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QUESTION: Does Evernote slow down with more notes?


Andrew Wiles

Idea

As the title says: Does Evernote slow, the more notes you add?

I ask this because, surely it can't run as fast with 100 notes, as it does with say 2,000 notes?

Or is it magic? All I am going from is, normal experience, on a computer. When you open a large file, or intensive computer programe, that is data heavy, things seem to take a while.

So I am curious if Evernote's efficiency, ever slows (not referring to syncing).

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I've got just over 50,000 notes (used applescript to import lots of back emails, paid $20 for the extra EN bandwidth to do it). I use EN on Mac/PC/iOS/Android and web. Lately EN has become virtually unusable on the mobile devices. The Mac client has become very bogged down, seeing the spinning beach ball often. Was excited to have one place to have everything, especially since I'd be able to access it from any of my devices. Now I'm loosing faith, doesn't seem like EN scales so well. I'll try breaking some of my large notebooks down into smaller ones, but accessing even small notebooks on mobile has been an effort in futility due to freezing up. Currently moving 2000 notes from a 26000 note notebook to a new one is taking a second per note on the Mac client (unacceptably slow).

Funny, with the motto "Remember Everything" I didn't expect this. Perhaps changing it to "Remember 100,000 things" would be more appropriate.

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I have not far from 5000 notes. I use on 3 computers. Synchronisation take more and mor times. I bought faster computer for better using evernote (i call everslow)...

I think there are lots of optimizations to do.

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I have 6700 notes. Syncing doesn't take long at all for me. However, I had trouble with a database and had to re-download all of my notes. It took two days (nearly three) for me to download them. I think this could definitely be improved. The same amount of data only takes a few minutes to download from other sites.

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I have 6700 notes. Syncing doesn't take long at all for me. However, I had trouble with a database and had to re-download all of my notes. It took two days (nearly three) for me to download them. I think this could definitely be improved. The same amount of data only takes a few minutes to download from other sites.

Whether or not syncing is a problem, or takes a long time, depends on how many, and what size, notes need to be sync'd.

GM, in your case, syncing of all of your notes (6700) is a problem because of the excessive time it took. Just to be clear, what you described as "downloading" is syncing. :)

I had a case where I needed to sync 300 Notes on my EN Win. This took 15 minutes, way too long. Normally (previously), sync of this number of notes would be done in a few seconds.

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I currently have between 11,000 and 12,000 notes. I used to have close to 20,000 but have been forced into archiving many of them as Evernote was slowing to a crawl. It's not so much the mac version, though that's been subject to it, but the IOS versions that suffer most, including frequent crashes. I've also taken to a multiple notebook approach and try to keep each notebook well under 1000 notes. I'm slowly building my notes back up again, but following the new multi-notebook rule for me (one for each year, as well as the general topic ones like recipes. I might have to start breaking those down as well.

I agree about an option on the instant search, I too would love to turn it off as I hate when it freezes.

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I currently have between 11,000 and 12,000 notes. I used to have close to 20,000 but have been forced into archiving many of them as Evernote was slowing to a crawl. It's not so much the mac version, though that's been subject to it, but the IOS versions that suffer most, including frequent crashes. I've also taken to a multiple notebook approach and try to keep each notebook well under 1000 notes. I'm slowly building my notes back up again, but following the new multi-notebook rule for me (one for each year, as well as the general topic ones like recipes. I might have to start breaking those down as well.

I agree about an option on the instant search, I too would love to turn it off as I hate when it freezes.

Oh. That sounds bad. Do you think it was the number of notes causing the problems in iOS? I sure hope not, because I am well on my way there :(

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That seems to be the key factor. I've had much better luck since dividing my notebook into smaller ones. The other factor is I had several VERY long notes which I've moved back out. It seems to be happier with shorter notes rather than ones that are several pages.

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"search" is snappy for me (5000+ notes), but the instant search "process" is infuriating at times. I can pretty much always find what i am looking for by the time i am done typing, but the road to get there is a long one. sometimes, i type out the search in another app and paste it into evernote. i imagine this will be my standard operating procedure if i ever get to 45000 notes. i do hope they consider getting rid of instant search, or making it an option. thankfully, there is no instant search on the ipad (yet) as i recall. i just sold mine today, so i cannot test that... please come soon ipad 3 :)

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Now i have 30.000 Notes or more. The same : Evernote unsuable on mobile device...

Last time i made  a fresh install on my MacBook Pro i7 2.6Ghz/3.2 16Go ram (late 2012) and 50Mbit Fiber Internet connection, it take 3 days 24/24 to synchronize !

Each time it synchronize it take 10s to 30s or more... And often it freeze the client.

Lots of slowness in the client : when fusion of 2 notes, when moving notes to another notebook.

Lots of freezing, making evernote unsuable, have to wait 20s to use it again.

Multitasking ? 8 cores on the i7 and always have to wait.

 

So Evernote is good when you don't use it.... 

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Yes, there are many upset and angry Evernote customers.

Even the biggest and most powerful users are voicing their frustrations.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/66103-power-user-discontent-best-alternatives-to-en/

 

As users accumulate more notes, the scalablity difficulties get worse and worse.

 

Even the Support Department is having difficulty keeping their head above water as they struggle to address all the problems the program is causing.

 

And the response from Evernote? Just crickets. It looks like they are all hamstrung until the long rumored corporate takeover happens.

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And the response from Evernote? Just crickets.

Hey folks, cricket here:

 

I'm glad to see this discussion in the Mac forum. Our power users are everything to us. We (the Evernote team) are all power users too. I have 5 digits worth of notes and was growing frustrated too. We are working on it.

 

We just released Evernote for Mac 5.6. This could easily be called the biggest power-user release we've ever done. Our sync was completely rewritten from the ground up. We reduced the opportunity for crashes significantly (and if you do crash, our new crash reporting system ensures that we tackle the most frequent crashes before every release). Our note editor is brand new to handle old features better (like bulleted lists), new features (image resizing, table resizing), and features we can't even talk about yet! Search was rewritten to sort by relevance so that users with large numbers of notes get better results (not just more of them). 

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is: we're working on it. Making an awesome place to store your life's work is our life's work. Keep the discussion going. We love the feedback.

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I have 18,000 notes.  I actually have more, but the Windows Desktop product has not consistently been updating the database.  I hope they're being saved on the web version.

 

The program has not worked properly in about two years.  The program hangs up indefinitely  and is for all practical purposes unusable. I have not renewed my Premium subscription.

 

EDIT:  

 

On the fifth try, I'm seeing recent notes, but who needs this?

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While Jackolicious offered a reply of a coming fix for this for Mac users, what about Windows Desktop users who are experiencing the same thing?

I have, for quite some time (months, at least), in mulitple versions. Yet I have only about 1500 notes taking up about 140mb. When I do a search (even if only within a notebook of 500 notes), it often freezes after typing two characters, for about 5 seconds (about 50% of the time, enough for me to have come searching for help and found this thread and read it to the end here.)

 

I see others here also reporting the issue on Windows. Surely only a few hundred notes and a couple hundred meg should not be the cause of slowness. (I'm on rev 5.8.1+.)

 

Is this an acknowledged issue on Windows as well? And is there any solution, planned or that we can implement? I'm open to doing anything like a index rebuild or optimization. I won't try uninstalling/reinstalling, though. I had in fact done that just a couple months ago, to no avail. (Well, I was suffering the longstanding problem of the old 4.6 release that would not uninstall, as was widely reported by many. I finally got it off and upgraded to 5, and a couple of updates to that since then.)

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I think the theory behind it is to help (theoretically) speed up the process of searching for something.

I.e. if you are one who doesn't type very fast, or have a long search term it could produce a result without having to complete the search etc...then it could help...

You can see this in the way google describes the search:

http://www.google.com/insidesearch/instant-about.html

But for the rest of you who are faster than the instant search, it is definitely annoying...very.

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search is slow.

it is maddening, because it does an instant search that starts somewhere around the third letter. with 5000+ notes getting searched for any word with the three-letter combination in them, there is an awful lag. i am hoping that evernote will reconsider the instant search in the future, because if you copy and paste a search in from another program, the search is very fast.

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The "3rd character lag" should be trademarked. It has been around for many upgrades of Evernote and can be quite frustrating.

To avoid the affect, I avert my eyes from the search screen monitor and consciously stare at the keyboard as I power my way through the remainder of the search criteria. Eventually Evernote catches up with my keystrokes and then I take a look at the screen.

.

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Recently, I've seen so may high-tech companies duking it out over frivolous patents - "the patent wars" - I thought I'd throw in a possibility for Evernote.

I agree - my attempt at sarcasm failed in this case.

But the impact of the "3rd character lag" is still frustrating.

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The "3rd character lag" should be trademarked. It has been around for many upgrades of Evernote and can be quite frustrating.

To avoid the affect, I avert my eyes from the search screen monitor and consciously stare at the keyboard as I power my way through the remainder of the search criteria. Eventually Evernote catches up with my keystrokes and then I take a look at the screen.

.

lol. me too! i close my eyes and keep typing to the end, but the lag is so bad i sometimes take a sip of tea as well. that cracks me up. i knew i wasn't the only one.

as for why anyone would want instant search, you'd have to ask toyota (the maker's of the worst navigation system i have ever used), google (the one's who ruin your searches, unless you login to take advantage of your preferences that allow you to turn off instant search), and any number of misguided tech people who think this is more user-friendly.

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, google (the one's who ruin your searches, unless you login to take advantage of your preferences that allow you to turn off instant search) . . .

Well, that is the key: The OPTION to turn it OFF.

If Evernote wants to pattern their search after Google, then they should make it optional (yet another long debate :) )

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I'm on Windows/iPhone/iPad/Android/web. IME, the search can slow/bog down with more notes. Windows is the fastest client, that I use. Normally the search is pretty fast, unless it's syncing or I have other high priority CPU stuff going on. Worst case scenario is it takes me 5-7 minutes to find the note(s) I'm looking for if it's hung up b/c of sync'ing & I have a lot of other apps running at the same time.

Mobile apps (iPhone, iPad, Android) take longer but that's probably to be expected.

But...did I mention I have over 46,000 notes? So even with the lag time, IMO, that's pretty darned good. I do know scalability is a prime concern for EN folks. OTOH, I think I'm also in the minority (at this point in time) with the number of notes I have. I know there are several users with many more notes than I have. But I do think I'm on the "other" side of the bell curve. So I'd have to think for most users, there's not a noticable difference between 10-2000 notes. OTOH, as was mentioned earlier & even in this post, the computer/device you're using as well as the connection (wifi, 3g, edge, dial up - yes, there are some poor souls still using dial up) that can contribute to the turnaround time as well.

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From the Google Help on Instant Search:

Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

But this does not account for how long the user must look at each of the links found to find the ONE link they need.

So I save 5 sec on the search, but spend an extra 30 sec clicking several links --- that is NO help.

Also, the other BIG advantage of Google is the auto-complete, so that as I type Google is suggesting completion of what I will type.

I find this very useful.

The other problem is that with Evernote I will likely have several Search terms that change the Search dramatically.

I may have several "tag:" terms, an "intitile:" term, and several free text words.

Until I get to my last Search term there may be hundreds, even thousands, of Notes which match -- that is NO help.

Now, I read earlier that Evernote attracts "non-technical" people more so that most other apps.

I suspect with these people that most of their searches are just free text (like Google).

So, maybe the Instant Search is of help to them.

So, make Evernote Instant Search an option, and set the default to "ON".

Those of us who use more complex searches to turn it "OFF".

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I also had terrible search lags and freezes that were upgraded to merely bad search lags and freezes with 3.0.6. This is very frustrating, because I can't finish a search without a freeze. (This is one reason I've had a hard time getting on the search-is-your-best-friend train.) Jbenson and GrumpyMonkey, not until you said that you two look away while searching did I realize I've started to do this too. Haha! But also, ugh.

I emailed support about this a week ago and got this response:

Ticket # 16051-64787

Dear Peter,

We apologize for the inconvenience, however it appears there is currently a bug causing this.

We appreciate you taking the time to send us this error. We have filed an internal bug report with the QA team lead. She will classify and fix the bugs in the order determined by the project Lead.

Unfortunately this is not something I can fix for you at this time.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience.

Thanks for making Evernote a better product,

Given that Dlu has told us both that Evernote will not consider adding any more options that don't currently exist be adding new options anytime soon and that Evernote will not be giving up instant search, I really, really hope this bug gets fixed in future versions. Given that some Mac users don't experience it, though (lucky guy, that Metrodon), I'm afraid those of us currently stuck with search lag/freeze are probably going to have to live with it for a long time. Oy.

EDIT: Struckthrough wording above rephrased.

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@peter

thanks for posting this. it's good to see i'm not the only one frustrated by this. in the larger scheme of things, i guess it's not such a big deal. but, because i depend so much on the search capabilities of evernote, it is an annoyance i cannot easily escape.

to be fair to dlu, i think what he said was that they were reluctant to add any options, because they wanted to avoid feature bloat. i suspect a search option is unlikely by this criteria :)

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Well, Evernote may not ever change their position on providing Options, but you never know.

I have seen them reverse their decisions/positions before.

Perhaps if we continue point out how an options would be of great help to resolving conflicting requirements Evernote will see the light.

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Well, Evernote may not ever change their position on providing Options, but you never know.

I have seen them reverse their decisions/positions before.

Perhaps if we continue point out how an options would be of great help to resolving conflicting requirements Evernote will see the light.

You're quite free to do that. I will say that I don't find sheer repetition persuasive. So go for broke on originality :P

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Well, Evernote may not ever change their position on providing Options, but you never know.

I have seen them reverse their decisions/positions before.

Perhaps if we continue point out how an options would be of great help to resolving conflicting requirements Evernote will see the light.

You're quite free to do that. I will say that I don't find sheer repetition persuasive. So go for broke on originality :)

Once upon time when programmers added an option they thought was good, they had the foresight to include the option to turn it off just in case their customers did not feel quite as ecstatic about the new feature.

It takes little to no effort to write an off switch at the time new features or any features are introduced. Sadly the whole programming world has turned South in this regard in the last few years. Guess this is what they are teaching at programming school these days.

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