Did You Know: How to Create a Checklist in Evernote

Tips and Stories | 02 Aug 201102 Aug 11 | By Kasey Fleisher Hickey

206 comments

If you’ve been following our user stories, you may have noticed that a lot of people love to make checklists in Evernote. Whether for work, personal stuff, or both, you can find a reason to make a checklist in Evernote. If you haven’t made one already, we’re here to show you how to do it.

What kind of checklist should I make?

Creating a checklist that’s accessible from any device where you have Evernote installed allows you to get more done by helping you remember stuff you need to do at any moment. Here are some ideas for checklists that you might want to create:

To-do list: make one for work from your desk on a Monday morning and check it on your phone on a Wednesday.
Packing list: don’t forget your sunscreen, your bathing suit, or your phone charger.
Goals list: keep it with you, wherever you are.
Reading list: keep adding to it — when you’re at the bookstore with your phone, or at the airport with your tablet
Home repairs list: pull it up on your phone when you’re at Home Depot and grab everything you need.
Grocery list: add items you need and even share it with your spouse!
Where to eat list: explore where you live through food and check off restaurants as you try them. See our list.

Ok, how do I get started?

You can make a checklist using several versions of Evernote—Mac, Windows, Web, Android, and others soon—by clicking on the checkbox button in the note formatting bar (on your Android device, you can find the checkbox in the bar above your keyboard). To add items, just click on the checkbox button again and a new checkbox will appear in your note. On a Mac, you can can also create a check-list by going to Format > Insert To-Do. On your Windows PC, go to Format > To-Do > Insert Checkbox (or CTRL + SHIFT + C).

To check the box, just click inside of it. Double click to uncheck it.

Keep it all in sync

Above: checklist on Android

Whenever you update a note, Evernote automatically synchronizes the change to all versions you use, meaning that something you’ve checked off on your phone will also be checked off when you log into Evernote on the Web, or from your desktop, so you’ll never lose sight of what you’ve done or what needs to be done.

Search for your checkboxes in Evernote

To find notes containing one or more unchecked boxes, type in todo:false into the Evernote search box. To find all notes containing a checkbox, type in todo:*. [More about searching in Evernote]

Note Links – Associate Checkboxes with other Notes, or your Calendar

Want to associate your checklist with a calendar reminder? Now you can. You can create a Note Link by right-clicking on the note in a desktop version of Evernote and choosing the option Copy Note Link. Open your calendar and paste in the Note Link. Clicking on the link will open the note (in this case, your checklist). You can read more about Note Links and how they work in this blog post.

How do you use checklists? Tell us in the comments.

Learn more about Did You Know

Matt

The to do lists check boxes dont sync with sticky notes and neither does the strike out text.

This would be an awesome feature for the next update.
http://www.wpa.org.uk/grahamroberts Graham Roberts

This is for Windows users only at the moment, but some of the calendaring issues can be overcome with TuskTasks. ## insert date and time reference between the hashes ## sticks a reference in the calendar which can be sync’d with Google.

Examples are
## tomorrow ##
## tomorrow at 10am ##
## Friday at noon ##
## 21st April at 1600 ##

Just started using it. Will update when I have some more info.
Amin

It is a good start, but my main complaint is that checklists don’t disappear once you’ve checked them off. They just sit there, until you delete or something. It would be good to have a system where they get “hidden” once you have checked them off. Hiding would also allow for looking back at what you did.
Amy

I do not know why when I make the checklist and want to add one more item the checkbox before the first item will disappear. I have tried a lot times but do not know why the click the checkbox in the bar can not result in one more item.
gooogix

Inserting a note link in a Google calendar date only shows the whole URL, not clickable like in Outlook – by design?
Dario Mendoza

My wife was using the notepad in her new Ipad 3, I convinced her to try Evernote. She refused to use it at the first time. I explained her all the funtionalities and now she is the number one user!! she is really happy using Evernote…however she wants to create Check lists on her Ipad using evernote, unfortunately that option is not available for Evernote on Ipad. I have tried to find it and have not had success. I have it in my Android devices. When is this going to be available on iPad? thank you
ahmed

Evernote, get this checklist and calendaring fix ASAP. We shouldn’t have to do application origami, combining 3+ third party application to get the same function we get with pencil and paper. Isn’t the whole point of this application to move away from that?

We need checklist with due dates and completing date. A way to sort them, a way to send the due dates and lists into the calendar on the iPhone so that a calendar reminder will come up.

It’s the most basic form of getting organized:
You have a calendar. You pencil in the tasks for the day. You check them off as you complete them.
Scott

When taking notes during meetings using paper, I highlight actions that I or others have committed to. In attempting to move to Evernote for this, I like being able to use a checkbox in the middle of my notes to capture this “to-do”. In a perfect world, creating this in the note would simultaneously populate an independent to-do list (with all the features and functionality already covered by others). This way I could always see what needs to get done by when without creating a unique task list. Ideally, as I worked through this “to-do” list, marking them as complete would simultaneously check the box in the original note. If any other app does this, would like to hear about it.
Brad

I like having my checklists available across all devices. However, I would love the ability to “protect” a checklist. For example, a packing checklist that I want to re-use all the time. Currently, when checking off items it goes into edit mode. Then after I’m done, I would love a single un-check option so that I can re-use the list without manually unchecking all the boxes.
http://www.therightthing.posterous.com Bert Rinkel

I don’t have the bar you refer to for creating a checkbox. You are leaving out some basic instructions
Should I be able to create a checkbox on my iPad as well???

From above comments, appearantly it is a pain anyway.

Why do I have to go through ALL comments first before getting to this area where I can insert my comment? Each time I have to look up a term in the instructions above, I have to scroll all the way up and down again. Sorry, but this is not helpful and timeconsuming to figure out

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