Evernote Sharing Improvements: New Design, Permissions and Re-sharing

Product updates | 07 Sep 201207 Sep 12 | By Andrew Sinkov

27 comments

Update 9/17/2012: You don’t need a client update to see the sharing improvements described in this post.

Today, Evernote Web, Evernote for Mac and Evernote for Windows got a number of much-requested sharing improvements. You can now easily update sharing permissions for individuals, and, if you’re a Premium user, you can allow others to re-share your notebooks. In addition, the whole sharing interface got a nice redesign. Let’s take a look.

Changing Permissions

Changing notebook permissions used to be a hassle. Not anymore. If you decide to change someone’s permission from read-only to modify and back again, simply open the sharing options for that notebook. You’ll now see a drop down menu near the names of everyone who has access. Click on the drop down and change the permissions. Then click done. That’s it.

I Share, You Share

Premium users now have a new sharing option that lets them grant others the ability to re-share a notebook. For example, let’s say you’re working with another department at your company. You share a notebook with the head of that department. With the new functionality, she can share that notebook with individuals within her group. In order to do this, the notebook owner must be a Premium user.

To re-share a notebook, select “Modify and Invite Others” from the permission menu. If at some point you would like to revoke or change that permission, you can do so by following the instructions above.

All of the notebooks that aren’t yours, but that you have permission to re-share, are listed in the sharing screen below your own notebooks.

View Notes and Activity

We’ve created a new read-only permission level called View Notes and Activity that pushes notebook updates into the recipient’s Activity Stream in the desktop versions of Evernote. This is great if you want to keep people aware of changes to your notebook without granting them access to edit your notes.

A new look

Our sharing interface was getting a little long in the tooth. We made all of the buttons and labels clearer, and significantly improved usability of the menus and screens. We hope you like it.

More to come

Sharing notes and notebooks with your friends or your team is an incredibly useful way to share ideas and keep your projects on track. There are many more enhancements to come. Stay tuned.

Learn more about Mac, Windows

Mickey

(Note: I love Evernote, and will continue to extol its awesomeness to everyone, but…)

The title excited me, but I leave disappointed.

In Dropbox (and Google Drive), my folders look like this:

- Folder A
- Folder B (shared)
- Folder C

In Nozbe, my task lists look like this:

- List A
- List B (shared)
- List C

However, in Evernote they look like this:

- Notebook A
- Notebook C

Where is “Notebook B” that a friend shared with me? Under a completely separate tab, with the notes not appearing in my main “all notes” tab, nor easily searchable.

Among my peers, it’s a race to share first. If I share the folder, it’s in with my main stuff. If I accept a shared folder, it’s buried back in the “shared” area.

Is this a technical hurdle you can’t get past, or do you consider this the better way to do it?
- Bruce Grieve
  
  I have exactly the same problem as Mickey. I was hoping the sharing improvements would fix it, but sadly it does not. I also don’t think shared folders can be offline on my iPad? Key reason we cancelled our company account.
Andrew

I agree with Mickey. This is one area that sharing on Evernote falls short and feels clunky by comparison with other shared file/folder services.

Two other major downfalls with sharing in Evernote that our office has experienced are:

1) You can’t share a notebook with sub-notebooks. This means you may have to share multiple notebooks with another user, and they have no ability to move notes between notebooks for organization purposes.

2) Users that don’t own the notebook can’t add their own tags to notes. I can see why you might want to prevent this, but there should also be the option to allow it too.

Hopefully these are being worked on as the blog post says, many more enhancements are to come!
Elisa

I don’t see the update for Evernote on Mac. Is it because I’m in Canada?
JMichael

As of Sep 8, 2012 2:00 AM CST, no updates are available to EN Mac 3.3.0.
Evernote > Check for Updates says “You’re up-to-date! Evernote 3.3.0 is currently the newest version available.”

When will you actually release the new version, and what will the version# be?
Dan

Is it now possible to share a notebook and other anonymous user will be able not only read the notebook but also can edit the notebook without login in?
Charles Mount

Hi,
How do I get the new version? Do I download it from the website or will me desktop version be automatically updated?

Charles
- Kasey Fleisher Hickey
  
  Charles, select to check updates from your desktop version, then update.
  - Charles Mount
    
    Kasey, thanks for that. I’ve got it set for automatic updates.
JMichael

When will the new version of EN Mac be released?

As of Sat, Sep 8, 2012 5:00 pm CST, no updates are available from EN Mac 3.3.0.

Have you released updates for EN Win and EN Web?
Barbara

I love Evernote but with this last upgrade it has been crashing a lot. I’m the official Evernote trainer for all of my friends and co workers. I think it is difficult for some to learn this app but once someone does they love it. Thank you for this app but please fix it.
JMichael

After all this time Shared Notebooks still have a serious limitation: Searching

You are limited to searching within one Shared NB at a time. Searching in your account does NOT search ANY of the notebooks that have been shared with you.

What’s worse is that Evernote does not document this major limitation anywhere.
So this misleads many people into thinking that Shared Notebooks is a good solution for them, only to discover after they have implemented this approach and entered many Notes that it will NOT work due to the searching constraint.

Does Evernote have any plans to make searching global, to include all shared NB in searches in your account?
- Bill Ziobro
  
  I completely agree. I just started sharing notebooks and while it looks great on my end, it isnt easy on the end of the person getting the shared notebook.
Eduardo

When will the Mac App Store version be updated?
- Christian
  
  I am also interested in the new MAS version!

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