Ideally, it could work like this:
On android app, swipe left or right on a note to mark it as “archived”. On next sync the note is marked as archived on server and deleted from phone. Finally on next desktop sync the note is moved to an archive notebook on desktop and deleted from server.
(That would be case with one mobile and one desktop devices. With more devices the archived note remains on server until it has been deleted from or moved to archive notebook on all devices)
Different users may prefer to have the archive notebook on differnt devices or all devices. The point (for me) of archiving is that there are notes that are better not to carry around but are useful to keep archived just in case.
On another note, I would like to say that I am syncing with nextcloud and everyhting is working surprisingly nicely. The only problem I see is that perhaps React Native is not as native as they advertise it. Opening notes feels sluggish and the side panel is hard to work with. Other than that it’s a dream app. Thanks!
Why would you want to have archived notes on all your desktop devices except the server? What could be a use-case for this?
(I myself am strongly opposed to this idea: I want to know that when I see a note in Joplin, it's also been backed up on my backend and killing my HDD won't ruin my notes.)
perhaps archive notebook is a confusing term.
basically the idea is to define a notebook on one or more devices that are not synced with the rest of devices so that when notes are flagged as “archived” they are moved to these no-sync notebooks and erased from all other notebooks.
it’s a security feature. you set up no-sync notebooks on secured devices and erase notes that you dont need to carry with you while keeping a secured copy
but it may serve other purposes too.
it’s the way i deal with email
Hi
I’m a newbie of Joplin but a long period user of Google Keep.
Archived notes in Keep are no longer visible in the notebooks but they are restorable if needed. It’s a very useful function because it keeps the active notes list shorter.
I could mimic this function with a “Archived” notebook but when I look at “All notes” I retrieved the “Archived” ones too.
A logically separate repository for archived notes should be simpler.
I agree, having it be separate conceptually would be nice. Then they’re not clogging things up but are retrievable later.
Google Keep is exactly what I had in mind when searching for this feature.
A lot of mailboxes and apps have an “archive” button, sometimes as the default over the trash can or deletion. This is no doubt relevant to the sale of storage space once a user hits their free account limit, but I’m the type of person who likes to store everything that isn’t completely useless like spam.
It sure is possible to regret deleting something as well.
I just started using Joplin this week, and I was looking for an “Archive” action button -> Archive folder as well.
As others were expressing, it can sometimes be useful to have notes/folders (such as in this “Archived” notebook concept) not included in a default search, but included in a “Search everything there is” search. Does that make sense?
I had implemented manually a Archive folder, but the searching problem exists, so I have ended up exporting the notes and folders I want “Archived” and then deleting them from the app.
I’d like to add my support for this feature request. Our use case is an institutional knowledge base, and the systems we document change over time.
To invent an example, if we replace a scheduled biannual process on an IIS server with a new one on an Apache server, we don’t want the documentation for the old process to show up in search results, as it would cause clutter and confusion if a new person takes over the system a couple of years from now. However we also don’t want to delete it as we need to keep a history of the application over its lifespan.
An “Archive” flag/tag on notes and a settings option to “include archived in search results” or “search all notes” would be very useful.
My use case for this feature would be the configuration of Auto-Download.
I use Joplin for Lecture notes for University. During these online school terms, I have been saving video lectures as resources for my notes.This means I have single notes with upwards of 1GB of files attached to it. Overall, my notebooks+resources for my courses add up ~30Gb for just this term.
I would like to be able to "Archive" these notes, which forces notebooks to follow a seperate sync profile than standard notebooks.
To me Archiving means:
Dont automatically sync the notes. Download markdown when note opened. Download resource when resource opened.
Dont include in search results. (Maybe add support for search indexing or something for archived markdown ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )
Implementing this goes over my head, but this is what I envision for User experience
My use case for archiving is such:
When I mark a to-do as complete, I'd like it to stick around for a while in case I need to refer to it, but after so much time, it becomes dead wood in the list. At the same time, I'd like to keep it for history purposes.
So, I'd like to be able to set a designated archive folder, either for all notebooks or for individual notebooks, and I would have an auto-archive set that moves completed to-do's after so much time (e.g. 14 days).
Otherwise, to-do's and regular notes could have the option to straightaway move to the designated archive.
I'm not sure I would change how search works, except perhaps for results to mark which entries are archived.
I realize I can create archive folders and move entries there manually, but Joplin automatically doing this would save some work.
I'd like the Archive feature, where I can put my stale notebooks, so they're kept hidden or at least always at the bottom. Example use case: I changed job and I have a notebook with notes from that job and I'd like to Archive them before I create a new notebook for new job.
I use Z_Archive for that. The thing is that notes in there are still synced.
I think Caleb suggested to just export that Archive folder to JEX and remove it. This sounds like a reasonable idea, unless you add notes to the Archive folder every day.
The archiving by export would make sense as long as export takes place directly to Dropbox.
The Archive Vault where you can return and run search would be nice - it can be achieved easily introduce hidden notebooks, that can be unhide from dedicated menu. These as such could be synchronized rarely.
That would take a lot more planning. Exports are not encrypted so you probably don't want to store them on Dropbox directly.
Notebooks that are not synced are technically possible but will be a nightmare in a sense of conflicts. Imagine 2+ devices putting notes in an Archive folder. At one point you activate this Archive folder again (or move notes and folders out of it). It would be a mess.
And then there's search. Such a folder and its contents must be excluded from all searches. Depending how search is implemeneted this can be a performance nightmare.
But you are actually talking about searching the archive, which would mean a separate index (search index, not index on a database table).
There's also no concept of hidden or read-only notes/notebooks, which would also require a lot of development work.
If we had 5-10 devs who worked full time on Joplin, yeah, I think it might be feasible. I highly doubt that this will make it into Joplin anytime soon.
I agree with the principal of keeping the application simple and not spending time on features that don't give a good return on time investment.
If you want to filter out certain notes, then I think allowing mark hidden or even filter by tag might work. Say, have an "archive" tag. You can exclude notes from searches with "-tag:archive" or in preferences check a box that says "hide archived notes". When this filter is on, you would want a visual indicator so that the user knows that some notes are being hidden from view.
Personally , I don't like Archive folder as organize notes by directory structure. Putting them into a flat Archive folder loses that data organization information.
