Search on IOS not working?

[markeh 40]

Search of a note on IOS doesn't seem to work reliably. The search text is found and correctly highlighted in the note (including multiple instances), but at the bottom of the screen it reports "No Matches", and the < > won't search through the finds.

However - it sometimes works... on the same note it failed on a few minutes earlier. But mostly it doesn't work.

The same notes search fine in Windows.

If there is a pattern here I must be missing it.

 

Any suggestions?? thx,

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Thanks for pointing this out.

Can you specify a bit on which sort of document you encounter these issues ? PDF ? Scanned ? OCR done by the EN server or by another program ? Pictures (same question) ? Clipped stuff ? Other attachments ? Plain text notes ?

Does the iOS device have a good Internet Connection when searching ?

On Windows, EN will use the local database for performing searches.

[markeh 40]

All notes tested were typed by my me, mostly on my PC. Not copied or clipped from another source.

So plain text, but styled (colors, bold/italic etc.., bullet lists). But I would claim that that makes no difference: I took one of these, copied into a MS Text doc (so now pure characters) pasted it back into a new note and it made no difference on my iPhone (works as expected on my PC).

The problem is the same regardless of my location. When I decided this finally annoyed me enough to try track down the problem, I tried a number of variations - remove styling, paste (as above), shorten the note, etc.. I was in my office about 5 feet from my wifi router. Speed tests about 80mb download on the phone.

Same story on offline notebooks - seems to make no difference.

If some part of the search is done on EN servers, I could certainly believe that could contribute to the problem. On my PC it's not uncommon for a search of a large note to stall for a while until the (remote) server catches up. Maybe that's what happening on the iPhone. Highlighting the matching text on the phone is almost instantaneous. But maybe the indexing is done on the EN server.

Occasionally it works. Go back and try again on the same note, it doesn't. Mostly it doesn't.

 

.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

7 hours ago, markeh said:

But mostly it doesn't work

Can you provide specific examples of fails

>>But maybe the indexing is done on the EN server.

With Evernote/IOS, if online - the search is run on the server with the server indexes

>>the < > won't search through the finds

The <> are note navigation controls; not related to search finds
Correction: Switching to "Search in Note" supports <> search item navigation

[markeh 40]

The < and > skip back and forward to the search matches. Means I don't have to scroll a long document to find all the places where the search matched.

No matches, no skip.

 

.

[Sayre Ambrosio 520]

7 hours ago, markeh said:

Search of a note on IOS doesn't seem to work reliably. The search text is found and correctly highlighted in the note (including multiple instances), but at the bottom of the screen it reports "No Matches", and the < > won't search through the finds.

However - it sometimes works... on the same note it failed on a few minutes earlier. But mostly it doesn't work.

The same notes search fine in Windows.

If there is a pattern here I must be missing it.

 

Any suggestions?? thx,

I rarely search within a note on iOS but I just tried it and I get the same results that you do. It will highlight all the instances of the search but I am getting No Matches at the bottom as well.

[markeh 40]

Thanks. My guess is that if you try it a few times, it will occasionally work correctly. I just tried it again - worked correctly the first time - failed the next three.

Maybe it's a timing issue between when the IOS app reports results (by marking text) and the server responds with the count.

But I don't think its a cockpit error - pretty reasonable to assume it's a bug. IMO failure of search is a major bug. We'll see what EN says...

 

.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

I just made a quick comparison of search on my Mac and on my iPhone, not for the first time. Both are logged into my home network.

On the Mac, I get a count of how many notes were found. On the iPhone, I do not get the count (but I can count it myself). Plus other differences, mostly resulting from the Mac using its own database, so it will highlight the found text in the documents without going to the server to load the document first, as on the iPhone.

In 5 simple test searches ("All notes" selected, one search word) I got exactly the same number of notes found, and when probing I could not find a single deviation of a note found in one search, and not found in the other.

Is this your way of testing ? Or do I have to do something else to get differing search results ?

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

count of how many notes were found  ...  Is this your way of testing ? Or do I have to do something else to get differing search results ?

I was confused at first - there are two different and independent search functions   
Search for notes, and "Search in Note"

The issue being reported is with "Search in Note"   

In my testing, I'm unable to replicate the "No Matches" error   
I'd like to see specific test samples

[PinkElephant 8,103]

In my observation, sometimes a document is found, but nothing is markered in the document.

In my test drive today, this happened for example in a pdf containing a page with very large text. The Search String was exactly in these large font words, not marked but found. The page was open (not the first one in this doc), but not highlighted. Maybe the highlighter does not work on 90pt font any longer.

In another document (where I was surprised the search string was found) nothing was marked, and the search string was not in it - but a word very similar to it.

It is a known feature with OCR programs that they may save more than one word of OCR results if they are not sure about the OCR result. In this case, the word contained was a persons name, very similar to the search string. I think the OCR did compare to a dictionary, did not find the exact match (because the persons name is close but not identical to any word in a modern German dictionary) and decided to save both. I count this one on the OCR, not on the following search.

So again, if we want to dive deeper into in this we need a better input about the setup that led to deviating results.

We must not forget as well that on a desktop the search index is hosted locally, and can acquire problems over time. So for me if there is a difference between a local search (desktop) and the server based search, I always would rebuild the local search index first. If there is still something weird, I would force a sync of the database (which takes a while with 30.000 notes the thread owner has), and then rebuild the local search index again.

[markeh 40]

The only thing I was reporting was searching for text within an all text note. Not searching for notes, across multiple notes, not within PDFs, not within OCRd docs. I have no idea if those would or not work correctly, as I haven't tested or used them.

I also have no comparison with what works on a MAC, as I don't have one. I can say that when searching within the same note on my PC and my iPhone the PC version works as expected, highlights all of the matches, and correctly shows the count of matches at the bottom of the window. The iPhone is random, but mostly doesn't work as expected.

Just to be clear, I took one of the notes that showed the problem, copied on my PC to a .txt file (so all formatting lost), copied the text to a new, fresh note, synced it with my phone, and the same problem was there.

Test samples?? Build a reasonably sized text only file on you desk system (at least 50-100 lines), copy it to a new note in EN, sync with your iPhone and try searching for a word within the note. See if you get the same result - the word (or multiple copies of the word) are highlighted, but the summary at the bottom says "no matches" and the < > are dimmed and have no function. This is what I see over multiple notes. Works properly maybe 1 out of 10 times, totally unpredictable (at least to me).

Apparently at least one person (above) saw the same thing.

 

ALSO - I have just shy of 4,000 notes. I don't know where 30,000 came from.

.

 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Well, text search inside of a note: I have tried this on several notes now on my iPhone.

In one case out of 10 EN did say „0“ found when it actually had found several hits, and highlighted them. Why ? No Idea.

But it found the note itself with the searched text, and then it found whatever was to find inside of it. No total count seems to be a bug - so if it is important to you to always have a count and the <> - arrows to jump in the note you can issue a support ticket.

Personally I found the search on the iPhone (11 Pro Max) super fast - even while typing in the search field highlighted text appeared, and disappeared again when I continued to extend the searched word. When I start to move down in the document, search seems to continue, because to the initial XX findings, new ones are added. Maybe - but this is plain guessing - it loads only a part of the text initially, and when you move inside of the note pulls the rest from the server.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

On 1/18/2020 at 9:55 PM, markeh said:

Search of a note on IOS doesn't seem to work reliably.

By the way: This is how your initial thread starts. „Search of a note“ is exactly worded, and is is not „Search inside of a note“. Saying what is meant makes life easier for everybody.

The PC / Mac issue: PC and Mac are similar because they both have an own EN database, that is used for searches. iOS and Android does not, here only a fraction of the total information is permanently loaded to the device. 

[markeh 40]

10 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Well, text search inside of a note: I have tried this on several notes now on my iPhone.

In one case out of 10 EN did say „0“ found when it actually had found several hits, and highlighted them. Why ? No Idea.

But it found the note itself with the searched text, and then it found whatever was to find inside of it. No total count seems to be a bug - so if it is important to you to always have a count and the <> - arrows to jump in the note you can issue a support ticket.

Personally I found the search on the iPhone (11 Pro Max) super fast - even while typing in the search field highlighted text appeared, and disappeared again when I continued to extend the searched word. When I start to move down in the document, search seems to continue, because to the initial XX findings, new ones are added. Maybe - but this is plain guessing - it loads only a part of the text initially, and when you move inside of the note pulls the rest from the server.

 

I have a somewhat older iPhone, and some of the notes are quite long. Highlighting the text  is very fast - feels almost instantaneous. But in a long note scrolling to find the matches takes too long, so for me the lack of navigation (<  >) is a functional problem.

Waiting doesn't seem to change anything. Also, the same problem shows on offline (downloaded) notes, but to be honest I don't know how this effects search results.

I have entered a bug report (or at least a report to support). We'll see what happens.

 

.

 

 

[VinnieDee 1]

Hi.  Just letting Evernote know that I'm having the same problem searching.  Typing a word and looking for specific notes. 

The first photo shows that it found suggestions.  

The second photo shows that it found notes, which is highlighted in blue, but then doesn't list all the files.  

The third photo shows that if you click one one of the found notes, ex: chicken adobo - it only shows one note and there should be three. 

Looking forward to Evernote solving this issue, as I have so many notes now and the search function is key for me. Thank you.  

 

[CalS 5,280]

On 1/18/2020 at 2:01 PM, PinkElephant said:

On Windows, EN will use the local database for performing searches.

As long as ODS is not enabled.  If ODS is enabled search occurs on the servers.

[mpmoskowitz 0]

Hello.  I have been having this problem on my iPhone for the last few months.  It is so frustrating I am heavily considering to quite Evernote.  It is functionality I use several times per month to quickly find a note, but since it has stopped working, I could not find critical information when I needed it the most.  Any fix on this?  Otherwise, I unfortunately will have to move on. 😞