It would be best to make a separate post on my long time notetaking app, Evernote, and how it now disappoints me. Bottom line, I no longer trust the company behind Evernote since it was acquired.
My first inclination was to finally look at alternatives. like Notion, Joplin, Obsidian, etc. I was not enamored with any of them, so I gritted my teeth and stayed with Evernote.
The situation made me think about how I use Evernote.
To keep up additional posts on this topic, search on the tag Notes Folder
Updates : January 24, 2024 and in updates noted here.
Most of the things I store are quick notes, lists, online receipts for online bills, that sort of thing; kind of an online file cabinet if you will.
If I were a doctoral student though I could see storing PDFs of papers and research materials. If were working on a large project, then plans, communications etc. would all be there.
Back when I began using Evernote way back in 2008, hard drive space was expensive in a PC. What is now 6 cents a gigabyte cost $1.00 a gigabyte. Cloud synchronization and backup was much more costly than it is now.
Evernote moved the storage out to the cloud. The synchronization allowed me to have my notes on multiple machines and my phone. Its search capability was fast. It even had scripting, a feature lost with the newest version.
As I looked at alternatives, I looked for the features most important to me:
Affordability
Cloud Storage and synchronization
Local Storage for data redundancy
Search
Notebooks
Tags
Import folders (anything placed in a folder ends up in your note collection)
Web clipper
Future Proofing to some degree
Scripting
Link to other apps via IFTTT
Android Support
IOS Support
Share Notes
Star Important Notes
Artificial Intelligence Access to notes
Email into note collection
Import Evernote Notes
As I mulled over that list, I realized much of that is simply online file storage like offered with Microsoft's OneDrive or Google's Drive.
Those kind of services were not as robust as they are now back when Evernote began. Now they are powerful and cheap. Back then, Evernote made more sense. These file storage systems had grown up.
Considering how many of the feature set this system can deliver, I thought it was worthwhile taking a closer look.
I first looked at using Microsoft OneDrive. As part of our $99 a year family scription, we have five terabytes of storage. That is an awesome amount.
I ended up choosing to use Google Drive although much of what I am doing could be done in OneDrive. I have some scripting options with Google Drive that are not as easy on OneDrive.
Other's have thought of this solution of course. I'd heard mention of it but failed to grasp the concept until my mind went down the path on its own.
The reason I am writing all of this out is I've given quite a bit of thought to solutions. And I have more features planned for the system than what I'll outline here. I am hoping others will value these thoughts.
This will not be for everyone; note taking systems vary widely and so do the tools that support them. And I admit there are some disadvantages.
If you want to go this route, test it exhaustively and run it in parallel to your existing system until you know for sure it is for you.
The setup I'm using inside of Google Docs does not satisfy all the features in my list above but it does many and I have plans for the ones not met.
Let's take a look at my process.
Affordability
Cost starts at free.
Google Drive is free with 15 gigabytes of storage. Some of that goes to Gmail and other needs, but even if just 5 gigabytes are used for Notes, that can be thousands of notes. Of course, note size varies on size, and if images are used in it.
I brought in 42,000 notes in from Evernote and it only took 24 gigabytes. I pay $2 a month to add 100 gigabytes to my Google Drive. At say 1,750 notes per gigabyte, and only 8 gigabytes of your 15 free gigabytes dedicated to Notes, you could have approximately 14,000 notes for free.
If you need more space, you can purchase it from Google for as little as $3 a month for 100 gigabytes more. (all prices in US as of December 2023)
Some additional services, like IFTTT might cost you a few bucks a month if you use more applets than are permitted under their free tier.
Setup a Google Account
If you do not already have a Google account, then take a moment to set one up. If you have Gmail, you already have a Google account.
Setup Google Drive
Next, you need to setup Google Drive on your PC. To have your Notes be both in the cloud and also on your machine for local redundancy, Setup Google Drive for the Desktop.
Start a Notes Folder
In your Google Drive, click the New button and make a new folder. This folder will be your Notes folder. I named mine simply "Notes"
Click on the Notes Folder to take you to it. It will be empty. Bookmark it. I started a Bookmark Folder on my browser's toolbar for this notetaking.
Adding Notes to you Notes Folder
Click the New button again. For most notes you can choose "Google Docs" and create a blank note. You can type in it, paste in images, import images etc.
You can also drag and drop files into the Notes Folder, or upload them.
If you uses an external tool like Word, Wordpad Notepad, the Snipping Tool or whatever, and save the file to the Google Drive Notes folder on your hard drive, it automatically uploads to Google Drive in the cloud. That is the equivalent to Evernote's Import Folders.
Want to dictate notes? You can do it on the desktop and your Android phone using Google Recorder.
I hope to have a method to Email into Notes in the future. I believe I can do it with Google App Script.
Organizing your Notes
You can create folders inside your Notes folder.
If you want tags, just include them in the title.
For example : "Electric Company Payment for December 2023 #utilities"
You can have as many as you want in the 255 character limit for file names.
Personally, I often add keywords to the end of file names to make search easier or faster. Or you can add them inside of the note itself.
Searching your Notes
Search could not be easier. Go to your Notes page in Google Drive and type into the search box. If you type your terms inside quotes, it will find text in the Google Doc or Google Sheet itself.
There is a syntax you can use at Find Items in Google Drive
Web Clipping
Evernote's web clipper is its superpower. Every review I've read of Evernote competitors notes that tool's web clipper is not as good as Evernote's.
That was a challenge for me when considering this toolset.
The Edge browser lets you right click and choose a web clipper. It saves the entire page as an image.
Chrome's Save to Google Drive extension does the same.
Another good way to capture a web page is to use the Snipping Tool in windows or any screen capture application.
One way I like is simply to print the page to PDF and print it to my Google Drive Notes folder. Quick and easy.
Future Proofing
I bought my first computer 45 years ago. There is one data file I could have created on that machine I could read on this one. That is the simple text file. If I had to bet if any of the files on this machine now would be readable in 50 years on a current machine, it would be the lowly text file. Maybe there will be apps that can still read a PDF file or a DOC file but with almost certainty the text file will be readable.
Do you need your notes to be readable in 50 years? Probably for most of us, no. If you become to your own surprise the next Einstein, or another person historians would want to know about, then your notes would be of value.
Ideally we'd save all of our notes as text files. And with this system, you could. Create your notes in Notepad and save to the Notes folder.
But what about images? The ever popular jpeg file will be around a bit longer I think. And one good thing, is as a file format is retired, often there is a way to convert existing files to new formats. One nice thing about all of our notes being files as they are in this system, is batch tools can run against them.
I am creating most of my notes in Google Doc format. Those can be exported as text files if I choose. And I could create a batch tool to automatically export new files to text files so I have a timeless version of it.
Update January 14, 2024: User Devtastic made a good point about future proofing on Reddit:
I would note that DOCX (not DOC) and PDF are both open formats so it is probably safe to assume that you will still be able to open Word documents and PDFs in 50 years time. Microsoft opened up DOCCX for that reason, some organizations were moving to other open document formats because they did not want to be tied in to using Word for archived documents for 50 years.
Scripting
Evernote used to have scripting built into the Windows version. It was abandoned with Version 10. I believe Apple script abilities disappeared at the same time.
Google App Script is a JavaScript based scripting tool that lets you manipulate their tools like Drive, Doc, Sheets, Forms, Gmail etc.
I have plans to build a tool that will let me email to myself with a hashtag in the subject line. An App Script will be triggered by that email, and save the text of it, and any attachments to the Notes folder.
Likewise, the tool I mentioned that would make a text only backup of of any Doc files could be done in App Script. If this system develops a community, I could see many people creating useful scripts.
And we wouldn't be limited to App Script but could use Python and other tools as well.
Link to Other tools using IFTTT and Zapier
You can create IFTTT and other service's tools to record information in this system.
For example, every time I save a Reddit post, a copy is made in Google Drive Notes folder using this IFTTT Applet.
IFTTT is free for up to 2 applets. If you need more you can get 20 for $2.50 a month (as of December 2023).
Likewise I can create applets to save Feedly posts and other social media posts to the Notes folder.
Mobile Support
Google Drive has an app for both Android and IOS. Using Notes Folder on both is relatively easy. You can have the folder as a shortcut on your Android home screen. When you click New you have the option of creating a Doc file, upload an existing file, or scan in a document directly to your Notes folder.
And of course, you have full access to search, share etc.
And Syncing is automatically done for us by Google Drive.
Sharing of documents to Google Docs. It isn't something you have to pay extra for as you do with Evernote.
Star Important Notes
A request I saw for Evernote many times was a way to Star important notes. Probably like many, I just created a tag #starred to designate those notes.
With Google Drive, you can actually Star a note, and quickly find them.
Artificial Intelligence Access to our Notes
Evernote in the last several months added AI to Evernote so you could ask a question like "What is Doctor Smith's phone number" and it would go through all your medical documents and find it.
Moving to this system doesn't deny you AI abilities. AI is moving fast. You can use your notes as source material for your AI system.
Google NotebookLM is an AI system that can read your Google Doc files and then answer questions using that material.
Right now, it is limited to like 20 sources of material each with up to 200,000 words, but I expect that to rise quickly.
Email into Evernote
As I said earlier, I hope to soon develop a Google App Script to give this tool that ability.
Import Evernote Notes
I have over 40,000 notes created over 15 years. When I finally do stop paying for Evernote in the next month or so, I supposedly can continue to view them in the Free version. It would be foolish to depend on that.
I have had issues downloading some of my bigger notebooks as ENEX files. I'm going to keep trying. Enex is a wonderful file that would allow you to rebuild a note completely with images.
Instead I downloaded all 40,000 notes as Multiple Web Pages.
I did put them into their own sub folder in my Notes folder so I can tell them easily from newer notes.
Evernote moved the dates created and dates updated over but not as visible material on the web page. You have to look at the page's source and find the attributes. It is near the end of the source.
That would be another scripting project; perhaps with Python. Read each file and move the date created and date updated into HTML text.
Update January 2024 : User Regression4 on Reddit had an idea on how to move Evernote notes to PDF using a third party :
Thanks for the post. I too moved to Google Drive. To get my Evernote data to Google Drive, I used a web service called CloudHQ. I connected Evernote and Google Drive. It copied each Evernote notebook to a folder in Google Drive. Each note became a PDF in Google Drive. Each PDF had metadata like created and modified date.
Disadvantages
Every system has its pros and cons. I have spent time on what I consider the pros to be. Here are some of the cons I’ve thought of. I’m sure there are more.
No creation date in the Drive list of files but can find files of a date creation range using the search syntax syntax
createdbefore & createdafter
Find items created before or after a certain day. Format the date as YYYY-MM-DD.
Examples:
createdbefore:2022-05-02
createdafter:2022-05-01
No backlinks
No central list of tags
No backup to ENEX but these are all files so easy to backup to another service
Other Resources
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