Requesting Duplicate Notes Search Function across one/many folders

[DRSmithPMP 2]

As a member for more than 6 years - I have often wished for an effective duplicate note(s) search /display function.

Sometimes when clipping web pages, duplicates are created - and/or imported files into Evernote are duplicates (without any notification of this in advance of importing)...

Regardless of the reasons for the duplicates;  it seems amazing that this feature is not available - at least an highlighting and presentation of the duplicates notes for subsequent "manual" cleanup...

Not a trivial exercise for me to manage without a duplicate search function given there are over 50,000 entries in the Evernote DB.

With some basis of technical capabilities as an enterprise IT pro of over 30 years , please consider how to include this feature/function in the not too distant future...

Many thanks,

David 

 

 

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  Duplicate note searches have been requested,  but I don't see the point.  If and when I see a duplication from an active search,  I'll delete the duplicate.  It does me no active good to do so,  other than to thin down my 'found' list and the overall database size (very slightly).  Why bother to do a specific search?  It will take time to find and verify any duplications - which may then prevent my needing to delete some duplications in future.  And duplications may be difficult to verify sometimes if the same page has been copied at different times.

There is already a method for finding exact duplicates in Windows - set List view.  Make sure you have Title and Size columns active.  Select that view and Ctrl+A to copy all.  Copy and paste to spreadsheet.  Sort on title and find duplicates...

[DRSmithPMP 2]

Update:

Following up to this - from a practical perspective with a collection of over 75K plus notes in catalogue - please consider that this does not really work using a manual approach...

... Unless of course I do nothing but Evernote dedupe for this next 2000 hours...

Cheers!

Still not satisfied,

David

 

[DTLow 5,736]

Moved to the feature request forum

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[defitz 0]

I too would like a feature that would eliminate duplicates. I can't find anywhere in the discussion groups where the company has fixed this, although I have found several people requesting it.

[gazumped 11,652]

3 hours ago, defitz said:

I can't find anywhere in the discussion groups where the company has fixed this,

Hi.  Fixed what exactly?  The fact that a user might see a web page,  and think it's worth clipping,  but forget that s/he already clipped it a year ago?  Without doing a detailed search of the current database before completing the clip,  there's no way to tell whether that is true - and the extra 30 seconds that will add to a clip - plus the additional "This page was already clipped 11 months ago - clip anyway?" further confirmations would annoy the spots off a number of users including me.  Better to delete duplicates if and when you find them in my view...

[Frank Hirschhausen 0]

Duplicates come in either by Distraction, followed by clicking "Send to Evernote" again or just not realizing that its already captured

Duplicates increase the Size of the Database (and so the Energy Consumption) plus they could be distracting when working on both of them by mistake, creating different Versions.

A Duplicate Finder could return a List of Notes (just like any Finder for Files, Photos or Addresses on Desktops) and offer to keep either the newest File or the most attractive to the User

[CalS 5,280]

7 hours ago, Frank Hirschhausen said:

A Duplicate Finder could return a List of Notes (just like any Finder for Files, Photos or Addresses on Desktops) and offer to keep either the newest File or the most attractive to the User

Sort of a duplicate finder?  Interesting as to what criteria one would use to ID duplicates?

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, CalS said:

Sort of a duplicate finder?  Interesting as to what criteria one would use to ID duplicates?

Probably a multi-field comparison. Title, for a start. Source URL, tags, attachments, subject, author?

They wouldn't all need to match, but it would be a start, maybe put a percentage on it. But I'd definitely start with title, then source URL, and winnow from there.

[CalS 5,280]

2 hours ago, jefito said:

Probably a multi-field comparison. Title, for a start. Source URL, tags, attachments, subject, author?

They wouldn't all need to match, but it would be a start, maybe put a percentage on it. But I'd definitely start with title, then source URL, and winnow from there.

Yeah, I get it.  Title, size, tags, and then the lesser fields.  Just wondering what the OP had to say.

[gazumped 11,652]

With (currently) nearly 47K notes and about 20 gigs of database I see the merits of slimming down where possible,  but IMHO that's better done by saving some notes with attachments externally than by weeding out a few MB of duplication. 

Reasons not to bother?

1. Reducing your online database size is of no benefit to your account whatsoever - there's no extra credit from Evernote.
2. Only active notes get synced,  so AFAIK you won't see an increase in sync speed*.
3. Spending time on duplicates is adding another task to my daily (weekly / monthly / yearly) schedule.
4. I already find duplicates occasionally when I do active searches on topics of interest or relevance.  When found,  I expunge with extreme prejudice.
5. If I didn't find a duplicate in an active search,  it's sitting quietly in a corner IMHO (again) doing me no active harm and not getting in the way,  slowing searches or contributing to my carbon footprint.  Leave it be,  I say!

* unless you're downloading a whole database,  but you do keep local backups,  right?

Okay - occasionally I will find two notes that have exactly the same title and size,  and it would be useful to have a little option to compare the content of the two.  But nothing much more scientific than that...

[CalS 5,280]

47 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Okay - occasionally I will find two notes that have exactly the same title and size,  and it would be useful to have a little option to compare the content of the two.  But nothing much more scientific than that...

And sometimes the exact size isn't, that is rounding occurs.  I notice this with trouble tickets.  I leave the title Ticket # 999999 descriptionofproblem for emails I forward to EN.  If enough bytes don't get added between emails they are theoretically duplicates in the title size match.  And I'm with you, the juice is definitely not worth the squeeze.

[JustMe333 0]

Hi, just wondering if there was by any chance an update on duplicates? And possibly a notification for gmail add-in if the email was already saved... I like the Pinterest approach, "Pssst... you already got one of those..." so I slowly retreat, don't pin it and just shake my head ... Yeah Pinty, I knew that! just checking you keep up!

[gazumped 11,652]

7 hours ago, JustMe333 said:

Hi, just wondering if there was by any chance an update on duplicates? And possibly a notification for gmail add-in if the email was already saved... I like the Pinterest approach, "Pssst... you already got one of those..." so I slowly retreat, don't pin it and just shake my head ... Yeah Pinty, I knew that! just checking you keep up!

Hi. No changes yet.

[Fazakas 0]

It would be helpful for Evernote to recognize when I save a pdf that has already been saved. I'm sure Evernote could identify the duplicate much faster than if i was to do the search myself.