Evernote on Android frequently crashes, losing everything in the note permanently

[Conagh 3]

I had been using evernote for about a month on Android to take notes for University. Often during lectures, the app would glitch and the note would go blank. Usually I could click the back button and refresh the note from the list and continue working, but sometimes, the entire note would be empty. Back buttons do nothing. Nothing in the recycle bin. No sync conflict in the web client. Nothing. An entire lectures' notes lost. 

I therefore migrated to another program, but recently had to come back to an old piece of work I started in evernote. I worked on it for a couple of hours, then it too, disappeared without a trace. 

I cannot recommend Evernote (on android) to anyone. Quite aside from the terrible sketch interface, it is just completely unacceptable to lose data like that. 

It's a shame, since Evernote (at least on the desktop/web versions) is generally very powerful and easy to use. Since a tablet is the main place it is even useful though, the entire system is worthless. 

I hope one day the Android app has a lot of work done on it and I can swap back, but in the meantime I will not touch it with a bargepole. 

[gazumped 11,713]

Hi.  Welcome to the forums.  Sorry to see you go.  Bye.  (Just for the record I use Evernote on Android and it hasn't crashed for me in some years...)

- And it is a matter of personal preference,  but I never take detailed notes in lectures - it seems to me better to listen and take an outline or a mind-map snapshot of what's going on,  then write up the content in full later.  The aim is to document the content in such a way that you could explain it clearly to someone else - which guarantees you understood it. 

There are several apps to help,  including Cogi which runs a continuous audio recording loop.  I use that to catch content that seems really important.  Even if someone already started talking about it this app catches the 30 seconds before you hit 'record',  and carries on for as long as necessary.

I also take my on-the-spot notes on paper and use the device camera to add them to Evernote at the end.  Some sites don't have reliable network connections,  and some speakers just don't like too much technology on view.  Taking notes on paper shows interest - apparently...

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

15 hours ago, gazumped said:

I also take my on-the-spot notes on paper and use the device camera to add them to Evernote at the end.  Some sites don't have reliable network connections,  and some speakers just don't like too much technology on view.  Taking notes on paper shows interest - apparently...

Just to comment on a couple of things here: I'm a retired professor, and technology for note taking was coming in late in my career. I never thought it seemed less attentive than paper. What some people don't like is audio recording, actually--apparently under the apprehension that someone in the audience is going to release an unauthorized recording of their lecture, which strikes me as more than a little ludicrous. And I suppose it might seem that someone taking notes on paper must be paying attention, while someone recording audio could be woolgathering, planning to listen to the lecture later. I knew diligent students who took paper notes and reviewed them with their audio recordings later.

But back to the topic at hand (you know how professors ramble). I suspect that @Conagh's bad experience could be related to dodgy network connections, whether WiFi or phone/tablet data. In the Android app, the 3-dot menu at top right has an option to save the note, which I think saves it temporarily to the device. It'd be an aggravation in the middle of a lecture, but hitting that a few times might secure the note in a poor connectivity situation. Best might actually be to create an offline notebook just for note-taking, and then after the lecture move the notes to a synced notebook. All this is if connectivity is actually (part of) the problem.