Now that I have EVERYTHING in Dynalist, Iām finding myself going into search a bit more often. Just today, I wanted to find everything tagged with a keyword and copy them and I couldnāt do that as the results page is just a set of links.
In thinking about it further, I can imagine other actions, like DELETE as well as RETAG, etc. I donāt want this to grow into a monster, just saying, clearly as a power user, that as search could be a gateway to some powerful group actions.
1 Like
find everything tagged with a keyword and copy them and I couldnāt do that as the results page is just a set of links.
Thatās not how it works for me. If I ctrl-F and search ātheā, all the items with ātheā appear, as if thats the whole document, then I can select as many items as I want and copy them with ctrl-C. I donāt see any āset of linksā.
There are apparently two types of searches: text and tag. If you search by text, you are correct, itās just a doc. However, if you search by TAG, you get this special link view.
Further research how shown that if click on #sampletag in the left nav pane, I get this unhelpful list view. If I instead search for ā#sampletagā then things are perfect. This means I have a slow, if clunky work around. Which is a step in the right direction!
Given that search by text gives you EXACTLY what Iām asking for, I guess my request is now: Why doesnāt clicking on a tag in the nav window work like a text search for the same tag? @Erica ?
I still canāt get what youāre getting. I just want to satisfy my curiosity. You click a tag and it takes you to a list of links? For me clicking #shopping does the same as searching #shopping.

Ooooooh I see it now. It only happens if you go into āAll tagsā where it searches multiple documents and tries to clip the results of many documents onto the same web page. Iāve probably never seen this weird multi-document search because my personal philosophy is that thereās only 1 universe so there should be only 1 document in oneās outliner. Life is all interconnected so it should all be one heirachy. Things just work better. Searches are nice. Multiple documents yucks my experience up with an unhelpful wall between things. Rant rant ramble ramble.
I think Iām in the minority with my philosophy but for real everyone should take the names of their documents, list them in a new document, zoom into each item and paste the contents of each document under the matching item, then delete all your old documents. Bookmark each zoomed view if you must have a sidebar of air quotes documents. Now your outliner is as the Lord Jesus intended. The only downside is you can only have as many items as your computer has RAM for since it loads it all, but thatās also an upside if you subscribe to the Konmari philosophy of not hoarding things that donāt spark joy.
ā¦and in this proposal the Lord Jesus = Jesse Patel?
1 Like
OK, it has been confusing as Dynalist has these two views (link vs āsearch resultsā). I too donāt use multiple docs, I was just clicking on the ātag viewerā somewhat naively.
So given your feedback George, I did a text search for #sometag and then bookmarked it. This shows up in the nav window as well, but it is JUST as easy to use and it shows the full editable list. Problem solved!
However, I still have a quibble about why the ātag nav windowā has that behavior, but now that Iāve got it figured out, itās not that critical.
1 Like
I think it depends on how you are using tags. If you are using them as a device to filter a dataset then I tend to agree with @BigChungus that it would be best to have them all in one document. On the other hand, if you are using them to group items with the same attributes across different documents I would be more in favour of the existing arrangement i.e. a sort of google search result. It reminds me of the Search v Filter discussion in UX e.g. https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/4752/search-vs-filter-what-is-the-difference
1 Like
Fair enough. My issue with the āsearch results viewā is that it so⦠well, useless. If I want to do anything with any of them, I have to open them 1 by 1. Thereās noting else you can do from the results view, itās only purpose is to link you away.
However, this discussion is moot as there is such a clear workaround: search for your tag using text search. If you do it frequently, just bookmark it.
My only issue is that Dynalist pretty much guides you into using the Tag nav view (if you use tags) and itās not really the most useful way to use tags. (of course, I could be using tags in a very weird way and not know it) But if other people are like me and want to āhoistā their doc by tags and edit/complete/delete them, then the tag nav panel isnāt really helping, itās pulling us users into āfalse pathā that is keeping us from using the app to itās full potential. I didnāt even THINK you searching for tags until @BigChungus suggested it

You can also go into Document tags which works like you want
1 Like
OK, now I officially feel stupid⦠
I disagree. Thanks to you, we now know more about the Dynalist Tag Pane than almost all the humans who have ever lived 