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30 Tips Every Evernote User Must Know Premium Evernote

30 Tips Every Evernote User Must Know

30 Tips Every Evernote User Must Know


You can add to or access info on Evernote from the Web, full desktop programs for Windows and Macintosh, or via mobile devices like iPhone, iPad, Android, or Windows Phone. Every single one of those interfaces has earned our Editors' Choice award. That's a lot of awards.

There's also an Evernote app for the Pebble Smartwatch, extensions for Web browsers, a handwriting and drawing app, even hardware that makes it especially helpful to input new info to Evernote, including a special scanner. Evernote has other specialty programs like Evernote Food (for tracking what you eat) and Skitch (for annotating images).


All those interface awards and extra tools are great, but they don't spell out just how to use Evernote. There's no lack of methods and best practices for getting the most out of the service. From what you can store (recipes, addresses, business cards, travel info, product serial numbers, project notes, images, receipts, thesis papers, entire articles—namely, everything) to how you store it, to what you can do with the data after (did you know all the words in pictures store on Evernote get turned into searchable text?), there's plenty to try. The competition from Microsoft, the totally free OneNote, might be worth considering as it's better for taking typed notes—but as an info storehouse, Evernote can't be beat.

So here's our take on the top tips you need to get the most out of Evernote. If you do it right, it'll be the database of your entire existence—and make your day-to-day life that much simpler.

This story was originally published on April 28, 2014.

Learn the Search Syntax

Searching through Evernote is the next best thing to storing things on there—after all, you store it to find later. Just throwing terms in a search box isn't the right way to go about it. Learn the syntax that makes searches powerful. They're spelled out on Evernote's advanced search syntax help page.

For example, use "tag:" (without quotes) followed by a term just to search tags. The "created:" or "updated:" operator, followed by a date in the form YYYYYMMDD can find specific dates; follow it with something like "day-2" and it'll find everything from the last two days. If you're looking for your task lists, the "todo:" operator only looks for notes with check boxes. Look just in the title of a note with "intitle:" and in a specific notebook with "notebook:". The "source:" operator followed by "web.clip" or "mobile" limit searches to those sources. Learn them all. The video above will help.

Use Evernote Like PowerPoint

Evernote believes all your notes can work as slides. The Presentation Mode is for just that option—making presentations where your notes are the content of the talk. It's part of the Windows, Mac, iPad, and iPhone versions of Evernote—if you've got the Premium version. Here's a full tutorial, with the video preview above.

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