(Archived) edit v.s. append?

[dancekat 0]

I'm confused. On my Android phone, one of my notes only gives me the option of "append", not "edit". My other notes has the "edit" option. Can someone explain to me why?

[engberg 89]

The Android OS only includes a basic "plain text only" editor. This means that it can't safely edit rich, formatted text without potentially losing important formatting or content.

If you create a text note on the Android and don't edit it anywhere else, you should be able to edit it again from the Android. But if you've edited it on a desktop computer and changed formatting or added other non-text-only elements, then it's only safe to append to the end of the note.

[dancekat 0]

Ah! Thanks, Dave! That make perfect sense as that particular note is the only one I edited on on the desktop app.

[dougsyo 0]

I have appended to notes, hit Save, check note status (date is changed), pending uploads (none, must have already gone, these are small notes), etc and even exit and kill evernote for android, but I don't see my appended text.

Is there some sort of refresh that I'm missing?

Doug

[lgritz 8]

Dave, being able to edit notes on my Android mobile is very important. In fact, it's much more important than having all the fonts and other rich text features AT ALL.

Although the best solution would be full editing of rich text on Android, many of us would settle for an easy way to create a true text-only note on the Mac/PC that could be edited on Android. I'd much rather have edit functionality than rich text, if given the choice. It's kind of weird that if you edit a note on the Mac -- ever -- then it is forever uneditable on Android.

Anyway, if you are stuck with "plain text editing only" on Android, perhaps you could throw us a bone by adding a feature for the desktop version that allows creation of text-only notes, and allows us to edit on the desktop without losing the text-only property.

[dconroy1 0]

Igritz - totally agree with you - can we not have a 'mobile compatible' mode on a note where it can be edited across platforms in plain text without tears?

I also am not at all bothered about fancy fonts etc if i can't edit a note across mobile/desktop.

This would be very useful functionality - is it on the list anywhere?

Thanks!

[engberg 89]

If you only edit a note by typing into it on the desktop, it should remain editable on the phone.

You can strip text formatting by selecting all of the text, cut, and then Edit > Paste without Formatting

[lgritz 8]

Hmmm... you're right. It must be that I habitually just paste, instead of "paste without format", when creating notes.

It's so easy to fall off the wagon and do something small that makes it a non-text note forever after. It would still be tremendously helpful to "mark" the note as "text forever". Or to have a button "convert to text note", or something.

[rmg 0]

I use the Android app and I use the desktop app in OS X. I have created notes in the Android app; viewed them in the OS X app, edited the notes in the Android app, and they never get updated in the Desktop app. I changed the title of the text note in the desktop app and that update made it to Android. I have updated several text notes on the Android phone and the updates do not make it onto the Desktop app (or the web site). New notes end up getting sync'ed. As far as I know I don't do anything but just plain text in either the desktop app or the Android app.

I have noticed that after updating the text on a note in the Android app and then looking at the note info the updated date didn't change.

[engberg 89]

If you see "stale" versions of notes on the Android device, that may be a bug we're investigating.

We believe that the Android app can occasionally get confused if you edit an existing note on the Android, and then edit it later somewhere else. It may think that the local version is still "pending" and refuse to accept the changes from the service.

Until we fix this bug, the only workaround is to clear Evernote's data directory from the SD card on your device:

viewtopic.php?f=51&t=17046&p=68404

[ianwood1970 0]

This is such a pain it makes me want to give up on Evernote all together! I've been trying to maintain "text only" notes so I can edit them on both phone and PC but alas they somehow become "rich text" without ever asking. I don't need/want rich text. Also, sometimes when I "append text" and save, it completely vanishes without a trace. Happened twice now. That's not good! What's up with that?

I just want to edit my plain text notes both here and there! Otherwise I have no use for Evernote. I might as well email myself instead!

[minotes 0]

just got an android phone and playing with evernote.

i see the same issue. i have the Windows App v 3.5.6.2844 (98594) on my desktop and the Android app v 1.5.1 (97121) on my phone. hopefully this issue will be fixed?

thanks.

[Suitcase 0]

I just wanted to add my plea -- it would be so great if there were an option to choose for plain text v. RTF. Even if I had to set it note-by-note, it would make Evernote much better for me.

[mb168 0]

This is such a pain it makes me want to give up on Evernote all together! I've been trying to maintain "text only" notes so I can edit them on both phone and PC but alas they somehow become "rich text" without ever asking. I don't need/want rich text. Also, sometimes when I "append text" and save, it completely vanishes without a trace. Happened twice now. That's not good! What's up with that?

I just want to edit my plain text notes both here and there! Otherwise I have no use for Evernote. I might as well email myself instead!

I totally agree with isanwood1970. This small thing makes Evernote pretty much useless to an Android user. All of the cool things Evernote can do, are gutted on an Android since you can't edit, just look at it or append to it, if you do anything to it on a pc. Without the ability to even copy and paste text from a website, doc, xls, etc and not worry if it has formatting or an odd character which renders that note useless mobile. It isn't even good for a grocery list for my wife. At the very least there should be a way to restrict our account ourselves either in the program or web version to only allow text, much like the way pasted text in notepad works, so it's editable in both places. It basically can't do as much as Dropbox, which I can edit text both mobile and on a pc/mac including html, plus any kind of file, pics, pdfs, docs, etc.

[captain-hook 0]

Why not adopt wikicode formatting as the back end of the note formatting?

Those clients that can support lots of pretty fonts in their builtin editor can display the styles according to the wikicode. Those that can't implement a full rich text editor in the short term can still see and edit the raw text and formatting codes (perhaps with a toggle to turn off the displaying of the formatting codes) and more importantly can write notes with formatting that other clients can understand so long as the user can remember some escape characters.

I suggest wikicode because presumably a largish userbase is already used to dealing with that. I realise wikicode probably doesn't cover the full range of styles which you current support, but for the most part all I'm looking for in terms of styling for a note is font, bold, italic, size and maybe alignment; it doesn't seem like that is a huge range of codes which the user would need to remember.

Formatting rich text with clients which only supports plain text was a problem which was solved decades ago, albeit in not a massively user friendly form, it just seems like you are trying to reinvent the wheel.

[jefito 5,589]

Why not adopt wikicode formatting as the back end of the note formatting?

At a guess, it's because Evernote already uses an HTML-style encoding for their notes (ENML). Changing to some other encoding would require changing all of their numerous clients, plus any server processes that need to work with the note encoding as well. Probably not a very palatable option.

~Jeff

[ctaylor 0]

I want to second somewhat belatedly Suitcase's request for a plain text setting:

I just wanted to add my plea -- it would be so great if there were an option to choose for plain text v. RTF. Even if I had to set it note-by-note, it would make Evernote much better for me.

Actually, I'd like to go a bit further and ask for a global option to set plain vs rich text. As long as I'm wishing.