Organizing Evernote Using Notebooks

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About this lesson

Evernote doesn’t have a rigid built-in structure for organizing your information.  So, you’ve got to take matters into your own hands and organize your Evernote yourself.  One way to do it is by using Notebooks.

Quick reference

Topic

Organizing Evernote Using Notebooks.

When to use

Evernote doesn’t have a rigid built-in structure for organizing your information.  So, you’ve got to take matters into your own hands and organize your Evernote yourself.  One way to do it is by using Notebooks.

Instructions

You don’t have to choose between Notebooks and tags to organize your Evernote.  In fact, most people use both.  However, to make things easier for yourself, I suggest you pick one primary method.  It will make it easier for you to maintain and will prevent Evernote from becoming your information graveyard.

Organizing Evernote using Notebooks is quite straightforward and “logical”, because it’s the very same way we organize any information storage tool—Dropbox, GoogleDrive, or My Documents folder on your computer.

All you need to do is draw a parallel between the concepts you are already familiar with and their matching elements in Evernote:

  • Stacks = folders
  • Notebooks = subfolders
  • Notes = individual documents

The only limitation is that with Stacks and Notebooks you can go only one level deep, i.e., you cannot create Stacks inside Stacks (folders inside folders).  

When using Notebooks as the primary way of organizing your Evernote:

  • Decide how your Notebook structure will help you reflect and organize in a logical order the kinds of information you are storing in Evernote.
  • Refer to the Organizing Notebooks lesson for examples.  When creating your structure use your logic to help your future self quickly find information.
  • To work around the limitation that the same Note cannot  “live” in several Notebooks, cross-reference your Notes by using a Note link or create Table of Content Notes.  It will allow you to quickly access information that you could use in more than one Notebook and/or eliminate the need to duplicate information.  
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  • 00:04 Evernote doesn't have a rigid built in structure for organizing your information.
  • 00:09 So you've got to take matters into your own hands, and
  • 00:13 organize your Evernote yourself.
  • 00:15 One way to do it is by using notebooks.
  • 00:18 And this is exactly what we are going to talk about in this lesson.
  • 00:21 How you can organize your Evernote using notebooks.
  • 00:25 You don't have to choose between notebooks and tags to organize your Evernote.
  • 00:30 Most people do use both.
  • 00:32 But, I do suggest that you pick one primary method,
  • 00:36 because then it will be that much easier for you to maintain your Evernote,
  • 00:42 and prevent it from becoming your information graveyard.
  • 00:45 Organizing Evernote using notebooks is quite logical, because
  • 00:51 it's the same way that you organize your information
  • 00:57 storage tools like Dropbox, Google Drive, or my documents folder on your computer.
  • 01:04 And what you will need to do here is simply draw a parallel
  • 01:08 between the concepts you are already familiar with, and
  • 01:11 their matching elements in Evernote.
  • 01:14 Because basically what you have is that you have stacks that are your folders,
  • 01:19 notebooks that are your sub folders, and notes that are your individual documents.
  • 01:25 The only limitation is that you cannot create stacks within stacks, so
  • 01:30 you can go only one level deep, but you can find a work around.
  • 01:36 Even though a note cannot live in two
  • 01:40 notebooks at once unless you duplicate it, you do not need to duplicate
  • 01:45 your information in order to reference it in different places.
  • 01:49 But you can do, is you can cross reference notes by creating this note links.
  • 01:57 And for that, all you do is right-click on the note, copy note link, and
  • 02:02 paste it where you want to create that reference to another note.
  • 02:06 This way, you will be able to navigate from note to note very easily, and
  • 02:12 without having to search for every single note, over and over again.
  • 02:17 Or even duplicate information,
  • 02:19 if you want to reference something in more than one place.
  • 02:24 Another way to organize
  • 02:28 Evernote using notebooks, is to create tables of contents.
  • 02:33 So if you remember to do that, you simply select a number of notes,
  • 02:39 and then hit create table of contents right there, and Evernote creates
  • 02:44 practically immediately, a note for you with the links to those notes.
  • 02:49 All these links are live links,
  • 02:53 so when you click on them you will be taken into those specific notes.
  • 02:58 So If you want to create, kind of smaller containers for
  • 03:03 very specific notes, you can always create these table of content notes, and
  • 03:09 even pin them to the shortcuts area, so that you could have quick access to them.
  • 03:15 All these strategies will help you organize your
  • 03:19 Evernote in a way that it will be easy for you to find what you're looking for.
  • 03:23 And also easy to remember where you need to store a specific note,
  • 03:28 when you add information into Evernote.

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