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If you’d like to have a structure for your tags so that you can quickly find what you are looking for, it’s best to organize your tags.

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Organizing Tags.docx
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Quick reference

Topic

Organizing Tags.

When to use

If you’d like to have a structure for your tags so that you can quickly find what you are looking for, it’s best to organize your tags.

Instructions

Evernote doesn’t force on you a specific structure for your tags.  By default, your tags will be listed alphabetically, but other than that you have the option to create your own personal classification system. Your structure can be as simple or as complex as you need.

To create a structure that works for you, determine (if you are new to Evernote) or examine information you are already storing in your Evernote to decide on the main categories.  They will help you to decide on the names of the highest-ranking categories — the ones that all the smaller  bits of information will fall under.  For example, Travel, Food, Kids, Household, Marketing, Clients, Administrative...

Each larger category will be broken down further:

Travel:

2016-Greece

2015-Thailand

2014-Belgium

2013-New Zealand

Or:

Marketing:

Blogging

Interviewing

Public Speaking

Social media

Vlogging

The beauty of tags is that you can nest one tag under another several levels deep creating an entire tag hierarchy:

Travel:

2016-Greece

Corfu

Kos

            Crete

2015-Thailand

2014-Belgium

2013-New Zealand

Marketing:

Blogging

Blogging ideas

Blogging templates

Blog post uploading guidelines

Blog post posting checklist

Interviewing

Public Speaking

Social media

Vlogging

To nest one tag under another by dragging the “Child” Tag onto the “Parent” Tag.  Use symbols such as hashtags, periods, and numbers to force tags into an order other than alphabetical.  Another benefit of starting a category of tags with a character is that when you search your notes by tags, typing the character first will significantly limit the number of options that Evernote will prompt for you thus saving you great amounts of time.

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  • 00:04 Since you can create practically an unlimited number of tags it's very
  • 00:08 important to create a structure for those tags.
  • 00:12 And it's especially important because Evernote doesn't have
  • 00:17 a built in structure, and it doesn't force on you a specific structure for your tags.
  • 00:22 You can't sort them by name or note count, but
  • 00:26 other than that it's really up to you how to organize all your tags.
  • 00:32 In order to create a structure that works for you, take a look at the information
  • 00:37 that you've been adding to your Evernote and tags that you've already created.
  • 00:42 And then think about categories that you could group those tags into.
  • 00:47 And then each larger category you'll be able to break down into smaller
  • 00:52 ones to create a entire tree and the fact that you can nest
  • 00:57 one tag under another will greatly help you with that.
  • 01:02 So take a look at this example I have a category where under which I have two
  • 01:06 subcategories, conference and travel and in that travel I have three more tags.
  • 01:12 And you can go as many levels deep as you want as long as it's not too much.
  • 01:19 So make sure to strike a nice balance.
  • 01:23 But if you want to create such a tree,
  • 01:25 simply drag the child tag on to the parent tag and.
  • 01:32 As you can see that and one tag jumped under the other.
  • 01:36 You can always change it, you can always return it to the previous state.
  • 01:41 So you can play with it any way you want.
  • 01:45 If you right-click on the tag a drop down will appear that will allow
  • 01:50 you to rename a tag, delete the tag, remove it from all the notes.
  • 01:55 And right now this is not active just because I don't have that tag anywhere,
  • 01:59 that tag exists only in the list of tags.
  • 02:03 And then you can move it to the top level and add it to shortcuts.
  • 02:08 This is actually very useful feature because if you have a tag
  • 02:12 that you use all the time like for example to do or to follow up.
  • 02:17 You can have that tag.
  • 02:19 And under your shortcuts, and access it very quickly.
  • 02:24 Last but not least, is, as you create this structure for your tags.
  • 02:30 Try and start the category names for your tags with a symbol.
  • 02:38 Hashtag, period, number, and
  • 02:41 this way you will force tags into an order other than alphabetical.
  • 02:46 And another benefit of starting a category of tags with a character
  • 02:52 is that when you search your notes by tags typing the character first
  • 02:57 will significantly limit the number of options that Evernote will prompt for
  • 03:02 you and will save you a great amount of time.
  • 03:06 So make sure to organize your tags.
  • 03:08 This way when you look for
  • 03:10 something you will be able to find something really quickly.
  • 03:13 And as you start adding note into Evernote, you will easily remember
  • 03:18 which tag you need to add to that note so that again,
  • 03:24 down the line it will be very easy for you to find what you're looking for.

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