Local notes got lost after update to version 10.2

[Riccardo_1899 0]

Hi All,

I have lost all the notes saved in my local machine, and I cannot find a way to recover them. After having updated the application on my Windows machine (with the most recent version - 10.2), I was asked to sign up to Evernote. As soon as I did so, I checked my notes and I realized that 80% of them were missing.

I have been trying to look for a way to fix this issue, but no success so far (I tried to reinstall the application; I restored the legacy version; I checked if there was any sort of back-up version of my old notes saved somewhere on my Hard Disk, like an .ENEX file , but nothing... no success so far).

Does anyone know how can I recover these notes?

[gazumped 11,840]

Hi.  Since this seems to relate to updating to v10 I moved it to the correct forum.  Were you specifically keeping unsynced notes in a Local Notebook,  or are you referring to the database file stored on your local device and synced with the server?

"Local Notebooks" containing unsynced notes are no longer supported in v10 and you should have been warned about that when upgrading: Convert local notebooks.

Your local database folder is also no longer required - in v10 Evernote saves notes into a temporary notebook and deletes that at the end of each session.  Just after changing from the legacy version to v10 your notes are being re-downloaded from the server,  so may appear to be incomplete for a few hours.

I'd suggest you sign in to Evernote.com in your browser to check whether all your notes are still in place.

If you did have unsynced notes,  some or all of them may be recoverable if you have a backup of your local device anywhere.

More may be available if you get in touch with Evernote Support via @EvernoteHelps 

[agsteele 3,012]

Evernote 10 does not always delete the folders relating to EN 6.25.  Have a browse and see whether the c:\users\<your_name>\Evernote still exists and has data in it.  If it does then make a copy straightaway for safety.

Now navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Evernote\Evernote

Double click on Evernote.exe 

If all is well the old version of Evernote should launch and all your old data should still be available.

By now, if this has worked, you will feel able to relax.  You can either abandon Evernote 10 and stick with the old version or you can follow the link that @gazumped provided and follow the advice for importing local folders into the cloud with EN 10. However, local notes are not supported in EN v10.

[RlikesEvernote 0]

It appears about 80% of my local notes are lost after update to 10.2.4. I have evernote on macOS Sierra. WhenI installed the update, I don't recall getting the Convert Local Notebooks message. Evernote should have built a fail safe process that would have saved user's local notes in case the user did not see the message, for example. Does the update to 10.2.4 actually delete the local database of the previous version rather than save it to a safe location and give this info to the user? It seems users are losing inportant user info and hours and hours of organizing this info in evernote!!! I'm hoping to recover some of my local notes in a computer backup I did several weeks ago. Does anyone know where the local notes are stored by the previous version on a mac?

[Riccardo_1899 0]

Thank you both for your advice.

I opened the Legacy app and followed @agsteele, but unfortunately I still cannot access my old notes. When I open the Legacy app, I am asked to put my credentials, I do so, but I can see only the notes that are syncronized.

[s2sailor 2,351]

38 minutes ago, Riccardo_1899 said:

I opened the Legacy app and followed @agsteele, but unfortunately I still cannot access my old notes. When I open the Legacy app, I am asked to put my credentials, I do so, but I can see only the notes that are syncronized.

Do you have a backup of your .exb file that you can restore from?  Any backup you have prior to installing v10 should still contain your local notebooks.

[Riccardo_1899 0]

@s2sailor I have an .exb file inside C:\Users\<user>\Evernote\Databases. But what should I do with it? I have tried to import notes from this file, or to open it with Evernote, but no success...  

[s2sailor 2,351]

14 minutes ago, Riccardo_1899 said:

@s2sailor I have an .exb file inside C:\Users\<user>\Evernote\Databases. But what should I do with it? I have tried to import notes from this file, or to open it with Evernote, but no success...  

You mentioned that you upgraded to v10 and then installed the legacy version.  It is likely this file represents just your new legacy database that was created from the server data.  When you downloaded the legacy version it recreated the .exb file based on the content loaded on the server.  If that is the only .exb file on your system, it is doubtful it has your local notebooks.  What I was asking is if you manually created a backup of your Evernote data prior to upgrading to v10.  Evernote does not backup local notebooks, that is the responsibility of the user.  I didn't think Evernote deleted your .exb file when it loaded v10, but I'm not sure.  If a search on your system only finds one .exb file, then that is the one used by your legacy installation, and if the local notebooks are not there, I'm afraid you may be out of luck unless you created a backup at some point prior to installing v10.

[Riccardo_1899 0]

Thanks for your information @s2sailor. Unfortunately this seems to be the only .exb file. And no, I didn't do any manual backup of my Evernote data before the update. Ex-post, this has been definitely a mistake, but I would have never thought to lose more than 2 years of notes in such a way. And it's still difficult for me to imagine that there is no real way to recover these notes to be honest. I mean... it seems pretty absurd losing 2+ years of notes with just an update...

[DTLow 5,739]

10 minutes ago, Riccardo_1899 said:

it seems pretty absurd losing 2+ years

Just to be clear, we are discussing Local Notebooks?     
You would have specifically excluded them from being uploaded to the Evernote servers where they would be backed up

[Riccardo_1899 0]

Yes they were local notes. I don't recall myself doing any upload before the new release.