An Introduction to Evernote

What it is and what it is not

Evernote doesn’t have a catchy tag-line like Notion, “All-In-One-Workplace”, or ClickUps, “One App to Replace Them All.”

As a matter of fact, Evernote does itself a disservice by calling itself, “The Best Note Taking App.”

Yawn.

And this description has permeated the internet. If you do a search on Evernote, you will find it in articles all labeled with some variation of “The Best Note-Taking Apps of 2020.”

Notepad and TextEdit are note-taking apps. Most task management software has a place to take notes. I have these things lying next to my keyboard for taking notes.

They’re called pen and paper.

If I only needed to take notes, it is unlikely I would have never tried Evernote, much less stuck with it.

But I’m coming up on ten years with Evernote. There are only a few applications I have ever used for that long.

What is it?

So, let’s talk about the literal elephant in the room. What is Evernote?

I like to think of Evernote as a document and data storage and retrieval system. Not a very sexy name, but that’s what it does, and it does it well. I have found nothing better that does all the things that I do in Evernote.

Yet. But we’ll get back to that in a minute.

When you sign up for Evernote, you will probably choose the free plan. For many, that is enough. Even though I have been using it for ten years and have well over 10,000 notes in it, I could get by with the free plan, but I choose not to. You can find plan comparisons on their site, but the main restrictions on the free plan are:

• You can only log two devices in at a time (I will discuss two ways to work around this.)
• You can only upload 60Mb of data a month, vs 10Gb with Premium. (I only use a fraction of my 10Gb, but 60Mb isn’t enough)
• Maximum note size of 25Mb vs 200Mb (Not a deal-breaker depending on your use cases)
• No offline access on mobile devices (Maybe a problem depending on where you use it)
• Can’t email notes directly to Evernote (This is a problem for me, although Notion also doesn’t have this)

What do I do with it?

Store stuff. Retrieve stuff.

That’s it. But it does both things very well.

First, the storing stuff. When you first start, you have a blank slate. You can just start taking notes by creating one on the fly. I do this a lot. It’s easy to access no matter where I am or on what device. So yeah, it takes notes.

You can also create a hierarchy for storage and retrieval. You can use folders, tags, or a combination of the two. I use folders. Many, if not most, use tags. It’s up to you. Whatever you are used to, but you need some sort of organization system.

Or do you?

One of Evernote’s greatest features is its search function. With somewhere north of 12K notes, I can click on All Notes, then search on a word and within a second or two, it will show every document with that word in it. Even if that document is a jpeg image or a PDF file.

What do I store in it?

Everything. Tax records, investment and stock portfolios, business documents, recipes, book lists, PDFs, spreadsheets, plans, important emails, articles, and yes, random notes.

I started going paperless many years ago, thanks to Evernote. I have very few pieces of paper in my office anymore. How do I get all that stuff in Evernote? This is another prominent feature of Evernote that few offer or do successfully. I can enter data by:

• Typing it in
• Recording it on my phone
• Using voice to text on my phone
• Taking a picture with my phone
• Forwarding it in as an email
• Scanning it directly from my printer
• Saving a file into a dedicated folder which automatically stores it in Evernote

I have tried all the competition and will continue to do so, but I haven’t found a single product that does all of these. The email function may not seem like much, but it is if you take it to the next level. All emails from my banks, stockbrokers, IRA, and 401K accounts are automatically forward to Evernote and stored in the proper folders. This via an applet in IFTTT. If you are not familiar with Zapier and IFTTT, you need to be.

And finding stuff is just as easy. I’ve already mentioned the great search capability. If you plan and use a well thought out hierarchy with folders and/or tags, it gets even easier. I rarely have to search, because I can drill into and find what I am looking for quickly.

You can automatically build a table of contents for folders to access content quickly. I have used this with a custom dashboard I created to get to my most needed stuff almost instantly.

They mirror all of this functionality on portable devices, so it’s always available. The Evernote mobile apps need some work, but it still loads quicker than any of the competition. You can also set up any folder for offline use if you are a Premium subscriber. I do this in advance if I know I will be somewhere without internet access.

I also trust it with backing up my data. As a photographer, I always have every image in at least three places. With Evernote, almost all documents are in their original location whether scanned in, or in email. Those docs and everything I enter on the fly is in a file on my hard drive in a proprietary .enex file. This is backed up easily or exported as HTML files. Everything is also in Evernote’s cloud storage. When I buy a new laptop, I can sync all my data automatically in a brief time. Anything you have marked for offline storage is also on your mobile devices.

What it doesn’t do well

The problem with apps like this is we want it to do to everything. Nothing does everything. Every app has some things that others don’t and doesn’t have things that others do. Here are some things that Evernote doesn’t do well. Whether or not it should is between you and the developers.

It doesn’t handle task management very well. Sure you can use it for that. I have done so in the past. But there is too much friction for me to use it for a to-do list full time. You can create checklists and set reminders. You could set up your 43 folders for GTD and use it that way.

You could do what I tried in the past, which is a simple to-do folder and a done folder. But it doesn’t have built-in functionality for recurring tasks or priorities or any of the other stuff that the most basic task management software has. There is also no calendar function, although there are calendar templates available you can download and enter text into.

It doesn’t do document creation and editing great. It does it very well, but not great. This may or may not matter to you depending on how much serious editing and markup you do. It has all the basic editing functionality, such as fonts, headers, and text formatting, but nothing too fancy. If you need that, stick to your word processor. Then you can store that doc inside Evernote.

It stores data very well but has no database functionality. You can create rudimentary tables, but that’s about it. If you want an app like this with databases, Notion is your best bet. You can embed spreadsheets, but editing, saving, and retrieving is a somewhat tricky operation. It’s doable, but it’s also easy to screw it up.

Caveats

I like Evernote. I really do. They use an elephant as the icon as a reference to the memory of an elephant. But it also moves very slow like an elephant. I don’t mean the software is slow; I mean, new development is slow. Notion releases more extra features in a month than Evernote does in a year. Or three. ClickUp does so each week.

Evernote keeps going through management changes and growing pains. The current leadership keeps talking about what it will do. There is an old saying, “What have you done for me lately?” Not much. But the question you need to ask yourself is, what else do you need? Does it do everything you need it to? Maybe.

Free vs Premium. A couple of years ago, they downgraded their free plan. They caught a lot of flak for that. Many people left. Many others threatened to leave but didn’t. I’m not sure they cared.

In a Costco I used to visit, there was this guy I would see every weekend. He wandered around for an hour or so eating samples. It was probably his lunch. In all the years I witnessed this, I never once saw him with a shopping cart or buying anything. If they stopped giving out free crackers, he would probably not be back. Would they care? Probably not.

As a former developer, I have always had the habit of paying for apps I used. If I liked something good enough to use it regularly, I pay for it. It amazes me to read complaints on forums that such-and-such in the app store or Google Play charges $.99 for their product.

But what people balked at was their promise of free forever. I think many developers make the mistake of advertising this. Yes, it’s free forever, but that doesn’t mean you get the complete thing for free. That would be stupid.

Surprisingly, the thing most people complained about wasn’t the data limit or no email, which I find crucial to my work. They complained about the two device limit. They wanted to be able to access it from every device they, their spouses, and their children used. Sorry, but that’s just unreasonable.

But two apps aren’t enough. Most of us have at least three; a computer, a table, and a phone. But if that is your need and you don’t want to pay, there are (at least) two ways around it.

One is to use the web version. It doesn’t have all the features of the desktop version and it looks and feels different but it works fine. It also doesn’t count as a device. So use that on the computer and keep your mobile devices activated.

The other way is based on the limit of two devices “at the same time.” It only takes a minute to deactivate one and activate the other. In my normal day-to-day life, I am on my laptop most of the time, while at home. There is rarely a case where my tablet is available, but my laptop isn’t. If I were using the free plan, since I like the desktop version better, I would keep the laptop and phone activated. When I leave home, the phone is always with me, the tablet, not so much.

When I travel, I rarely take the laptop, but always take the phone and tablet. So I would deactivate the laptop and activate the tablet. Then reverse the process when I got home. You can only make this switch twice a month, but if you only change active devices when you travel, that is plenty.

But honestly, if you will use the product, $.20 a day is not too much to ask.

If you are looking for document storage and retrieval product it’s hard to go wrong with Evernote. If you want to go paperless, it’s one of the best out there. It can be as easy and basic, or as complicated a storage system as you want or need.

If they don’t ramp up their development, they will be left behind soon. But today, for my needs, it’s the best at what it does.

Finally! Chapter Two is Available: