With over 100 million users, Evernote is arguably the web's favorite note-saving and productivity tool. But there is much more to this powerful platform than meets the eye.
Since its launch in 2008, Evernote has quickly become the ubiquitous platform for "storing everything." From photos of receipts, to copies of invoices. From hastily written notes to downloads from your favorite blogs. Whatever you want to save for later, Evernote can save it Get Creative With Evernote:10 Unique Uses You Haven't Thought Of Get Creative With Evernote:10 Unique Uses You Haven't Thought Of Evernote is one of the most advanced tools on productivity, and with a wide variety of cross-platform apps, there's no limit to how you can use the service. We're big fans of Evernote here... Read More .
When it comes to note storage, there are certain features that you can't miss. The ability to sort multiple notes into notebooks and multiple notebooks into stacks of notebooks. The awesome search feature (you can even search for text in images). Access your notes from any device..
However, despite its large number of users and robust “BASIC” note-taking features How to Use Evernote:The Unofficial Manual How to Use Evernote:The Unofficial Manual Learning to use Evernote on your own takes a lot of time. That's why we've put together this guide to show you how to get the most out of Evernote's most important features. Read More
As with most search boxes, Evernote's search box is largely underused. The engineers behind Evernote have put a lot of effort into making this feature as useful as possible by incorporating "Descriptive Search" (Currently only available on Mac). This means that there are a number of common phrases you can use to find what you're looking for.
If you want to find any notes you have created while in Barcelona since 2014, type “Notes created in Barcelona since 2014..” Looking for some food ideas? Search for “notes that are recipes.” There are a lot of these available:
Another surprisingly useful search feature in Evernote is "Related Results." First, install Clipper web, The Evernote Browser Plugin. Next, turn on the “Related Results” option. Now when you search Google, a small widget will also appear showing any related results you've saved to Evernote.
Once you start using Evernote more often, your number of notes will quickly become amazing. At this stage, it's often difficult to remember everything you've stored, and you may end up duplicating your research. Related Results helps you overcome this by displaying your related notes when you're most likely to forget you have them.
We've written before about how If This Then That (IFTTT) can help you become an Instapaper power user. Become an Instapaper Power User With These 6 Cool Features Become an Instapaper Power User With These 6 Cool Features Despite an impressive adoption rate, a host of Instapaper features often remain unexplored. Let's take a look at some of them. Read more . It can also help you become an Evernote master. Imagine a world where any note I would make I want to take, they were taken automatically. This can be done largely with the help of IFTTT (read our full guide to IFTTT The Ultimate Guide to IFTTT:Use the Web's Most Powerful Tool Like a Pro The Ultimate Guide to IFTTT:Use the Web's Most Powerful Tool like a pro if this is so aka IFTTT is a free web-based service for your apps and devices to work together.Not sure how to build your applet?Follow this guide.Read More).
IFTTT connects your favorite apps, news sources, and websites to your Evernote account, automatically capturing notes.
Currently, there are almost 10,000 different ones. “recipes” that you can easily configure to help Evernote be more useful to you. Like some popular examples:
To start using IFTTT in this way, you'll need to sign up (for free) and grant permission for the platform to access any services or tools you'd like to create. “recipe” with.
If you have some complicated searches that you'd like Evernote to handle, you can save previous searches to access the results more easily. For example, if you regularly wanted to search for “All notes I've tagged as recipes (IFTTT Recipes) from the dedicated IFTTT file or notebook I have” (GuidingTech), you would save the search:
To save searches across multiple devices:
To retrieve a saved search, simply click on the search bar and select from the list of searches that appear. Finally, to get the most out of Evernote search, you can find a description of the available search operators here.
When you use Evernote to store everything, somewhere down the line you'll need to store some sensitive information. Travel information, login credentials, contacts, personal messages, etc. Fortunately, Evernote has an encryption feature to keep these notes safe in case your device is stolen or someone hacks into your account.
At this time, you can only encrypt text within a note (not an entire note or notebook). To do this, highlight the text you want to encrypt, right-click it and select “Encrypt Selected Text”. You will be prompted to enter a passphrase, which allows you to decrypt the text. If you lose this passphrase, there is no way to recover it.
You can decrypt the text the same way.
If there's a project you're working on with others, sharing a notebook can make things a lot easier. Instead of a confusing thread of emails, or the hassle of sorting Dropbox folders, you can simply share a notebook.
You can share notebooks from any device by right-clicking on the notebook and selecting “Share Notebook”, then following the on-screen steps; the recipient of the notebook doesn't even need to have an Evernote account. They'll receive an email letting them know you've shared a notebook, along with a link to view that notebook.
If someone else shares a notebook with you, you'll have the option to "Join" that notebook, which will then show up in their Evernote account.
Without a doubt, Evernote is a powerful tool. The features mentioned above are just some of its underused tools and integrations. Along with these, you can also keep track of where you've been (iPhone), capture handwritten notes (iPhone), and turn Evernote into a calendar.
The apps that Evernote can connect to are countless and only set to grow. Therefore, becoming familiar with some of the more advanced features of the platform will only serve you well as Evernote's reach and functionality continue to expand.
What other Evernote features do you use regularly?
