Evernote: 6 handy features you should know about!
Member Blog Feature: by Susan of On Hand Virtual Solutions
Personally, I love Evernote, and I have used it for many years in a personal capacity. Most important to me is that Evernote seamlessly sync to my PC, tablet or smartphone. It is possible to tag notes and organize them into different notebooks. Even the free version has an excellent search functionality!
We are living in a time of information overload. And this is why it is often impossible to remember everything that is important to you. Having a good note app, is crucial for you to manage your life efficiently.
Let’s delve deeper and have a look at some handy Evernote Features:
1. Capture your thoughts
Note creation in Evernote is as easy as opening a new note and deciding on your format. You can format text by choosing a font and font size, bold, italics, underline, and even highlighting of text.
In addition to the above, a lot of the features you love in Microsoft office is also available in Evernote. Besides bulleted and numbered lists, you can even add checkboxes! Furthermore, you also have alignment options, adding tables, and the indent functionality.
If necessary, you can also add an attachment, either by retrieving directly from your computer or adding a file from Google Drive.
Have an idea and don’t have time to type? Evernote have you covered with it’s audio recording option. It is easy to snap a photo directly from your created note (as long as your device supports this functionality!)
2. Organize
It is easy to organize notes by creating different notebooks. For example, you can have different notebooks for work, personal, hobbies etc. If there is one specific notebook that you know you will use most often, you can set this as the default. Setting a default notebook ensures that every new note you create will be filed in this folder.
If you create a note that goes in a different folder, you can just select the appropriate notebook when creating your note. It is also possible to go back and select a different notebook afterwards.
To create a new notebook, hover over Notebooks in the sidebar, and click on the plus (+) sign that appears.
YOU CAN VIEW YOUR NOTES IN 2 WAYS:
- If you select all notes, your notes are displayed by date of creation (current on top). You can change the sorting option, choose different views or search by tags. It is also possible to export notes in different formats.
- Alternatively you can expand your notebooks and select the specific notebook you want to view.
3. Tagging
Sometimes you just can’t find that specific note that you are looking for, because you have filed it in the wrong notebook. And searching through thousands of notes are not likely to bear any results! This is way it is important to use the tagging feature in Evernote. Tagging your notes enables you to search for your allocated tags. Another way to access your tags is by clicking on Tags, and see an alphabetic list of all your tags.
4. Search & Filter
Evernote has an excellent searching facility. If you use the All Notes view,the search bar is displayed above your first note. You can choose to search for one or multiple keywords. Results can be filtered by any or all. Choosing Any will display results where any of your keywords were found e.g digital file will look for digital and file. All will only return results for the exact match of your keyword(s).
The tag option allows you to filter notes by tag. Depending on your plan you can even search handwritten notes and content within a pdf document.
Advanced search options allows you to exclude a tag from a search by using -tag: e.g -tag:submitted. This will return all notes without submitted as a tag. In addition, you can search by description, e.g web clips last month or notes with pdf.
Best of all, you can save your regular searches as a shortcut! If you know you will be using a specific search regularly, use File – New Saved Search to save your search and create a shortcut by dragging to Shortcuts.
5. Sync
Syncing Evernote between your devices is as easy as making sure that you have the Evernote application installed on all your devices and that you are logged in. Ensure that Evernote is setup to sync in the background and choose how often you want it to sync. Go to Tools – Options – Synchronization.
5. Integration
Evernote can be integrated with many other applications. With Web Clipperyou can clip web pages in many different ways like article, simplified article, web page etc.
The add-on for Outlook allows you to clip an email directly to Evernote. If you don’t use Outlook, you can even send your emails to Evernote using a specific Evernote email address!
When scanning a contacts business card, Evernote will retrieve the details for this contact if found on Linkedin. You just need to ensure that you have linked Evernote with your LinkedIn account.
Businesses can also integrate Evernote with Salesforce and Slack.
6. Templates
I think one of the new features you will just love is templates. Using a template is the perfect time-saver and Evernote has a wide range of templates to choose from. Templates are arranged in different collections, like Holiday Collection, For Work etc. Or you can browse by different categories like creative writing, getting things done and many more.
It is easy to create a template by selecting new note, and then click onTemplate. This will take you to a page with your saved templates, or alternatively you can click Browse templates, which will redirect to the template options on the Evernote website.
As you can see, many valuable Evernote features can be used for work, school or personal purposes. This is by no means an extensive list, but only the 6 that I find most valuable to me.
Available features depends on the plan you choose. I am currently on the Plus plan (which unfortunately is not available for new users anymore) – but even the Premium plan is quite affordable at R49.99 per month.
The main reason why I’ve moved from the free plan, was because I’ve started to exceed my upload limit on a regular basis. But also because I’ve needed to sync to more than 2 devices. Premium also allows you to view your notes and notebooks offline.
Ready to start using Evernote? You can look at the different plan comparisons here.
If you find this article useful, please share with your social networks!
YOU CAN VIEW MY RESOURCES PAGE HERE.
For more on Susan and how her business On Hand Virtual Solutions can assist you, please do visit our members page.