Going Paperless Quick Tip: Clipping Email with the Evernote Web Clipper

I was recently asked if there was a way to automatically eliminate the header information you get in a note when you forward an email message to your Evernote account. The short answer is to use the Evernote Web Clipper. This solution really only works if you are using Gmail, which I do. That said, if you have Evernote installed on a Windows machine and use Outlook, you can use the Outlook plug-in for Evernote to get some of this functionality.

I imagine that many Evernote users are familiar with the Web Clipper for clipping pages from the web, marking them up, and saving them to Evernote. But if you use Gmail, and have a message window open, when you click on the Web Clipper you will have an option to clip the email message you are looking at. Here is what it looks like:

Here is how it works: Select the message you want to clip in Gmail and then click the Evernote Web Clipper icon in the toolbar in your browser (I use Google Chrome). What you will see is something like the image above.

1. Choose the Email clipping option. When you clip a Gmail message with the Web Clipper, you will see 2 options: Email or Screenshot. Select the Email option. (This is usually the default option for email.)

2. Select the messages you want to clip. In Gmail, messages are threaded. The web clipper gives you the option to select which message(s) in the thread you want to clip. It also makes it easy to clip all of the messages at once.

3. Mark up the message. Use the standard markup tools to mark up the message: highlight, draw arrows, annotate with text, etc.

4. Tag and file the message. Choose the notebook in which to save the message, and add tags, if desired.

5. Save or share the message. Click the Save button to save the email message to Evernote. You can also click the Share button to share the message with others.

Clipping email messages using the Web Clipper doesn’t add any of the forwarding headers that forwarding a message often adds, which is nice. It also makes it easy to tag and file email messages. And being able to mark up the messages is a nice bonus.

Some email messages I receive get automatically sent to Evernote without me having to do anything. But I tend to use the Web Clipper to clip one-off email messages. For example:

• Confirmations of charitable donations.
• Travel confirmations or itineraries.
• Email messages that I want to convert to reminders.

I find the Web Clipper incredible useful, fast, and easy in situations like these.

If you have a suggestion for a future Going Paperless post, let me know. Send it to me at feedback [at] jamietoddrubin.com. As always, this post and all of my Going Paperless posts is also available on Pinterest.

Last week’s post: 3 Ways I Capture Where I’ve Been with Evernote.