My Disappointment With Evernote

Don't let the title of this post fool you. I don't want to slam Evernote. I've been using Evernote regularly for a few years now, and I love how easy it is to capture, keep, and search for information with this unique tool. No, my goal here is to spur Evernote or its developers to solve a big problem with this information wrangling tool--retrieval.

I have years worth of information locked up in Evernote, and it's not easy to retrieve. Once I do a search for notes or keywords, I'm reduced to opening each entry, and cutting and pasting to repurpose the information I need. It shouldn't be that way. I should be able to capture and dump my information so that it can be repurposed for my creative endeavors. If I've created the equivalent of subject related index cards, I should be able to dump them into a document, divided into groups by keyword. I want it to be more useful than other products, or even my old index card system.

As I said, I don't really want to slam Evernote. It held a lot of promise because of the breadth of what it can capture, but I'll tell you one thing--if Evernote doesn't solve this problem, someone else will, and I will switch in a heartbeat--even if I can't carry my work over. The information I have isn't doing me much good because I can't use it quickly or efficiently. Losing the old information to the promise of a better service to wouldn't be so bad.