(Archived) Evernote feature requests and gripes

[shimra 14]

Evernote has been a bit of a frustrating program for me because the team will implement some very clever, advanced functionality while neglecting some very simple stuff that would not take very long to implement.

One problem is you can't copy and paste ocr text. Evernote takes the trouble to recognize and record it with advanced technology, but the program doesn't let you copy and paste it. Frustrating.

Currently, Evernote doesn't let you drag and drop notes between Notebooks,update: Ok, I just realised that you CAN drag and drop between notebooks, but only by clicking on the blue bar thingie at the top of a note. I was trying to drag by clicking on the note title in the "note list" panel. Maybe the "note list" panel should allow dragging between notebooks as well? Maybe that makes more sense as a user interface thing. The bar is attached to one note, but dragging it can allow moving multiple notes between notebooks if multiple notes are selected. I'm not sure if that makes as much user interface sense as dragging from the "note list" panel. Just to prove I'm inconsolable, I discovered a new complaint: you can't undue moving notes between notebooks. THis is not, however, a big deal

Is there seriously no "find next" within individual notes? I certainly can't find it. This is a "what were they thinking?" level of frustration for me. So if I drop in a 100 page note, and want to find a word that comes up 20 times in the note, I then have to scroll through the note looking for the pretty yellow highlighting? Am I missing something? Did the Evernote team really go through the effort of implementing this great, instant search technology, then miss the small feature that would actually make it useful for searching?

The export notebook and merge note functions work, but only in reverse chronological order. So if I do a diary in Evernote, and want to export it, I can only easily read my diary in reverse chronological order, which nobody does? If I wanted to read it in chronological order, I'd have to scroll up and down repeatedly, as you scroll down to read but scroll up to move to the next entry, I'm sure everyone can see the problem. Why not give the user a choice to export or merge notes in the order you created them?

You have to open all of your notebooks at once in 3.0. This is a problem in terms of scalability which is pretty obvious. If my home and business notebook are really big, if I have to keep them open at once and they 'get too big for Evernote to handle, that's it, because I can't just open the notebooks one at a time like Onenote lets users do. Evernote 3.0 doesn't let me separate my notebooks and choose a custom directory for the notebooks, either. So if I want to separate my business notebook and personal one and encrypt the business notebook in an encrypted directory, I can't, without fighting with the program, since you can't choose a custom directory. Also, If I wanted to keep the business notebook offline while moving it between computers while syncing the personal notebook with the web 2.0 service, I have to fight with Evernote, because it doesn't want me to do that or keep the notebooks in more than one file.

You can't encrypt a whole notebook, just individual notes? (Onenote lets me encrypt a whole notebook) So basically, i have to use third party encryption software to keep my business stuff secure, but, as I said above, Evernote doesn't let you separate the business and personal files either, at least not without fighting with the program.

I hope the Evernote team realizes that many business users can't put their confidential or trade secret containing notes online on the web 2.0 service. Many lawyers for example, would never consider putting client information online without first encrypting it. I hope the Evernote team realizes that there's a market for the non web 2.0 service and doesn't neglect the non web 2.0 portion, both in their business plan and program functionality. Heck, I don't even want to put my personal stuff online. The people running the Evernote servers might be good people, but why should I take the risk of storing my diary online in an unencrypted format?

Finally, no PDF support. Business documents are maintained in PDF. Multipage documents are scanned to PDF. Many scanners scan to PDF. I don't know if there's a workaround by importing to microsoft word with the PDF plugin and exporting to Evernote in some fashion, but PDF support would be good.

Evernote team, if you are reading this, please consider implementing some of my ideas, and keep up the good work. Also, If some of the above features exist and I'm too thick to find them, please let me know

[shimra 14]

Now I've learned why you can't copy and paste from the handwriting recognition.

"For a given hand-written word, any word that is reasonably close gets entered into the database as a match. It’s a one-to-many relationship, so you think it’s working because you get positive hits. When you search on what you expect to match, it matches fairly often. What’s not so obvious at first is that lots of other stuff (incorrect words) will match too. This one-to-many structure is probably why EverNote doesn’t let you copy the recognized text from a hand-written paragraph. There is no cohesive translation per se."

http://manage-this.com/evernote-vs-onenote/

Less frustrating to know the reason why at any rate.

[themoules 3]

I totally agree with the lack of security for business notebooks. At present I keep my business evernote records on a separate evernote database on the encrypted portion of my Pc. I for one would not risk leaving my business notes on Evernote's servers.

Please Evernote team let us know if we will be able to have separate databases WITH THEIR OWN tags/catagories in the final version. I can't understand why I have to see tags appertaining to my domestic notes when browsing my business notes.

I hope there are others of you beta testers out there that agree with this.

Evernote have made a huge jump with this new beta software. Lets just hope that they don't leave too many frustrated version 2 users behind

[CadErik 0]

You can't encrypt a whole notebook, just individual notes? (Onenote lets me encrypt a whole notebook) So basically, i have to use third party encryption software to keep my business stuff secure, but, as I said above, Evernote doesn't let you separate the business and personal files either, at least not without fighting with the program.

I hope the Evernote team realizes that many business users can't put their confidential or trade secret containing notes online on the web 2.0 service. Many lawyers for example, would never consider putting client information online without first encrypting it. I hope the Evernote team realizes that there's a market for the non web 2.0 service and doesn't neglect the non web 2.0 portion, both in their business plan and program functionality. Heck, I don't even want to put my personal stuff online. The people running the Evernote servers might be good people, but why should I take the risk of storing my diary online in an unencrypted format?

I would expect something will happen in regards to private/secure data. No matter how appealing storing in the cloud sounds, Evernote would loose a share of market if they can not provide an acceptable solution for managing confidential data. So far the "local" notebooks are not really an acceptable solution. And if they launched the beta program for feedback, they sure got alot on this.

Erik.

[shimra 14]

I totally agree with the lack of security for business notebooks. At present I keep my business evernote records on a separate evernote database on the encrypted portion of my Pc. I for one would not risk leaving my business notes on Evernote's servers.

Please Evernote team let us know if we will be able to have separate databases WITH THEIR OWN tags/catagories in the final version. I can't understand why I have to see tags appertaining to my domestic notes when browsing my business notes.

The other problem is, the tags from the local notebooks appear on the web site, so if the local notebooks have tags mentioning client names or alluding to business strategies, that info is up on the cloud, even though you've indicated that the notebook itself will not be.

[themoules 3]

The other problem is, the tags from the local notebooks appear on the web site, so if the local notebooks have tags mentioning client names or alluding to business strategies, that info is up on the cloud, even though you've indicated that the notebook itself will not be.

Thanks Shimra I totally overlooked that point.

The more I get into this Beta the more worried I become about using Evernote in the future. If we don't get some sort of updated "road map" from Evernote soon about the future, someone will start a thread on alternative programs. It will be interesting if anyone knows anything as good as Evernote 2.2.

It is a pity that before the beta our main gripe was getting the Evernote team to lift the database maximum size limit. Now that is forgotten as Evernote 2.2 users are begining to wonder whether to "abandon ship". I for one will be very sorry, as it will be like mourning the loss of an old friend.

[vogelap 27]

The other problem is, the tags from the local notebooks appear on the web site, so if the local notebooks have tags mentioning client names or alluding to business strategies, that info is up on the cloud, even though you've indicated that the notebook itself will not be.

I didn't realize that! That is BAD. Very, very bad.

[jshafter 4]

Agree fully that the Evernote team has been oddly silent on these boards regarding their development roadmap - and that this is a very bad business strategy for Evernote. Much of the raw functionality in Evernote can be duplicated given a few months of effort using off-the-shelf components. Give me a month or two with Expression Blend, SQL-lite, etc... and I can have a text/ink notekeeping application synched to a local/remote database with handwriting recognition which is perhaps not up to ENote standards but good enough. Of course, I have no desire to do this and am happy to pay Evernote some $$ per upgrade cycle to do all this for me. In the past, Evernote has proven very responsive to the needs and wants of its user community. Now there seems to be an odd disconnect with the company either remaining radio silent on the future of many elements from ENote 2.x which were dropped in this version (file links, category manipulation, linking to notes, etc...) and acting oddly dismissive of the security concerns of its power user base. If this publication of tags is accurate and a planned design feature of the software rather than a Beta oversight it is likely the end of Evernote for serious users. I rely on Evernote to structure my thoughts and memory regarding critical matters of personal and business importance. My internal cognitive schema of tags is not exactly something I consider appropriate for public consumption.

As a corporate strategy ENote may have decided the world of power users isn't exactly a massive market segment and their focus should be streamlining a simple product for mass consumer use. I would urge them to consider that the most likely future for this scenario is that one power user (it only takes one) grows sufficiently annoyed that they hack together an open source Evernote type-program (see Basket Notes for a start down this track). At this point a self-sustaining open source project emerges to drain both revenue and "first-adopter" buzz from Evernote. Yes, the consumer market is orders of magnitude larger than the power-user market. But the power-users are the blog writers, board posters, and general opinion leaders who establish the brand identity and credibility of Evernote for the consumer market. Microsoft may be powerful enough to keep rolling despite the complaints of computer power-users but Microsoft is a singular monopoly exception and no small application software shop has ever survived once serious users laugh at it.

[tablets_r_nifty 0]

The other problem is, the tags from the local notebooks appear on the web site, so if the local notebooks have tags mentioning client names or alluding to business strategies, that info is up on the cloud, even though you've indicated that the notebook itself will not be.

I didn't realize that! That is BAD. Very, very bad.

Agreed!!! That is a very serious problem!