Source: Wikipedia

I’ve been playing around a bit more with Evernote searching and have found another “JANUSIAN” anomaly. As I explained at the end of my last post, when Evernote does not do what I want, I am patient. I don’t complain. I wait for them to catch up to my expectations. The second face of Evernote/Janus is the functionality coming in the future!

This morning I have been investigating how Evernote plays with Microsoft Word files. Here is an example of some MS Word files that I have stored in a note about how to teach remedial Excel.

*Aside* Remedial Excel is a crash 2 hour course that helps executives who don’t know how to use Excel formulas. As a class, formula-less executives are terrified that people will find out that they don’t know how to create or edit formulas in Excel. So I run this class one-on-one with folks to get them privately up to speed. If you need remedial Excel help, email me. /*Aside

As you can see from the attachments, I have 8 Microsoft Word .docx files in this note. When I open the note, and type in .docx in the search box (upper right) however, only one of the notes is highlited in yellow. Hmmmm….

If I type only “.do” in the search box, every attachment is highlighted … including the .xlsx file and .pptx file … and two occurrences of the letters “do” in the text of the exercise.

 

I would expect Evernote to find all 8 occurrences of .docx inside a note in attachment file names, and Evernote found one. That seems like a break. Turn the other cheek Janus!

And, because Evernote added searching within MS Office documents about a year ago, maybe the Excel and Powerpoint attachments were included because they have “.do” inside. But, when I opened Excel and search for “.do” Excel says: “Excel cannot find the data you are looking for.” This may be a break. Or, it may be that I don’t understand what I’m saying when I search with a leading period in Evernote.

Hypothesis: the period must be altering the search’s meaning. Time to read Evernote’s search grammar … I’ll post anything surprising at a later time.

bill meade