Evernote for Windows 6.19 beta 1

[Iriska 24]

Today we released Windows 6.19 beta 1. Its available here!

 

What’s in 6.19 beta 1?

New:

* Automated file splitting on export of enex files. We are making it easier to backup and import files, especially on file systems that do not support large files or systems with low memory...

* Security update

 

Fixed:

* Fixed an error in export option when selecting all notes (Ctrl + A)

* Cursor jumps to beginning of note body during sync while editing note in shared notebook

* Fixed an issue with changing Evernote DB location

[gazumped 11,664]

Thanks for the notification - currently updating...  Outlook restarted / Evernote restarted / desktop icon in place... and we're back!  Does anyone know if the changes to ENEX file generation have any effect on Backupery's process?  (I'm also asking them!)

[CalS 5,280]

17 hours ago, Iriska said:

Automated file splitting on export of enex files.

What does this mean, before I dive in?  Thanks.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

@IriskaHello, thanks for the heads up.

Will the "automatic split" by any means influence our backup processes for the local EN database ? I am using Acronis Backup for frequent backups of the EN data folders.

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

Will the "automatic split" by any means influence our backup processes for the local EN database ? I am using Acronis Backup for frequent backups of the EN data folders.

Can't think of any reason why it would. Backing up the Evernote database files has nothing to do with exporting .enex files.

[Guest]

The database is not affected by the enex splitting so Acronis will work fine.

Enex files are now split when exporting when they reach a certain size.  This is to help with export files being so large that they can not be properly imported due to memory restrictions.  By default the enex files are split around 2 GB.  When the export dialog pops up, it will give an estimated size of the exported data in the title bar.  The estimate is for the raw data size and the final size will be slightly larger due to the enex file format.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Is this related to this error for enex files (200MB)

This is the maximum note size warning.  That size has not changed.  The "importing" portion of it refers to attaching too many (or too large) file attachments.  This does not refer to the enex import/export process.

[DTLow 5,736]

On 6/18/2019 at 12:03 PM, RMorgan said:

This does not refer to the enex import/export proces

If there's no connection, we should drop this; it's off topic and may not be a Windows issue
I appreciate the smaller export files

I should have included more detail in my post

The 200MB issue is an error message on a Mac, opening .enex files  (Win/Mac)

I bypass it by dragging the enex file into a local notebook

There's discussions at 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/120130-importing-backup-enex-files-200mgs/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/102393-opening-large-enex-file-200mb-limit/

[jefito 5,589]

17 minutes ago, RMorgan said:

This is the maximum note size warning.  That size has not changed.  The "importing" portion of it refers to attaching too many (or too large) file attachments.  This does not refer to the enex import/export process.

Seems a little unclear. Does this refer to any .enex file that has one or more notes that are larger than 200MB? Presumably since your 'split' cutoff is ~2GB, that's OK to import so long as each note in it is < 200MB. 

15 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I bypassed it by dragging the enex file into a local notebook

Since local notebooks are unsynced, sounds like that's not an issue for that case. Or it may be different on the Mac. What happens if you try to move it to a synced notebook?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Sit down, lean back and enjoy the show ...

Hope there is a way to get this archived stuff back to where you can use it.

[gazumped 11,664]

Had a response from Backupery if anyone is interested - they're looking into whether any changes affect their processes...

[CalS 5,280]

Ummm, put this beta on a backup machine.  Exported a notebook, 22,633 notes, 15GB per the banner before the export started.  Ended up with 106 ENEX files most 160MB plus or minus, some as low as 110.  I'm assuming this isn't the intended behavior?   

Also, what is the import process for this?  Not sure naming the first fille notebookname and the second notebookname (2) makes sense if there will be more than one file.  Seems to me the first might as well be (1).  FWIW.

[eric99 980]

13 hours ago, RMorgan said:

The database is not affected by the enex splitting so Acronis will work fine.

Enex files are now split when exporting when they reach a certain size.  This is to help with export files being so large that they can not be properly imported due to memory restrictions.  By default the enex files are split around 2 GB. 

Hopefully I can override the default. I still prefer a single file since my PC has sufficient memory to do the job

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Maybe this is more related to the file system on the disk. Some can not take more than a few GB in one single file.

[jefito 5,589]

13 hours ago, gazumped said:

Had a response from Backupery if anyone is interested - they're looking into whether any changes affect their processes...

If they use the .enex export system, the the answer's probably "yes". If they use the Evernote API, then the answer's probably "no".

[gazumped 11,664]

2 hours ago, jefito said:

If they use the Evernote API, then the answer's probably "no".

And the winner is...

Can't see any difference between the latest Backupery back up and one last month - 

I have one extra file (went crazy - started a new notebook) in 7 Folders (my stacks) - interestingly I didn't realise I had that many notebooks (98,  apparently) until now.  Ironically 98% of my notes are still in one default notebook - the rest are shared / local / WIP / and me being lazy.

Anyway.  Initial mild panic over - I still seem to have my regular backup in place.  Thanks Backupery and Evernote!  (And everyone else for comments :)

 

[dbvirago 502]

I did an Enex backup this morning without knowing about this or paying attention. It split my 11K note 5+Gb file into 5 ~1Gb files. Never had a problem with the large files, so not sure I care, but I've never done a recovery from them either. 

[OrbWeaver 83]

Oh, well. It's back to 6.16.4 again.

Paste & Match Style still doesn't match style in even the most basic paste.

A very simple line of text. Note there are 10 "A", 5 "B", and 10 more "A" (that's a rough count, my eyes are tired.

 

I highlight the 5 "B" characters and "Copy" and immediately "Paste & Match Style".

One would expect the line to have zero changes. The cursor hasn't moved, the text hasn't changed, there should be NO changes at all. So how come ...

 

... the text has changed? My eyes must be getting worse than ever because I could swear the original was all on the one line. I guess it's time for new glasses.

 

[Denis L 50]

On 6/18/2019 at 9:15 PM, RMorgan said:

Enex files are now split when exporting when they reach a certain size.  This is to help with export files being so large that they can not be properly imported due to memory restrictions.  By default the enex files are split around 2 GB.  When the export dialog pops up, it will give an estimated size of the exported data in the title bar.  The estimate is for the raw data size and the final size will be slightly larger due to the enex file format.

May I ask if ENScript.exe on Windows also splits enex files?  We've made several tests and didn't find any difference in behavior compared to the previous version of ENScript.

[jefito 5,589]

30 minutes ago, Denis L said:

May I ask if ENScript.exe on Windows also splits enex files?  We've made several tests and didn't find any difference in behavior compared to the previous version of ENScript.

I'd guess that ENScript.exe just calls over to the Evernote application to do the export, or else they both use the same library. The difference in behavior appears to be with very large .enex files. To figure it out, I'd find a notebook that does the split thing when you export from the Evernote application, and then see whether ENScript does the same thing on the same notebook.

[CalS 5,280]

8 hours ago, Denis L said:

May I ask if ENScript.exe on Windows also splits enex files?  We've made several tests and didn't find any difference in behavior compared to the previous version of ENScript.

According to @gazumped above the beta does not seem to effect Backupery.

[gazumped 11,664]

9 hours ago, CalS said:

According to @gazumped above the beta does not seem to effect Backupery.

Ran a further test on my biggest database - my default notebook is one 23GB file when backed up by Backupery,  but 20-odd 1GB files when exported directly.  

[CalS 5,280]

3 hours ago, gazumped said:

Ran a further test on my biggest database - my default notebook is one 23GB file when backed up by Backupery,  but 20-odd 1GB files when exported directly.  

Wonder what I did to turn my 16 GB prime notebook into 106 odd 160 MB files.  Must have a special version.    Will try again later today.  Ditto the Backupery experience, one file.  Importing those 106 one at a time might be a PITA.

[RooRoo 2]

Multiple <not responding>...mostly on sync 

 

Have to force close and restart

Edit: Fixed (for now) by increasing sync times to 10 minutes

Edit 2: Nope, back again (Like Ludacris)

[cmahoney729y@gmail.com 0]

On 2019. 6. 17. at 오후 5시 17분, Iriska said:

Today we released Windows 6.19 beta 1. Its available here!

 

What’s in 6.19 beta 1?

New:

* Automated file splitting on export of enex files. We are making it easier to backup and import files, especially on file systems that do not support large files or systems with low memory...

* Security update

 

Fixed:

* Fixed an error in export option when selecting all notes (Ctrl + A)

* Cursor jumps to beginning of note body during sync while editing note in shared notebook

* Fixed an issue with changing Evernote DB location

 

[CalS 5,280]

Well, decided to try the export again.  This time I got 9 files versus the 106 the first time, a marked improvement.  Target file size seemed to be 2 GB. 

Based upon @gazumped above at 1 GB and my first experience at 160 MB, it begs the question if some parameter is getting diddled somewhere or is it a random act of violence as to the target file size for each export file?  IAC, the previous mentioned option to decide if a single fie is okay would be appreciated.

[jefito 5,589]

8 hours ago, CalS said:

Well, decided to try the export again.  This time I got 9 files versus the 106 the first time, a marked improvement.  Target file size seemed to be 2 GB.

It would also be interesting to know whether Evernote has any problems with a .enex file greater than 2GB, of if that's a limitation of some other consumer of .enex files.

[CalS 5,280]

23 minutes ago, jefito said:

It would also be interesting to know whether Evernote has any problems with a .enex file greater than 2GB, of if that's a limitation of some other consumer of .enex files.

Don’t know, though I have imported a file larger than that in the past, to recover a dumb a$$ note delete.  🙁  I think the file was 10 GB +.   But that was the past. 

[gazumped 11,664]

On ENEX exported file size again - I didn't keep the test I ran,  so I can't currently test again:  but - when importing,  how are the split file portions treated?  Are the backup files linked,  so if you restore <backupfile>01,  it will automatically suck in 02 etc without further prompting,  or do I aim to reinstall every.single.one individually?

[CalS 5,280]

41 minutes ago, gazumped said:

On ENEX exported file size again - I didn't keep the test I ran,  so I can't currently test again:  but - when importing,  how are the split file portions treated?  Are the backup files linked,  so if you restore <backupfile>01,  it will automatically suck in 02 etc without further prompting,  or do I aim to reinstall every.single.one individually?

First of all, you have to import each file separately.  I ran a test with a smaller notebook to check that out.

And,  in the process the saga continues.  This notebook was just under 5 GB, image below.  Export generated 16 ENEX files in the 325 MB range, image below.  So another target size in the mix.  @Iriska, we know this is a beta and we are testing it.  A bit of feedback as to what is supposed to be happening might be appropriate at this point.

[gazumped 11,664]

7 minutes ago, CalS said:

Export generated 16 ENEX files in the 325 MB range,

Wow.  Somewhat weird.  Interestingly 5GB / 16 is in that range... and my 24GB / 1.5GB = 16

Could the splitting algorithm be that basic??  Options not to split definitely required here!

(All numbers very approximate!!)

[CalS 5,280]

1 minute ago, gazumped said:

Wow.  Somewhat weird.  Interestingly 5GB / 16 is in that range... and my 24GB / 1.5GB = 16

Could the splitting algorithm be that basic??  Options not to split definitely required here!

Well my 15 GB into 9 files can't be bent into 16.  

[jefito 5,589]

1 hour ago, CalS said:

Don’t know, though I have imported a file larger than that in the past, to recover a dumb a$$ note delete.  🙁  I think the file was 10 GB +.   But that was the past. 

I'd test it myself, but it turns out that my largest notebook exports to only 1.5 GB or so.

[gazumped 11,664]

Oops.  Once again Stats defeat me!  Ah well - p'raps @Iriska will have something more useful.

[CalS 5,280]

1 minute ago, jefito said:

I'd test it myself, but it turns out that my largest notebook exports to only 1.5 GB or so.

Too many notebooks!  

[CalS 5,280]

3 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Oops.  Once again Stats defeat me!  Ah well - p'raps @Iriska will have something more useful.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review

[jefito 5,589]

Just now, CalS said:

Too many notebooks!  

You might think that, but even though I use Evernote daily (predominantly, but not exclusively, at work), I don't save huge amounts of stuff (in either numbers of notes or size of notes). 

Perhaps I'm just a wee bit more selective than the note hoarder crowd...  

[CalS 5,280]

1 minute ago, jefito said:

You might think that, but even though I use Evernote daily (predominantly, but not exclusively, at work), I don't save huge amounts of stuff (in either numbers of notes or size of notes). 

Perhaps I'm just a wee bit more selective than the note hoarder crowd...  

I prefer the term paperless, not to be confused with clueless... which I might be if I didn't save all this stuff.  

[CalS 5,280]

13 minutes ago, jefito said:

I'd test it myself, but it turns out that my largest notebook exports to only 1.5 GB or so.

Seriously, might be worth a go to see one or more files are produced.

[CalS 5,280]

Bug Report.

I have this beta installed on a Surface.  I am running 6.18.4 on my main system.  I downloaded a PDF through IOS.  I modified the note title and added a new tag to the note on the Surface. I exited EN on the surface and everything synced.  When I went to my main device the note was as it was before the editing.  So okay, maybe my memory is slipping.  However, the new tag was available for selection and after "re-adding" it to the note there is only one note with the tag.  I don't know, sometimes notes created via IOS share get added multiple times, but I've never had one lose edits, or get overwritten.

[ej8899 175]

1 hour ago, CalS said:

Bug Report.

I have this beta installed on a Surface.  I am running 6.18.4 on my main system.  I downloaded a PDF through IOS.  I modified the note title and added a new tag to the note on the Surface. I exited EN on the surface and everything synced.  When I went to my main device the note was as it was before the editing.  So okay, maybe my memory is slipping.  However, the new tag was available for selection and after "re-adding" it to the note there is only one note with the tag.  I don't know, sometimes notes created via IOS share get added multiple times, but I've never had one lose edits, or get overwritten.

Sadly, I'm seeing a lot of sync issues between working on ios and windows desktop application.   I get notes coming back, titles reverting back to "untitled" and more.  Usually the tags stay put, but I can't confirm that as I'm usually just frustrated at the point of having notes re-appear in my inbox after already dealing with them and filing/tagging/titling them.  I've seen this across various versions of both Windows and iOS too.  Reported in the past too. 

[CalS 5,280]

Just now, ej8899 said:

Sadly, I'm seeing a lot of sync issues between working on ios and windows desktop application.   I get notes coming back, titles reverting back to "untitled" and more.  Usually the tags stay put, but I can't confirm that as I'm usually just frustrated at the point of having notes re-appear in my inbox after already dealing with them and filing/tagging/titling them.  I've seen this across various versions of both Windows and iOS too.  Reported in the past too. 

Good to know thanks.  I haven't had any issues of which I am aware other than this one.  Weird thing about this was adding the new tag to the note on the Surface and then the tag disappearing form the note but sticking to the tag tree. That's how I knew I wasn't dreaming the edits.

[Guest]

I've added an option in the next beta for configuring the split size:

Default is 2000 mb (2 gb).  To disable, set to 0.

If the number is low (200 mb or less), there's a good chance that the split size will be larger than the give size since at least 1 note will be in the enex.  Otherwise it will keep the enex file sizes below the size limit.

This is to fix systems file systems that don't support large files (you'd be surprised how many users are restricted to 2 gb limits) and systems with low memory (or 32 bit OS limits) that can not load and parse such large files.

The 200 mb note size limit is still in place and has not been affected.  Ideally anything that is exported should be re-imported without error. 😃

The import process does not automatically add the next file in the sequence.

If there is a naming conflict, a confirmation dialog will ask if you want to overwrite the file(s).

[s2sailor 2,193]

20 minutes ago, RMorgan said:

The import process does not automatically add the next file in the sequence.

If I have a multi-file export, offhand I can't think of a reason why I would only want to import one file.  If I'm doing this to recover a specific note I won't know which enex file it is in so I would need to import the full database to find it.  Maybe an option can be added to import the full series?

[gazumped 11,664]

29 minutes ago, RMorgan said:

The import process does not automatically add the next file in the sequence.

Ow.  Missed that.  I agree with @s2sailor - surely there's no reason why someone would want to import file #09 in a series of 12.  Unless there's a better way to identify a note or a notebook from within a series of backups,  the obvious tactic would be to import all the files - One. By. One. And then search for the required note(s),  restore the required content and delete everything again.  That is not an elegant process...

[DTLow 5,736]

7 hours ago, gazumped said:

Unless there's a better way to identify a note or a notebook from within a series of backups

There's an idea; search enex files for a title or keyword
and only import the specific enex files

Preferable to importing 1000's of notes just to restore a single note

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, RMorgan said:

I've added an option in the next beta for configuring the split size:

Great, and 0 will act as things do today.  Out of interest, will this also fix the variable sizes we have seen in our testing of the beta?

[gazumped 11,664]

20 minutes ago, DTLow said:

search enex files for a title or keyword

Not sure how feasible that is in Windows - searching inside file contents outside of their host app hasn't been something I've needed to do often...

[Guest]

Variable sizes don't sound right to me.  There is some variation on size based on how it splits and how big your notes are.  Like I said, the file will split if there's at least one note and the next note would push the size limit over the threshold.  The registry key that controls the size is "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Evernote\Evernote6\ExportSplitSize" and should be defaulting to 2 x 10^9 (2000000000).  For convenience, the option dialog deals with mb (1000000) so 2000 is 2000 mb or 2 gb.  When you get the update, let me if if you're still getting variable sizes.

I filed a bug for multiple file importing.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, RMorgan said:

When you get the update, let me if if you're still getting variable sizes.

Will do.  I got sizes of 160 MB and 2 GB for the same notebook, ,and 300 MB for a different notebook, details above.  Didn't sound right to me either.

[jefito 5,589]

OK, a bit more on the export stuff. The export splitting only applies to the Evernote Windows client.A value of 0 for the split size in Options / Note will disable splitting. Export split size is not honored by the ENScript command-line program. Not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but there should probably be a new option to the ENScript exportNotes command that allows a user to set ENEX file split size.

[Denis L 50]

Denis from Backupery is here just to confirm that the latest changes in Evernote doesn't affect current workflow of the Backupery app. As already mentioned by Jefito and other members it seems the enex splitting option doesn't affect ENScript export now (Backupery for Evernote uses ENScript internally to make backups).