Lost all Local Folders since upgrading to Windows 10

[zessm 3]

Hi, I have just discovered that I have lost all my local folders since upgrading to Window 10 from Windows 7.  I made several backups along the way in the process of upgrading and have backups of the EXB files.  The EXB files themselves have not shrunk in size (8.7GB), so I suspect my data is still in there somewhere.  I took a lot of data 'offline' into local folders as my online account was getting very bloated.  Now they are gone along with several years of notes.  

When installing Win 10 it initially failed during an upgrade and the install conducted a 'repair' and deleted a lot of programs including Evernote.

 

John

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  If your current EXB file included the local notebooks,  then you'd be able to see them in whatever version of Windows you were using. 

If you do have backup copies of the EXB file from when these notes were visible,  they are recoverable - but it will require a little messing around.  As far as Evernote is concerned the current server copy of your notes is the gold standard,  so starting Evernote with one of the old EXB files in place of your current one will just get the content of the backup file overwritten.

You'll need to try an old process to recover your local notes - to see if it still works... (Evernote has had several updates since this was posted!!)

 

[DTLow 5,736]

14 minutes ago, gazumped said:

so starting Evernote with one of the old EXB files in place of your current one will just get the content of the backup file overwritten.

Starting Evernote with one of the backup EXB files is the solution for restoring local notebooks
The sync process will update notes in the sync'd notebooks; the restored local notebooks will be untouched

[gazumped 11,652]

4 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Starting Evernote with one of the old EXB files is the solution for restoring local notebooks
The sync process will update notes in the sync'd notebooks; the restored local notebooks will be untouched

Yup - thought of that,  but wasn't sure whether a major revision of notebook content (ie adding what sounds like several new offline notebooks) would be a good thing to dump on the existing search indexes.  I thought that importing the notes from ENEX (which I kinda missed out of the earlier explanation) is more in line with how Evernote expects to see new content.

@zessm - you're a subscriber,  so if you're in any doubt how to proceed,  just ask the nice folks in Support!!

PS Whatever you do - take another backup of your current database folder before you go any further!

[jefito 5,589]

I think that the trick here is that Evernote needs to be pointing at the correct notes database (.exb) file for it to recover the local notebooks. Check Tools / Options / General : "Open Database File" to see where it thinks that the database is. If that's not where your backed up .exb file is, then you're not going to get the local notebooks back.

[zessm 3]

Well, 

1. Disconnected from Internet,

2. overwrote the entire C:\Users\XXX\Evernote\ folder with the backup from before I updated to Windows 10,

3.  then connected to the internet and updated Evernote.

I seem to have all my old offline folders and my online records up to date.

Thanks to all, Z.

[jefito 5,589]

23 minutes ago, zessm said:

Well, 

1. Disconnected from Internet,

2. overwrote the entire C:\Users\XXX\Evernote\ folder with the backup from before I updated to Windows 10,

3.  then connected to the internet and updated Evernote.

I seem to have all my old offline folders and my online records up to date.

Thanks to all, Z.

Sounds about right. Glad to hear it.