Evernote is a great tool for collecting stuff, but it’s also useful place to dump ideas and write quick notes to yourself. But there’s no easy way to do the latter. Here’s the best approach I can find, which involves using a tool I already use: Launchy.
1.
You need to install the excellent desktop tool Launchy first. (Launchy is a great tool for quickly loading programs, websites or files.)
2.
Find and copy the email address that Evernote provides for you to email stuff to your account. It’s probably in the settings page, towards the bottom right hand side:
(It’s usually your username, a period, then some digits, followed by @m.evernote.com)
3.
Pull up Launch (usually Alt and F12) and open the options window in Launchy (right click on the window and select options):
4.
Go to the Plugins tab and click on Weby:
5.
In the list on the right, click on the + button at the bottom:
6.
In the Name field in your new entry, type in the word that you want to use to add an Evernote entry (I use idea but it could be anything). In the next field type in mailto: and then paste your Evernote email address. If you want to include a default title for your note—say, idea–add ?subject=idea immediately after the email address. Like this:
mailto:xxxxxxxx.87234@m.evernote.com?subject=Idea
7.
Click on OK.
8.
Bring up the Launchy window again, type in the word you chose to activate the function, and hit enter.
9.
Your default email program should now load a fresh email with the Evernote address in, the title you’ve assigned in the Subject field, and the cursor in in the body.
10.
Type your note and then send it. It should appear in the web version of Evernote and, when next you sync with your offline Evernote program, appear there too.
I’m sure there’s an easier way to do this, but I find it works, especially with something relatively light like Thunderbird.
Filed under: medium
This is pretty cool, and I love Launchy, but there is a keyboard shortcut for creating a new note — ctrl + alt + N. You just need to have Evernote running. It seems to be a better solution than emailing and syncing.
Alyssa, thanks for this, and good point. It’s a simpler way of doing it. Though I find that as the Evernote database gets bigger, it’s not always useful to have it open. So long as you’re using a light email client, sending yourself a note seems to be faster and smoother..
Horses for courses I guess..
Look at this!
http://lifehacker.com/5190601/email-yourself-reminders-from-launchy
Evernote now has a scripting program, enscript.exe that might be able to integrate with launchy nicely. I’m trying that now.
Grant, and how can we use enscript?