Invasion of the Notes!!! I can't find the real notes anymore because of a thousand copies of not

I have a lot of notes across many notebooks, with many of them tagged to specific Bible verses. Now for some reason I am seeing tons of copies of the notes. For example, I have seven different notes tagged to the Gospel of John as a whole (one on authorship, one on date, one on provenance, and so forth). Now if I open to the Gospel of John, I see those seven notes before the title of the book, and then again after the title of the book, and then again before John 1:1, and then again before each new section of the Gospel of John (John 1:19, 29, 35, etc.), and again before every verse that I have written a comment on. It is hard to find the real comments because I am seeing hundreds of copies of comments attached to the whole book. Is this a glitch that is going to be corrected, or has Faithlife just decided to do notes in a different way that is not going to work with the way I have set up my notebooks?

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Comments

Mark Smith

David, I am not sure what is going on. I wonder if you'd check something?

Go to the Visual Filters icon on your Bible where you are seeing this, click on it and scroll down to the start of the Notes and Highlights section. You'll see something called "No notebook". If that is checked, please uncheck it and see if the spurious note markers disappear. Let me know.

Doc B

I have seven different notes

"...and there before me I saw seven notes, on seven panels, and behold as I looked on, there were seventy times seven notes..."

[6]

David Sloan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1007329#Comment_1007329

Yes, it was checked, but when I unchecked it, nothing changed. I should mention that it varies how many copies I see. So in the NRSV John 1 has 7 notes at the end of the text and then on the next line, at the beginning of John 2 (with only whitespace between those notes and these), there are the same 7 notes repeated, plus the two notes that I have written on John 2:1. But if I look in NA27 or ESV, I have only the 9 notes before John 2:1 and none at the end of the last line of John 1. Ideally I should have just the 2 notes here, and the other 7 all belong at the beginning of the Gospel of John. I don't want to have to look at all 9 notes to figure out which ones actually have to do with John 2:1.

Jesse Blevins

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1007437#Comment_1007437

Yes, I think that it has become obvious that this new note system has some glitches.

Once they get them worked out, I believe that this new note system will be so much better than the previous notes and easier to locate your information.

David Sloan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1007437#Comment_1007437

So far, this problem has not been resolved, and I am finding the new notes system to be rather frustrating. I want to go back to Logos 7! Even creating new notes is more difficult. I used to be able to add a note to a notebook simply by having that notebook open and right-clicking on a verse and choosing "Add a Note to [notebook name]." Now I have to do an extra step, and I have a hundred different notebooks, so it is not just opening the dropdown and selecting the notebook I want, but searching the notebooks for the proper one and then selecting it. And I have to do this for every new note!!! Typically I am just working in one or two notebooks at a time, and Logos 7 made this easy. I have yet to find a single advantage of Logos 8, and the disadvantages are quite frustrating and time-consuming!

Mark

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011396#Comment_1011396

So far, this problem has not been resolved, and I am finding the new notes system to be rather frustrating. I want to go back to Logos 7! Even creating new notes is more difficult.

So far I am also feeling a bit frustrated and unsure about the new notes system. I have not yet had time to spend to understand it better, but I did look at the videos, so I have a basic understanding of them. The new note system seems to be overly complicated when all I want is simplicity.

I am willing to wait it out (actually we have no choice) and hope that it will all make sense and be what Logos and beta testers have said it would be

David Taylor, Jr.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011396#Comment_1011396

So far, this problem has not been resolved, and I am finding the new notes system to be rather frustrating. I want to go back to Logos 7! Even creating new notes is more difficult. I used to be able to add a note to a notebook simply by having that notebook open and right-clicking on a verse and choosing "Add a Note to [notebook name]." Now I have to do an extra step, and I have a hundred different notebooks, so it is not just opening the dropdown and selecting the notebook I want, but searching the notebooks for the proper one and then selecting it. And I have to do this for every new note!!! Typically I am just working in one or two notebooks at a time, and Logos 7 made this easy. I have yet to find a single advantage of Logos 8, and the disadvantages are quite frustrating and time-consuming!

I can't speak to the multiple notes. I am not seeing that behavior and did not see that behavior in any of the beta period.

However, you can simply add a note to a notebook the same way you describe in L8. If you have a notebook open, and right click a passage and click "Add Note" it adds it to the appropriate notebook. Just curious, what are you using notebooks for in L8. There is less need for Notebooks depending on what you are doing.

David Sloan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011400#Comment_1011400

If you have a notebook open, and right click a passage and click "Add Note" it adds it to the appropriate notebook.

It appears to me that it makes the note, but not in my notebook. (How would it even know which notebook I want something in?) I have different notebooks on different topics. So, for example, I am working on a book on personal eschatology, and I have a notebook titled "Hell," in which I have hundreds of notes that I have written as I have studied the topic. Some of these notes are anchored to Bible verses, some to pseudepigraphal literature or passages in the church fathers, some to books that are in my library, and some are not anchored to anything. When I actually write that chapter, I want to be able to open my "Hell" notebooks, and see everything that I designated for that discussion. Previously I could keep my "Hell" notebook open and also have my "Sloan Bible Notes" notebook open and my "Synoptic Problem" notebook open at the same time and switch between the three (or others of my hundred notebooks). Now it is quite difficult to navigate. Maybe this is that I spent years adapting my note-taking method to the old note system, but at this point I am not sure it is worth it to me to switch to the new system. I am tempted to return Logos 8 (making it the first version since I have not purchased in over a decade) and download the Logos 7 engine again.

Unfortunately, the original problem I mentioned here started showing up in Logos 7 as soon as Logos 8 came out. It seems to be a bug where if an entire biblical book is an anchor for a note, that note shows up in every section of that book, which is very frustrating because I often have 7 or 8 notes anchored to a book rather than to a specific verse within the book.

David Taylor, Jr.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011435#Comment_1011435

If you have a notebook open, and right click a passage and click "Add Note" it adds it to the appropriate notebook.

It appears to me that it makes the note, but not in my notebook. (How would it even know which notebook I want something in?) I have different notebooks on different topics. So, for example, I am working on a book on personal eschatology, and I have a notebook titled "Hell," in which I have hundreds of notes that I have written as I have studied the topic. Some of these notes are anchored to Bible verses, some to pseudepigraphal literature or passages in the church fathers, some to books that are in my library, and some are not anchored to anything. When I actually write that chapter, I want to be able to open my "Hell" notebooks, and see everything that I designated for that discussion. Previously I could keep my "Hell" notebook open and also have my "Sloan Bible Notes" notebook open and my "Synoptic Problem" notebook open at the same time and switch between the three (or others of my hundred notebooks). Now it is quite difficult to navigate. Maybe this is that I spent years adapting my note-taking method to the old note system, but at this point I am not sure it is worth it to me to switch to the new system. I am tempted to return Logos 8 (making it the first version since I have not purchased in over a decade) and download the Logos 7 engine again.

The notebook has to be open in the notes tool in order for the note to be automatically filed. And yes, you can no longer have multiple notebooks open so in that sense it is different. But it seems like the answer might be to switch to tagging for topics vs separate notebooks.

Adam Borries (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011435#Comment_1011435

David, I'm sorry for the trouble. I agree the new Notes needs some tweaking, which we are working on.

f an entire biblical book is an anchor for a note, that note shows up in every section of that book

I did some light testing, and confirmed that if a note is anchored to a book, it appears at the beginning of every chapter/article. I'll have the team take a look.

the problem started showing up in Logos 7 as soon as Logos 8 came out.

Are you quite sure about that? I don't mean to doubt, but knowing whether this was an existing issue in Logos 7's old notes might help us track down the problem.

Previously I could keep my "Hell" notebook open and also have my "Sloan Bible Notes" notebook open and my "Synoptic Problem" notebook open at the same time and switch between the three (or others of my hundred notebooks).

Regarding notebooks: I realize we need to make some improvements here as well. Can you help me understand why you keep multiple notebooks open?

What do you use notebooks for?
What task are you doing that requires quickly assigning new notes to different notebooks?
If there was a new mechanism to satisfy the same underlying need, would that work for you?

Understanding the core problem you are trying to solve will inform our design for the new Notes tool.

David Sloan

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011466#Comment_1011466

I did some light testing, and confirmed that if a note is anchored to a book, it appears at the beginning of every chapter/article. I'll have the team take a look.

Thank you!

the problem started showing up in Logos 7 as soon as Logos 8 came out.

Are you quite sure about that? I don't mean to doubt, but knowing whether this was an existing issue in Logos 7's old notes might help us track down the problem.

I cannot say for 100% certain when I first saw it, but I am pretty confident that one of the last times that I was on Logos 7 I saw this. There was a series of events that led to this, and I cannot say when it first happened, but I am pretty sure I was still in Logos 7. I have used notes in Logos 7 for the last couple years and never saw this problem before, so it was not a problem in Logos 7 ... at least up until the last release. Somewhere in the following process, though, I noticed the duplicaiton of notes:

I became a Faithlife Connect member a couple weeks ago
I got the subscriber-access update to Logos
My computer started running the Logos 8 engine

It may have been in stage 2 here, when I was still running the Logos 7 engine, but after I had followed the link for the subscriber-access update. But like I said, I cannot remember for sure.

Regarding notebooks: I realize we need to make some improvements here as well. Can you help me understand why you keep multiple notebooks open?

What do you use notebooks for?

What task are you doing that requires quickly assigning new notes to different notebooks?

If there was a new mechanism to satisfy the same underlying need, would that work for you?

Understanding the core problem you are trying to solve will inform our design for the new Notes tool.

I like to have multiple notebooks open for multi-tasking. I find that often when I am researching one topic, I stumble across an important point for another topic, so I add a note to that second notebook, but I want to then go back to my original notebook. In Logos 7, that was easy. In Logos 8, I have now lost the place in my original notebook where I was working because I opened a note in the second notebook. I like the added search capabilities for notes, but I don't like that I now have to do a search to find the note I was working on just before I switched to another topic.

As I shared above, I have tons of notebooks. I have a notebook with general information about the church fathers and a notebook with information about who's who among the early rabbis and how each particular rabbi is dispositioned toward Christianity. Meanwhile I have a notebook with general notes on the Bible but another notebook specific to the synoptic problem and one devoted to Paul's conception of "the gospel." I have a general notebook on Eschatology, and another more specifically on "Hell." It sounds like tagging is the new way to do that, and it might even be a better way. The problem is that right now I know I can open my notebook on one of these topics and successively read my notes and know that all of my thoughts on this topic are recorded in that notebook. If I could automatically apply a tag (e.g., Synoptic Problem, Church Fathers, Hell) to every note in a particular notebook, then maybe I wouldn't need the old notebooks anymore (I could search for a particular tag instead of scanning a particular notebook). But I have been building these notes over years and have not tagged them in this way up to now.

David Taylor, Jr.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011473#Comment_1011473

If I could automatically apply a tag (e.g., Synoptic Problem, Church Fathers, Hell) to every note in a particular notebook, then maybe I wouldn't need the old notebooks anymore (I could search for a particular tag instead of scanning a particular notebook). But I have been building these notes over years and have not tagged them in this way up to now.

Hey David, the good news is that you CAN automatically bulk tag notes within notebooks. Open a notebook, select the notes within the notebook you want to tag and then you will see the bulk action dialogue appear on the right side of the tool.

Note: You can only select up to 50 at a time, but you can scroll down as they load and shift + click to select more as they are loaded into the window until you have the entire notebook. Hope that helps.

Adam Borries (Logos)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1011473#Comment_1011473

I stumble across an important point for another topic, so I add a note to that second notebook, but I want to then go back to my original notebook. ... It sounds like tagging is the new way to do that, and it might even be a better way.

Thanks, David, that's really helpful. We'll keep that in mind as we work on improvements to notes organization. Yes, tagging might be a good alternative (see David Taylor's comment for bulk tagging) in the meantime. Another workaround is to keep the "original" notebook selected, add your note, and set the notebook for that note at the top of the note edit pane. Not perfect, but not too far from your previous workflow.