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Need Help to Encrypt Text (Mac)


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Please be patient with me, I've only been an EN member going on two weeks, and have a lot to figure out.

For years I've kept a PHR (Personal Health Record) because I'm OCD and obsess over details. But mostly because I have to communicate to one doctor what another's doing so they're all on the same page. I also have ADHD which makes that difficult, especially when my PHR is now scattered in various Notes synced across my Apple devices, which is far from ideal. Today I've jumped headfirst into creating a new PHR using EN since I have two upcoming doctor appoints, and so far it's driving me absolutely crazy!! I want my PHR secure but easily accessible on my iPhone, and EN isn't playing nice.

I want to make text records and encrypt them, but it doesn't work right or I'm doing something wrong. I copied text from recent blood work and pasted it into an EN note. Then selected all the text, right clicked and "Encrypt Selected Text" is shaded out so I can't select it. It's only letting me encrypt all the text by doing it in sections, which doesn't seem right, and I don't want to have to decrypt a note in sections.

Is encrypting text in an EN note supposed to work this way or am I doing something wrong? How do I get around this?

Thanks in advance to anyone who replies!

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On 9/15/2019 at 8:51 PM, Eagle20 said:

Please be patient with me, I've only been an EN member going on two weeks, and have a lot to figure out.

Hi.  Relax - rumours that this forum eats newbies are wildly exaggerated...  mostly.  ;)

I'm guessing that your blood test data included one or more images - the in-note encryption applies only to pure text.  It might also balk at very long texts - I haven't tried it on anything more than screenfull of data.  The way to deal with mixed documents is - if you have access to a PDF editor like Acrobat - to convert the file to PDF and then password-protect the whole file.  You'll see a PDF icon in your note,  but if you click on it you'll be asked for a password before the file will open on your screen.

If you don't have access to that option,  you could try 'indirect addressing' - keep the file on your own computer,  or add it to a cloud storage system like DropBox or Google and put a link to that file in your note.  Again,  you click the link,  it takes you to your cloud account,  and you open the file from there.

Last option - a 'Local Notebook' - that's not synced,  and not available from any other device, but at least it's not directly online.  You do however need to keep a backup of that data - as you should for everything else that's on your hard drive - in case of some problem.  The copy on your hard drive is the only one,  and when it's gone...

- There will probably be other posts to fill in anything I forgot,  but if you have any more questions,  don't be reluctant to ask!

What is a local notebook?

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On 9/15/2019 at 12:51 PM, Eagle20 said:

Then selected all the text, right clicked and "Encrypt Selected Text" is shaded out so I can't select it.

As @gazumped posted; it's a text only encryption feature.

My solution is to use the native encryption in files; pdfs, office/iWork documents, ...

So on my Mac and iPad, I use Apple Pages and save as an encrypted document.  The document is stored in Evernote as a file attachment in a note

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13 hours ago, gazumped said:

Hi.  Relax - rumours that this forum eats newbies are wildly exaggerated...  mostly.  ;)

I'm guessing that your blood test data included one or more images - the in-note encryption applies only to pure text.  It might also balk at very long texts - I haven't tried it on anything more than screenfull of data.  The way to deal with mixed documents is - if you have access to a PDF editor like Acrobat - to convert the file to PDF and then password-protect the whole file.  You'll see a PDF icon in your note,  but if you click on it you'll be asked for a password before the file will open on your screen.

If you don't have access to that option,  you could try 'indirect addressing' - keep the file on your own computer,  or add it to a cloud storage system like DropBox or Google and put a link to that file in your note.  Again,  you click the link,  it takes you to your cloud account,  and you open the file from there.

Last option - a 'Local Notebook' - that's not synced,  and not available from any other device, but at least it's not directly online.  You do however need to keep a backup of that data - as you should for everything else that's on your hard drive - in case of some problem.  The copy on your hard drive is the only one,  and when it's gone...

- There will probably be other posts to fill in anything I forgot,  but if you have any more questions,  don't be reluctant to ask!

What is a local notebook?

Now I am afraid, some may not like my upcoming opinions 😟

13 hours ago, DTLow said:

As @gazumped posted; it's a text only encryption feature.

My solution is to use the native encryption in files; pdfs, office/iWork documents, ...

So on my Mac and iPad, I use Apple Pages and save as an encrypted document.  The document is stored in Evernote as a file attachment in a note

First, just for reference... my test result notes are text only and maybe 2-3 pages printed in length. Also, I upgraded to Premium the 12th but am rethinking my decision based on my experience so far. Second, please forgive me for my mini-rant coming up because I'm likely to come across as a bigger witch than I really am 😂

Yesterday I contacted chat for help with this issue since I did pay for actual support. Admittedly, I've dealt with many "support" lately and they tap dance all over my last nerve. They make me feel like they don't pay attention and use the same flip-book of all-purpose responses. Unfortunately, EN chat was no better and a complete waste of time 😒

First thing I said was I need help encrypting text notes, but since I copy & pasted the info a table was automatically inserted, and I sent screenshots to help explain the issue. Like an idiot, I assumed a table not being text it went without my having to say it couldn't be encrypted. Then the woman I spoke with said the issue may be due to the "chart" and she needs to "discuss it with her advisor". Immediately Bill Engvall popped in my head saying, "here's your sign" 🙄 During the 7-minutes it took her to get with an advisor to figure out what I thought was obvious, I'd removed the table and typed in the info but it didn't resolve the issue. Confirming for me the issue is related to something in the text formatting but not what specifically. Then I asked if there's a page explaining what text formats can or cannot be encrypted, and was told there's only one help article on the topic. If it wasn't for being support I was chatting with I would've thought she was joking.

IMHO, the "how-to" is vague and providing no additional details just naive. Not everyone is going to know some text can't be encrypted, such as bulleted lists, tables etc. When on chat I pointed out my only option is to play around with it until I figure it out myself, and there needs to be further information on this so members don't have to do that. To which I got the typical flip-book response, "I understand and will be sure to pass along that feedback. I agree, there needs to be some additional details.". Sure, you just do that because I'm sure, in all the years this feature has been available, I'm the first to suggest that more than a "how-to" be provided. In a nutshell, it was a waste of 54-minutes since she was more clueless than I was, and this is considered a "Premium" feature 😖

In the end I don't know what in the text formatting caused this issue. On the plus side, I figured out a workaround that's a bit more work now but a lot less headache than having to encrypt and decrypt a section at a time. I decided to see what happened when the information was pasted into a note a section at a time and that did the trick, I was able to encrypt the entire note at once! 🥳I love when technology cooperates for once, and I feel a booty dance coming on... ( | ) ( \ ) ( | ) ( / ) ( | ) ( \ ) 🤣

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