My database has been ruined!

[Radiophile 16]

Woe is me. Read it and weep:

I am in the process of moving from Max OS X to Windows 10. I already synced my EN cloud stuff with my newly installed Windows EN app, but needed to move a local notebook from Mac to Win. I exported the 378 local notes in my local notebook to a .enex file and proceeded to import them into the Win client. I started the import process in the local notebook I had just created in Win EN, but unexpectedly it put the imported notes in an Imported Notes notebook that it created. So I selected all the notes in the Imported Notebook and said to move them to the local notebook. It seemed to take a long time, and finally I noticed that it had moved ALL my notes (all 11,000 of them, in lots of different online notebooks) to my local notebook. All my other notebooks were empty, and the local notebook contained all my notes. And it was already in the process of syncing all this to the EN cloud. As quick as I could I ended the EN process with Task Manager.

Now I'm stuck. I have a ruined version of my database in the cloud, one that every client I have will want to sync to. I have a perfect set of notes on my Mac, which hasn't been connected to the Internet during all this. Even if it would work, I can't transfer my Mac database to the PC; the file structure is completely different.

What options do I have at this point?

1. Delete all my notes in the Win EN client. Let it sync with the cloud, which would delete all my notes everywhere except on the Mac. Export each of my 200-or-so notebooks from the Mac client, then while keeping the Win client offline, import each notebook into it, then connect to the Internet and let it sync. Would this work, since the importing into the Win client would be the most recent action?

2. Somehow (method unknown), make my Mac EN a "master copy" that will override all other EN data in the cloud, and let the Mac sync to the cloud. Perhaps I could accomplish this by opening EN for the Web and deleting all the notes there. But no, since that would be the most recent action, I think that would cause EN to delete all notes on any and all clients connected later.

3. Let the sync complete, and then manually examine each note and put it, one by one, into the right notebook. I can't imagine how many days or weeks this would take.

I hope I've missed something. Help, please.

John

P.S. While reading this over before posting, I realized I had another Win client running on another PC. Hoping against hope that EN wasn't running there, I ran down to its location. EN wasn't running, so I disabled the PC's Internet connection. When I started EN, I found that some background process must have been doing its job. Most of my notebooks were empty and I had only 1,800 total notes listed. (Only 1,800 left because the others had already been moved out of the cloud to my local notebook on the other Win PC.

[DTLow 5,749]

40 minutes ago, Radiophile said:

I have a perfect set of notes on my Mac, which hasn't been connected to the Internet during all this

The Mac seems to be the answer to restoring your database
Export the notes to enex files, and then import.
I would use a script so you have one file per Notebook. 

Warning: The import creates new notebooks & notes, so it's not a perfect restore. Any previous created note links will be invalid

Here's the script I use for my backups   Backup.scpt

tell application "Evernote"

 

set allNotebooks to every notebook

repeat with currentNotebook in allNotebooks

            

            set notebookName to (the name of currentNotebook)

            set fileBackupenex to "/Users/david/Desktop/@Evernote/Evernote Backup/Notebook-" & notebookName & ".enex"

            set fileBackupenex to POSIX path of fileBackupenex

            set theNotes to every note in notebook notebookName

            if theNotes is not {} then

                try

                    

                    with timeout of (45 * 60) seconds

                        export theNotes to fileBackupenex format ENEX with tags

                        --do shell script "/usr/bin/gzip -f " & quoted form of fileBackupenex

                    end timeout

                    

                end try

            end if

            

        end repeat

 

    end tell

 

 

[Radiophile 16]

Thanks for your reply DTLow. Of course you're right. And your script might save me a lot of time.

But before I get into that, I just realized I have something else. I have Crashplan, which backs up all my computers several times a day. I thought I had excluded my Evernote database location from Crashplan (because it's already in the cloud), but no! I found one PC that has backups of my database. The most recent one is from this morning! Thank goodness I wasn't thorough with my Crashplan setups.

I worry what will happen when I restore it to this PC and sync. Which will have priority, this morning's database I just restored, or the bad stuff in the cloud? Since I can't make things worse, I guess I should try it and report back.

[CalS 5,311]

Sorry to hear it.  I agree with @DTLow go to the Mac and create an ENEX backup for every notebook.  Delete all the notes on the PC and the  web should be empty at that point.  Then import the ENEX files into your PC changing the notebook name as you go.  Depending upon plan you may or may not run out of upload.  

When everything is as you like it on the PC and web, do a backup.  If you want to continue to use the Mac remove the data base and then refresh your data from the server.

[CalS 5,311]

My guess would be the web would trump a backup from this morning?

[Radiophile 16]

I'm following up: I ended up contacting support about this, hoping that they'd have some magic easy path to putting everything back together again. They didn't. They did suggest that I abandon this account and its database and start fresh. So I did. I opened a new basic account, and the support person turned it into Premium for me, gave me credits for the unused months left on my existing account, and temporarily increased my upload limit so I'd be able to upload my whole database in one go, without waiting for next month to finish. (My old account still seems to be open; otherwise I wouldn't be able to log in and post here with my old credentials. I need to ask if I can somehow keep my old forum identity (this one) with the new account. I suppose not but I will ask anyway.) So I've spent many hours over three days importing notebooks one at a time and stopping to upload after every few notebooks.

One other thing. The support person gave me another way to make a folder with .enex files for every notebook: Sign out of the Windows client. Select Evernote>Options>Open Database Folder. Drag and drop the good database file into the database folder window. Exit out of the database folder window. Type crtl+shift+E while viewing the login screen, select the database you just dragged-and-dropped. A folder will be made on the desktop filled with .enex files for each notebook in the database. No need for a script. (Support also said to rename the good database file BACKUPDB.exb before starting, but I don't think this is necessary for the process to work.) 

[jefito 5,598]

1 hour ago, Radiophile said:

otherwise I wouldn't be able to log in and post here with my old credentials

As far as I know, your Evernote account and your Evernote forum account are wholly separate, and not linked together.