First impressions and problems as a new user of Evernote

[johnnewbury1@yahoo.co.uk 0]

[Rather than a matter of choice, I'm pretty well obliged to use Evernote to liaise with a collaborator for long-term, maybe never-ending, purposes. The following was prepared and sent to them; it is forward to you, as is, for information, for what it's worth - rather than splitting into the separate forums, which I accept would be far better -  not in the expectation of any imminent fixes, or dialogue about these issues.]

 

There are two, confusingly quite different, versions of Evernote: one as a Web page, and one as a loadable app, for each device you want to use it on. Here I'm only talking about the free versions; reverting from the initially provided 30-day free trial of the upgraded version only causes more confusion!

 

The Web version is functionally most deficient, and not to be recommended at all, except in emergency when accessing from a device that doesn't have the loadable app loaded. And the free version allows the app to be loaded on no more than 2 devices for a given account, so the Web version could still potentially be useful sometimes. But - and this is important - the Web version is the one that one is initially automatically directed to in an email if invited to join Evernote by an existing user, or when anything new has been shared or is available in Work Chat.

 

# Evernote Web version

 

• Work chat is unavailable.
• The width of columns can't be adjusted. So, in particular, long titles, especially if any status text, say, is appended, cant be seen in full.
• Notes can't be moved between folders (other than by copying and deleting).
• The "Notebooks" tab only displays own Notebooks and those shared ones that have been opened (recently?).
• The "All Notes" tab only displays Notes in the listed Notebooks (see above).
• There is no control of when syncing takes place.

 

#Evernote App version

 

• This seems to be free for the problems with the Web version.
• It has much more functionality, available via menus on a normal menu bar.
• However, the app window gradually seems to accumulate duplicate names for Notebooks, in the "Notebooks" and "Share with Me" tabs.
  • These duplicates remain even if the app is restarted.
  • The duplicated names seem to be mere dummies: they don't display the number of Notebooks within, and are empty if clicked on.
  • The duplicates can be deleted, and it it tempting to do so. But if deleted, sharing with that Notebook is lost, without warning, for a long while; maybe until the owner of the Notebook resyncs.
• There is sometimes a long delay in new shared Notebooks, or the Notes they contain, becoming visible. (Maybe this applies to the Web version too.)
• View settings aren't remembered unless explicitly requested.
  • That request isn't made from the View menu!
    •  And that facility, used minutes ago, now seems to have disappeared; unfindable!
  • When the Notes List column had been unintentionally hidden - possibly by accidentally pressing F11 - it wan't obvious how to view other than the most recently selected Note, until all the menus had been searched for plausibly bad settings.

 

Will report these flaws to Evernote, if easy to do so. But worth bearing in mind if others are to share Notebooks and Notes with you as we have done.

[Scott T. 661]

13 hours ago, johnnewbury1@yahoo.co.uk said:

# Evernote Web version

 

• Work chat is unavailable.
• The width of columns can't be adjusted. So, in particular, long titles, especially if any status text, say, is appended, cant be seen in full.
• Notes can't be moved between folders (other than by copying and deleting).
• The "Notebooks" tab only displays own Notebooks and those shared ones that have been opened (recently?).
• The "All Notes" tab only displays Notes in the listed Notebooks (see above).
• There is no control of when syncing takes place.

• Work chat is mostly a mechanism for notifying users of shares they have received. The new web version exposes that via the "Shared With Me" view. Use of work chat for non-sharing means such as actual chatting is a highly underutilized feature.
• Though the width of the columns is not adjustable, such as in the notebook view, adjusting the browser window will resize the columns. For a notebook view where you have the middle note column, that doesn't appear to be resizable.
• Moving notes between folders can be accomplished by clicking the "..." menu on a note (upper-right corner) and selecting "Move to..."
• The "Notebooks" tab will display notebooks that you've created or viewed. If a notebook has been shared to you, it's not added to your Notebook list unless you've taken action to view the share. This is to support the idea that you might not want notebooks that were shared to you to show up in your notebook list. Should this be the case, we support the ability to "Leave notebook", such that it no longer shows in your notebook list. All shared notebooks will always be accessible via the "Shared With Me" view
• As you notes, the "All Notes" view will reflect notes that are in notebooks in your list. Again, all shares are always accessible via "Shared With Me"
• For syncing, we've really tried to obscure this from our users. In the modern age of always-on internet, a user shouldn't be concerned with trying to manually force a sync. We've made vast improvements to all of our clients such that syncing is near real-time. It's a feature that should not be exposed to or even on the mind of a user. All data should be accessible on all clients instantaneously. We still need to do some more work for our non-web clients to make it truly instant, but the web version really shouldn't have that problem.

As for your issues with the desktop client, you need to provide more information on what client you are actually using and I can try to help out. I don't understand why you would be getting duplicate notebooks like that.

[joepan 1]

Work chat is not highly underutilized where I work & now the chats seem to be missing after a certain date, chats we need to access. Where can we access old chats?

[Scott T. 661]

@joepan All your work chats should be accessible from any of our installed clients. As I noted, work chat itself has not been implemented in the latest web client. Notes and Notebooks shared via work chat will show up in the "Shared With Me" section. But, if you want to access text chats via the web, you will need to switch to the older web version via your settings https://www.evernote.com/Settings.action 

Do you believe there is data loss with your chats? If you try on an installed client and are not seeing the chats, you should reach out to our support for assistance. Go to https://help.evernote.com to file a ticket.