Evernote for the best Organization of Digital Life

Today when you need a certain digital file, lot of apps are at your service to help you out. Dropbox helps you to upload files to a central storehouse on the web. Google Drive provides you image recognition technology to help you search a photo. The Doo app organizes any types of documents for you on your phone, like receipts, presentations or tickets. However, perhaps the easiest of these is an app called Evernote. Evernote is an app for computers and mobile gadgets which saves anything which you might need later.

Through Evernote you can store and find practically anything on your computer or phone. These files are automatically backed up on the server of Evernote. Even sharing files with others with the help of Evernote is far easier than sending email attachments.

The astounding number of features of the app is in fact daunting for a beginner about where to start. But once you learn a few things you find it much easier.

Find Files on Any Gadget

You can use Evernote to store files by dragging, tapping or forwarding, and then you can search for them, share and post anytime later. When you want to dig it up, you don’t need to remember the device on which it is – if it is in Evernote, you can find it from any of gadget.

You can add up to 60 MB of content every month to your folders with the free version of Evernote which is enough for almost two dozens of full-size iPhone photos or about a hundred big Word documents. You can make the archive as big as you want. The premium version will cost you $5 per month, whereby you get an increase in the limit by a GB a month, just enough for hundreds of photos and some more features useful if you are a heavy user.

To Start With

Download Evernote on every computer and mobile gadget of yours and create an account. The app works on Windows and Mac computers, as well as Windows and Android phones and tablets, iPhones, iPads, Blackberry gadgets and even on the WebOS gadgets of Hewlett-Packard. However, the interface is a bit different on every platform, so you have to take a few minutes to understand each one.

An easy way to begin is to toss an image into Evernote. This you can do by dragging and dropping the image from anywhere to the app on a computer desktop, or select the photo icon on the mobile version of Evernote and choose a photo which is already on your phone. In just a few minutes, the image will be synced to servers of Evernote and will be available on your other gadgets. Everything goes to one folder by default but new folders can be created for keeping things better organized. The same procedure you can do for all the other files like PDFs, Word documents, MP3s, spreadsheets and videos too.

No Need to Install on All Gadgets to Move Files

You can move files to the app even if you don’t have it installed on the device you are on. Each user is given an email address for his/her account and sending a file by sending a file to that address saves it into the account. This is a fine trick which lets you forward emails and attachments to Evernote. You can put the destination folder in the subject line and with that, you can specify the folder the forwarded message goes to.

Save Web Pages

You can even save the web pages you like into Evernote. For this you can install the Evernote Web Clipper provided on the Products page of Evernote.com. This is a web browser add-on which creates an additional button on your browser in shape of the elephant logo of Evernote. Upon clicking it you will be prompted about how much of the page is to be saved. If you want to save a recipe, a news article or a review, Simplified Article is perfect. It strips out the surrounding ads and links and saves only the main content. Web Clipper is not designed for phone or tablet browsers; however somebody has filled the empty space with an app named EverWebClipper for Android and iOS which costs about $3.

Taking Items Out

Taking items out from Evernote is easy. Once you get to the file you were searching for, use Export Note menu option on computer or tap the icon below the screen on the mobile interface and you can export the item to your phone. Then you can send it as a message or share it on Facebook.

Identifies Even Text Within Photos

To search something you have saved, the search function of Evernote is extremely efficient and can even identify text within a photo. This makes it possible for you to use phone as an archival scanner because you can take pictures of printed pages and then search for text in those documents later. However, you will have to remember that the free version won’t allow you to search the text within Word or PDF files. Only with premium upgrade you can do that.

Sharing Made Easy

You can share individual item or an entire folder with other people by an arrow icon on the upper right side of an item which creates a public URL. Once you create this URL you can send the item or folder to others so that they can view it. With premium version you can also allow other Evernote users to add items to your folders. This is useful for group plans, like plans for a picnic or a party. And you are not limited to share within Evernote. With the said arrow button you can post items to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter too or forward it as email attachments.

Be careful! Evernote is extremely captivating and once you are used to it, it is hard to give it up! Only one drawback with it is its intensely enthusiastic interface. There are options, controls and messages everywhere on the screen which can confuse a new user. But once you figure things out you start enjoying the scores of functions and keeping your previously messy digital life superbly organized.