Evernote Won't Copy/Paste Line Breaks

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

Evernote seems incapable of copy/paste line breaks from YouTube. I have all the updates for both my Windows 10 machines and Evernote. I experience this issue on my desktop and laptop, pasting from Firefox and Chrome.

I know these kinds of bugs are supposed to be fixed in the new desktop editor, but who knows when that will be released? Hopefully soon... but maybe not.

Is it possible to release a quick fix for a feature as essential as copy/paste now?

For the record: if this happens to be a super hard bug to fix, then I would prefer that effort be put into releasing that new editor ASAP rather than fixing this bug.

 

[gazumped 11,658]

Hi.  I'd suggest you look into screen shots if the layout is important,  or maybe copying the YouTube content into a word processor and then copy/ pasting the WP text into Evernote with any necessary editing along the way.  The lack of line breaks in this specific case isn't enough justification (IMHO) for Evernote to issue a 'special' fix,  or to rush through the general upgrade (which has to apply to all Evernote versions on all OS's).

[John in Michigan USA 129]

Good job documenting the bug!

What about using the Evernote Web Clipper instead of Windows copy-paste?

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

On 4/25/2020 at 3:43 PM, gazumped said:

Hi.  I'd suggest you look into screen shots if the layout is important,  or maybe copying the YouTube content into a word processor and then copy/ pasting the WP text into Evernote with any necessary editing along the way.  The lack of line breaks in this specific case isn't enough justification (IMHO) for Evernote to issue a 'special' fix,  or to rush through the general upgrade (which has to apply to all Evernote versions on all OS's).

That's what I've been doing. Does it not seem weird that this is necessary in a note-taking program?

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

On 4/25/2020 at 9:57 PM, John in Michigan USA said:

Good job documenting the bug!

...

Thanks!

 

On 4/25/2020 at 9:57 PM, John in Michigan USA said:

...

What about using the Evernote Web Clipper instead of Windows copy-paste?

 

I don't think I've ever actually used Evernote Web Clipper before. How much better is it than copy-paste?

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,091]

Much better.

It gives you a wealth of options on what to clip, how to clip and where to save it.

[gazumped 11,658]

3 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Does it not seem weird that this is necessary in a note-taking program?

The editor is famously limited in its layout and style options,  but it will capture basic text with some minor flourishes.  MS Notepad is even more limited in being plain text only,  but it's still presented as 'Notepad'... depends on your opinion as to the minimum styling required I guess.  The next version 'should' be better...

[dcon 166]

On 4/25/2020 at 11:59 AM, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Evernote seems incapable of copy/paste line breaks from YouTube.

What EN is capable of completely depends on the source from the website. If they have really squirrelly html source, there's not much EN can do about that...

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

50 minutes ago, dcon said:

What EN is capable of completely depends on the source from the website. If they have really squirrelly html source, there's not much EN can do about that...

Sounds like you think the website code is the root cause of the problem.

Doesn't my GIF disprove that? Google Docs, Sublime, OneNote -and every other program I've found- perfectly capable of copy-pasting as expected? Why is Evernote uniquely incapable?

[dcon 166]

25 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Sounds like you think the website code is the root cause of the problem.

Doesn't my GIF disprove that? Google Docs, Sublime, OneNote -and every other program I've found- perfectly capable of copy-pasting as expected? Why is Evernote uniquely incapable?

Sublime is a plain text editor.

Google Docs pasted exactly as EN did. Your 2nd paste was paste-as-plain-text - that's different.

What's missing in EN is Google's paste-as-plain-text. (I'm never sure what paste-and-match-style does - I don't use it)

 

What I do for things like that is paste into a plain editor (notepad, sublime, vim, etc), then select the text there and copy it. That puts plain text on the clipboard and removes any other format that EN may attempt first. (EN will always use html before plain text if it is available)

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

8 hours ago, dcon said:

...

What's missing in EN is Google's paste-as-plain-text. (I'm never sure what paste-and-match-style does - I don't use it)

...

So we agree, then, that Evernote appears entirely unique its inability to paste line breaks? i.e. That every known program can do this except for Evernote?

 

 

8 hours ago, dcon said:

...

What I do for things like that is paste into a plain editor (notepad, sublime, vim, etc), then select the text there and copy it. That puts plain text on the clipboard and removes any other format that EN may attempt first. (EN will always use html before plain text if it is available)

Am I the only one who finds it unreasonable that this is necessary to capture a line break?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,951]

And @AndreasM will always come in with no help, but lies and insults. Lie:

10 hours ago, AndreasM said:

They (the gurus) will always defend EN

There are no "gurus," a category once applied to dedicated forum volunteers who created a large number of posts. The category no longer exists, but the people do exist, and they do acknowledge problems, sometimes even point them out. Next lie:

10 hours ago, AndreasM said:

obviously they are receiving some rewards from the company

Believe it or not, some people like to be helpful for free.

I know, this won't change the troll's behavior. I've just had enough of lying, and feel like calling it out.

As for the actual problem, as @dcon pointed out, the issue is not that "Evernote won't copy/paste line breaks"; I paste material with line breaks into Evernote all the time. The issue is that EN lacks Google Docs' "Paste as plain text" feature to process the specific HTML code that YouTube puts on the clipboard. That's certainly a problem for pasting from YouTube. But without knowing more details (what's the YouTube HTML look like? how many people need to do this on a regular basis?), it's hard to go much farther. One could, of course, go to Google's famously responsive tech support and request that they change they way YouTube puts text on the clipboard.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

Some statements tell more about the person uttering it than about the persons it is directed at.

@Dave-in-Decatur Thanks !

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

1 hour ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

...

As for the actual problem, as @dcon pointed out, the issue is not that "Evernote won't copy/paste line breaks"... One could, of course, go to Google's famously responsive tech support and request that they change they way YouTube puts text on the clipboard.

Though it would be amazing if Google changed something in YouTube, don't you think Evernote should be the company that fixes a problem that appears entirely specific to Evernote's software?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,951]

2 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

...

As for the actual problem, as @dcon pointed out, the issue is not that "Evernote won't copy/paste line breaks"... One could, of course, go to Google's famously responsive tech support and request that they change they way YouTube puts text on the clipboard.

Though it would be amazing if Google changed something in YouTube, don't you think Evernote should be the company that fixes a problem that appears entirely specific to Evernote's software?

 

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

The issue is that EN lacks Google Docs' "Paste as plain text" feature to process the specific HTML code that YouTube puts on the clipboard. That's certainly a problem for pasting from YouTube. But without knowing more details (what's the YouTube HTML look like? how many people need to do this on a regular basis?), it's hard to go much farther.

But in the beginning (of this thread) there was:

On 4/25/2020 at 2:59 PM, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Evernote seems incapable of copy/paste line breaks from YouTube. I have all the updates for both my Windows 10 machines and Evernote. I experience this issue on my desktop and laptop, pasting from Firefox and Chrome.

I know these kinds of bugs are supposed to be fixed in the new desktop editor, but who knows when that will be released? Hopefully soon... but maybe not.

Is it possible to release a quick fix for a feature as essential as copy/paste now?

For the record: if this happens to be a super hard bug to fix, then I would prefer that effort be put into releasing that new editor ASAP rather than fixing this bug.

Evernote definitely should fix this. IMHO, they definitely should not drop everything and fix it. The "feature as essential as copy/paste" is working, on the whole; it's not working in this specific instance. If this were making Evernote unusable for millions of users, or for thousands of users all the time every day, it should go to the head of the line. If it's not that widespread an issue, then that I think (however hard or easy the bug may be to fix) also leads to your final conclusion: get the new editor out ASAP, which I assume is what they're working on.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,951]

FWIW, I confirmed the problem myself, selecting some of the descriptive text below a YouTube video and pasting it into a new Evernote note, and finding that the line breaks are indeed missing. I use a clipboard manager called ClipCache, and it shows two forms of this clip on the clipboard: HTML (no line breaks, a beige-ish background); and Text (just the words, but with the line breaks). I presume that's why Google Docs' "Paste as plain text," or pasting into a plain-text editor, gets the line breaks. I also tried pasting into Word, using all 3 options: Keep Source Formatting gives the same result as in Evernote; Merge Formatting removes the font, font size, and background color, but has no line breaks; Keep Text Only pastes the text with line breaks.

What I (with very little knowledge of what's going on in the background) take away from this is that in Evernote, Ctrl+V pastes HTML as HTML; Ctrl+Shift+V (Paste and Match Style) strips out things like font, size, and background color, but doesn't add line breaks (like Word's Merge Formatting). YouTube is somehow producing HTML that it knows how to present as including line breaks, but that simply pasting the HTML into other programs can't render in that way.

[gazumped 11,658]

Hi

16 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

don't you think Evernote should be the company that fixes a problem

...you noted up front that Evernote are working on an upgrade to their editor.  This might already be in hand,  but like a new headphone connection on a new phone - it's not going to be any use until the complete phone is available for release 'later this year'...

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,951]

@AndreasM, what is the situation in which copy/paste is failing for you? If you set forth the problem some of us non-existent gurus might be stupid enough to actually help you.

[Calion 26]

This bug was first reported in 2008: 

 

[gazumped 11,658]

1 minute ago, Calion said:

This bug was first reported in 2008: 

Hi.  And you're still experiencing it?  What device OS and Evernote version do you use?

<Hint> you posted in the 6.25 forum which is a 3-year old,  unsupported legacy app these days.  If you don't already have it,  Evernote.com will send you v10.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,951]

43 minutes ago, Calion said:

This bug was first reported in 2008: 

 

That bug was about copying info from Web forms and pasting into a version of Evernote on a Mac that no longer exists. This thread is about copying text from YouTube descriptions and having line breaks not appear in Evernote for Windows in 2020, shortly before the introduction of the new Evernote editor. Which specific problem (if any) are you having, and in which version of Evernote on what operating system?