It’s situations like this that make me reevaluate Evernote…for a possible return

Software
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I left Evernote a few months ago and that was quite a feat, because it had become a verb in my house, even among my kids.

“Are you Evernoting that?” & “can you Evernote this for me?” had become common phrases. My wife even had my EN email in her contacts so she could swiftly send me the “don’t let me forget this” tidbits whenever she liked. I was an organizing force.

Since leaving, I’ve dropped the ball on a few things. I’ve been asked to recall information and come up with no answers, much to the disappointment of my family. When I tell them I left EN, they give me a look like I’ve disappointed them so.

I’m pondering a return actually, and it’s situations like this coming example that prompt me to think that way.

I got an email from my son’s high school that he will be starting at next year. The email details two days at the end of August where he will be attending a kind of “welcome camp”. It has dates, times, a list of things to bring, a list of things they want you to be aware of, where to meet etc. All in all, it was 2-3 pages of information.

In my EN days, that would have been a simple action. Forward the email into Evernote, and then during my weekly review of notes I’d catch it and set a reminder on that note so it resurfaces a week or so before the event. Knowing that I’m using one app to house all this one-off knowledge, I also had the benefit of knowing that the email would be in EN if someone asked me for it.

Now that I’m using Craft for this kind of thing, it’s more steps. First of all, I use a local space (iCloud), so I constantly have to toggle the share sheet over to that space — Craft keeps trying to push me into using their own spaces. Then once I get the email saved — do I print it to PDF and drag over? Yeah, HOW do I get this email into Craft? Copy and paste all of it? That seems tedious. And in two months when I want a reminder, how do I go about that? Put it in my calendar with a link to the note?

It may not get the nerd seal of approval and it may not be cool, but to just pile everything into Evernote and organize it once a week was a system I’ve yet to beat.

And for those who say “Obsidian is the best” or “try Capacities!” — I think a lot of us miss the point about HOW we use a note taking app. I use Obsidian daily for work and for my own thoughts. It’s great for that. But with no OCR, no email in functionality, and no real quick way to get info into it (e.g. mobile app), I don’t view Obsidian as the same kind of tool.

Maybe if you’ve never used a note reminder or email into a service you don’t know what you’re missing. But man, it’s hard to forget that stuff once you’ve been there.

I feel so scattered now. I don’t know where to save something or where to look for it, and for all the messing about over the past few months I have to wonder if the price increase isn’t still cheaper than my anguish trying to function without my trusted EN.

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For £80 a year - for an app that seems to make your entire family relax?

Worth every penny - a no-brainer

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Perhaps your current system hasn’t had the same time to mature that your previous one did. I use Mail Drop to Drafts (or Things) and from there what needs to gets to Obsidian. Works for me.

But if your previous system worked, why replace it?

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Sounds like Evernote was a perfect solution for you and your family. I could recommend what I use or mention other everything bucket apps that people have found useful, but that would just be something new for you to figure out how to use. Losing a well-matched workflow is a tough lesson to learn that may resonate with some of us on this forum who are always looking for greener pastures. :slightly_smiling_face:

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You’ve summed up exactly how I feel about Evernote. It was my “single source of truth” for everything, and largely because it accepts anything you throw at it. I left over the price increase, but like you, I’m having trouble figuring out what to do with things I need to capture. I have yet to find an app that suits me as well as Evernote did.

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I work much the same way, I deal with things as they arrive. The best software is the application that works for you. :+1:t2:

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Evernote is unmatched in the “ingest-everything” department. This, combined with great search, makes it for a perfect digital vault.

I’m not storing my stuff in Evernote any longer, but I remain a paying customer and some times I miss the simplicity of it. But these days Evernote sure feels like an old beast.

My main concerns would be the viability of the service in the long term (although there are good export options) and the latest pricing increases.

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Would getting the text of the PDF and attaching it to an event notes field work for you? I use Devonthink/DTTG to hold my PDFs. Since you use Obsidian, get the OCR text and go crazy. I guess if you are trying to go from mobile first - that makes it tricky. Devonthink to go should still be able to work. Attach the link from the file to a calendar event or in obsidian.

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I don’t use Evernote, but it sounds to me like you should! In reality, it’s cheaper than Netflix. And if it helps you sleep easier, great!

To play devil’s advocate, it sounds to me like you’re looking for a task manager here more so than a data manager. But if I’m wrong, Evernote away! You’ve gotta do what keeps you sane.

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I’ve done the same switch as AppleGuy, and tried to go to Devonthink with it as well with apple scripts to send it to Devonthink and strip and OCR attachments. The extra steps to do that at home turned in to doing it once a week or greater. This friction meant I never had that “Everything bucket” as @karlnyhus said above. I’ve cycled through Devonthink, Craft, now Obsidian with the exact same problem - I’m now far less organised and trust my system much less.

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One word - UpNote.

Try it, buy it, love it.

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My family uses Things email to forward TODOs to each other. I usually like to split out Notes from TODOs, it’s cleaner for me. YMMV

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I think there was some confusion on my part.

I was just mentioning the email as containing things to remember for later in the year but it’s not something I would put into Todoist. It’s a checklist yeah but I want the email contents too and any attachments.

So, I do use a dedicated task manager.

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Got it. I misunderstood. Although Things does have reminder which I use for to do at a later time, it doesn’t have attachments though :neutral_face:

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I have this exact same scenario. My son starts high school in September and there are induction days, emails about his travel to school, emails on where to buy the uniform, And dates for parents to be at the school to be informed of its ethos.

Anything that is a task goes into my task manager with a link to the email. The link works on mobile and desktop. Dates go into my calendar with links to emails embedded. Information goes into devonthink in a group with the school name. This has worked so far.

I fully understand that changing a workflow that you have used for so long is disorienting and muscle memory wants to trigger a process that’s no longer in operation. I agree with others that £80 a year for something that works for the whole family is worth it. The other option would be sitting down and looking at how you used evernote and creating clear workflows for the whole family that cover all scenarios.

EDIT
I should add that my workflow with email is that it always goes into my task manager if I don’t have time to fully process it when I’m clearing my inbox.

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I made very limited use of Evernote. Occasionally saved posts to newspaper comments forums as a record of what I had said in case I need to challenge moderators removing the text. Even more occaslonally saving links to various web pages while commuting for me to read later back at home. Major use was to support proofing documents I was writing with Scrivener on my desktop Mac and mobile devices, which involved creating ebook copies adding them to Evernote after which the “books” were added to iBooks where I proof read the text on either iPhone or iPad finally emailing myself back the amendments for incorporation into the Scrivener original. All that stopped when the Scrivener developers released an iOS version that sycned changes via Dropbox. I immediately stopped using Evernote especially as this coincided on the same day with EN restricting the number of physical devices that could be used for free accounts.

From all the talk about Evernote since then I have not seen any reason to return to it as the limited use of creating other files (than the ebooks) is readibly available in Dropbox, which is what Scrivener desktop and iOS/iPadOS versions use to sync changes. It simply got in the way of my workflow. Why would I need yet another thing when I also have iCloud?

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@AppleGuy Did you end up making a decision, are you going back to Evernote?

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Yep- Despite owning DevonThink Pro, Craft, and others, I’ve stuck with EN (since 2008). It’s certainly not perfect, gets a lot of bad press (some deserved, some not so much), but the workflow and uses you describe are similar to what has worked for me for years. Sounds like it might be worth returning for you… good luck!

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What evernote does you can replicate with icloud rules and scripts. It is not difficult and the scripts are available.
Any pdf that arrives in my mail goes to devonthink. any flagged mail goes to reminders.
that from icloud.
I use MailMate and from there I can do other things.
From iOS you can do it manually

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Back and happy :smiley: yes.

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