URGENT: Add "undo" functionality for tag changes or at least record tag changes as note "Updates"

[Yipeedog 27]

THE PROBLEM DESCRIBED BELOW LEADS ME TO ADVISE AGAINST USE OF EVERNOTE BUSINESS UNTIL CORRECTED OR SOMEONE EXPLAINS TO ME A DIFFERENT REMEDY... Additionally, the functionality gaps below were directly confirmed with Evernote through Chat. Thus the issues were acknowledged, and no remedy was provided, by Evernote before I posted this request.

The system currently does not allow you to undo tag changes (e.g. reversing "delete a tag") or even sort notes by when tag changes occurred. This can create HUGE problems. For instance, if you decide on a new organization system and accidentally delete the old tag before adding the new tag, there is no way to recover the related notes except to go searching for them manually.

One point of Evernote is that it gets away from traditional folder-hierarchy organization, leaning into deep tagging organization, but the inability to undo a mistake makes that very same tag organization EXTREMELY fragile, particularly for commercial contexts. Within personal use case scenarios this is seriously problematic, but for Business users this is DANGEROUS (imagine accidentally losing everything related to a client and not being able to recover it). Even admins can make mistakes (I personally am an Evernote power user and beta tester for the iOS app and I just did it) and we need to be able to back up.

This also seems like a very strange gap in functionality as "Undo" is one of the basic common UX functionality elements of modern software (including Back, Forward, Multi-Tab/Window, etc).

And as I say above, you don't even need to add traditional undo functionality, you just need to log a tag change as a note "update". We could then pull notes by time updated and fix the error. As it stands right now BOTH a straightforward "undo" option and the (backstop) "time-updated" option are absent.

Please help make this fix a priority by upvoting this post. If a power use like myself can make this mistake it is a serious flaw that should be addressed and it seems simple.

[DTLow 5,736]

You got my vote for logging tag changes via the updated field.  All changes should be registered as updates.

I don't think including an undo function is conceivable feasible for such database updates

[Yipeedog 27]

4 minutes ago, DTLow said:

You got my vote for logging tag changes via the updated field.

I don't think including an undo function is conceivable.

Either one fixes the problem. The urgent issue is that neither are available.

[CalS 5,280]

Not the first request for tag maintenance on a note to change the updated field.  100% support this and up-voted.

[jefito 5,589]

The behavior of not changing the updated date when doing tag operations is by Evernote design (for better or worse). See: 

 

[Yipeedog 27]

12 minutes ago, jefito said:

The behavior of not changing the updated date when doing tag operations is by Evernote design (for better or worse). See: 

 

Then you're just back to providing a normal "undo" option, or simply separate metadata for tag updates vs content updates. They literally probably have the latter, they just need to offer it as a sort filter. The bottomline is that the inability to correct errors is terrible functionality. Lots of ways to fix it, but it needs to be fixed.

[Yipeedog 27]

Here's another idea from @icoco_de that would resolve the issue 

 

[Yipeedog 27]

More from @JimmyBoy and @Dima Stefantsov

 

[CalS 5,280]

3 hours ago, jefito said:

for better or worse

Worse, but we've danced this danced before...  

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

6 hours ago, DTLow said:

I don't think including an undo function is conceivable.

"Conceivable"??  Perhaps you meant "feasible".  I'm pretty sure it is conceivable since OP did just that. 😉

IAC, it is definitely feasible, and, seems to me, one of the easier things to track for undo's.  Just record the tag and affected Notes in a temp database.  You might think an account with tens of thousands (up to 100,000) notes might be a challenge, but decades ago we had databases that could easily handle millions of records.  Many advances in both DB technology and HW tech. since then.

[jefito 5,589]

On 2/22/2019 at 3:31 PM, Yipeedog said:

Then you're just back to providing a normal "undo" option, or simply separate metadata for tag updates vs content updates. They literally probably have the latter, they just need to offer it as a sort filter. The bottomline is that the inability to correct errors is terrible functionality. Lots of ways to fix it, but it needs to be fixed.

FWIW, A little more context on this. The Windows OS has the ability to add text tags to files. I don't use this, myself, and I doubt that many other folks do either, but there it is. So just kicking things around a bit in File Explorer, and with the understanding that Evernote's organization scheme != Windows OS file system.:

• A file rename operation does not change the file's modified date 
• Tag operations *do* change the file modification date 

So a bit of inconsistency on the modified metadata always modifies updated date. Me, I don't have a problem with this; other rational beings of my acquaintance do.  But more importantly, File Explorer does offer undo for tag changes and file renames both. So my take is that changes to updated date on Evernote notes is a separate issue, but an undo that undid things like tag changes, and title renames would really be the better solution here. I'll upvote this on that basis.

Cheers.

[CalS 5,280]

3 hours ago, jefito said:

I don't use this, myself, and I doubt that many other folks do either, but there it is.

Tags work well with pictures, if you don't want to go all in with some photo management app.  Which is where I started long ago.....

I'd up-vote whichever one is easiest to deploy (I would think its gotta be change the updated field, ).  That and sometimes the need to undo has a lags when it is possible to undo.

[jefito 5,589]

22 hours ago, CalS said:

Tags work well with pictures, if you don't want to go all in with some photo management app.  Which is where I started long ago.....

But using File Explorer as a UI? Nah...

That's the beauty of Evernote -- it makes tagging operations easy and right up front, rather than hidden in a Properties dialog tab.

[CalS 5,280]

4 hours ago, jefito said:

But using File Explorer as a UI? Nah...

That's the beauty of Evernote -- it makes tagging operations easy and right up front, rather than hidden in a Properties dialog tab.

We take a judgmental pill today?    Not so much a UI, different viewers for that.  More for access.  Stuff in two places I know, but I don't care for the auto tag/recognize of some of the apps.  Plus I started this long ago and not interested in changing the plumbing at this point.  Funny, I use tags with the pictures same as I do in EN.

[jefito 5,589]

18 hours ago, CalS said:

We take a judgmental pill today?   

Every dam' morning...

Seriously, though -- you can evidently search for tags in files in File Explorer using... tada! -- tag:<whatever> in the File Explorer search bar, but there's no central tag repository, and doing tag operation on multiple files isn't that great, as far as I can tell. Tags are not such a prominent feature in File Explorer, at least not so much as in Evernote, so I stand by my judgmentality. in this case.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, jefito said:

Every dam' morning...

Seriously, though -- you can evidently search for tags in files in File Explorer using... tada! -- tag:<whatever> in the File Explorer search bar, but there's no central tag repository, and doing tag operation on multiple files isn't that great, as far as I can tell. Tags are not such a prominent feature in File Explorer, at least not so much as in Evernote, so I stand by my judgmentality. in this case.

Yeah, my only excuse is I started this form of tagging so long ago when I began to marshal photos.  And I've never found an app which enabled transfer of the existing tags.  Tag repository is an issue, though multi tagging not that bad.  So inertia be what inertia be.  So a tag:mom search in the root directory returns all Mom pics.  Or whatever.

[jmonen 2]

Did this ever get fixed? I've been an Evernote user since 2010 and consider myself a power user. But I accidentally just deleted my "journal" tag from 628 notes I had  and it appears there's no way to undo this. Please let me know if there's a solution for this. 

 

[CalS 5,280]

2 hours ago, jmonen said:

Did this ever get fixed? I've been an Evernote user since 2010 and consider myself a power user. But I accidentally just deleted my "journal" tag from 628 notes I had  and it appears there's no way to undo this. Please let me know if there's a solution for this. 

It never changed to my knowledge. Only thing I know to do is to recover the notes from back up, determine which ones had your journal tag on them, and then manually add the tag  to the 628 notes. Not pretty in anyway at all.

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