Take On-Line Notes with Evernote

Evernote is an on-line note taking application allowing you to capture data on the web, on your Windows, Mac and on your phone. All input is synchronized, no matter where you send it from. What you can collect with Evernote? To-do lists, text, reminders, screenshots, links and many more.

Registration

You can create free account or go premium (compare free and premium accounts). I decided to use free account as it seems to be more than enough for my needs. Registration is simple and fast. I successfully passed recapcha in my second try and immediately got e-mail with confirmation link.

First step – take a tour

Definitely a good starting point is to take a short tour. Video takes only 4 minutes and explains basics how to use Evernote. You will learn how to take notes and how search, indexing and tagging are working. Publishing and sharing is only mentioned there. Of course, you have also access from your phone or PDA to all gathered data. No more movies explaining other features were available at that moment, so my next step was trying Evernote on-line.

Notebooks

First of all, you can create multiple notebooks for taking notes. This means that all your notes are not mixed together in one sack, but you can group them. For example, you create separate notebook for each of your projects where you keep related notes.

Creating notes

Creating notes is very easy. Having selected one of your notebooks, you can simply click “New” button to create a new note. You enter name and tags and you can type data like in text editor. Of course you can use Copy and Paste. Save when you finish.

When you use desktop clients, you can also simply drag-n-drop things you want to keep in your notebook. I like this feature very much.

Search

Search works exactly as it should. When you have selected one notebook, you search within it. To search in all your notes, select “All notebooks” on your sidebar. Search also looks for text on images. Finally, you can save your favorite searches. Great.

Tags and attributes

As I have already mentioned, you can tag your notes. It helps in search and you can also open a view with notes for selected tag. Similar with attributes; you can open view with notes that have certain created or modified date, selected type of content (image, audio, list…) and selected source of notes (email, web, mobile…). All these make access and search through your notes fast and easy.

Knowing most important things that Evernote is capable of, it is time to ask fundamental question…

Do you need it?

…and it is you who has to give the answer. My advice – try it. It won’t cost you too much. After 15 minutes you will know if Evernote is for you. Remember that it should help you to stay organized. Don’t use it if it is only another cool app that will bring mess and distraction.