Mac blank notes due sync clash and app quality

[AndyDent 97]

I am fairly certain I fall into some kind of elite victim status as an Evernote user because I have nearly 28,000 notes.

There is an ongoing problem with the Mac clients and sync - they are unusable during sync and it takes a long time with that many notes.

(I am a developer so may make assumptions about how things work from that perspective.)

There appears to be a phase during sync in which the entire app is locked up. It is unresponsive to commands, a cmd-N for a New note has no effect until sync finishes, typing has no effect etc. 

This phase may not affect people with fewer notes.

I suspect Evernote has a fundamental architectural flaw in its reliance on the Javascript-based editing engine.

One manifestation of the problem is that there is a lockup of sometimes as much as 30 seconds even before the sync progress spinner starts to change colour and turn.

Notes that I select or open in a separate window show up with blank content and remain that way - I have to close the window or choose another note in order to force a refresh.

I am getting frustrated by this and related iOS performance issues to the point where I am seriously considering quitting Evernote and moving to One Note. I have been a loyal paying customer for years and recommended it continually but these problems cause me to come to a complete halt in my working lie way too often. 

I am now trying to work around it by only ever doing manual sync. It's a very sad state of affairs to be reduced to that.

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  Welcome to the elite victim club then because I'm in your neighborhood with note numbers,  though I don't suffer so badly from freezes (Windows user too...).

The usual advice is to go back to manual syncs / switch off Context / opt out of predictive searches (if you can),  plus uninstalling,  restarting and reinstalling the app (via a fast wifi connection) being aware that if you have any notes that are offline searchable it will take some time to rebuild the database on your phone.  - make sure you sync fully first,  too.

Other than that and if this is still an issue,  I'd suggest  you contact support directly,  or message them on Twitter - that's one advantage of Premium membership,  and you'll be aware that if the developers don't know there's a problem,  they can't do much to fix it...

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, AndyDent said:

Notes that I select or open in a separate window show up with blank content and remain that way - I have to close the window or choose another note in order to force a refresh.

I urge you to contact support and open a ticket

I created ticket #1895717 to address this problem of notes showing blank content for an extended period.  I have approx 10,000 notes at 10GB

 

[AndyDent 97]

Thanks for the encouragement.

I forgot when, but had a vague feeling it wasn't recent - ticket 1759161 was logged on 20 August 2016 with several pages of detailed scenario.

The development team is currently aware of this issue, and although I don't have an ETA of when it will be resolved, I can assure you we're working diligently to fix it.

I have a lot of years of experience on products which are used by many people around the world (currently I have a day job at Realm, the mobile database company). So, I know what it is like to have to prioritise things.

What scares me a bit is that they may have such deep technical problems in the clients, or worse in the overall architecture, that this is not fixable without the kind of rewrite that is not going to happen.

Cynically, product companies generally do not tell knowledgeable power users hey, sorry, you're actually pushing our product beyond its boundaries but we're not going to fix it.

On a related, but slightly less gloomy note, does anyone have a bright idea on how to force a note to refresh? 

As a side-effect of this bug, I will often have a blank window sitting there with just the note title and no body. If I could just force a refresh that would help. I tried going into Present mode but that obviously pulls straight from the note data rather than affecting the edit window.

 

 

[AndyDent 97]

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering about my usage patterns:

I have two Macs and a Surface Pro with Evernote installed.

I also use it regularly on an iPad and iPhone, with a small subset of offline notebooks.

I clip everything of interest that may be vaguely useful for later reading or research, using the Chrome clipper.

I record regular audio notes using SoundEver on the iPhone, which has a more car-and-bicycle-friendly UI (big ugly buttons) and is very reliable at audio recording.

So a lot of my notes come from web clippings but the ones I want to edit are usually relatively simple formatting.

[jmpsfs 23]

I have about 28,000 notes and have complained several times about it. I'm now told that the problem has been found and fixed, and the fix will be included (for Mac) in Version 6.11 Beta 2, which is due out within two weeks.

(I don't ordinarily install EN's betas because of some bad luck with them a few years ago, but I made an exception this time, and I'm glad I did. The tabs feature is terrific.)

[AndyDent 97]

I just got the same feedback as I logged a ticket asking for a Window Refresh feature to make up for it.

I wonder if I'd just let it lie whether anyone would have told me as my original ticket was closed.

[AndyDent 97]

Mac Version 6.11 Beta 2 did not fix the bug. I still have to wait until sync completes to be able to see content of notes, when I . It seems it may have a partial fix in that editing sometimes works, providing I had opened that note prior to sync starting.

[Rob van Vliet 43]

I'm suffering from the same issue (21K notes). In my case the problem on my 2011 iMac became so severe that I installed an SSD disk in it over Christmas. Since then it has become bearable, but has not gone away.