managing vast quantities of user data

[Kristin]

Hi @mgvh,

Thank you for the clarification. Your instructions got me to the right point, but it was not able to export and gave me a warning box saying it cannot export more than 1000 verses to RTF. So I think that will work with smaller notes, but not this really large one. I think I just need to focus on splitting it up internally in Accordance before I do anything further. Then after that I will find a more practical way to organize academic research, as I have now learned that Notes is obviously not designed for it.

[mgvh]

9 hours ago, Kristin said:

Hi @mgvh,

Thank you for the clarification. Your instructions got me to the right point, but it was not able to export and gave me a warning box saying it cannot export more than 1000 verses to RTF. So I think that will work with smaller notes, but not this really large one. I think I just need to focus on splitting it up internally in Accordance before I do anything further. Then after that I will find a more practical way to organize academic research, as I have now learned that Notes is obviously not designed for it.

Well... that's good to know that the RTF export has a 1000 verse limit. I'll have to rethink what I am doing in Note.

I really hope Accordance makes some improvements on the Notes functioning and its exportability.

[Fabian]

16 minutes ago, mgvh said:

Well... that's good to know that the RTF export has a 1000 verse limit. I'll have to rethink what I am doing in Note.

I really hope Accordance makes some improvements on the Notes functioning and its exportability.

Yes, as User Notes are our own ©!

[jlm]

I’m another user who keeps my notes mainly outside Accordance. One reason for this is that I came to Accordance from BibleWorks, and so keep on mind that one day my favorite Bible software may no longer be available. So I want an exit strategy for whatever tool I’m using to keep notes. At present, it’s Bear, which is only available on Apple platforms. It has nested tags, so I can tag a note #Bible/Is/53/3 or #Josephus/War/6/353. I can link back to Accordance with the accord: scheme. External notes work well for me also because most of my notes are not about single verses.

[Joe Weaks]

7 hours ago, jlm said:

I’m another user who keeps my notes mainly outside Accordance… At present, it’s Bear,

Bear is a great notes app solution, because all of the notes are actually stored as plain text files (which means ultimate portability).

[Fabian]

On 9/11/2021 at 10:42 PM, jlm said:

I’m another user who keeps my notes mainly outside Accordance. One reason for this is that I came to Accordance from BibleWorks, and so keep on mind that one day my favorite Bible software may no longer be available. So I want an exit strategy for whatever tool I’m using to keep notes. At present, it’s Bear, which is only available on Apple platforms. It has nested tags, so I can tag a note #Bible/Is/53/3 or #Josephus/War/6/353. I can link back to Accordance with the accord: scheme. External notes work well for me also because most of my notes are not about single verses.

I see your point and I know the ex BW users profit of the NON encryption of their notes in BW. To go to another Bible Software from Accordance or L is much harder, as they encrypted the user Notes. Both companies try a lock in for their users.

[jlm]

4 hours ago, Fabian said:

I see your point and I know the ex BW users profit of the NON encryption of their notes in BW. To go to another Bible Software from Accordance or L is much harder, as they encrypted the user Notes. Both companies try a lock in for their users.

I don’t mind storing my notes on a proprietary format. Encryption could even be a good thing, since I sync my Accordance user files to Dropbox. All I ask is that I be able to export all my notes to some well-documented format that I will be able to import into the next system I use.

[Clint Cozier]

Let me point out that if you separate your notes (Joe's .txt file answer), there are lots of options for searching and organizing. As someone who has migrated my BibStudies software several times, it makes sense to me to make my notes app agnostic which happens when you make them as separate text files. You can also use DevonThink to search them which is like Mac Spotlight on steroids. Of late I've been working with Obsidian, which allows bi-directional linking of notes. You can even place Obsidian inside DevonThink so that you can use either / both on the same body of notes. There are so many great options out there, I'd rather see Accordance work on opening up and working with other external programs for user notes. Once you understand what bi-directional linking can do and how it works, there is no turning back.

[Kristin]

4 hours ago, jlm said:

I don’t mind storing my notes on a proprietary format. Encryption could even be a good thing, since I sync my Accordance user files to Dropbox. All I ask is that I be able to export all my notes to some well-documented format that I will be able to import into the next system I use.

 

4 hours ago, Clint Cozier said:

As someone who has migrated my BibStudies software several times, it makes sense to me to make my notes app agnostic which happens when you make them as separate text files.

 

Hi @jlm and @Clint Cozier,

I understand what you are both saying, and honestly, I think all of us who came from Bible Works are a bit skittish. That said, I am trying to export my data to serve as a backup and in order to access it in a practical way. I don't really need it in an "input format" as I am keeping everything in Accordance.

 

I am not too familiar with that RF... whatever it was, that thing that leads to html, or with txt files, just a little bit with User Bibles, and my experience with these formats from User Bibles is that while they are good for editing and such, they are pretty rough and don't really serve for much than that until they are imported

In my perfect world I would be able to export Notes to Mac Numbers. I have started doing this as I have discovered that a lot of my notes really need to be in a table format to organize it, but it is turning into a fairly overwhelming task. Copying and pasting each note for each verse by hand is taking close to forever.

 

It would be helpful if in the future Accordance provided an "export to Numbers" option.... which of course, would copy the whole note and not just the first 1,000 verses.

Take care,

Kristin

[Fabian]

7 hours ago, jlm said:

I don’t mind storing my notes on a proprietary format. Encryption could even be a good thing, since I sync my Accordance user files to Dropbox. All I ask is that I be able to export all my notes to some well-documented format that I will be able to import into the next system I use.

I'm not against the encryption. I only wanted fully point out it should be easy to take our notes outside from our Accordance.