Get Shift Done: Tips and Tricks
Instead of searching through hundreds of saved notes, you can find what you’re looking for more easily by using Evernote’s search filters.
In the example below, I’m looking for a proposal letter I started and would like to finish. First I do a general search on the word proposal which returns 81 notes:
While it wouldn’t take me that long to look through the 81 results to find what I’m looking for, why should I spend time on it at all? Instead, I can use a search operator, such as, “Intitle:” to filter and narrow the results. Since I know that that the work “proposal” was in the title of my note, I use Intitle:Proposal to search this time. That narrows my search results to only seven notes to look through:
Taking it a step further, I remember creating this note in the last 20 days, so I add another search operator that used the date the note was created. My new search looks like this: Intitle:Proposal Created:Day-20. Once I hit search, I’ve narrowed it down to one result, the proposal I’m looking for.
It doesn’t take long to memorize four or five of the most useful Evernote search filters. Here are some that I use regularly:
intitle:
- Searches within the title of the note.
tag:
- Searches for notes tagged with the specified tag.
-tag:
- Searches for notes not tagged with the specified tag.
created:
- Searches for notes created on or after the date specified. Note that the date specified must be formatted like this: YYYYMMDD (where YYYY is the 4-digit year, MM is the 2-digit month, and DD is the 2-digit day), or as a date relative to the current date (e.g., day-1 to represent yesterday, week-2 to represent two weeks ago, etc.)
resource:
- Searches for notes that contain specific types of media (audio, images, etc.).
Discover even more search operators in Evernote’s, “How to use Evernote’s advanced search syntax” post. Let me know your favorite search hacks in the comments.
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