A helpful and often overlooked feature of Evernote is the personal email address every user gets with their Evernote account. Any emails you send to that address go straight to your account as a new note.
Ever get an email that’s more “documentation” and less “conversation?” This is where Evernote’s personal email address comes to the rescue.
Get the Gist
- File important information trapped in an email.
- Receipts
- Registration information
- Project documentation and notes
- Travel info
- How I use it
- Contact in all my address books
- Email filters for automated filing
- A few caveats
What Do I Use It For?
Receipts
Have you tried buying something online and have them email you a receipt? I forward it to my Evernote account for filing. I tag with the appropriate client and/or tax information when appropriate.
Registration Information
Registration and other email confirmations: Forward it to Evernote for central filing. I could use tags here but I’ve found, in this case, search works well enough to find any registration information as needed. I have an archive notebook for “long-term storage.”
Project Documentation and Notes
Often, good project notes and ideas are passed around via email instead of central documentation. It’s a bad idea but impossible to stop. When it happens I forward that info to Evernote where I already keep meeting notes, audio recordings, scanned documents, etc related to a project. From there I have a notebook per client or major project and any tags as needed.
Travel
Your flight information and other trip itineraries: I forward to Evernote where I have one notebook devoted to travel. Since Evernote has offline notebooks available on my phone, iPad and notebook I don’t have to worry about an internet connection or wait for downloads.
How Do I Use It?
Address Book Contact
My personal Evernote address is a contact in all of my address books, in particular email. It works for text messages too so I keep it in my phone’s contacts.
Email Filters (Rules)
I have rules and filters set up in my email to automate some of the linking to Evernote. Filters capture any recurring statements and automatically forwarded them to Evernote. I have another filter to look for receipts and payment confirmations and forward those to Evernote.
Specify Tags and Notebooks
Make filing easy by adding tags and the target notebook when you send the email by including them in the subject. See Evernote’s excellent help guide for more details. [LINK]
Keep Your “Private” Address Private
Evernote took the effort to make your address “private,” or at least not obvious. Don’t ruin it by sharing it with others. If including it in an email to others, be sure to add it to the BCC. Or, do like I do, and make a point of having my personal Evernote address the only recipient of the email. Nothing is worse than spam filling up your Evernote account.
There you have it. Never lose important documentation again while trying to have a conversation. And keep important information at your fingertips instead of searching through email.
How do you use your Evernote email address?
Additional Resources
All Things Dave 