something that the other apl could do.
The other thing is that OneNote is just too powerful for me to make a ToDo list. I prefer an app I can just open and write down a note for that special purpose.
One of the most common complaints I hear with OneNote is the challenge people have in getting it organized. Now, I know that seems counter-intuitive for an application designed around organizing information, but this is a case of flexibility being a foil rather than a feature. When setting up OneNote one of the earliest things you need to grasp is the differences between notebooks, sections, and pages. (Yes there are section groups as well but let's leave those out for now.) Feedback number one I hear is, 'How do I organize my notebooks?' If there were only an easy answer. The notebook metaphor is a good one in OneNote because it's connected to a physical construct making understanding its purpose fairly easy.
Unfortunately understanding what a notebook is doesn't address how best to use it. When creating notebooks in OneNote it's easy to wind up with a bookshelf full of notebooks and no clear way to keep things straight. This is a good time to address the one notebook / multiple notebook kerfuffle.
For some, the management of all their information in one notebook makes clear, simplified sense. For others, why would you be able to create multiple notebooks if you weren't supposed to use them? Strategically I ask people answer a few questions before deciding how they want to proceed:. Do you want to share the notebook with other people who would have no interest in some of the content of the notebook. Is your notebook likely to become extremely large with file attachments or other content. Will you be accessing your notebook on a mobile device If you want to share specific content it's often better to create a dedicated notebook rather than giving someone access to a generalized notebook and then telling them where to find what they're looking for. If you're going to create big notebooks, you could be impacted by sync speed and reliability issues as well as place your content at risk if something bad happens to the notebook.
Finally, if you're going to be accessing the notebooks from mobile devices, smaller targeted notebooks can help compensate for small storage and slower connections. Moving day If you're capturing content into a Quick Notes section frequently (something that happens a great deal if you're capturing from a mobile device) you'll want to get comfortable with the move command. I don't recommend trying to reorganize your notes from a mobile device (the usability is a bit suspect right now) but rather use a desktop or UWP version of OneNote for page and section moves. TIP - If you're doing bulk cleanup, close the notebook on any other devices you may have it open. This will prevent any sync issues as much as possible as you do your house cleaning. Keeping Organized Cross-linking is one of my favorite ways to deal with notebook organization. Let's take a simple example.
I have a photo of a receipt from my spouse's visit to the dentist. The question is, does it go in my Medical notebook, my Taxes notebook, or my Spouse Information notebook (no it's not actually called that but you get the drift.) I decide on the destination based on the place I am most frequently going to need that item.
In this case it goes into the Medical notebook. Now in the Taxes notebook I have a page for Medical Expenses and I add a link to the corresponding link page in the Medical notebook. I do the same thing in my Spouse's Notebook.
This way I only have one copy of the original but I can get to it from three locations depending on need. TIP - In many versions of OneNote you can highlight a paragraph on a page, right click, and copy a link to the paragraph. That link will take you to the page AND highlight the paragraph to make it easier to find.
Outlining With content spread across pages, sections, and notebooks, it can be a pain to keep track of all of it for specific purposes. Let's take a professional example. You have a staff meeting at 10:00 a.m. You need to be prepared with the information from the last meeting, reference notes you gathered between the sessions, emails, PowerPoint presentations, and a checklist of things to do. Now you could move all that content in to one notebook for the meeting, but why go to all the effort of moving things around.
When I assemble a meeting agenda I create an outline of what needs to be covered and then in each section I create links to existing content. My links always go to pages because that's where the information is rather than linking to sections and notebooks where I still have to drill down to get to what I want. Using the outlining features also mean I can reorganize the content, change sequences, and assign to-do tags all without altering the original items. Remembering that OneNote is a working productivity tool and not just for storage can make planning out your notebooks much more effective. #Tags suck in OneNote I know that sounds harsh, but they do IF you're coming from a world where you can do text based tags such as #doctor or #email. OneNote can't search for those specific types of delimited tags yet so it makes it difficult if you're used to organizing that way.
What options do we have as alternatives to hashtags and other text based markers? OneNote can do a search for specific strings as long as they are alphanumeric characters. (Really Microsoft? What I do is use a combination of 'xTagx' to identify tagged items. So if I need to flag something for the Dentist it's 'xDentistx' and can search for that specific phrase. Yes it's a bit cumbersome but it does play well with search and means I can leverage the core concepts of OneNote search with textual tags. TIP - The same trick works with any alphanumeric character so if you'd rather use 'xxTag' or 'oTago' feel free.
Just try to be sure you use a combination that doesn't result in being part of a common word. I love it when a plan comes together OneNote is a highly flexible and forgiving application when it comes to organizing your information. Regardless, you will be best served by putting together a plan of how you want to organize your information and then adapt that plan as you grow and use OneNote more.
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