(Archived) QUESTION: What happens when I hit 100,000 notes?

[r37 1]

I feel like I could hit 100,000 notes in a few years... I hear that is the limit. What then?

[jefito 5,589]

I think that it's likely that Evernote will have increased their limit by then.

[spg SCOTT 736]

The world ends.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

No one's lived past posting 100,000 notes, so we don't know.

BTW, I agree with Jeff. I once did the math & posted it on the old message board (can't find it right now.) Even if one had a premium account & posted a lot of very small notes, it would take several years to hit 100,000 posts. I'm sure as time goes on & the number of notes people have gets larger, EN will be increasing this. Their goal is to be a 100 year company.

[Metrodon 2,184]

The shark jumps over the moon.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Maybe that's why we don't see Dave Engberg around here anymore... 100,001th note & poof...!!!

[heather 604]

We actually have had a few people hit 100,000 notes already. That's why we instituted our cap on how many emails you can send into your account per day

At that point, you need to prune down your account because the entire thing becomes read-or-delete-only.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Maybe that's why we don't see Dave Engberg around here anymore... 100,001th note & poof...!!!

I really want to 'like' my own post...

[megsaint 441]

Maybe that's why we don't see Dave Engberg around here anymore... 100,001th note & poof...!!!

I really want to 'like' my own post...

I liked it for you.

[chuckbiddinger 2]

Why in the "SAM HILL" would anyone need 100,000 notes? I bet the "delete" key could delete those note that are NOT necessary!

[gazumped 11,664]

In a few years Evernote will probably limit you to 500,000 notes whether you like it or not. Meantime go easy on the emails!

[anjoschu 67]

I wonder whether it would still be possible to find anything with 100.000 notes. Well, technically, EN search would find the one note you're looking for -- as well as 300 others. Some smart ranking would be in order.

[Limegreen 8]

Is there something that tracks your usage in Evernote or any other way I could find out say, how many tags I have?

I know I'm north of 300 and nowhere near 100 000, but it would be nice to know how extensive my tag usage is. If you have over one hundred notebooks it would probably be useful to be able to get a number to look at so you don't run into the 250 cap accidentally (so you don't have to count your 180 notebooks or whatever you have to be sure).

[jefito 5,589]

I wonder whether it would still be possible to find anything with 100.000 notes. Well, technically, EN search would find the one note you're looking for -- as well as 300 others. Some smart ranking would be in order.

Refine your search?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I wonder whether it would still be possible to find anything with 100.000 notes. Well, technically, EN search would find the one note you're looking for -- as well as 300 others. Some smart ranking would be in order.

consistent and informative titles and tags will do it for you. a refined search now with 5,000+ notes can often get me exactly the note i am looking for. i think 100,000 will be fine.

[anjoschu 67]

I wonder whether it would still be possible to find anything with 100.000 notes. Well, technically, EN search would find the one note you're looking for -- as well as 300 others. Some smart ranking would be in order.

Refine your search?

The good old altavista way.

[AlwaysTired 0]

Anyone with 100.000 notes needs to get a live. And take off two weeks to delete at least 50.000 of their 100.000 notes.

[spg SCOTT 736]

Anyone with 100.000 notes needs to get a live. And take off two weeks to delete at least 50.000 of their 100.000 notes.

They have a life, it's just in Evernote

[raindog 16]

We actually have had a few people hit 100,000 notes already. That's why we instituted our cap on how many emails you can send into your account per day

At that point, you need to prune down your account because the entire thing becomes read-or-delete-only.

Facepalm.

I hope this is a joke.

[heather 604]

Which part?

[gazumped 11,664]

Due respect, I don't see why this is a problem in the first place - I've built up to nearly 8,000 notes over a couple of years by diligently converting 30 years' worth of accumulated reference material and general paper into 1) recycling or 2) Evernote, then recycling or (very occasionally) 3) Evernote, then archive storage. It's a very small archive. I clip web pages and scan correspondence, business cards and related paperwork. I save electronic copies of my outbound letters as PDF or DOC files, and sometimes both. I'd class my usage as "above average" - and I only have nearly 8,000 notes.

I can see that copying all my inbound and outbound emails might up the ante somewhat - I have around 1,500 current and archived conversations and probably 10 times that in individual emails; but I don't plan wholesale dumpage anytime soon.

I have an ongoing gardening process that adds to or changes tags and headings as I search for stuff, so that ideally my searches will get very short hit lists, and although I hadn't particularly thought of it before now, the same process involves me merging notes where appropriate, and building "timeline" notes which list out significant stages in a given process and include relevant documents as attachments rather than separate visible notes.

My aim is to avoid long lists of irrelevant hits when I do searches; but the same aim will avoid me building up too many notes over time - and should make it easy to identify notes that I can safely archive to bring the total down if/ when necessary.

My thought was to either archive stuff into a local notebook, or to export the notes to a file then delete the live copies when necessary.

But unless you are at 95,000 and counting, let's cross that bridge if it comes up (please excuse illogical metaphor). If there have been a few already, these amazingly productive individuals have been very quiet in the forum so far...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

i doubt it is a matter of productivity. i could easily create 100,000 notes if i wanted to stick in everything from emails (several tens of thousands of those) and web clippings (i've downloaded entire sites onto my hard drive) to files (thousands upon thousands of pdfs since i went paperless).

i'd prefer not to have a limit, but like you, i am not anywhere near it at the moment, mainly because i don't really want all of my emails from nigerian princes and so forth in evernote. i try to use a little bit of discretion. people have already hit 100,000, and it will happen more and more as we incorporate evernote more into our lives.

[peterfmartin 221]

I agree with Gazumped, as I suggested the other day on another thread. Even though I'm adding notes at a far faster clip (a little more than 13,000 in seven or eight months of active use), I've done the math, and it will take me another 45 to 55 months at this pace to reach 100,000. I am optimistic that by 2016 Evernote will let us have more than 100,000 notes—and if I need to, I know by that point I'll be able to delete or merge several thousand notes to buy myself some more time.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Reviving this thread b/c it's the first hit I found and b/c I'm pressed for time.  Funny (funny not in like 'haha' but funny like in 'ironic') b/c each time I have a problem with Evernote, I'm pressed for time.  But then again...not so funny (like in 'ironic') b/c EN is such an integral part of my life that when it's not functioning properly, I...get...behind...  Like when my car won't start so it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the grocery instead of two minutes to drive there. 

 

Anyway, I'd posted in other threads (couldn't find them quickly) about how my EN has been slow the past couple of years...that I'd submitted several support tickets & followed the many suggestions given (move my exb file out of a Truecrypted container, upgrade my OS, get new hard drive, redownload database, etc, etc, etc) and yet I continue to have annoying lags before I can create or modify a note.  C++ run time errors and Evernote fatal errors are not all that uncommon in my world.  (Had both today, AAMOF.) 

 

I'd also posted somewhere that I'd already started my "archive" account, since I was ~55,000 notes & there was no indication from EN that increasing the note count from 100,000 was not in the pipeline.  Being proactive & all that jazz.  I also have been around here long enough to know not to ask b/c EN does not post those things. 

 

So far, so good.  Kinda sorta.

 

BUT...with my recurring EN lags, runtime errors & fatal errors, it regularly takes me an hour to do what I should be able to do in 15-30 minutes.  I try to not be idle so when my EN lags, I do something else.  By the time my EN is responsive, I've sometimes forgotten what it was I was going to do.  Thank goodness I have Clipmate so I can continue to clip things & then return to them to paste them into EN when EN is willing to talk to me.  This happens each & every day.  One of those "the harder I work, the more behinder I get" things & it's because I rely so heavily upon Evernote & Evernote is running so slowly on my computer.  I do run my computer hard.  Other apps will occasionally say "not responding".  The operative word is 'occasionally'.  Other apps do not lag as often or as long as EN. 

 

SO...tonight, while surrounded by piles of papers needing to be scanned & put into EN as well as some online tasks needing to be done (screen caps to EN), I decided to open a new EN account & temporarily try using it as a "feeder/input" account on my desktop.  Kind of like feeding my main account intravenously.  I wanted to see if running the same app on the same computer with the database on the same hard drive and creating the same type notes would produce the same or different results. 

 

To clarify, I created a notebook (a secondary inbox, if you will) on my main account that is shared to my newly created "input" account.  This allows me to use my "input" account to create notes and put them into this "secondary inbox" notebook in my main account.  If this proves to be faster, then it would seem to me this proves the problem with my main account is pretty much related to the size of my database (scaling.)  But I haven't played with this new setup enough to say if that's true or not.  But I certainly will over the next day or two. 

 

Which brings me to the point of this post...I will truly tie all this together...

 

With my 'archive' account, my main account & now my "input" account, it occurred to me that if EN does not plan on increasing the note limit from 100,000 notes & their suggestion is to use another account (I'm pretty sure Heather posted that...again...I'm pretty sure I can find that post but it's 1:30 a.m. & I've still got gobs to do & am not looking it up right now), then I think sharing entire accounts is a necessity.  Has this already been proposed?  Probably, but I don't remember seeing it.  So per-emptive apologies, if already discussed.  If already discussed, consider this a +1. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Reviving this thread b/c it's the first hit I found and b/c I'm pressed for time.  Funny (funny not in like 'haha' but funny like in 'ironic') b/c each time I have a problem with Evernote, I'm pressed for time.  But then again...not so funny (like in 'ironic') b/c EN is such an integral part of my life that when it's not functioning properly, I...get...behind...  Like when my car won't start so it takes me 10 minutes to walk to the grocery instead of two minutes to drive there. 

 

Anyway, I'd posted in other threads (couldn't find them quickly) about how my EN has been slow the past couple of years...that I'd submitted several support tickets & followed the many suggestions given (move my exb file out of a Truecrypted container, upgrade my OS, get new hard drive, redownload database, etc, etc, etc) and yet I continue to have annoying lags before I can create or modify a note.  C++ run time errors and Evernote fatal errors are not all that uncommon in my world.  (Had both today, AAMOF.) 

 

I'd also posted somewhere that I'd already started my "archive" account, since I was ~55,000 notes & there was no indication from EN that increasing the note count from 100,000 was not in the pipeline.  Being proactive & all that jazz.  I also have been around here long enough to know not to ask b/c EN does not post those things. 

 

So far, so good.  Kinda sorta.

 

BUT...with my recurring EN lags, runtime errors & fatal errors, it regularly takes me an hour to do what I should be able to do in 15-30 minutes.  I try to not be idle so when my EN lags, I do something else.  By the time my EN is responsive, I've sometimes forgotten what it was I was going to do.  Thank goodness I have Clipmate so I can continue to clip things & then return to them to paste them into EN when EN is willing to talk to me.  This happens each & every day.  One of those "the harder I work, the more behinder I get" things & it's because I rely so heavily upon Evernote & Evernote is running so slowly on my computer.  I do run my computer hard.  Other apps will occasionally say "not responding".  The operative word is 'occasionally'.  Other apps do not lag as often or as long as EN. 

 

SO...tonight, while surrounded by piles of papers needing to be scanned & put into EN as well as some online tasks needing to be done (screen caps to EN), I decided to open a new EN account & temporarily try using it as a "feeder/input" account on my desktop.  Kind of like feeding my main account intravenously.  I wanted to see if running the same app on the same computer with the database on the same hard drive and creating the same type notes would produce the same or different results. 

 

To clarify, I created a notebook (a secondary inbox, if you will) on my main account that is shared to my newly created "input" account.  This allows me to use my "input" account to create notes and put them into this "secondary inbox" notebook in my main account.  If this proves to be faster, then it would seem to me this proves the problem with my main account is pretty much related to the size of my database (scaling.)  But I haven't played with this new setup enough to say if that's true or not.  But I certainly will over the next day or two. 

 

Which brings me to the point of this post...I will truly tie all this together...

 

With my 'archive' account, my main account & now my "input" account, it occurred to me that if EN does not plan on increasing the note limit from 100,000 notes & their suggestion is to use another account (I'm pretty sure Heather posted that...again...I'm pretty sure I can find that post but it's 1:30 a.m. & I've still got gobs to do & am not looking it up right now), then I think sharing entire accounts is a necessity.  Has this already been proposed?  Probably, but I don't remember seeing it.  So per-emptive apologies, if already discussed.  If already discussed, consider this a +1.

That was Heather's suggestion for when you reach 100,000, and if I recall correctly, she made it before our accounts greatly improved in how they handle account switching and shared notebooks. Technically speaking, though, the upper limit isn't 100,000 anymore, but potentially 500,000 (http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169).

Theoretical v. Practical Limits

Your suggestion sounds good to me, but I don't think that is the real problem here. I think your experience (and mine http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127) makes it clear that whatever your note number, once your database size (in terms of gigabytes uploaded) gets into the double digits, you begin encountering serious difficulties managing your data. Evernote is by far the most promising app out there for handling massive amounts of data on the cloud, but it currently doesn't scale well. I'm afraid to say that practically speaking, our workable limit is probably 25 or so gigabytes. Evernote's theoretical account limit is 9,766 GB, so I think they need to look into making sure that the service works better for you in your primary account before thinking about sharing entire ones.

Selective Sync

Part of the solution simply must be the ability to use selective sync (keep some notebooks in the cloud and some on your computer). That is essentially what you are doing by opening another account and joining one notebook from your primary account. Apple's most popular and most accessible netbook, years after I first brought up the issue of storage concerns, is still quite restrictive at the entry level. I literally could not run my old account on my computer right now, because I don't have the space available. The best solution at the moment (I think) is to open a Business account and put all of your notes into a Business Library, where it can be selectively synced. You still have to download an entire notebook if you want to join notebook, search through them, or add to them. However, it is one step closer to the elusive goal (curiously, in my memory we used to be able to access joined notebooks without downloading them in the past, but lost that before Business came along). IF we had selective sync, you wouldn't need to download your other account when you joined it -- an extremely resource intensive process that will almost certainly put you right back where you started in terms of runtime and fatal errors.

Better Management Options for Large Accounts

Incremental sync, days (literally) of downloading for initial syncs, hours (literally) of processing when you rename notebooks or tags, lack of local storage (in my case), lack of options for database location, your runtime errors (my downloading headers crashes in iOS), etc., etc. are major issues that could / should be addressed so that when others eventually reach this point (businesses will increasingly get there) they can agilely navigate and manage their data. Again, the Evernote service has tremendous potential, but it just isn't being realized in this regard. Just imagine what would happen if you really did have 500,000 notes and 9.6 terabytes of data (the theoretical limits). It would be a practical impossibility. On a Mac, even the brand new Mac Pro couldn't handle the account, and that is one of the best consumer products out there (calm down Windows folks -- I said "one of"). You can't move your database off the main drive (you can hack it, but there are problems), so no amount of expandable storage on the Mac Pro will help you.

I actually have about 85,000 notes on my computer (in plain text), but I have never had much more than 10,000 in my account at once, because it becomes quite a mess (beachballs, etc. as outlined above). Sharing entire accounts (I'd probably need 3 or 4 if I wanted to avoid some of the problems outlined above, and even then, the iOS app still wouldn't work for me) is a possibility, but not a pleasant thought. If I put in attachments (remember, I only have plain text at the moment) it would be unworkable (I'd have to get the Mac Pro just to use Evernote). I think Evernote knows about the problem because a few of us have raised the issue of large accounts in the past, Phil (the CEO) has mentioned that measures like selective sync are "inevitable," they certainly have the talent and the vision to pull it off, so I think it is possible to fix your problem. I don't know their timeline, though. My suggestion would be that you become a guinea pig for Evernote. Let me know how it goes

[tweveruser 1]

100,000 notes? hmmm, how much time do you spend doing this? It is really amazing

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

100,000 notes? hmmm, how much time do you spend doing this? It is really amazing

I usually make 1-20 notes a day. Always at least one, because I have a daily research journal. The others are usually connected to sources I have read, or topics that work better in separate notes broken out of the original journal. This is my stuff.

Then, there are things others make. There are important emails I receive, which might be 0-10 a day. And, there are PDFs I convert into text files (most people would just leave them as PDFs), web articles, and other stuff that I want to keep on hand for reference.

In total (stuff made by me and others) I think I end up easily going over 50 notes a day. Over the course of a few years, it piles up! The thing is that I have gone paperless, so everything is digitized (I am a completist http://www.jamierubin.net/2012/05/15/going-paperless-to-scan-or-not-to-scan-that-is-the-question/) and 100,000 is actually a small number if you think about counting every bill, every receipt, etc. that crosses your desk in the course of a day.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Well, if nothing else, this is giving me some hands on experience with sharing. 
 

Your suggestion sounds good to me, but I don't think that is the real problem here. I think your experience (and mine http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127) makes it clear that whatever your note number, once your database size (in terms of gigabytes uploaded) gets into the double digits, you begin encountering serious difficulties managing your data. Evernote is by far the most promising app out there for handling massive amounts of data on the cloud, but it currently doesn't scale well. I'm afraid to say that practically speaking, our workable limit is probably 25 or so gigabytes. Evernote's theoretical account limit is 9,766 GB, so I think they need to look into making sure that the service works better for you in your primary account before thinking about sharing entire ones.

I concur.  So far, my newly created account is very snappy.  At this point, I'd have to say the only difference is the size of the account since both are on the same computer, hard drive, etc.  So it does appear that EN does not scale as well as you & I would have hoped. 
 

IF we had selective sync, you wouldn't need to download your other account when you joined it -- an extremely resource intensive process that will almost certainly put you right back where you started in terms of runtime and fatal errors.

I get this now.  (I didn't last night.)  So what I'm going to do now is just share small notebooks, since my biggest obstacle now only requires access to a few notes.  (Less than 100.)  I may need to move notes from their "forever" notebook to the shared notebook temporarily.  But that may be more productive in the long run.  When I have more time later, I may share/join some of the larger notebooks but I just don't want to spend the time downloading the notes right now.  I use more notebooks than you do, so I can share some of my most often used notebooks to my new account & still be well under the point where EN starts to fail. 

 

WRT to being a guinea pig...I'm willing to do so.  But so far, I don't think I've ever received any confirmation from EN that this is something they should fix.  And I didn't push it b/c of the aforementioned factors on my end.  But after this most recent test, I'm pretty much convinced that it's something on their end & having to do with either the large size of the database and/or the large number of notes.  Since you've had this same situation & relegated yourself to "fringe", perhaps together we can convince EN that the scaling just isn't working as it should.  As you say, we are where many others will be in the future.  Paving the way for the others & all that jazz.     Also nice since you're mostly Mac & I'm 100% PC.  Two POVs.

 

(Hope this makes sense...didn't get to bed until early this a.m.) 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Well, if nothing else, this is giving me some hands on experience with sharing. 

 

Your suggestion sounds good to me, but I don't think that is the real problem here. I think your experience (and mine http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127) makes it clear that whatever your note number, once your database size (in terms of gigabytes uploaded) gets into the double digits, you begin encountering serious difficulties managing your data. Evernote is by far the most promising app out there for handling massive amounts of data on the cloud, but it currently doesn't scale well. I'm afraid to say that practically speaking, our workable limit is probably 25 or so gigabytes. Evernote's theoretical account limit is 9,766 GB, so I think they need to look into making sure that the service works better for you in your primary account before thinking about sharing entire ones.

I concur.  So far, my newly created account is very snappy.  At this point, I'd have to say the only difference is the size of the account since both are on the same computer, hard drive, etc.  So it does appear that EN does not scale as well as you & I would have hoped. 

 

IF we had selective sync, you wouldn't need to download your other account when you joined it -- an extremely resource intensive process that will almost certainly put you right back where you started in terms of runtime and fatal errors.

I get this now.  (I didn't last night.)  So what I'm going to do now is just share small notebooks, since my biggest obstacle now only requires access to a few notes.  (Less than 100.)  I may need to move notes from their "forever" notebook to the shared notebook temporarily.  But that may be more productive in the long run.  When I have more time later, I may share/join some of the larger notebooks but I just don't want to spend the time downloading the notes right now.  I use more notebooks than you do, so I can share some of my most often used notebooks to my new account & still be well under the point where EN starts to fail. 

 

WRT to being a guinea pig...I'm willing to do so.  But so far, I don't think I've ever received any confirmation from EN that this is something they should fix.  And I didn't push it b/c of the aforementioned factors on my end.  But after this most recent test, I'm pretty much convinced that it's something on their end & having to do with either the large size of the database and/or the large number of notes.  Since you've had this same situation & relegated yourself to "fringe", perhaps together we can convince EN that the scaling just isn't working as it should.  As you say, we are where many others will be in the future.  Paving the way for the others & all that jazz.     Also nice since you're mostly Mac & I'm 100% PC.  Two POVs.

 

(Hope this makes sense...didn't get to bed until early this a.m.)

I think they are aware that it doesn't scale as it should/could/must. I'm not sure yet if they feel the same sense of urgency about it that we do. When I hit the wall in August of last year, I think you might remember my grumpiness, but I found a workaround that fit my needs. I doubt other people will be as forgiving, and businesses certainly won't. In short, "unlimited" or really large amounts of data storage are meaningless if they are a practical impossibility.

If you think about the mobile experience (I know you try not to!) we can make notes, search them, edit them, etc. without downloading anything more than headers. Assuming the Evernote backend is up to the task (I think it is) it is totally conceivable (the architecture and thinking is in place) that we could do the same thing on the desktop. This would radically impact my approach to Evernote. Obviously, the details of such a system would need to be worked out. For example, I could see a need (at least for me) to designate an external drive for a mirror of my account to be kept as a backup. Or, perhaps we could download an archived version of our entire account each day. Somehow, we would like the data somewhere backed up on our end, but we wouldn't need to have access to it in our database for daily use.

I'm game for being a guinea pig

My guess, though, is that they are going to need videos or some other evidence of our notetaking trauma. I have extensively documented my iOS issues, so they know about that! If I stick all of my notes into my Mac, even without attachments, I'll have plenty of pain and suffering to display with the incremental search alone. Anyhow, I think the road forward is fairly obvious in terms of the broad strokes (they've been saying from the beginning that they would build in selective sync in some form). I don't know what the delay is. Let's spam them on the July 4th holidays and see if we can get them to work extra for us then

Seriously, though, I know of others in this forum and elsewhere who have similar large database problems. This is actually a longstanding and (in my opinion) critical issue to solve sooner (last year would have been nice) rather than later.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

My guess, though, is that they are going to need videos or some other evidence of our notetaking trauma. I have extensively documented my iOS issues, so they know about that!

I've submitted several support tickets including log files. I assumed the log files imparted the lags between clicking onto a note & then actually being able to edit that note. But that may not be true. I've got the physical equipment, software & skill set to record videos/screencasts & I'm pretty sure you do too. If that would be helpful to EN, I'm willing to create & submit those.  But I'm not sure how helpful those would be.  Not to toot my own horn here, but I think EN realizes that you & I are pretty accurate with our reports & may not need validation. 

 

Anyway, whenever this stuff happens, I'm always so torn between trying to get my ***** done & trying to submit info to EN to help them.  Right now, I've got to get my stuff done, so will check back later. 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

My guess, though, is that they are going to need videos or some other evidence of our notetaking trauma. I have extensively documented my iOS issues, so they know about that!

I've submitted several support tickets including log files. I assumed the log files imparted the lags between clicking onto a note & then actually being able to edit that note. But that may not be true. I've got the physical equipment, software & skill set to record videos/screencasts & I'm pretty sure you do too. If that would be helpful to EN, I'm willing to create & submit those.  But I'm not sure how helpful those would be.  Not to toot my own horn here, but I think EN realizes that you & I are pretty accurate with our reports & may not need validation. 

 

Anyway, whenever this stuff happens, I'm always so torn between trying to get my ***** done & trying to submit info to EN to help them.  Right now, I've got to get my stuff done, so will check back later.

I am just not sure they feel the distress as acutely as I would like for them to

You're right, though. Don't spend any time you don't have! Let's see if any other users come across this thread and have similar concerns. We can form a guinea pig posse.