Here are 5 Evernote enhancements that are making a difference for me. If you missed them, now is your opportunity to see the difference they can make for you.

The question used to be, “How do I construct a system of folders so that I can file and later find documents?” But the focus has changed. In our information-rich world, how can we quickly save and later find information, and how can we easily manipulate that information?

I think it’s essential that we all have two things:

1. An efficient way to trap, organize, and execute tasks
2. An efficient way to trap, organize, and use digital notes

If you have these two things, forgetting becomes irrelevant, and you can scale in terms of what you can do and the access to information that makes your life hum.

Evernote is my note-taking software of choice. This article gives you five Evernote enhancements that have made a significant difference for me. They are fairly recent, but with the frequency of enhancements, you may have missed some. Each one has had a substantial impact on my workflow. Each one is something I use daily.

1. Collapsible Headers

First are the headers activated by slash commands and the collapsible sections. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I want to refer you to a previous post devoted to collapsible headers. It explains the concept thoroughly. One thing that has changed since that video is that collapsible headers are now available on mobile.

Before collapsible headers, each note was like a sheet of paper. If you had a great deal of information, the note was long. That often led us to break up information over several shorter notes rather than one longer one. Breaking up related material over several notebooks also meant creating additional notebooks to house those related notes.

Now that we can collapse headers, we can put a lot in a note while keeping the appearance simple. We use headers to organize the information logically. We have Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 headers, making it much like an outline form. Add to that the ability to expand or hide the information within any header. Go

2. Lite Client Editor

The second of the Evernote enhancements is the Lite Client Editor. It’s an improvement over a long-standing Evernote feature.

The ability to share information digitally is important. If I want to share a note with someone else, I’ve always had that ability. If they were an Evernote user, I could grant rights to view or rights to both view and edit. It was great.

If the person didn’t have Evernote, I could still create a link to that note where they could view it.

Here’s the enhancement: The ability to share a note with someone who does not have Evernote and allow that person to make changes.

Here’s an example:

I’m planning an interview with a guest. I’m using an Evernote note to house all the information about that interview: the guest’s bio, questions to ask, links to include in the blog post, etc. I would like for my guest to also be able to edit that note—to see what I am planning and make his own additions. The only problem is he donesn’t use Evernote.

I click the Share button. I change the dropdown from “Restricted” to “anyone with the link can edit.” I send the link to the guest. I’m done! After we record the session, I can turn the sharing off for that note.

3. Templates

Next up is the improvement in templates. The easier something is, the more likely a person is to use it. We’ve had templates for quite a while. Any time we create a new note, one of the options has been to use a template. It could be a template provided by Evernote. It could be an Evernote note we created in our template gallery.

There were two problems. First, getting to your own template gallery was awkward. Second, if you wanted to make a change to your template, you had to create a new note using that template, make your change, save that note as a template, and then delete the original template. There was no way to simply make a change to the template.

Here’s how templates work now. Create a new note and compose your template. Click the three-dot menu and choose “Save as Template.” Nothing new so far. You can save that template in any notebook of your choosing. That’s a big change. Previously, all templates were in a template gallery. Plus, it was hard to get to it. Now, you can have a template that helps with content creation and save that template in the correct notebook, the one called “Content Creation” perhaps.

That template also shows up in the menu item in the left sidebar that says “Templates.” Therefore, each template is viewable in two places: the notebook in which you save it and the Templates kingdom.

And that’s not all…

Another big improvement is the ease with which you can change a template. When you open a template, you see one button to click if you want to use that template. Click the button, and it creates a new note using that template.

If you want to change the template, don’t click the button to use the template. Simply make your changes.

What templates do I have? Here are a few:

• Packing List
• Meeting Planner
• Content Creation
• Cornell Note
• Presentation Room Checklist
• Professional Development Planning
• Emergency Preparation

4. Audio AI

The fourth of the Evernote enhancements is “AI Voice Transcription.” For this one, I am going to refer you to a previous video. I bring the concept back because it is so important. Imagine being able to talk and have everything said converted to editable, digital text. Record a conversation and know you’ll never miss a thing. Dictate a blog post to yourself. After all, talking is easier than typing. I did a post on this and our next topic. It’s so important, I felt you needed to hear about it again. encourage you to go back and watch that previous video.

5. Image to Text Transcription

The fifth of the Evernote enhancements I am really liking is “Image to Text Transcription.”

Take this challenge…

Take out a piece of paper and write a paragraph.

It doesn’t have to be fancy…copy something out of a book, write out a favorite poem, or journal about how your day is going. It can be print or cursive

When you get finished, grab your phone and turn it into editable, digital text.

So how did it go? Were you successful?

More importantly, was it effortless enough that you could do it on the fly and it could become part of your workflow?

• If the answer is “yes,” that’s great.
• If the answer is “no,” I want you to come away from this episode with a definite “yes.”

I can take notes on a legal pad in cursive, snap a picture of the page, and watch image become editable, digital text. I can take a screenshot of text on my screen and have the text extracted so that I can edit it and then copy and paste it somewhere else.

This one feature has changed my workflow. The same video that talked about the audio-to-text capability also talks about the image-to-text capability. I think we all need a way to convert writing in the environment to editable, digital text on our devices. Go back and review the video.

Your Call to Action

So, your assignment is to watch the video embedded in this post plus the two videos mentioned.

More importantly, practice with the concepts presented here. With practice, you get better. What took a little time to lean starts paying off with time saved.

If you don’t use Evernote, that’s OK. Research to see if you can do the same things with the note-taking software you do use. And if you don’t have a note-taking tool at all, today’s the day to find one, because we all need to up our game when it comes to digital notes.

Be sure to watch:

How to Use Evernote Collapsible Headers & Anchor Links

Evernote AI Transcription

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