Hey!
Perhaps, I am missing it in B2 but I have been reluctant to use the Archive feature because search results do NOT include notes from this area. So, I have to create a separate tag for Archive which seems silly. Again, maybe I am missing something but if there isn’t a way to do it now, can we please include an option for this in the near future?
Thanks!
Maybe the archive can get it’s own workspace in a future version of Bear 2?
With it’s own database and tags?
The point of the archive is to “remove” notes that are not frequently used from daily usage, this includes: Notes list/tags/search.
Bear doesn’t search notes inside the Trash either, we consider both the Archive and Trash cold storages.
Help me understand why you want a note archived, but still want it part of your current notes pool.
@matteo Thanks for following up with this.
Sometimes I have notes that I don’t categorize or tag because they were simply used for a short-term need. However, I may want to refer to them in the future for some reason. So, a search would help me locate such notes. Currently, I have just been using a tag called “Archive” but as Bear already has an “Archive” area with that common terminology, it seems redundant.
Also, even if I did use the cold storage method, wouldn’t I eventually get so many messages in Archive, that if I ever did want to find something and pull it out of cold storage, it would be hard to find among so many other messages?
Thanks!
You can search in both Archive and Trash when these are the active note list,
but they are just not included when you search in (all) Notes
Actually the notes in archive are searchable when picking them in left sidebar. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense in my eyes to let archived notes spam search results when applying search on all notes node.
Maybe another name? 
This is good to know. I’ll have to evaluate which is better for my system. A single search across all notes (thus tagging my one-off notes) or doing a second search from the Archive folder. It seems that a single-search would be the best option in my eyes, with less friction.
Adding my 2 cents, I also agree with OP that there should be an option to include archived notes in search (and in wiki link search). Maybe it’s not that critical considering that Archive can be selected and search works there (post by @krssno)
Use case: I have tags for different client projects on my sidebar, and as those projects end or those clients leave, I would like to hide those tags from the list (which could be done by archiving the notes themselves) to avoid cluttering my everyday note searching/filing. However, if I search for a keyword (contact name, tool/software, etc.) and it relates to those old projects, I would like those archived notes to show up in search as well (maybe grayed out, or at the bottom).
Without this capability, I’m forced to “archive” projects by hiding them under a subtag, and to prefix that subtag with _ (to show at the top) or z_ (to show at the bottom of the alphabetical list) . E.g. #projects/abc becomes #projects/z_old/abc, which is far from tidy.
Right now we can exclude specific notes from search by tagging them properly and using the “-#tag” search syntax. But this is cumbersome. Maybe we could have a setting to exclude notes from search and the wiki-link autocompletion ? The archive seems to be too overkill for this purpose.
I think the current behaviour(s) make sense and that we shouldn’t overcomplicate things.
To use a metaphor: if we’re cooking dinner and have our notes on the top shelf of the fridge, I would like an Archive that’s the bottom drawer of the fridge, or maybe a cupboard. I may have to look a little deeper to see into it, but it still follows the same basic logic of organization and discoverability.
Bear offers an Archive that’s an unlabeled cardboard box buried deep in a dark attic. It’s all in a jumble, I have to take out the entire box to find any one thing, and I generally forget it exists so I never even think to look in it. I just go to the store and buy yet another can of beans, even if there are many cans of beans in the box.
This happens to me all the time! When I think, “hmm, I wonder if I have any Bear notes about that person/topic?” and I do a search. If nothing comes up in the search, I assume I have zero relevant notes. But I’ve recently been finding that I DO have those notes—they’re just in the Archive!
This has happened to me so much that I’m going to unarchive everything in my Archive. As it’s currently designed, it is not a useful feature for me and I’m going to resort to one of the awkward workarounds that others have mentioned in this thread…that so many of us are doing this rather than use Archive feature says a lot. We want a drawer, not an attic box.
My DREAM feature to make the Archive usable at all would be to have a little box at the bottom of search results like this:
Search term
It would also be really helpful to be able to use the tags we’ve painstakingly added to browse the Archive, but that is definitely secondary to finding them at all.
Thanks for considering.
I might be in the minority within this thread because I actually prefer the Archive notes to be invisible unless I’m actively searching within the Archive. It’s an archive; I want it up in the attic, metaphorically speaking. I proactively remove things from my notes and store them in the archive when I know I’m not going to need to reference them, search for them within the main notes, etc. I move things to the archive to de-clutter the main notes list; the last thing I’d want is for them to clutter up the main notes search results, tags, etc.
If anything, I could get on board with maintaining the tag structure within the Archive. But again, would only want to see that archive tag structure when I am actively poking around the archive.
@krssno - I absolutely agree with this and @Prometheus . When I want to search Archive separately, I can (using sidebar). When I want to search something globally and I would want to include Archive, why would I want to put something in Archive before? That just does not make sense for me, as moving the note in Archive = I do not want to view this note in sidebar / taglist / search / links suggestions etc. but I want to have it somewhere separately still available (in Archive)