TextExpander Crossover: Remember everything with Evernote

TextExpander Crossover is a series that explores how TextExpander can help you communicate faster with other apps.

Evernote is one of those amazing apps that means many different things depending on who you talk to. It can be used to take notes at school and work, search for text in images with its built-in OCR, collaborate on research and projects, and share things with the world through public notes.

Many of us at Smile use Evernote in our personal and/or professional lives, and TextExpander can improve almost any Evernote workflow. Here are a few ideas you can use to get your snippet gears turning.

Evernote Template for Meeting Notes

Evernote is a great way to save meeting notes for review and sharing throughout your organization. Instead of typing your note structure over and over with each note, you can save a ton of time by creating a TextExpander snippet of the template you use for meeting notes. With just a few keystrokes, you can create a new note, add a title with the day’s date, and lay out your entire meeting note structure. Boom.

For bonus points, if you use an Evernote shared notebook to collaborate with others, be sure to also share your TextExpander snippet group so you all benefit from note templates.

We’ll get you started with two basic snippets below—one for titling each of your meeting notes with the date, and the other for the actual body of information you need to record. Naturally, feel free to steal these and modify to your organization’s needs and heart’s content.

The note title snippet:

abbreviation: mdate
snippet: Meeting Notes for %e %B %Y

The actual note body snippet:

abbreviation: mnote
snippet:

**Attending**

* name
* name

**Announcements**

Add your meeting summary here.

* Announcement 1
* Announcement 2

**Discussion**

Summarize the discussion for each issue, state the outcome, and assign any action items.

**Roundtable**

Summarize the status of each area/department.

Evernote Template for Research Outline Notes

Whether you’re doing research for a class, a scientific breakthrough, or simply your next HDTV, Evernote + TextExpander snippets can do wonders. Give this one a shot:

abbreviation: rnote
snippet:

I. Introduction

The intro should grab the reader’s attention and move swiftly into the thesis statement, which will condense your overarching argument into a concise, authoritative claim.

II. Body

**1. First Point**

a. (support for your first point with evidence, research, statistics, etc.)

i.
ii.
iii.

b.
c.

**2. Second Point**

a. (support for your second point)
b.
c.

**3. Third Point**

a. (support for your third point)
b.
c.

**III. Conclusion**

**Sources**
- source 1
- source 2

Evernote Templates for Journaling

If you (want to) use Evernote for journaling, the sky is the limit here, and what you journal is incredibly personal. Still, we can get you started with a few ideas and templates from around the community.

The core idea remains the same: anything you want to save in Evernote with any frequency can be turned into a time-saving TextExpander template. Try these for ideas.

A journaling template from Christopher Mayo is a good place to start:

abbreviation: evjournal
snippet:

SCHEDULE / TODO LIST
-

DIARY
-

HEALTH LOG
- Weight:
- Sleep:
- Overall Condition:
- Goal(s):
- Diet:
-
- Workout:
-

RELATED NOTES
-

Alternatively, “bullet journaling” is a relatively new approach that aims to help you journal more regularly while reducing friction. If you like the idea as we’ve summarized it below, you might want to read up at the linked site to learn more about the technique. This will help inform how you’d like to apply it in your journal and as a TextExpander snippet.

In short, bullet journaling is built on the idea that you don’t have to write a novel for every entry. It also leaves the door open for your journal to be any combination of a to-do list, sketchbook, notebook, and diary. To help distinguish between these these types of items in a single journal entry, bullet journaling identifies each with a unique character:

X = Task Complete

> = Task Migrated

\< = Task Scheduled

O = An event

— = Notes (that’s a dash)

There are also characters you can add to give certain items priority or mark items as inspiration. But to get started with bullet journaling in Evernote with a TextExpander snippet, give this a try:

abbreviation: bnote
snippet:

- X
- X
- X

- \>
- \<

- O
- O

- —
- —

TextExpander-Enhanced Apps for iOS

For the mobile iOS warriors in the audience, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the third-party Evernote apps in our TextExpander-Enhanced Apps directory.

See, Evernote for iOS does not have built-in support for TextExpander (yet!), but a number of these specialized Evernote clients do. While you can use our TextExpander keyboard to expand your snippets anywhere on iOS, having TextExpander support built right into apps like FastEver, Textever, and Drafts allows you to get things done even faster.

Go forth and Evernote

We hope this got your gears turning on ways to communicate smarter and remember everything with TextExpander + Evernote. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so catch us on our TextExpander contact page, on Twitter @TextExpander, and LinkedIn.