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Ink Notes are Crippled

tpbishop

Asked by tpbishop,

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tpbishop

tpbishop 3

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OS:  Windows 7 & 8

EN:  4.6.3.8096

 

ISSUE:  Ink Notes created in Evernote are not OCR'ed and therefore not searchable.

 

CUSTOMER SUPPORT:  Here is the text of an email from Jack at EN support:

 

Dear Valued Customer, 
       Sorry about that, Ink notes are not made for the purpose to be directly
compatible with our OCR but specifically designed to be used with a fine-point
drawing device, such as a stylus then imported as .png file, after that you can
try to index. 
       Hope it helps!
Jack

DISCUSSION:  I've been an Evernote user since the early tablet PC days when the ability to use a pen to create handwritten notes made EN stand out. I even became a Premium subscriber to get priority access to the OCR capability.

 

Since there is no menu or command for exporting native EN Ink Notes to .png files, the support reply is at least unhelpful. Further, it makes me wonder if Jack is aware that EN has the ability to create it's own Ink Notes (which used to be searchable for text before all OCR capability was moved from the application binaries to the servers).

 

Furthermore, iOS users of Penultimate (an app acquired years after EN started) can send their handwritten notes straight to EN in three clicks for almost instant OCR.

 

Finally, as you can see from the workaround below, there has to be a simpler fix than buying an app to make EN's own Ink Notes support EN's own OCR.

 

WORKAROUND:   Create new Ink Note. Write your text. From the Edit menu, click Select All. From the Edit menu, click Copy. Create a new note. From the Edit menu, click Paste. Sync. Wait a few minutes. Sync again. The handwriting copied from the Ink Note is now OCR'ed and searchable.

 

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bljarv

bljarv 3

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I too have used Evernote since the days of Tablet PC's. I was delighted to discover last week after purchasing a Win 8 tablet that Ink notes still existed (or are back) in Evernote, but was equally disappointed that they were not searchable. It seems like a miss to me and I hope that it's something that can be remedied with a more reasonable solution than the workaround above. 

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Phi87

Phi87 9

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the workaround above makes no sense.  Why doesn't the ink note get scanned when synced?  I use evernote inknote all the time for me handwritten notes in meetings and such. I would very much like this feature of having them OCR scanned.

 

 

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tpbishop

tpbishop 3

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On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2013 at 8:55 PM, tpbishop said:

OS:  Windows 7 & 8

EN:  4.6.3.8096

ISSUE:  Ink Notes created in Evernote are not OCR'ed and therefore not searchable.

   ...

DISCUSSION:  I've been an Evernote user since the early tablet PC days when the ability to use a pen to create handwritten notes made EN stand out. I even became a Premium subscriber to get priority access to the OCR capability.

Since there is no menu or command for exporting native EN Ink Notes to .png files, the support reply is at least unhelpful. Further, it makes me wonder if Jack is aware that EN has the ability to create it's own Ink Notes (which used to be searchable for text before all OCR capability was moved from the application binaries to the servers).

Furthermore, iOS users of Penultimate (an app acquired years after EN started) can send their handwritten notes straight to EN in three clicks for almost instant OCR.

Finally, as you can see from the workaround below, there has to be a simpler fix than buying an app to make EN's own Ink Notes support EN's own OCR.

WORKAROUND:   Create new Ink Note. Write your text. From the Edit menu, click Select All. From the Edit menu, click Copy. Create a new note. From the Edit menu, click Paste. Sync. Wait a few minutes. Sync again. The handwriting copied from the Ink Note is now OCR'ed and searchable.

 

THREE AND A HALF YEARS - A MAJOR CODE REWRITE UP TO V. 6.2 - STILL NOT A WORD AND NO RESOLUTION

I've now installed v. 6.2 on various Windows 10 devices. This problem persists (and ironically the Windows workaround still works). What makes this even more annoying is that EverNote iOS on iPad Pro now does great handwriting recognition in the native app.

I am open to adjectives that describe this lack of customer support. You keep adding handwriting recognition to the other EN platforms. Microsoft Surface -- with handwriting capabilities (See their OneNote product) -- is taking the market by storm.

Please either fix this or remove the ink note capability from EN for Windows.

 

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heather

heather 604

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I do apologize for the slight misinformation you received from our support team. InkNotes are indeed indexed - when they reach our server, they are indexed to become searchable as any other image file. They are also translated to .png format for viewing on other devices (that are not Windows/Ink Note compatible).

 

You cannot extract the text from them, however, as they are not PDFs.

 

Does this help explain that comment further?

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tpbishop

tpbishop 3

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Heather:

 

Thank you for your note. After my original posting, I received other messages from the support team acknowledging that Jack's email was sent in error. I subsequently sent the log files and the exported note to EN support. After several more messages, I received an email acknowledging this as a bug.

 

I haven't heard back yet as to whether the bug is one of the fixes in 4.6.4.8136 or not.

 

 

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tpbishop

tpbishop 3

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My ticket number on the earlier request is:  16051-275100

 

I am now up to EN 5.1.2.2387 (270387) Public.

 

The behavior described in the original post persists. The workaround described in the first post is still necessary.

 

The inking problem does not appear to be hardware dependent. At all times, I am running the current public EN Desktop Client; I do not install the beta versions. I have replicated it on the following devices: 

 

--Samsung Series 7 Tablet PC running Windows 7

--Microsoft Surface Pro running Windows 8  Pro

--Microsoft Surface Pro 2 running Windows 8.1 Pro 

--Dell Venue 8 Pro running Windows 8.1

 

Your assistance would be appreciated.

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RCBeall1

RCBeall1 6

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I am having the exact same issue.  Ink Notes are not indexed so I cannot search for them.

 

I am using a Microsoft Surface Pro 2.  The only work around is to copy the ink notes by using "select all" and pasting them into  new note so they are an image file that can be recognized and indexed.  This is not ideal because once you copy and past them into a new note, you can no longer go back and edit them. 

Also - when I use Ink Notes and I view them on my android phone or on the web, they do not look good at all (the actual thickness of the lines appears to be much thicker to the point where it is unreadable) and there are also very strange page breaks that distort some of the ink notes. 

That is not nearly as big of an issue to me as not having the ability to search my handwritten notes.  Please fix this Evernote!  I have always liked Evernote over Microsoft Onenote but if features like this do not work it seems like I might not have a choice if this is not fixed.

 

Also - I had a ticket opened up, but I have heard nothing from support in a while and I feel like they forgot about my ticket.  My ticket number is #339268.  Please fix this!

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beck_k

beck_k 0

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I am using Evernote on a Surface Pro 4, and would love to be able to write notes with my stylus that are searchable. It's totally fine when I take notes on paper, then take a photo and enter them into Evernote, but is there a way that I can bypass the paper and take handwritten notes directly into Evernote that are searchable?

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tpbishop

tpbishop 3

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The Twitter account @EvernoteHelps asked me to put in another ticket request. I did.

I supplied new sample .enex files and logs and got this nice note back:

 

Korben D. (Evernote Help and Learning)

Apr 14, 11:00

Thanks for your patience. I'll spare you the standard bug response since you're heard it all before. The issue is easily reproduced on our end 100% of the time, so there is no reason this shouldn't get some developer attention. I'm going to bring this up with the product manager to see if we can finally get this issue taken care of. Let me know if you have any questions or additional concerns you'd like me to take a look at.

Regards,
Korben

I installed EN 6 for Windows Desktop today, with high hopes it might solve this issue. Alas, it did not.

The search continues ...

 

 

 

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tpbishop

tpbishop 3

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I've now installed Evernote Desktop/Windows 6.1.2....

Still no fix for ink notes created in Windows. Ink notes created on Android and iOS are text searchable in minutes. Not so for Windows.

More than 50 days since the help desk closed my third ticket on this issue in 3 years with no fix.

 

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gadgetgal

gadgetgal 0

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Along the same topic, if I take notes using "ink" on Windows 10, I would like to be able to edit them later on Android if my laptop is off and someone returns my call.  At this time I usually like to update my "ink" or handwritten notes.  

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gazumped

gazumped 11,640

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Haven't tested this,  but the best you could do (I suspect) would be to take amending notes in a new note and tie that to the original by tags / title / merge,  depending on which platform you're on.  I don't think Windows ink notes will be editable in Android.

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tpbishop

tpbishop 3

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RESOLVED

I am now running EN 6.4.2.3788 on Windows 10 (1607).

Today, I decided to test the native Ink Note functionality. I wrote a note and about 20 minutes later, text search worked on the handwriting.

This didn't work 60 days ago. Not sure what changed when. It's a shame it took 4 years to get it fixed.

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