Who am I to raise criticism of any software application? The patience to labor over code lines in what must be an ingloriously tedious trial and error exercise eludes me. Yet, I wish one of my favorite programs was even better than it is.
Evenote came into my field of view about three years ago. Since finding ways to better organize time and things is always on my radar, I jumped right in. It was satisfying. Yet, it wasn’t. Sometimes a program with lots of promise reveals irritating limitations when you get to know it.
The purpose of the Evernote service is the creation of virtual notebooks to, as the headline on the landing page says, “remember everything”. And it works! However, in my opinion, one of the most glaring limitations in the beginning was the lack of a hierarchical folder structure. Some people are really into tags for organization. For me, they didn’t go far enough. Enough of us users communicated, and the good Evernote folks finally gave us Notebook “Stacks” which work mostly like folders. Now I can nest folders to my organizationally-obsessed heart’s content. It’s only one level but better than none at all.
Why do I like Evernote?
- True to the headline on their landing page, it helps me remember things.
- There’s an easy learning curve, yet I keep discovering new ways to use it.
- It’s my default “read it later” tool.
- With the low-price subscription, I have all the storage space I can possibly use.
- Any article you want you can keep, and do so much more quickly and efficiently than the old clip-and-stick-in-a-manila-folder routine.
- It replaces my vintage number-based Day Timers paper file system (pretty ingenious itself – the pre-cursor to tags).
- Ideas for projects, or for anything really, can be stored.
- Everything syncs automatically (it’s pretty much as brainless as Dropbox).
- Whatever I save on one piece of hardware is on all my others – automatically. (For our household: Mac Pro, iPad, Dell laptop)
- Plus, it’s all online.
- You can take your whole file system with you (much easier than dragging a heavy four-drawer file around on a hand truck).
- It is easy to find what you want because of the tags and the PDF search capability.
- You can save frequently used searches.
- I can easily share things with people without having to create a PDF or otherwise manipulate documents.
- Only one program is needed: having multiple applications and windows open to view different documents is unnecessary.
- It handles a wide range of data: docs, PDF, images, spreadsheets, charts, etc.
- Skitch makes it even better (grab and annotate anything on your screen that you want to keep).
- There are multiple ways to get things into your Evernote notebook: paste, drag, email, clip from browser, and probably others I haven’t discovered yet.
- For mobile devices, you can create offline notebooks so you have what you need even if not in WiFi or cell coverage range.
- The Evernote Clearly browser plugin makes clipping web items ridiculously quick and clean.
What do I wish was better?
- Evernote needs highlighting ability. I can hardly read an article without wanting to highlight key points and passages. Currently you have to export to another program to highlight text, then import back to Evernote. This is particularly ungainly in the iPad. (Yes, it could be done before saving to Evernote, but often I’m saving for future reference and don’t have time at that moment to read and highlight.)
- It is impossible to mark or annotate a PDF unless you go through the export-annotate-reimport routine.
- When you clip, drag, or copy a PDF directly into Evernote, it’s impossible to change the viewing size. (When it’s attached, then resizing is possible.)
- The online interface is almost unusable – painfully slow. I avoid it, although it’s better than it was. It’s nice to know that everything is there if a device crashes and burns, though. Re-syncing is painless.
- Better text editing, especially on the iPad, would be a great improvement. There are too few options.
In my opinion, Evernote would be near-perfect if these 5 things could be improved. They probably will be, because the service is regularly enhanced.
Perfect or not, stay away from my Evernote! It’s too usable and too practical to let it go.
[Images via stock.xchng 1, stock.xchnge 2]
Tim says
OneNote allows you to highlight. Just as easy to use as EverNote
Ken Rosentrater says
Thanks. I’ve seen a lot of good comments about OneNote. It’s that old dilemma of laying down a tool you’ve thoroughly adopted and starting new.
I appreciate the comment.
Ken Rosentrater says
OneNote disadvantage for me: It’s Windows-specific, or at least Microsoft Office specific. I use a MAC at home and have used PC at the office, to the cross-platform capability of Evernote is a key feature.