disaster recovery: how to recover notebook names and note distribution

[sammy123 1]

Hello,

I have approx 15,000 notes in 500 notebooks (premium accoun)

I looked at exported .enex notes  with textedit. They contain info about title, tags, etc, but no mention of notebook name of structure let alone notebook hierarchy (stacks).

In terms of disaster recovery, I would import all my exported notes (my Evernote 'backup') which Ev stores in a single 'import' folder.

Am I expected to re-create 500 notebooks and redistribute 15,000 notes ?

thanks in advance for your time and help

[sammy123 1]

Hello,

In a previous email I ascertained that exported notes do not contain information about notebooks. Forum members kindly pointed me to the database folder.

I looked at the database folder and find not reference to notebook names.

Assuming that I back up the database folder, in case of a crisis, what would the procedure to recover my complete EN structure from that folder including all notebooks and the pre-existing distribution of notes in those notebooks.

thanks in advance for your time and help

[sammy123 1]

Hello,

Using EN Desktop for Mac

In a previous email I ascertained that exported notes do not contain information about notebooks. Forum members kindly pointed me to the database folder.

I looked at the database folder and find not reference to notebook names.

Assuming that I back up the database folder, in case of a crisis, what would the procedure to recover my complete EN structure from that folder including all notebooks and the pre-existing distribution of notes in those notebooks.

thanks in advance for your time and help

[jefito 5,589]

Sounds like you're referring to the Evernote for Windows application. Given that, your Evernotes, plus notebooks, tags, etc attachments, etc. are all stored inside a SQLite database with extension .exb. You can spelunk it with a 3rd-party tool (https://sqlitebrowser.org/), but you kinda have to know what to look for. You almost certainly don't want to make any changes unless you really, really know what you're doing.

In any case, you back up your Evernote database folder in case something goes horribly wrong, in which case you just move out the old stuff and copy in the old stuff from your backup. The .exb file may be sufficient, though I'm not totally sure about that, having never needed to do a restore this way.

With respect to exporting notebooks, your should do it on a note-by-notebook basis, and you can do that by hand (tedious) or by using the Evernote ENScript command line program.One approach is outlined here: 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

8 hours ago, sammy123 said:

I looked at the database folder and find not reference to notebook names

I merged your posts

The database folder includes a small SQLite database (LocalNoteStore) storing note metadata, notebook records, ...

>>what would the procedure to recover my complete EN structure from that folder including all notebooks and the pre-existing distribution of notes inthose notebooks.

For recovery, you would be restoring the entire database folder     
You can't do this piecemeal

fyi  The Evernote sync process works well to restore data from the servers for sync'd notebooks

Some users backup their data using .enex exports, a separate export for each notebook  
 

[gazumped 11,664]

Hi.  Exporting to ENEX does not save the notebook structure.  It's necessary to export one notebook at a time to link the notes together - though I appreciate with 500 notebooks that's not a trivial task.  However a copy of your database and the notebook structure (excluding Local Notebooks and their content) is already present on the server.  In the event of disaster,  reinstall Evernote,  log in with your usual details,  and if Evernote doesn't find your copy of the database on the local drive,  it will create one by downloading from the server.  If you find that some recent updates have been missed because they were not synced with the server,  you will be able to recover edited information from your own backups.

[sammy123 1]

@DTLow @gazumped @jefito

Thank you very much for your answers.

I am using EN for Mac (not windows).

Do your comments still hold ?

With both Dropbox and Time Machine, I can go back in time as restore data (or the 'state of the data')  as per a specific date and time. This type of backup/restore  must have a name. 

I am trying to understand how advanced EN restore by sync is.

Let's say that I leave on a 1-2 week trip, and a dummy in-law deletes all 15,000 notes,  500 folders and zillion tags, AND empty the trash, so that everything is permanently deleted, and to make things even more complicated he creates new notes and folders.

I come back from my trip 1-2 weeks later. Can I ask the EN support team to restore the state of my EN notes, stacks, tags, hierarchy as it was 2 weeks previously ?

thanks again very much

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, sammy123 said:

Can I ask the EN support team to restore the state of my EN notes, stacks, tags, hierarchy as it was 2 weeks previously ?

No, that level of support is not available

fyi  deleted notes are available in your trash and can be restored

[sammy123 1]

OK thanks

[PinkElephant 8,103]

You can restore a single note to a prior status using note history on the server, but it is note by note.

If you want to save your complete EN database from your local disk, you can use a backup program that is able to copy single folders (this means not by TimeMachine, but for example with Acronis for the Mac). Then you can simply grab everything in your EN folder and stuff it away. Restore means then that you restore everything to a prior status, which probably is not very useful. But it is possible.

[sammy123 1]

thanks very much @PinkElephant