Evernote has saved my bacon more than once, which makes it well worth the investment, whether you are using the free account or one of the paid options.

What Is Evernote?

Evernote is a searchable database of anything you want to remember. Their icon, the elephant, is appropriate, because Evernote remembers everything you put in it. And quite unlike my brain, it is easy to retrieve stored information from it!

You can download Evernote onto your computer (either Windows or Mac), and you can get a mobile app for just about any device you might have. And all the information entered on one device synchs to all the others.

How I Use Evernote

On the Internet — I have the Evernote extension installed in all the Browsers I use. When there is something on a page that I want to remember, I click the elephant icon in the toolbar at the top of the page and save it. I can save the whole page, just the primary article on the page, a link to the page, or just a screen shot of a section of the page.

One of the things I do regularly is to capture a screen shot of a receipt, whether it is for something I’ve purchased or a payment I’ve made.

On the Go — I lose things. All. The. Time. One of my favorite uses for Evernote is snapping pictures of things, from appointment cards that show the next doctor’s appointment, to product/price information at the store, to somebody’s business card, to the receipt from Staples that shows a business expense. Whatever I know I’m going to need goes into Evernote.

Down the Road — Sometimes I know that I’m going to need a particular document at a later date when I’m not at my computer. Like the itinerary with the flight numbers, or the agenda for a workshop with times and locations of different meetings. Evernote allows me to email that type of information — with attachments! Then it is there, waiting for me when I need it.

How to Manage All That Information

Evernote allows me to organize my information with as much granularity as I want. I could go crazy with notebooks (where you file individual notes) and tags, or I could let everything sit in one huge notebook. It doesn’t really matter, because of the search capabilities built into the program.

For me, the most incredible thing about Evernote is its ability to search the text in anything — any document or note or image. Yep. That’s right — even if you snap a picture of a business card, all that text is searchable.

For example, let’s suppose I needed to call the plumber. I don’t even have to remember the name of the company. If the word “plumber” is on the card, Evernote will pull it up for me when I search. Pretty amazing.

What Does It Cost?

Evernote has three pricing plans, Free, Plus, and Premium. Each level, of course, has different benefits. I have the Premium account, which costs about $50/year, and I couldn’t live without it. …Well, I could, but I’d rather not!

Do you have Evernote? What is your favorite feature?