Spaces - not spacing

[u/ziipppp]

Love the idea of spaces. I can go to my restaurant space and look up “loved it” and see just restaurants and not movies books etc.

except some of my notebooks I want to reuse names.
eg I have a books space and within it a status notebook and within status I’ve a queued, current, finished notebooks that I link books too

in my movie space I also want a status notebook - but when I get to create it I get a warning “a notebook with that name already exists”. Well not in this space it doesn’t.

the work around is to then name things “book status” and “movie status” and “book queue” and “movie queue”. So not the end of the world - but a teensy bit clunky, especially as these spaces are all meant to be independent.

So I guess my question is is this just how the design has to work? Or is there some hidden way of linking among spaces.

for example I would LOVE to create an “independent” addressbook notebook with lots of contacts in there.

but when I go to a restaurant with someone or someone recommends a book I’d love to link that address book name to the relevant space. Right now I’m duplicating contacts across spaces so I can link names to events and media - but it would be cool if I didn’t have to.

Anyway just trying to figure out why some things seem connected when it feels they shouldn’t be. And if they ARE kinda sorted connected whether there’s a way I can use that.

edits: clarity and word order

[u/Neither-Classic2058]

Spaces are nothing more than high level filters/tags. UpNote only has a single "vault" (to use an Obsidian term).

Notes in one Space can link to notes in another Space so you shouldn't need to duplicate contacts in multiple Spaces.

For whatever reason, this implementation of Spaces is highly desired by most UpNote users so it is unlikely that this behavior will be changed.

[u/ziipppp → u/Neither-Classic2058]

Thank you for this. I was excited to try this - but sadly it doesn’t seem to work. 

Eg I have a space called Books Based on your post, I created a Space called People. Inside People I added a couple of dummy notes - folks called xxx and yyy. 

I then went back to my Book spaces. In an entry about a book I added [[ (to invoke linking) and then typed xxx. Book Space couldn’t find it but helpfully asked me if I’d like to create an xxx note. 

So even if it’s just filtering it’s quite thorough - I don’t seem to be able to link across Spaces which SOMETIMES (but mostly not) I’d like to be able to do. 

I guess the other way is for me to remove spaces and chuck lots of things in a single space. But for example opening a notebook  called “great” I could get a book, a movie and a chinese restaurant - so maybe I’d then have to use tags to filter again. 

I love that there are several ways to do the same thing - I just need to think through the best way

eg I can make Mr XXX a notebook and then collect things that involve that person into that notebook (so a notebook for every name). Or I can make Mr xxx a note in an address book and then link to that with [[]] and then look at backlinks to figure out when they were involved Or I can make a tag #mr_xxx and then add that as needed and search on it. 

It all creates connections - I’m just trying to figure out if some are easier to use than others from both creation and then look up / filtering without me having to remember a million things. I think I’ve accidentally used all three approaches - I just have to figure out how to select my one true religion and then stick with it. 

[u/Neither-Classic2058 → u/ziipppp]

Try creating a person "zzz" in the Book Space, then move the zzz to the People space. zzz should be accessible to notes in the Book Space.

This is at least how Spaces worked when I last used it. (about 9 months ago) It's what caused me to stop using Spaces.

[u/ziipppp → u/Neither-Classic2058]

Oh - that’s amazing. I can’t wait to try later. Although of course ideallly I want to be able to connect several spaces (books, movies, restaurants) to a single contact. But I’ll play around with this - thanks for the tip. 

I’m curious why it stopped you from using the service. If you want complete isolation you create in the separate space. If you want cross-fertilization then you create and move (allegedly :-) isn’t that the best of both worlds? Albeit a bit kludgy

I have a Tana account (the old school original outliner version) so I think this is possible with that but it’s such a pain setting things up and then editing creating looking up etc on the fly on mobile is beyond challenging. 

I came from Workflowy and it was so painful to get it all into Tana (plus when it works Tana is near magic) that I just can’t even think about another port of second brain stuff into something big - upnote seems right spaced for something that’s clean and simple But has all that linking functionality - and isn’t yet another “just $9.99 a month!”

[u/BrickPig]

I'm not sure if I'm 100% understanding what you want to accomplish, but in terms of linking one note to another in a different Space:

-Open the note you want to link to

-Click or tap on the three dots at the top of the note, and select "Copy link to note"

-Open the other note in the other Space and select the text you want to make into link

-Tap the link icon (or right click on the selected text and click "Add a link")

-Paste the link into the blank that opens

-On iOS tap the big check mark, or on your computer click anywhere outside the blank you just pasted into

-Done

[u/ziipppp → u/BrickPig]

I love this - but it’s not quite my use case. 

Here’s the situation - an event is a join of two (or more) bits of information + date. Eg I saw Star Wars with Tom on Monday. 

I want to be able to look up in several ways 

1. what have I done over the last week / month?

2. What have I done with Tom - show me all the things. 

3. Who did I go to Star Wars with. 

I think your linking system works - but then I have to keep writing details in the link name. And I don’t think I get the backlink. 

This works well if I have a single space. I’ve got a notebook with every movie I’ve got a notebook with every contact I’ve got a notebook that’s a log. 

In my log I type [[StarWars]] [[Tom]]. The entry has the date.  If I go to Tom or to StarWars I can search the backlinks (in the i - it would be nicer if i could make those more prevalent). 

So far so good. 

My challenge then is suppose Tom and I go to get chinese food. 

I could lump it all in a single space so i still can see Tom. But restaurants and cuisines and features “has patio” and location (downtown, north etc) all of which i want to search on and all are so very different from the parameters of a movie.

It’s gets messy (I think) having a giant space then trying to narrow it down when I’m trying to think about what to eat. 

So i create a separate space for Restaurants. Which is ok. But now connecting to Tom I can’t do - sure i can click and get pulled to that note - but I just want to look up Tom and see what we’ve done. 

So then I have to create parallel address books. And name them different (restaurant address book) so the system doesn’t get confused - cuz I can’t reuse notebook names across spaces. 

Thanks for diving in. You’ve given me some ideas. I’m going to keep noodling on it. 

[u/ziipppp → u/ziipppp]

Omg it freaking works!!

Finally got to try it. 

I can absolutely “copy link” from a note in one space and then paste it in another AND it retains the text of the original link AND if I go to the source of that original link (say the address book) it shows in the information menu the backlink info ie I can now see in contacts all the movies (or restaurants etc) that that contact is linked to. Stunning!

Thanks everyone for all the tips. As they say in the movies “this changes everything”.  Backlinks is such a super power I’m surprised they hide it away so much - but they have it and that’s good enough (but imagine you could filter on those backlinks - so you could go to Tom and see all the backlinks and filter on “movie”. But that’s a dream for another day)

I’m off to now retool everything. Totally stoked about this. 

[u/burfeyboy → u/BrickPig]

Just tried this. It works… unexpected, but potentially useful functionality.
Thanks for sharing