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Did You Know: Note Links, and How to Use Them

Tips and Stories | By Kasey Fleisher Hickey
 

Note Links are a new-ish feature we introduced that’s been talked about here and there on the blog. Not only are Note Links a powerful way to create an organizational structure that you like, they’re a way to actually associate your notes with a variety of 3rd party services. Let’s talk about how you could be using Note Links.

Creating a Note Link

You can create Note Links on any desktop version of Evernote and access Note Links from Evernote anywhere (including mobile versions). Creating a Note Link is easy: right click on a note and choose the Copy Note Link option, or choose it from the Note Menu. The link will be placed into your clipboard. From there, you can paste the link anywhere — a calendar event, a Post It on your desktop, another note, another application that you use, etc. Note Links are meant for you to access your own notes more quickly. Clicking on the Note Link in any location will pop up the note associated with that link.

Note Links are a super powerful way to bring organization, structure, and connectivity to all of your notes in Evernote.

Create Note Links on Your Desktop, Access them Everywhere

Once you start using Note Links, you probably won’t go back. Here are some great reasons to give them a try:

  1. Create a table of contents for a selection of notes. Whether you’re working on a study guide or planning your wedding, you can use Note Links to get ahead of the game. Create a new note and add Note Links for things like Notes: October, Notes: December, etc. or “Guest List,” “Flowers,” “Vendor Numbers.” Do this for a Shared Notebook to help collaborators see your organization structure at first glance.
  2. Add more context to your calendar.* Have a meeting scheduled and want to remember all of the goals you jotted down in Evernote? Place a Note Link associated with your Goals note straight into the calendar invite by pasting the link into the notes section of your calendar. Pull up your note straight from your calendar by clicking on the link.
  3. Associate notes with a big presentation. Keep the research you’ve saved in Evernote handy right inside a working presentation: drop Note Links into slides or comments for quick reference.
  4. Access your frequently-used notes, fast. Have a handful of notes that you’re always referring to (a piece of code for your blog, instructions for cleaning your pool, or important numbers related to your kids activities), link them all to a ‘Most Used Notes.’ You’ll barely have to search again.
  5. Create a calendar reminder.* Wish your notes could remind you of to-dos? They can. Create a checklist or to-do list in your Evernote account. Paste a Note Link into notes section of your calendar event like ‘To-do’ deadlines and use your calendar with Evernote to stay on top of whatever you have to get done. When you click a Note Link from the Web, or your calendar, it opens Evernote on your desktop (if you have it installed) and highlights the note.
  6. Add Note Links to Shared Notebooks. If you put Note Links into a note and drop that note into a Shared Notebook, the people you’ve shared that notebook with will be able to use them, too. This particular use case is super helpful if you’re working on a project that might require a table of contents, for example, to give added structure to a Shared Notebook.

*If supported by your program, Note Links open Evernote when clicked. In some cases (for example, when using Google Calendar) you may need to add HTML code to make the Note Link clickable. In all cases,  notes you link are only visible to you and will not work if you do not have Evernote installed on your desktop or mobile device.

These are just a few ideas for how you can use Note Links. How are you using Note Links?

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  • MWood

    I started using the Note Link feature as a way to create a status launch ‘page’ for myself, one note with overview info that linked out to other notes containing details. This worked great until I ran across one fatal flaw – the links break if you move the target note to a different notebook.

    Is there any way to keep this from happening? Going back and updating the links isn’t an option because I don’t keep track of *every* place I link to a note from.

  • petegreg

    It would be great to see this taken a step further and have the link added to say an Outlook Calendar item automatically if you select ‘Add to Evernote’ from the context menu. Then be able to go to that note from a new context menu item once the note has been created.

  • CSK

    Note Link with iCal – Mac OS X
    Reminders with Evernote – Mac OS X

    Here are some simple directions to make an Evernote (EN) note link open in iCal:
    in EN select a note, right click, and select “copy note link”

    Add an event to your calendar, or edit an existing event. In the notes section of the iCal event, paste the EN note link, and hit enter/return (you will see an underlined hyperlink)

    Right click the note link that appears in the Notes section of iCal for the event and select “Open URL” and the note in Evernote will appear. Touchpad users can use two finger touch, if you’ve set up your touchpad to do so, to open up the hyperlinked EN note.

    By logical extension and as described above in this blog, one can set up “To do” reminders by developing iCal events in the calendar and linking them to EN notes.

  • WPsmort

    For anyone looking for a way to create a shortcut on your Mac desktop to a note here are some instructions that worked for me –

    https://plus.google.com/111467508717854650986/posts/eLSJyxWa4bs

    also here -

    https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/9c352971-1b6e-448f-820a-3df18c764a51/98596063b82bd533e95f48534591be1f

  • sanderbeckers

    So the simple original question remains unanswered: how to paste links to notes in different programs?

    I failed to do this in Word (for Mac), in Mail, in Preview… Only in Growly Notes was I able to link to an Evernote note.

    Is it impossible, or is it not straightforward?

  • Carl

    I’d like to go a little different direction than the comments above. It would be really great if you supported Wiki style-links, and it wouldn’t seem to be extraordinarily difficult, given that the Note Link functionality is already present.

    Instead of having to right-click and then click “Copy Note Link,” how about the following:
    * Type two (or three) brackets, and Evernote pops up a small autofill list of available note names. As I type, the list is narrowed. When I select from the list, the link is created to the note with that name.

    By extension, any note name surrounded by double (or triple) brackets automatically links to that note. It would also be nice if words surrounded by double (or triple) brackets could be clicked to create a new note.

    I understand that the location of the new note could be an issue, and this is less critical than the ability to quickly create Wiki style links between notes.

  • chr

    Note Links are a nice feature but it stops halfway. Whats really missing is internal linking of notes WIKI style.

  • Sam Miker

    This is a good post with full of info about Creating a Note Link. It is that I was looking forward to get. A big thank dude for sharing this post article. Keep it up…

    handling a break up

  • Wolfgang

    Hello I’m from Germany (so excuse my english) and tried to use the Note-Links. But it doesn’t work correct for me.

    If I create note-links on my “Desktop-PC No. 1″ with the context-menue and paste it in an other Note (or drag/drop the note), everything works fine, as long as I do this on this Desktop-PC.

    If I click these links on my “Desktop-PC No. 2″ only half of the links works correct. The others show me a message “the link points to a lokal note in an other database, which not exists on this computer” (the message is shown in German, so I translate it here).

    On my smartphone “Samsung Galaxy S3″ not a single one of these link will work. If I click here on a link, it shows me a message “Error loadig note: Note will not be found” (translated too).

    Does anyone knows these problems and can give me a solution / hint.
    Greetings from Germany

    • http://s.evernote.com/support Heather

      Note Links are not currently supported on mobile devices.

      Are you creating Note Links to Local-Only notes on Desktop-PC No 1, or are all of the notes Synchronized?

  • http://www.atzari.com José Ignacio Mora

    I would like to see a much simpler way to link notes. As in Microsoft Project, where I highlight two or more notes and click a “link” icon and all of these are linked to each other. Also as in Personal Brain, although I realize that is a graphical user interface. But it should be just as easy. The key is that notes need quick, easy links to each other.

    Key words and search are not enough because too many notes show up in the search.

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