More Fun With Evernote Genealogy Binders

Evernote Genealogy Binder for my son's Schulze ancestors

I'm discovering so many great tools using Evernote to create virtual Genealogy Binders.My first blog post on using Evernote can be found at Using Evernote to Make Virtual Binders for Genealogy Organization 

The latest trick I've found is an amazing time-saver and one I touched on briefly in my last blog post More Ways to Use Evernote to Create Virtual Genealogy Binders. Now I've fine-tuned this method and want to share it with you. It has saved me so much time and duplication. This is the method where instead of creating a new note in your Evernote Binder and methodically importing one file at a time by using the FILES>ATTACH FILES command in Evernote, you accomplish this in a different more efficient way by importing files as batches directly from your computer drive. 

First step is to make sure your computer files are named correctly. I've discovered that if you name your genealogy file (either image or document) with the exact name you want to use as the Title of your note in an Evernote Binder, this file name is imported as the Title of the note. So if you import a file named "jacobdewhirst1820baptism.jpg" the title will be automatically inserted as "jacobdewhirst1820baptism" 

Instead of having to rename it in the note to "Dewhirst Jacob 1820 baptism Yorkshire England", make sure your file on your computer hard drive has the name you want in the Evernote note so that you do not have to redo anything.

Previously I titled my notes in my virtual Genealogy Binders with the year then the person's name then a description. But since Evernote limits how many Binders you can create,I soon realized I needed to put all the siblings of my direct ancestors in the same binder. I can't create one binder for each person. So I needed to rename my notes with the surname then the first name then the year, followed by the description. That way each individual's notes will be grouped together and in chronological arrangement.

It is easy for me to make sure my computer files follow this format. For example as I am searching on Ancestry.com and saving various records for Jacob Dewhirst and family, I rename each file as it is downloaded. The 1841 census for Jacob gets the name "Dewhirst Jacob 1841 Census Yorkshire England" His baptism record gets the file name "Dewhirst Jacob 1820 Baptism Yorkshire England" 

Adding files in batches to Evernote

The next time-saving step is to go to my computer folder where the files are for Jacob Dewhirst. I can highlight them all, right click and choose "ADD TO EVERNOTE". Every file I've highlighted pops into my default notebook in Evernote. 

Now it is very easy to open that default notebook, highlight  all the newly imported files (they will all be together because of how I named them), right click and choose "MOVE TO NOTEBOOK Schulze Genealogy" 

Files added in batches to my default notebook
then moving them to Schulze Genealogy notebook/binder

Every image and document I imported is now very nicely in place in the correct notebook and best of all it is already titled and has been arranged automatically by Evernote in the binder. 

The other tip I have for you is to put quotation marks around the title you give your default notebook in Evernote. That will pop it to the top of the alphabetical list of your notebooks and this is very handy when you want to open that notebook to move your recently imported files.