Quick Tip Friday: Merging Notes

Tips + Guides | 09 Nov 201209 Nov 12 | By Alex Muramoto

23 comments

Evernote is a great way to collect all your memories in one place. Whether you’re gathering photos related to a new home renovation with the Evernote Web Clipper, collecting meal ideas with Evernote Food, or jotting down plans for a work presentation directly in Evernote, the number of notes on any given topic can add up fast. Often, organizing notes as you collect them isn’t convenient, and copying content from one note into another later can be a pain. Luckily, Evernote for Mac, Evernote for Windows Desktop, and Evernote Web give you an easy way to merge multiple notes into a single one.

Merge notes by following these steps:

Select the notes you want to merge (Command + Click on Mac or Ctrl + Click on PC)
A thumbnail view of the notes with options will appear in the Note Viewer
Click the ‘Merge’ button

All of the selected notes will be merged into a single note. When merging with Evernote for Windows Desktop and via the Web, the title of the new note will be the same as the first note selected. When merging with Evernote for Mac, the title will be the same as the most recently modified note. The remaining note titles will be included in the body of the new note, making it easy to tell where the content originated from. The original notes will be moved to the Trash.

Please keep in mind that notes originally created in other Evernote apps, such as Evernote Food, Evernote Hello or Skitch, will no longer be accessible in those apps once merged. To continue to be able to view the original notes, simply move the original notes from your Trash back into any notebook in your Evernote account.

Have you used this feature? Share your tips in the comments!

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Jonaz

Combining several notes into one is a great feature. I have always been a bit confused about in which order the note are combined though. Now I realize that it works great in the web interface (on my mac I’m still on MacOS 10.5. 8 and Evernote 2.3.3, so that’s probably why it seems I can’t influence the order of the notes when combining in the desktop app).

Feature request: Collapsable notes/sections
It would be great if the different notes in the combined note were ”collapsable” sections (with Collapse all / Expand all commands).

Combined notes tend to become long notes that are difficult to navigate and get an overview of. If the note headings in the combined note could be collapsed, you would get a kind of automatic Table of Contents for the combined note.

If the sections could be rearranged that would be even greater!

This is a feature that I would appreciate in single notes as well; I try to keep a note for every project, and being able to collapse/expand sections within a note would make it easier to navgiate the note, and also to focus on specific areas within the note.

Keep up the good work
/jonaz
juwlz

But please, please, PLEASE can we have a way to determine what order the notes are merged in. The default (most recent first, on Windows) is almost never what I want.

I officially submitted this enhancement request ages ago.

Thanks
Paul Michelin

Every day is a new day wen you come to learn something new with my favorite ….Evernote. This is a great help.
http://mariannregan.authorsxpress.com Mariann Regan

Thank you for this tip. I’m making my way through “Evernote for Dummies,” and I’ll attend to this when I get there. Trying to do it right for once. I’ve heard it said that there are those who read the manual and those who mess with buttons. I’m a manual reader, trying to be slow but sure. : )) Well, I’m going slowly, that’s for sure.
Steven

Is it possible to un-merge?
- http://www.evernote.com Alex Muramoto
  
  After merging, the original notes are moved to your Trash Notebook. To retrieve the original, un-merged notes, move them from the Trash Notebook to another notebook.
Barbara

I am having some weird merge problems. I’ve tried with Mac and Web. I’m merging two JPG files (the front and back of a sewing pattern). I finally got them to merge so the front of the pattern is first in the merged note, but the thumbnail sometimes correctly shows the front (the first JPG) in the merged file, but sometimes shows the back instead. It seems random. Help!
Srinivas

Evernote, is the best app i’ve come across in a really long time. It gets better everytime I use it.
Coming to the issue at hand, is there a way by which only the contents are merged and title of the notes are skipped during the merge. As it would save me a lot of curation when I try to save text from the pdf i’m reading into a single note in a orderly manner to review later.

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