How to Use Evernote for Genealogy and Family History: Handwriting, OCR, Video and Upload Answers
Channel: Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems
Date: 2015-03-05

How to Use Evernote for Family History: OCR & Handwriting, Uploading Data, and Videos. These days Evernote is the tech tool of choice for genealogists who want to capture, organize and store their research notes. Every time I teach a class on using Evernote for genealogy, a round of excited follow-up questions follows. And today we’re going to answer some of the most common questions. 

Let’s start off with two great questions I received from Karen who listens to the Genealogy Gems Podcast:  She writes:

Q: The handwriting app on my phone is way cool, yet Evernote doesn’t seem to recognize any of the words. I thought it would apply OCR to the handwriting. Is that just a premium feature?

A: The OCR that Karen is referring to is Optical Character Recognition, which allows Evernote to read the text that appears in your images and web clippings. It can read handwriting, but the key is to print clearly. OCR can’t read cursive. 

Also, if you created your handwritten note and then immediately tried to search for a keyword, (and the note was printed clearly) it may not have found it because you searched before it had a chance to sync through the cloud and apply OCR. If you’re in a hurry, click the SYNC button in Evernote. Also, Premium accounts sync and apply OCR faster than free ones.

Here’s Karen’s next question:

Q: My husband has a single note file that he has been putting all his daily notes in for years – currently about 14mb. Once he has uploaded that file, then when he makes additional notes to it each day, will he be “charged” for the entire file being saved again or just the incremental portion?

A: No he won’t be using 14 MB of upload each time he saves it. The key here is “upload.” You’re charged uploading (not financially charged but rather the file size being deducted from the monthly upload allowance) for the first time you upload the item to Evernote. If he adds a paragraph that is 1kb of text to the note the next day, he will only have 1kb deducted from his monthly upload.

Now, one word of caution: if he has a desire to someday publish a book or some other project with his daily notes, I really wouldn’t recommend Evernote. As you saw, the export file types are limited, and it does not export directly to Word or .txt. However, if he just wants it for his one record keeping, I think Evernote is a great solution.

Do you have old home movies, footage of oral history interviews or any other type of family history video to keep track of? I recently heard from Ricky with this question:

Q: How do I add video to Evernote?

Well, thankfully, it’s easy to add video to Evernote!

On your computer simply:
1. Open Evernote.
2. Click New Note button.
3. Open Windows Explorer and resize so you can see both the window and Evernote.
4. Locate the desired video on your hard drive.
5. Click on the video and drag and drop it on to the new note.
That’s it!
You can also add video that you’ve taken with your mobile device if you have the free Evernote app installed:
1. Just locate the video (for example on the iPhone open Video app).
2. Tap Share icon.
3. Select Email.
4. Start to type “ever” and your unique Evernote email address associated with your Evernote account should auto-fill.
5. And then Tap Send.
This will send the video to Evernote as a new note. Keep in mind that video files are very large so take up a lot of your monthly upload limit. If you are a Premium Member, that’s not so much of a problem.
Do you need help with using Evernote for your family history? My Evernote for Genealogists quick reference guide is available for both Mac and Windows users (you’ll want to grab the one that goes with your desktop computer’s operating system). Get the guide at http://shop.lisalouisecooke.com/ 

And our Genealogy Gems Premium members at our website genealogygems.com get exclusive access to y full-length videos on how to use Evernote for family history, topic like:
• How the Genealogist can Remember Everything with Evernote ;
• How to Organize Your Research with Evernote 
• Making Evernote Effortless
• Collaborative Genealogy with Evernote 
• Using Evernote to Create a Research Plan

Not a Premium member yet? The Evernote video series alone makes Premium membership worth the low annual fee, but you get SO much more including over 100 exclusive podcast episodes only available to Premium members. So visit my website and click Premium in the menu to join us over at Genealogy Gems. 

If you have a question about finding your family history, click the Contact button while you’re at the website and send me your question. You might just get your answer right here on the Genealogy Gems YouTube Channel. Thanks for listening friend, I’ll talk to you soon!