How to Print Merged Images in Evernote

evernote for genealogy save merge images in notesNeed a better understanding of how to print merged Images in Evernote? Here’s a Q&A from a reader.

Recently I heard from Joe, who was trying to merge screen clips into a single image and note. He found that after he merged the screen clips, “the merged clips appear as one note on the screen. However, when I try to print or save the merged note, only the portion under the cursor is printed or saved. For example, after I right clicked on this obit to ‘Save as,’ only the top or bottom part was saved to another directory on my PC.

How can I make the vertical bar on the right encompass ALL of the merged clips, rather than just one of them, depending on where the cursor is located? Here is an example of my problem. When I print the obit, a small, top portion prints on page 1, then the large, bottom portion prints on page 2. Thanks in advance for your help!”

Here’s how merged images work in Evernote:
Joe clipped the item in pieces. Each piece is an image, and each piece saved as a separate note. Then he merged them all together. “Merge” means they were all put in one note, but it doesn’t mean the separate images were actually stitched together to make one single image.

How to Print Merged Images in Evernote

The end result is multiple images in one note. That’s why when Joe goes to print, Evernote prints each image on one page. Of course, he can always preview how the printing will come out.

How to Print Merged Images in Evernote

How to Print Merged Images in Evernote in a continuous format:
1. After merging the notes into one, click the Share button at the top of the note, and click “Share Note.” This will copy the URL for that note to your computer’s clipboard.

2. Go to you web browser and Paste the URL into the address field

3. With the entire note on your screen, use the Evernote Web Browser clipper to “Clip > Full Page.” This will create a new note with the entire obit in one image.

You can see the difference when you go to File > Print Preview in Evernote for the merged note and then the full page note. The merged note is broken up and the full page note is more continuous like the original obit, and likely over fewer pages. It’s an extra step, but should do the job if you really need the item to be reinstated as one image.

Print Preview full article

Whenever possible clip items from the web using the web browser clipper’s Full Page, or Article feature. It can capture what’s on the page even further down where you can’t see. (The exception would be items that appear in special “viewers” which is how sites like Ancestry display their images. In that case you need to use the Screenshot feature and clip what you can see on the screen, and then move down and clip the next portion separately.)

Thanks to Joe for his question!

Genealogy Gems: Your Ultimate Evernote Education

evernote heroThousands of genealogists use Evernote to keep track of their family history. Because everyone learns differently, I’ve created a variety of helpful resources in video, audio, print and online formats. The Evernote app and software are free to use–and so are many of my tutorials. Click here to learn (for free) how to get started in Evernote and how to access the ultimate Evernote education for genealogists!

 

 

 

 

Tools to Highlight Your Great Genealogy Finds

Snagit and Skitch can help you highlight screenshots and other digital images you capture for genealogy. Here’s how!

snagit skitch great genealogy finds

genealogy gems podcast mailboxRecently Diane from Alberta, CA sent in this question:

“I am trying to find how to highlight a portion of a document such as a birth certificate. The document has three people listed for the county and prior to adding it to my tree on Ancestry, I would like to highlight my ancestor so he will stand out. Can you offer any suggestions. I tried Evernote without success, also my family tree program.  What am I missing?”

I suggested Diane use Snagit 2019, compatible with Windows and Mac software to highlight her documents. In fact, I use it constantly for a variety of genealogical projects. The full-blown software has loads of cool features!

You can also download the free Snagit Chrome extension here. After you install Snagit, you’ll see it show up on your browser page. Here’s what it looks like on Google Chrome (the blue “s” button):
Snagit icon on browser page

 

 

Snagit Sample Thomas Hall census When you see something on your screen you want to capture, just click on the blue “S” icon. You’ll be asked at the outset to give Snagit access to various cloud storage options so it can store the image for you. Once you allow it access, then you’ll be able to name your file and add your own shapes, arrows and text. Use these to call attention to part of a record; annotate what you learned from it or even mark your ancestor’s face in a group photo.

As far as doing something similar in Evernote: Evernote only allows you to highlight typed text, not portions of an image. However, you can download Skitch and drag and drop the document from Evernote into Skitch. Then you can highlight an image to your hearts content. When you’re done you can Save to Evernote in the menu (SKITCH > SAVE TO EVERNOTE).

Share BoldThanks to Diane for a great question! I hope you’ll all share this post: Snagit is free and makes it so easy to take notes on your digital images, for your own use or to share with others!

Resources

How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote

Should Evernote Be My Digital Archive?

Annotating and Transcribing Documents in Evernote (What Evernote Can and Can’t Do for Family History)

How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote

Here’s a simple solution for making additions to an existing web clipping in Evernote.

By CBS Television (eBay item photo front press release) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever clipped something with Evernote and realized after the fact that you would like to copy and paste additional information (such as a genealogical source citation) to the clipping?

Carolyn wrote me recently when she ran into this problem of how to add text to a web clipping in Evernote: “I clipped a wedding document from FamilySearch to Evernote Notebook [and] added URL to dropdown menu. But where can I add the citation that is given on FS document page?

I tried copy/paste but…back at Evernote, nowhere to paste citation.  I like to document everything I use in my family records, so this is important to me…I enjoy using Evernote and following your tutorials that came with my (Genealogy Gems Premium website) membership. I have been using Evernote for just two weeks.”

Carolyn, I’m thrilled to hear that source citation is important to you, because it is the backbone of solid genealogical research! Here’s a simple solution.

How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote:

1. In Evernote, click once on the web clipping in the existing note

2. Press the right arrow key on your keyboard (you will see that now there is a big flashing cursor to the right of the clipped image)

3. Press the Enter key on your keyboard (just like a Return on a typewriter, your cursor has now moved one line below your clipping.)

4. Type or paste copied source citation as desired.

5. Use the formatting options at the top of the note to change the font size, type, and color, etc.

6. Click the INFO icon to see and add more data as desired (such as the original URL of the webpage where you clipped the item.)

How to add text to a web clipping in Evernote

sharing

Click here to learn more about using Evernote for genealogy.

Did you find How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote helpful? It’s easy to share it by clicking any of the social media icons at on this post. And we feel all happy inside here at Genealogy Gems when you do – thanks for being a Gem!

Evernote for Genealogy: Should Evernote Be My Digital Archive?

Evernote digital archive“If I put a PDF copy of a newspaper article or a jpeg photo into Evernote, can I get a copy back? I am putting them there for safe keeping and an easy way to archive them but I want to be able to use them in other places in the future.”

Recently Pam sent me the excellent question above. She’s been using Evernote for a couple of years, she says, “but not very well.” I’ve heard that before! I like how she’s now thinking carefully about not just organizing her genealogy research materials (which is important!) but also digitally archiving them effectively.

As I told Pam, folks have tried to accomplish this in a variety of ways. Here’s my two-cent’s worth on how I look at it.

First, I don’t save newspaper articles to PDF because you have to have a Premium Evernote in order to annotate PDFs and have OCR applied to them. (At least the last time I looked last week.) Personally, I prefer web clipping the article as a note and saving it directly to Evernote.

I haven’t found a simple free way to export a PDF that has been saved to Evernote back out as a PDF. This is a weakness of Evernote. (Click here for a blog post about this.)

organized videoIf you are keen on saving items to PDFs, I would suggest not bothering to store them in Evernote. If you really want a “note” of the item in Evernote, you could use this technique: First, save the PDF to your hard drive (using my Hard Drive Organization Premium Videos).

click_PDFThen right-click the PDF and “Create a Shortcut.” Drag and drop the short cut into a note. Now with one click of the shortcut in the Evernote note, you can instantly open the document on your hard drive and make any additional notations in the note about the item.

If you would rather save the PDF to a cloud service such as Dropbox rather than your hard drive, you can right click the PDF in Dropbox and select “Share Dropbox Link” and then paste that into a note. This, again, gives you one-click access to the item.

I don’t worry about making Evernote the holding tank for absolutely everything. Sometimes other technologies and services are better suited for the task at hand. But it’s pretty easy to create connections so that Evernote is still your central service. There is another alternative called CloudHQ, which can help you export items, but it is a paid service, and I don’t think the value is there for the price when you can use the method I’ve already described.

To get more answers to questions like these about using Evernote for genealogy I invite you to follow this blog.

Resources:

  • Ultimate Evernote Education abbreviatedEvernote for Genealogy Quick Guides for Windows and Mac will help you begin using Evernote immediately and effectively.
  • Become a Genealogy Gems Premium member to access the Ultimate Evernote Education: a series of videos that take you from beginner to advanced user.
  • Click here to find even more resources for using Evernote for genealogy!

Here’s What Evernote Can and Can’t Do for Family History

Evernote_fileRecently Genealogy Gems Podcast listener Rosie wrote in with an Evernote question:

“I really enjoy listening to your podcasts. Thanks so much for all your efforts. As a long time researcher I always wondered how the Hunt family got from New England to Ohio around 1800. Not too long ago another researcher found some autobiographical sketches written by Thomas W. Hunt in the Library of Congress. They posted it on Ancestry.com and another researcher sent me the linkI am still trying to figure out Evernote but I am wondering if there is a way to transcribe the sketches from PDF format with this tool.

Good for Rosie for considering her options for how technology might be able to make the task at hand just a little bit easier!

genealogy transcription to Evernote OCRCurrently you must have an Evernote Premium account in order for your PDF documents to be keyword searchable or to annotate PDFs directly. The pdf document that Rosie was hoping to automatically transcribe with optical character recognition (OCR) is in cursive handwriting. Evernote can apply OCR to simple, clear printing, but it can’t read script, especially fancier writing such as this Thomas Hunt sketch or old German script and handwriting.
That would require ICR, or intelligent character recognition, and that technology is still emerging and isn’t widely available to consumers yet.
The Solution: Evernote doesn’t transcribe documents. To get the genealogical content from the sketches into Evernote, Rosie will need to start a new Evernote note and re-type the documents herself. Once that is done, then Evernote can apply OCR to the note and the typed transcription will be keyword-searchable.
 
A Solution for Type and Printing if you aren’t an Evernote Premium user:
If you are fortunate enough to discover a long-sought after genealogical document such as Rosie did, and your PDF document is typed text or simple, neat printing then you are in luck. There are free conversion tools available online that can do the trick. I use ConvertOnlineFree.com to convert my PDF document to text. I like it because I can use the tool directly from the web without having to download software to my computer.
PDF to Text Converter Evernote OCR
(As with all tools we discuss here you’ll need to do your own homework and decide if it is right for you.)
I simply:

1. click the Choose File
2. select the PDF file I want to convert from my computer
Ultimate Evernote Education abbreviated3. click the Convert button
4. save the converted file to my computer
5. copy and paste the text into a new note in Evernote, and OCR does the rest.

Resources

How to Use Evernote for Genealogy: The Ultimate Education

Evernote for Genealogy laminated quick reference guide, available for for both Windows and Mac users. This guide is handy for everyday reference, and it’s packed with time saving tips you can use every day in your genealogy research.

How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote 

share notes with evernoteIt’s nice to share
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