Today, we’re adding a new feature to Evernote for Windows (version 4.5.2), which has been a part of Evernote for Mac for a little while: the Favorites Bar.
This little bar, which runs just above the note list, does some incredibly useful things. First, it lets you jump to parts of your account that you want to quickly access. For example, click on Web Clips and only web clips show up in the list. Or, click on Tags and choose a tag to filter your note list.
Searching through Notebooks and Tags
Speaking of tags, the Favorites Bar is a tagger’s best friend. Sometimes, finding the tag you want in a long list can be daunting. Not so with the Favorites Bar. Click on Tags and you can quickly filter your tag list by typing it into the text field. You can do the same for Notebooks, which is great if you have lots of them.
Pinning to the Favorites Bar
There’s one more powerful feature of the Favorites Bar: you can pin things to it. Have a note that you access a lot? Drag it to the Favorites Bar. Have a Saved Search that you run frequently? Drag it in. The same goes for notebooks, tags and just about anything else.
Try out the Favorites Bar, and let us know what you think. This update also includes lots of bug fixes, improvements to to-do items, new language support (Turkish, Thai and Malay), and more.
44 Comments
William
A very welcome update! As someone who uses Dewey Decimal Classification, useful things can get pretty nested sometimes. Seems like the favourites bar solves this inconvenience in a simple way.
Jeff
Well THIS looks to be about the sweeeetest update in a while!! I think the Favorites bar will be a favorite feature!!
PR
I like the favorites bar. How do I remove a tag or note I’ve dragged to the favorites bar?
Gordon
I can’t figure that out, either. :/
Ryan
Me either, I have submitted a ticket
Kyle
It works it’s just a little bit touchy – keep trying to drag your undesired item off the favorites bar and it’ll eventually work
Ben
It worked! Thanks Kyle!
Liz
Awesome
Dave
I know this probably isn’t the right spot for this, but please, Please, PLEASE add the capability to optionally “lock” notes from accidental changes!
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve highlighted text from a note, then thinking I’m in a different window, began typing away. All the highlighted text is wiped out!
I’ve asked for it before, but I must be not as smart as the rest of the users, because based on the responses, it appears nobody else has unintentionally altered a note!
elponderado
Try hitting Ctrl and Z next time that happens. That will undo the change. May need to do it a few times to get everything back.
Maxa
THAT IS a great idea. I could use it too.
Chris
Oh Boy! I this feature badly.
Sunil
Ah…… Finally finally finally
Evernote brings back a much missed feature
Now I can move from 2.2 to new version
PrimoLED
Great, some good features and a old feature long missed is back
Danny
The favorites bar is great. Thanks.
satoshi
I expect everenote will work faster when you have many notes like me, who have about 20,000 ones. It takes about 30 seconds or more when you move it from background to foregound.
dave
pretty neat update, i was never a big fan of scrolling down past my 90+ notebooks to get to the tag i wanted everytime i moved to a different notebook, so this is going to save a lot of time.
is there a shortcut key for the tag search by any chance? like the “F6″ shortcut you press to start searching in all notebooks. it would be real handy if you could search without having to use the mouse to activate the tag search
dave
shift+alt+t to put focus on the tags button in the favourites bar
shift+alt+n for notebooks
Ragnar
Love the update and what it promises, but so far i’ve only been able to pin one note to the favorites bar successfully. if i pin another note to it, selecting that note won’t take me to it. only the first note i pinned works.
and a nicer way of removing notes from favorites would be much appreciated.
GONSALVR
Love the ability to pin notes to the Favorites bar… I have a note with all my telephone work contacts so its great to have speedy access to it. Great Job.
Now for my pet peeve can you guys add a SPELL CHECK TOGGLE BUTTON to the tool bar on a note…. Sometimes I don’t want to see the red squiggly lines.
Steve K.
As someone who uses both the Mac and Windows clients, I would like it if there was a way to sync the favorites bar among clients like Google Chrome does. Is this planned feature? Thanks.
Tod
I would like to see a favorites feature that works like ‘starring’ a particular note. This type of favorites is common in email and would allow starring across multiple notebooks. Unlike the bookmarks bar, it would be more accessible on mobile devices rather than just the installed application.
Lisa Hetherington
I just upgraded to 4.5.2. I don’t see (how to enable/install) the Favorites bar. Help pls!
…Lisa
Samir
Thanks. I have a long list of nested tags and sometimes it does get hard to find then. This will be helpful a lot.
Brian
I like being able to customize the evernote toolbar. How about a way to customize favorites also? I want to remove all the defaults. Maybe there’s a way, I just haven’t found it.
Vic
Thank you so much! Very useful feature!
Also I support Dave regarding the locking notes feature (from accidental changes). From psychological point of view there is an advantage to be sure that your notes are stable and you can not accidentally change something.
Anubha
I second dave! at times, you can unintentionally add a note, would be good to see this fixed. Also a highlighting option for Windows would make a greattt update!!!
Thanks for the favorites bar though!
Sandra
I love the “favorites”. I created a “content” note for each major notebook, then used “copy note link” to link the notes to a table of contents. Just a couple of clicks now & I can retrieve the note I need. I do this for the 3 notebooks I seem to constantly use.
sc
What would really be great is an “advanced search” window that easily allows one to create sophisticated searches instead of having to wade through the API document to find the syntax for complex searches.
Ben
I love the new feature. Just one question…
How do I delete things off of the favorite bar? The only way I’ve found is restoring to default. Also, the web clips, mobile and files are something I don’t really need. Can they be deleted?
Thanks for the great update!
Maxa
You guys just keep making it better and better!
Many thanks!
R Hamill
Favourites bar is just perfection!!!!!!
Drew Vogel
How do I remove a tag or note I’ve dragged to the favorites bar?
anyone
I think it’s kind of bug of the evernote fav bar, they must tended drag out to remove, but somehow it bugy. you have to carefully drag out the tag or note you want to remove, try sway up and down you will find it disappeared in some point. now release your mouse for done.
hopefully they can figure it out on next release.
tom brakke
With the upgrade to the new version for Windows, new notes that are clipped from sites now open automatically in a new window (which they hadn’t before). How do I stop that from happening?
tom brakke
It would be great to get an answer to this question.
Chris
Hi,
I am looking to uupgrade to premuium account but cant find the information I am looking for. It is shocking that the site doesn’t offer any channel of communication between the users and the business. The community seems available only to premium users.
I’ve been using evernote for years now and I love it. I just realized I have accidently erased a part of a file in Jan this year. Will be able to retrieve the earlier file from history if I upgrade to premium account? Please answer, this is important for me. Thanks.
Kasey Fleisher Hickey
Chris, Note History will go back to around 3 months prior to when we announced the feature – so January of this year should be covered. Anyone can file a written support request, free or Premium, and everyone receives a response.
Dave
The previous (windows) version allowed me to right-click on a file in a directory and use the “send-to” option to send it to Evernote. That seems to be no longer available… Too bad, that was a handy shortcut.
satoshi
I have been using the newest version, 4.5.2, but it just now became not to run. Why?
Bill
The new software does not install a favorite toolbar for IE9 on my system. How does the toolbar get installed?
Deborah
I seem to remember that when I downloaded this latest version, it said there were updates for how it performed with the ScanSnap, so make sure to update to the latest version of ScanSnap software.
What are the differences? I can’t tell.
notetakingguy
I too find it cumbersome to remove a note from the Favorites bar. I did it about 10 minutes ago, and a there’s a screen residue from that that is showing on all my applications and desktop. I think I’ll have to reboot my system to make it go away.
Tom A
Exact same problem here. Very annoying!