I haven't been able to play with it yet, but my first impression is that Spaces is 'just' an improved version of Notebook Stacks, which also allows you to group related Notebooks. Spaces appears better in that it allows you to also add, and even pin, individual notes. But I wonder why Spaces thus doesn't just replace Stacks? What does Stacks now do that Spaces doesn't? Even if there is something Stacks still does better, wouldn't it be better to just add that functionality to Spaces and get rid of Stacks? I suppose keeping Stacks allows you to organize your notebooks along a second dimension if you want, but that might be undue complexity.
That said, I'm one of those few clamoring for more nested levels to Notebook Stacks. So I might be fine if Stacks were kept as just another optional layer within Spaces!
It is similar to stacks but I find the focus side of things much better and having more space to see things like inside the space is better than a stack dropdown.
I kind of look at stacks of being organisation and spaces being focus.
Thinking one use I might put a Space to is as a "To Read" area. Having clipped various web pages, emails and other links as possible interests at a later time, they currently end up mixed in with other content and scattered in my default InBox. A EN Space for such things might make them a bit more manageable? I'll investigate.
The @Read tag is a good suggestion. Personally I have an aversion to tags, as I've found in the past that can multiply with variations. So I endeavour to minimise my use of tags.
Yup. They know about this one and pretty sure a fix will come. Also, for some strange reason you can't pin a note if its got a task in it! I reported this one.
I’ve been using Evernote since 2009 and have organized my content in Stacks, Notebooks, and Notes.
The Spaces seem to resemble Stacks in some ways.
However, the implementation feels confusing—for example, in the sidebar under Notebooks, all Notebooks from all Spaces appear as a flat list. Why is that the case? This makes navigating and managing notes unnecessarily complicated. With Stacks it's not like that.
What I feel Evernote is missing is the ability to organize notes hierarchically at any depth.
For example:
* Notebooks > Sub-Notebooks > ... > Notes
This would function similarly to folders and files in a traditional system.
There’s no need for multiple overlapping concepts like Stacks and Spaces. These could simply be treated as named containers like "mySpace" or "myStack1" within a unified, hierarchical structure.
My suggestions for a simpler, more intuitive system:
* Optionally, allow tags for advanced filtering or creating "smart notebooks."
By streamlining these concepts, Evernote could become much more intuitive and flexible for users who need deep organization without the confusion of overlapping concepts.
Just wondering how to share a space with someone else - my wife in fact - also a user but not in Teams which I don't use- planning a big holiday and using a stack currently with shared notebooks for each stage. Can you help please? Thanks Geoff
Watched the Spaces video - one them. IF I could attached a Space to a filter, so every note fitting that filter would automatically appear in the Space – now THAT would be useful. Otherwise, not so much, unless I'm just missing the whole point...
That's a good idea. I'm finding it useful to visualise many notebooks that are around a similar topic. A lot of these topics belong in their own stacks and I could relate all the notes with tags but everything then just becomes more complicated for me. I also like having lots of pinned notes.
Thanks, Jon, for your videos. Incredibly helpful. I've created a space for RECIPES, and moved over all my Recipe Notebooks. Then, I've decided I want to add another Stack called MENU PLANNING NOTES to that same space, but I can't quite figure out how to do that. Can I only import when I first create the space? Thanks so much!
I have several notes in one notebook that i update everyday and by adding them to a space I named "Current", I have easy access to them without having to create separate shortcuts to them on the left sidebar.
Thx for your #17. I think the spaces can be just ‘nice to have’, bit of more of the same (like stacks), but a bit more elegant. Just cant delete the already made spaces like home/ work etc and now all kind of ‘not mine’ notebooks are all over the place. Saw below that they are working on this, but quite messy…thx
Hoping for a bunch of spaces improvements in the new year. I'm finding them useful for some things but sticking to my usual stack/notebook workflow of others.
Unless I'm missing something important I do not see how Spaces add an extra layer of organization since you can not put stacks of notebooks inside them so before Spaces there were three levels (Stacks/Notebooks/Notes) and now there are still three levels (Spaces/Notebooks/Notes). Therefore, you have replaced Stacks by Spaces. I know unlike Stacks now you can see some structure within Spaces (pinned notes, what's new) but essentially they do the same.
Yeah. I've been managing my training sessions for years using pinned notes and shortcuts but I have so many of them I need to manage them if that makes sense.
Right now in my training space I have all upcoming sessions pinned as notes. This would be a mess as pinned notes in a notebook or shortcuts as I have more than 20 notes. What I used to do was each week, pin/unpin, shortcut/un-shortcut all the jobs I was doing that week.
Spaces saves me a bit of time having everything to do with training in one place. Easier to manage.
Great video Jon, many thanks for sharing! Built some spaces around areas of focus: home, work, my side company (fitness trainer) but based on some feedback above I see logic for some similar resources such as reading materials or health related stuff. Just not yet figured out a way to remove a space. Did you see that option? ;) thanks again.
This almost looks like having multiple custom "Home" pages.
I'm currently working some admin stuff for a new client and I'm constantly digging through several notes and basically fighting with my organizational skills, or lack thereof.
I've been trying consolidate and reduce the number of notebooks and tags.
This looks like it might go a long way to helping me keep things together for all kinds of things.
It's a bit of a mixed bag so far. I've set up a space with the relevant notebooks, but the pin notes functionality seems a bit lacking.
It gives me a list of the notebooks in the space which I can expand to see the notes, but they're in a random order and there's no way to search on title. One of the notebooks has over 4,000 notes in it, so scrolling would take way too long.
Also, there doesn't appear to be a way to go to a note from outside the space and then pin it to the space, unless I'm missing something obvious.
Ah, that did the trick. The benefit is that I can now remove that note from my Shortcuts as I only ever need it for the project I created the space for.
Thank you, Jon! Very helpful.
I haven't been able to play with it yet, but my first impression is that Spaces is 'just' an improved version of Notebook Stacks, which also allows you to group related Notebooks. Spaces appears better in that it allows you to also add, and even pin, individual notes. But I wonder why Spaces thus doesn't just replace Stacks? What does Stacks now do that Spaces doesn't? Even if there is something Stacks still does better, wouldn't it be better to just add that functionality to Spaces and get rid of Stacks? I suppose keeping Stacks allows you to organize your notebooks along a second dimension if you want, but that might be undue complexity.
That said, I'm one of those few clamoring for more nested levels to Notebook Stacks. So I might be fine if Stacks were kept as just another optional layer within Spaces!
Happy New Year!
It is similar to stacks but I find the focus side of things much better and having more space to see things like inside the space is better than a stack dropdown.
I kind of look at stacks of being organisation and spaces being focus.
Thinking one use I might put a Space to is as a "To Read" area. Having clipped various web pages, emails and other links as possible interests at a later time, they currently end up mixed in with other content and scattered in my default InBox. A EN Space for such things might make them a bit more manageable? I'll investigate.
I use @Read tag to collect notes I want to read/read later.
I haven’t yet found the right-way-for-me to use Spaces, but was hoping it would allow for advanced search queries to automatically gather notes.
The @Read tag is a good suggestion. Personally I have an aversion to tags, as I've found in the past that can multiply with variations. So I endeavour to minimise my use of tags.
Just found out you can do space: as an advanced search. This is not mentioned on the search grammar page.
That's a really good idea. A note can be in a space and not a notebook so it would clear up my Inbox as well!
Just used it after watching this and there seems to be a bug with Spaces. You delete the default and they come back
Yup. They know about this one and pretty sure a fix will come. Also, for some strange reason you can't pin a note if its got a task in it! I reported this one.
... it seems that at the moment there is no chance to delete a Space.
Yeah. A fix is coming for that. You can remove notebooks and rename it to make it a new space if needed.
I’ve been using Evernote since 2009 and have organized my content in Stacks, Notebooks, and Notes.
The Spaces seem to resemble Stacks in some ways.
However, the implementation feels confusing—for example, in the sidebar under Notebooks, all Notebooks from all Spaces appear as a flat list. Why is that the case? This makes navigating and managing notes unnecessarily complicated. With Stacks it's not like that.
What I feel Evernote is missing is the ability to organize notes hierarchically at any depth.
For example:
* Notebooks > Sub-Notebooks > ... > Notes
This would function similarly to folders and files in a traditional system.
There’s no need for multiple overlapping concepts like Stacks and Spaces. These could simply be treated as named containers like "mySpace" or "myStack1" within a unified, hierarchical structure.
My suggestions for a simpler, more intuitive system:
* Everything is organized hierarchically (e.g., Notebooks > Sub-Notebooks > Notes).
* Optionally, allow tags for advanced filtering or creating "smart notebooks."
By streamlining these concepts, Evernote could become much more intuitive and flexible for users who need deep organization without the confusion of overlapping concepts.
I'm beginning think that spaces are not really any part of the hierarchy. Just a way to visualise notes and notebooks which can come from anywhere.
I'm still using stacks and notebooks to manage most of my workflow, just using a couple of spaces for specific topics.
There is talk about more levels of notebooks but not sure if any decisions have been made yet.
Very helpful Jon
Just wondering how to share a space with someone else - my wife in fact - also a user but not in Teams which I don't use- planning a big holiday and using a stack currently with shared notebooks for each stage. Can you help please? Thanks Geoff
I think sharing a space is coming in a future update. It would be really useful for a lot of folk. You going anywhere nice?
Thanks - yes Australia and New Zealand - bucket list job!
Watched the Spaces video - one them. IF I could attached a Space to a filter, so every note fitting that filter would automatically appear in the Space – now THAT would be useful. Otherwise, not so much, unless I'm just missing the whole point...
That's a good idea. I'm finding it useful to visualise many notebooks that are around a similar topic. A lot of these topics belong in their own stacks and I could relate all the notes with tags but everything then just becomes more complicated for me. I also like having lots of pinned notes.
Me again - never mind... I figured it out. You don't move Stacks. You move Notebooks. Got it.
You can also add notes to a space that only exist in a space and not a notebook.... could be useful.
Thanks, Jon, for your videos. Incredibly helpful. I've created a space for RECIPES, and moved over all my Recipe Notebooks. Then, I've decided I want to add another Stack called MENU PLANNING NOTES to that same space, but I can't quite figure out how to do that. Can I only import when I first create the space? Thanks so much!
If you right click the space in the sidebar you can import notebooks whenever you want.
Fine. But how are they deleted once you're finished with them?
Delete is coming soon. You can remove all the notes and notebooks and rename the space if needed which kind of creates a new blank space.
I have several notes in one notebook that i update everyday and by adding them to a space I named "Current", I have easy access to them without having to create separate shortcuts to them on the left sidebar.
Nice idea. I must admit I've reduced the number of shortcuts a lot since using spaces.
Thx for your #17. I think the spaces can be just ‘nice to have’, bit of more of the same (like stacks), but a bit more elegant. Just cant delete the already made spaces like home/ work etc and now all kind of ‘not mine’ notebooks are all over the place. Saw below that they are working on this, but quite messy…thx
Hoping for a bunch of spaces improvements in the new year. I'm finding them useful for some things but sticking to my usual stack/notebook workflow of others.
Unless I'm missing something important I do not see how Spaces add an extra layer of organization since you can not put stacks of notebooks inside them so before Spaces there were three levels (Stacks/Notebooks/Notes) and now there are still three levels (Spaces/Notebooks/Notes). Therefore, you have replaced Stacks by Spaces. I know unlike Stacks now you can see some structure within Spaces (pinned notes, what's new) but essentially they do the same.
Yeah. I've been managing my training sessions for years using pinned notes and shortcuts but I have so many of them I need to manage them if that makes sense.
Right now in my training space I have all upcoming sessions pinned as notes. This would be a mess as pinned notes in a notebook or shortcuts as I have more than 20 notes. What I used to do was each week, pin/unpin, shortcut/un-shortcut all the jobs I was doing that week.
Spaces saves me a bit of time having everything to do with training in one place. Easier to manage.
Great video Jon, many thanks for sharing! Built some spaces around areas of focus: home, work, my side company (fitness trainer) but based on some feedback above I see logic for some similar resources such as reading materials or health related stuff. Just not yet figured out a way to remove a space. Did you see that option? ;) thanks again.
Removing a space it coming in an update. Hopefully soon.
So cool!
This almost looks like having multiple custom "Home" pages.
I'm currently working some admin stuff for a new client and I'm constantly digging through several notes and basically fighting with my organizational skills, or lack thereof.
I've been trying consolidate and reduce the number of notebooks and tags.
This looks like it might go a long way to helping me keep things together for all kinds of things.
Can't wait to have at it!
Thanks!
Its very cool! I'm finding it quite useful for being able to focus on certain projects.
Thanks for your support as well!
Can Evernote put tasks in tables? Nice video on Spaces
Thanks for this really helpful introduction to spaces. Once I get access, I'll have a play with this and see how I get on.
Let me know if you end up using them and what for.
It's a bit of a mixed bag so far. I've set up a space with the relevant notebooks, but the pin notes functionality seems a bit lacking.
It gives me a list of the notebooks in the space which I can expand to see the notes, but they're in a random order and there's no way to search on title. One of the notebooks has over 4,000 notes in it, so scrolling would take way too long.
Also, there doesn't appear to be a way to go to a note from outside the space and then pin it to the space, unless I'm missing something obvious.
You have to move the note to the space first and then pin it, or create a new note.
Pinning is a bit painful. Would be nice to have a right click and pin to space on a note that's in a space.
Ah, that did the trick. The benefit is that I can now remove that note from my Shortcuts as I only ever need it for the project I created the space for.