Search Evernote Using Google Chrome Or Firefox
March 4, 2010
Recently the Evernote blog posted a really cool tip for searching your Evernote notes from inside your browser.
Basically, you tell Chrome or Firefox to use Evernote as a new search engine, which you can then search with in the address bar.
Google Chrome’s address bar doubles as a search bar, which makes it really easy to search various sites without actually going to them first. Now, you can add Evernote as a search engine in Google Chrome and search your notes from anywhere. Here’s how to set it up:
See the blog post for instructions on how to do it in Google Chrome or Firefox, or here is a video.
Great tip!
Cool Paperless Setup Video
February 4, 2010
As much of a paperless geek that I am, I normally wouldn’t sit and watch a video of someone scanning and shredding paper.
However, I just wanted to point you to this YouTube video by user allenday. He’s got a really cool setup of a ScanSnap S300M, Adobe Acrobat, a Mac Mini, a wall-mounted Sharp Aquos, the Royal PX1000MX to shred, and uploads everything to Evernote.
To do the OCRing, he uses the Acrobat OCR Applescript Droplet that I hacked/posted about earlier.
Very cool setup, thanks for sharing allenday! Do any of you have a cool paperless setup? Feel free to share pics or videos in the comments.
How To Create Searchable PDFs With The ScanSnap S300M
February 2, 2010
So you read all this great stuff about how the Fujitsu ScanSnap is awesome and creates searchable PDFs, and you’re on a Mac and want a portable scanner, so you drop the cash on a ScanSnap S300M.
Then you get it home and find out – wait a minute – the S300M doesn’t come with OCR software! If you’ve been there (and I have), hopefully this post will help you out, as I get a lot of questions about this.
Mail-In Rebate
Your local Fujitsu website may provide a mail-in rebate for OCR software if you purchase the S300M. At the time of this writing, the US Fujitsu websites has a mail-in rebate for a free copy of ReadIris OCR software
The rebate is at http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/rebates.html . Check if your country has something similar.
Acrobat
While the S300M doesn’t come with Adobe Acrobat, if you have a copy of it laying around, or have access to it, you can use the ScanSnap with it. Here is an example of how I use the S300M with Acrobat 8.
Evernote
Evernote Premium allows users to upload PDFs and they will be automatically OCR’ed and made searchable.
DevonThink
If you use a program like Devonthink Pro Office to manage your documents, they will be made searchable.
NeatWorks
NeatWorks is a software that is bundled with the NeatDesk scanner, but it can be purchased on its own. See this post for how to use NeatWorks with the Fujitsu ScanSnap.
These are some ideas for how to make searchable PDFs with the ScanSnap S300M. Do you have any others? Leave a message in the comments.
How To Encrypt Evernote On Mac OSX
January 21, 2010
In yesterday’s post, we discussed how to encrypt your Evernote database on Windows. Today, we will be going through how to do the same thing using Mac OSX. Unfortunately it is slightly more cumbersome, but it is certainly do-able.
Encrypting Text Inside A Note
The “official” way to do encryption in Evernote is to simply encrypt any sensitive text in a note. This is easily done in the Evernote UI
Step 1: Select the text you want to Encrypt.
Step 2: Right-click (or Command-Click) and choose Encrypt Selected Text.
Step 3: Make up a passphrase that you will later use to decrypt this text. Note: This phrase is never sent to Evernote’s servers, and they have no way of retrieving it for you. If you forget it, you are out of luck. Also, this text can not be decrypted in mobile or web Evernote – just in the Mac client.
Step 4: Your text will now show as encrypted in Evernote. To decrypt it, click it and enter your passphrase from Step 3.
Encrypting Your Evernote Database
Here is where things get fun. Evernote itself does not support any database encryption, so what we are going to do is create what is called an encrypted sparsebundle, then move our Evernote database to it, then trick Evernote into looking there for our files instead of in the normal location.
What is an encrypted sparsebundle? Despite the somewhat wacky name, it’s pretty simple. You can think of it as a file that you are going to create on your Mac’s harddrive that your Mac will treat as a drive. You can save and read files to it just like you can a normal drive or USB key.
When you read this it might look kinda technical, but its not that bad. Ready? Lets do it.
Note: You are going to be be moving around your Evernote files. If this scares you, I recommend you don’t proceed. If you delete everything by accident, I am not responsible!
Step 1: Click on Applications, then Utilities and choose Disk Utility
Step 2: Go to File, then New then Blank Disk Image
Step 3: In the Save As field give your file a name, and in the Documents field choose the folder where you want to save it. You can put it on your Desktop if you want.
Step 4: In the Volume Name field, give your image a name. If you’re just going to use it for Evernote you can call it EVERNOTE or something.
Step 5: In Volume Size, you probably want to give it a size that is a bit bigger than your ~/Library/Application Support/Evernote folder. My folder is 310 MB so I am going to make my image 500 MB. Don’t worry about this too too much as our image will automatically grow as needed. Leave Volume Format as MacOS Extended (Journaled).
Step 6: In Encryption, choose either 128 bit or 256 bit, depending on how hardcore you are.
Step 7: In Image Format, choose sparse bundle disk image
Here is what it looks like so far. If yours looks good, hit Create!
Step 8: It will prompt you to create a password and tell you how strong it is. It would be kind of strange to go to all this trouble to encrypt your Evernote and then use a super-weak password, but do what you need to do.
Step 9: Alright! You now have a new encrypted disk image created! If you go to Finder and look at the folder you specified in step 3, you’ll see your new file.
When you double click it and enter the password you created in Step 8, your new image will be mounted like any external drive or USB key.
Step 10: OK, now we need to move your Evernote stuff to your new encrypted image. First, make sure you quit Evernote
Step 11: In Finder, go to your home directory, then Library, then Application Support
Step 12: Drag the Evernote folder from there to your new drive.
Step 13: Make sure the Evernote folder copied over, something like this:
Step 13: Delete the Evernote folder in ~/Library/Application Support
Step 14: Open Terminal by going to Applications, then Utilities, then Terminal
Step 15: Type this, where the capital EVERNOTE is whatever you called it in Step 4, and yourusername is, of course, your Mac OSX username.
ln -s /Volumes/EVERNOTE/Evernote /Users/yourusername/Library/Application\ Support/Evernote
Step 16: Now when you look at ~/Library/Application Support, you should see the Evernote folder there with a little arrow. That means it has a “symbolic link” to the folder in your encrypted image and Evernote will be tricked into thinking it is reading it from the standard place.
Step 17: Alright! The moment of truth! Start up Evernote. Hopefully all your stuff will be there. If so, good job!
One thing to remember about this is that before you start Evernote, you must mount your Evernote sparsebundle that you created, either by double clicking it or adding it to your login items or something. Otherwise, Evernote will not know where to find your files.
Clear as mud? Do you have any other methods you use to encrypt Evernote? Let us know in the comments.
How To Encrypt Evernote On Microsoft Windows
January 20, 2010
One common comment about Evernote is that the service is awesome, but people wish that it supported encryption of notes or notebooks. To address this, Evernote introduced the ability to encrypt text inside a note, but for those that want something a bit more comprehensive, here is a 2 part guide on how to encrypt Evernote.
Today we’ll look at Microsoft Windows, and tomorrow how to encrypt Evernote on Mac OSX.
Encrypting Text Inside A Note
The “official” way to do encryption in Evernote is to simply encrypt any sensitive text in a note. This is easily done in the Evernote UI
Step 1: Select the text you want to Encrypt.
Step 2: Right-click and choose Encrypt Selected Text.
Step 3: Make up a passphrase that you will later use to decrypt this text. Note: This phrase is never sent to Evernote’s servers, and they have no way of retrieving it for you. If you forget it, you are out of luck. Also, this text can not be decrypted in mobile or web Evernote – just in the Windows client.
Step 4: Your text will now show as encrypted in Evernote. To decrypt it, click it and enter your passphrase from Step 3.
Encrypting Your Evernote Database
OK, it’s time to get a little geeky. Evernote itself does not support database encryption, so we are going to use a free program called TrueCrypt to make an encrypted drive that Windows will treat like any other drive or USB key. The difference is, whatever you save to it will be encrypted.
We’re then going to tell Evernote to put our files in there instead of the C: drive.
Ready? Let’s do it!
Note: This involves moving your Evernote files. If you’re not comfortable with that, I recommend you do not proceed. I’m not responsible in the unlikely event that your Evernote files are lost or something.
Step 1: Download and install TrueCrypt. Go to http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads and download the latest Windows version. Save it to your hard drive and install it.
Step 2: Start up TrueCrypt. You’ll see a blank list of drive letters. Click Create Volume.
Step 3: Hit Next for Create an Encrypted File Container and Next for Standard TrueCrypt Volume.
Step 4: Hit Select File and choose where on your hard drive you want your TrueCrypt image to be saved. You can think of it as a container that you are going to put other files into. For simplicity, I will put it on the Desktop and call it EvernoteVolume.
After hitting Save, hit Next when you are back at the Wizard.
Step 5: Choose the type of encryption you want. If you’re not sure, the default should be fine. Just hit Next
Step 6: Enter the size you want your new TrueCrypt drive to be. Obviously you will want to make this somewhat bigger than your existing Evernote database to allow for growth. To find out what your existing database size is, go to Tools and then Options in Evernote and then hit Open Database Folder.
Mine is about 77 Megs so I will put 150 Megs for my TrueCrypt volume. Why not. Hit Next.
Step 7: Enter a volume password that will be used when you mount this drive. It doesn’t make sense to go to all this trouble of encrypting Evernote and then choosing a weak password, so choose a good one. Hit Next.
Step 8: If you know that you need to change the Volume Format, do so here. Otherwise try the defaults.
Step 9: Hit OK and then Exit. You’ve got a TrueCrypt volume! Yeah!!
Step 10: Go back to your main TrueCrypt window where all the drive letters are. Pick which drive letter you will want to use. For this example I will use N, but use what you want.
Step 11: Click Select File and navigate to the file you specified back in Step 4.
Step 12: Hit Mount and enter the password that you created in Step 7.
Step 13: Check your Windows Explorer. You now have a new drive! Yeah!
Step 14: At long last, go into Evernote and got to Tools and then Options. Click Change to change the location of your Evernote files.
Step 15: Navigate to your N drive, or whatever drive letter you chose in Step 10. Hit OK. Evernote will now move all of its files to your new, encrypted drive.
You’re done! Awesome job!
One thing to note about this – from this point forward, you will need to have your TrueCrypt drive mounted before you start Evernote – otherwise Evernote won’t be able to find its files!
Over at 40Tech they have a handy TrueCrypt/Evernote batch file that might make this easier for you. I have not tried it myself, but give it a go if you’d like.
Do you have any other tips for encrypting your Evernote files? Leave them in the comments.
Use The Send To Feature Of Google Reader To Send Things Into Evernote
August 20, 2009
Like many of you I am sure, I use Google Reader to read my RSS feeds. Sometimes when I come across articles that I want to save into my Evernote account, I’d click on the article to open it in a tab, then hit the Evernote clipper button, and so on.
No more. Evernote has come out with a blog post that has a killer tip (to me anyways) for sending the article that you are reading straight into Evernote.
I bring this up not only because it’s cool, but I imagine this tip works with a lot of web apps, not just this one.
To quote Andrew Sinkov:
Why I love this feature
A lot of my web life can be broadly classified as research: recipes, drool-worthy gadgets, lifehacking ideas, articles to read, etc. Much of that stuff enter my consciousness through Google Reader. The usual workflow is something like–see an interesting post, go to the blog, clip it into Evernote for later, return to Reader. Now, I can do everything without leaving Reader. Awesome.
Agreed.
Evernote Premium Now Makes PDFs Searchable
July 28, 2009
Well, that didn’t take long. Just 13 days after my post about making PDFs searchable before uploading to Evernote, they went ahead and added that feature for Premium users yesterday.
Starting now, if you are a premium user and you upload a PDF, Evernote will OCR it on the backend and make it searchable.
If you have non-searchable PDFs already uploaded (and are premium), they are in the process of going through and OCRing them too.
Before you ask, apparently if you upload a PDF that is already searchable, they won’t touch it.
Here’s a quick video about the new feature:
I have heard the lack of this feature mentioned as a drawback of Evernote for ages, so adding it is a great move on their part.
Unfortunately I am not a Premium user so I can’t try this out (I probably should be though). Any Evernote premium users out there want to give it a try and let us know how it works?
ScanSnap Evernote Giveaway
July 15, 2009
Yes, I do realize that this is the second ScanSnap Evernote post in a row. I just realized that I had somehow not blogged about this contest that Evernote is having in July where they are giving away 4 Fujitsu ScanSnap S300 scanners.
Here is how to enter from their blog post:
* Follow @evernote and @ScanSnapIt on Twitter
* Send a public Twitter message to @evernote containing the hashtag #evernote_scansnap
Tweet once per person per week to be entered into that week’s drawing.
The first draw has already been done on July 10, and you can view the awesomely high-tech draw below. There is still time to win the other scanners on the 17th, 24th, and 31st.
Good luck!
OCR Your ScanSnap PDF Before Sending It To Evernote
July 14, 2009
Update: Of course, a few days after I posted this, Evernote announced that they would make PDFs searchable for Premium users. So if you are not a Premium user, this will help. Otherwise, just upload away.
One of the most popular posts on this site is on how to use the Fujitsu ScanSnap with Evernote. It describes how to set up a profile in ScanSnap Manager to send the resulting PDF to Evernote.
There is one problem with doing it this way – Evernote does not OCR PDFs. I assume they’ll be fixing this someday, but for now, if you want your document searchable within Evernote, you need to OCR it before sending it into Evernote.
How you do this depends on which model of the ScanSnap that you have, and whether you have Windows or a Mac.
ScanSnap For Windows
If you have the ScanSnap S300, S510, or S1500, your solution is pretty simple.
What we’re going to do is set Evernote to watch a folder so that anything it finds in there it will automatically import. Then set up ScanSnap to save files to that folder.
- In Evernote, go to File -> Import -> File Import Wizard
- Hit Next and select the Source folder that you want Evernote to watch and set your notebook
- Choose “Watch folder for changes and import files automatically”
Now set up ScanSnap normally to scan to that folder you just selected, and whatever files you save into that folder will be grabbed by Evernote.
ScanSnap S510M or S1500M For Mac
For whatever reason, Evernote for the Mac does not have the Watch Folder functionality that the Windows client does (why not Evernote?!). However, thanks to the magic of Applescript, we can do the same thing.
This will work for the ScanSnap S510M or S1500M.
- Download this file – AddToEvernote.scpt and save it to /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts
- Create or select a folder that you want scanned PDFs to go into. Right-click on it and select More and then Enable Folder Actions
- Right click on the folder again and select More and then Attach a Folder Action. Select the AddToEvernote script that you just saved
Now set up ScanSnap normally to scan to the folder that you just configured. When you add a PDF to it, the Applescript will go through that folder and add the files into Evernote. Handy!
ScanSnap S300M For Mac
For whatever reason (I say that a lot), the ScanSnap S300M does not come with OCR software (why not Fujitsu!?).
However, we’re in luck. Awesome DocumentSnap reader Sebastian Poll wrote this Applescript that will use Adobe Acrobat to automatically OCR the PDF and then kick it straight into Evernote.
Obviously, it requires Acrobat. If you don’t have Acrobat, you can use whatever method you currently use to OCR and then use the AddToEvernote above to import it in.
Note that Sebastian’s version was actually written with some of the code in German. I changed it to English, so if there are problems, it is probably my fault and not his.
- Download this file – OCREvernote.scpt and save it to /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts
- Create or select a folder that you want scanned PDFs to go into. Right-click on it and select More and then Enable Folder Actions
- Right click on the folder again and select More and then Attach a Folder Action. Select the OCREvernote script that you just saved
Now set up ScanSnap normally to scan to the folder that you just configured. When you add a PDF to it, the Applescript will go through that folder and OCR with Acrobat and then add the files into Evernote.
Do you use the ScanSnap with Evernote? Do you have any other methods of making PDFs searchable? Or do you not bother? Leave a message in the comments.
Ask The Readers: Best Windows Document Software?
April 14, 2009
Photo by iwantanimac
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am generally a Mac user. I do have access to borrow a Windows ScanSnap, but my personal ScanSnap is a S300M.
One thing I get asked quite a bit is which software should someone use to manage their PDFs? The ScanSnap comes with ScanSnap Organizer and a trial of Rack2-Filer, but what is the best?
The Mac of course has Devonthink, Yep, and others, but what abut Windows?
Since I don’t personally use Windows for my PDF management, I thought I’d open it up to you. What do you use to manage your documents? Do you use OneNote? Evernote? Your own personal folder structure?
Weigh in and leave a comment and let us all know what you use and why.
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