Part 1 of 2: Effective searching in EverNote

Searching is key in any media/circumstance. In the old days who ever could do a good search at Altavista, Yahoo or eventually Google was the king. I even had searching classes back in university for faculty and other students.
Since than has the search engines evolved to let any type of search produce decent results. However, still there are lots of times to save by learning how to search effectively.

If you are an EverNote user, improve your search results and save time.

First of all here are some shortcut keys for searching,

WINDOWS

CTRL+F

Search in the
chosen note. Local search in the specific note.

CTRL+ALT+F

Global search in all notes. The
focus is shifted to “all notes” and now you search in all your notes.

CTRL+G

Next result

CTRL+SHIFT+G

Previous result

CTRL+SHIFT+S

Save search

MAC

+ F

Search in the
chosen note. Local search in the specific note

+ + F

Global search in all notes. The
focus is shifted to “all notes” and now you search in all your
notes.

+ G

Next result

+ + G

Previous result

+ + S

Save search

If you want to have more shortcuts here are two links to the EverNote webpage.
Windows = http://ow.ly/4JBC6
MAC = http://ow.ly/4JBGF

Beginners syntax guide

Simple syntax that you should know and if you don’t here it comes:

  • One or many words will search for at least one of them
    Example: ipad tutorial price

This will return all pages with all of the words above.

  • Quotation marks will search for the exact words in sequence
    Example: “ipad tutorial”
    This will return all pages with both words in the exact order.
  • Adding + and signs.
    Example: +ipad -tutorial
    This will return all pages with the word ipad and not the word tutorial in them. The + sign can be omitted.
  • You can of course combine all of the above to get better results.

Now, the best way to get really good at this is to repeat it and use it everyday.

Let Google help

You can let google search your evenote notes when you do searches at Google. Install the plugin for Firefox or Chrome and in the plug-in settings you can let google search your notes as well. Not as useful that you might think but at times, it comes handy.

There is another more advanced blog coming in couple of days, look out for it. If you leave a quick comment below I will make sure that you get an e-mail once I have finished the spell check and the final proof read.

Best of luck,

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13 Responses to Part 1 of 2: Effective searching in EverNote

  1. Mahalia June 11, 2011 at 15:51 #

    And I thought I was the sensible one. Thanks for setitng me straight.

  2. auto ru May 7, 2011 at 10:39 #

    Nice topic – respect !

    • Shahram May 9, 2011 at 07:59 #

      Thank you for your comment. Appreciate you comment and hope to be able to provide more interesting blogs.
      Cheers,
      Shahram

      • Loran June 11, 2011 at 13:49 #

        That’s not just logic. That’s rlealy sensible.

    • Robinson June 11, 2011 at 11:20 #

      It was dark when I woke. This is a ray of sunnhsie.

  3. Phil May 6, 2011 at 20:46 #

    I dream of a day for EN to integrate a summary of these shortcuts in a floating window which can be displayed over your running app like module’s shortcuts help in Lightroom…

    • Shahram May 6, 2011 at 20:48 #

      I agree, there are many improvements. Even though EN is not the quickest company to introduce new stuff. What they release works really well.
      More shortcut keys and quick helps, as you mention, would help getting a good tool to be great.
      Thank you for you comment and have a great week-end,
      Shahram

      • Sherry June 11, 2011 at 16:57 #

        It’s spooky how clever some ppl are. Thakns!

    • Ducky June 11, 2011 at 18:52 #

      Ppl like you get all the bianrs. I just get to say thanks for he answer.

  4. Gaz May 3, 2011 at 10:27 #

    Always pleased to see useful stuff published about EN. It’s very easy to get started using this app, but it gets more difficult to use it effectively as you add more content. There’s lots of basic guides out there, but we really need more procedural guidelines to keep notebooks, tags and notes from getting bogged down in a black hole of informational overload! I’ll look forward to the next instalment with interest..

    • Shahram May 3, 2011 at 12:07 #

      Gaz!
      Thank you for you comment. I agree fully. I am working on a new series with “best practice” I will make sure to send an e-mail to you once it is done.
      Best regards and happy that you liked the blog.

      Regards,
      Shahram

      • Indy June 11, 2011 at 17:37 #

        This forum nedeed shaking up and you’ve just done that. Great post!

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