Virtual Filing
Evernote is becoming the filing cabinet of the virtual world.
By Jerry Durham, PT
In a world of increasing information at your fingertips, the problem of how to gather, sort, and store this information is an issue. For instance, let’s say you find yourself online reading an article about business management and you want to save it with other like-minded articles. Or you are on a trip and want to gather together receipts, with notes regarding meal attendance for submitting expenses. Maybe you want to store the notes you took in anatomy class today and organize them based on body parts. Or, lastly, you are headed on a trip and want to keep your flight information, itinerary, and a backup photocopy of your passport all in one place. If after all that you think, “Wait—I want to be able to share this information too.” You are in luck; Evernote does this for you. I look at Evernote as a filing cabinet for my virtual world, or better yet, a filing cabinet with a search function. Evernote can be used across products—phone, computer, and tablet—and can be synced across all your devices.
The app allows you to take “notes” and send items for storage. What constitutes a note or item? Almost anything: typed text, a webpage or excerpt of one, a photo, voice memo, or even a photo of a handwritten note. Once these items are sent to Evernote, they can be sorted and/or tagged for future reference. The sorting process is aided by the creation of folders with specific themes—these folders represent the app’s real value. I have personally stored all of my research, photos, and information for presentations in Evernote. They are sorted in a folder and can be accessed on any device. Also, once items are in Evernote, they can be edited or comments posted to them. Another value is that items can be emailed directly to Evernote and with the use of keywords in the subject line they will be automatically sorted and can go straight into folders. With the amount of information I access on Twitter, I frequently email articles I find straight from my Twitter app into my folders in Evernote. The search function is incredible and will even search your photos that have writing in them. No document will get lost.
These features only scratch the surface of the app’s capabilities. You will not be disappointed.
Jerry Durham, PT, is a PPS member and a founder and principal of San Francisco Sport and Spine Physical Therapy in San Francisco, California. He can be reached at jerry@sfsspt.com or on Twitter @jerry_durhamPT.