Using tags in for documents is a great way to make them searchable in unorganized piles of documents.
The problem is that different applications store the tags in different metadata formats. The tags in a Word document emailed to you won’t necessarily show up when you search your email.
The solution is ridiculously simple: write the tags in your documents.
Since almost all decent search features support searching inside documents, it will find the words.
Regardless on which platform and in which application the document was created (provided it’s on of the standard text document types) it will searchable in any environment.
When I have a miscellaneous note of some kind, with no obvious place or category, and I’m not sure I’ll find it where I put it – I just add some extra tag words at the end of the document. For clarification and consistency i preface the words with “tags: ”
As with all tags I include related words not in the text already as well as alternate spelling of names.
The documents are in a folder named Notes full of miscellaneous crud.
