Conflicting notes - make it work

[Mojaximus 11]

I'm a long time dedicated Evernote for Mac OS and iOS user. I 'live' in Evernote, and without it i would have to work hard to transfer my professional and personal organisational system to another platform.

Having made that endorsement, I have a bugbear: The server-side, and multi-platform syncing needs some work.

1. When opening a note on the desktop app, the app makes the me wait until the server has finished syncing before the contents are displayed, even if the note is stored offline. This happens on the iOS version too. It would be better if offline notes were immediately visible, but read-only, until the server-side syncing has completed. Outside of North America, internet connections are sometimes unstable, and this syncing process can take a LONG time. If the internet is only barely there, the sync can take so long it ultimately fails, and the only way to get the app to show the contents of a note is to turn off my system's internet connection altogether, and start up Evernote again, hoping the system hasn't partially synced and corrupted a note (this has happened before). This is a poor way to manage syncing. There should never be a situation, ever, when a note can be corrupted. Just today, I opened a note on my iOS device (this is version 8.2.352903 - the latest version on the app store at the time of writing), and the contents had been replaced by an entirely different note :-o. Syncing triggered a note conflict, and I was able to recover the original contents on my desktop. This should never, ever happen - and I hadn't opened either note.

3. (Because 1. was kind of two issues in one) I have given up ever editing existing notes on my iOS device. If I do, that note will almost invariably come up as a sync conflict when I next view it on the desktop app, creating a very frustrating new note with the entire contents of both versions included. Offering a note-merging option would help, where anything missing from either note is included in one inclusive note, or colour-coding differences. This way I wouldn't have to check line-by-line to see what's missing, and since the edit is usually one or two lines, it would be easy to remove them again using the desktop app. I have tried fully syncing on the iOS device, then fully syncing on the desktop app, so the server has time to check date stamps but it has no effect - I still get conflicting notes.

I realise Evernote has grown into a comprehensive tool, with scanning, OCR, business card management and team-sharing functionality, but can't help feeling the core offering is being forgotten. Evernote let's you store, organise, and sync text notes across multiple devices. That's the core offering for me.

I've been putting up with this unhelpful synching functionality for a long while, hoping an update would fix it. It hasn't, and so I'm researching alternative note systems that I can migrate to because I do need that core functionality to work elegantly. And when I say 'elegantly', I mean perfectly, solidly, having the same dependably result every single time, every day.

Evernote worked this way previous, which is why I fell in love with the system, but the romance is fading...

Thanks for reading,

Maxim

[enki 33]

Hi, I agree with you. Give it a try to Note. It is just elegantly, perfectly, strongly, but only for apple devices. Becouse of EN bugs and EN's last updates I start to use ios note from 10 days (after 7 years of EN Premium and 8,5k notes for 21Gb). I'm feeling more safe with iCloud than EN/Google's cloud.

[bounce 74]

On 4/30/2017 at 4:28 PM, Mojaximus said:

 (Because 1. was kind of two issues in one) I have given up ever editing existing notes on my iOS device. If I do, that note will almost invariably come up as a sync conflict when I next view it on the desktop app, creating a very frustrating new note with the entire contents of both versions included. Offering a note-merging option would help, where anything missing from either note is included in one inclusive note, or colour-coding differences. This way I wouldn't have to check line-by-line to see what's missing, and since the edit is usually one or two lines, it would be easy to remove them again using the desktop app. I have tried fully syncing on the iOS device, then fully syncing on the desktop app, so the server has time to check date stamps but it has no effect - I still get conflicting notes.

This here. I've had some of the same syncing issues you described and still do sometimes even though I sync religiously. Recently, I fixed conflicting modifications in maybe 9 notes that I was never clearly notified had conflicts. I only found there were conflicts in some notes when file size got extreme and by keyword searching "conflicting modifications"  I'm often in field using iphone/pad and so fixing them isn't doable at those moments. I've found this tool helps when I can get to a desktop and fix them http://textmechanic.com/wp-content/uploads/source/Remove-Duplicate-Lines.html

However, there needs to be a much more elegant way within EN than doubling the note, color coding differences at the very least.