(Archived) Danger: delete of notebooks is too easy

[mdave 1]

I was working very quickly and though I was deleting a tag, but instead was deleting a notebook. I quickly pulled the internet before the next auto sync. I tried to reconstruct the notebook from the trashed notes, but came up 10 notes short from what was on the server. So, I restored the local from the server.

Please provide an option to toggle off delete by delete key (preferably for specific types of items - I may want to leave it toggled on for notes, but off for tags, searches, and notebooks).

Yes, I know that there is a confirmation dialog, but that is the same for tags as for notebooks. Not enough safeguard in my workflow when I am moving quickly.

Thanks.

EDIT UPDATE: It just happened again. The behavior is that in trying to make a tag, the cursor jumps out and completes the tag name prematurely (happens more often than not with long tag names). Then I select the tag, and see that it is blue and highlighted. I think at that point that a simple delete key will delete the tag, but somehow the notebook that I was working in is selected and gets deleted. Funky for sure.

I have to get in the habit of control or right clicking for delete rather than the delete key. I wish I could just disable delete key.

[engberg 89]

If you try to delete a notebook, it should first prompt you and ask if you want to do so. Then, if you say OK (which isn't the default), the notes are put in the Trash. To permanently remove the notes, you'd need to then go into the trash, Empty the Trash, and say OK again (which isn't the default option).

Thanks for the report about the key bindings.

[LarryEitel 1]

If I switched off prompt before delete (from default) can it be turned back ON? Actually, I would prefer ability to control delete option for notebooks vs tags/notes. Delete of notebook is VERY dangerous. Deserves special care.

[mdave 1]

Larry, I'm not aware of any way to turn off the confirm for notebook deletion, only for tag and saved searches (Prefs > general).

Thank you Dave for your helpful reply...

Deleting the notebook dropped over 30 notes into the trash, mixed with another 30 that were already there, so I was reluctant to “restore all.” I tried to recreate the notebook manually, but comparing to the server version I was about 10 notes short. Also, I was working on deadline (which has just passed... whew!), so it was easy for me to make a mistake in reconstructing the notes. That notebook has 61 notes and 37 tags associated with it to simulate a multi-level sub-notebook environment for a research paper.

The confirm dialog is just not enough of a safety for me, because I'm deleting a lot of notes and creating and renaming and moving tags, and I see that dialog regularly and move through it by rote. So, I'm trying to get used to right clicking and looking at the dialog every time. I find that I can’t always trust what is selected in the notebook/tags/search column. Sometimes things get stuck selected. For example a selected tag may not unselect, even if I select a different notebook, hit the reset button, or another tag. This requires me to quit EN and relaunch.

What would be useful for me would be a confirm dialog that was distinctly different for notes tags and searches. Color-coded, or at least the name of the type of item would be bolded and large. Something that would stop someone who is rushing in their tracks. The danger is that there are actions that have no undo. That itself takes some getting used to in my workflow. Accidental deletion of an entire notebook is at the least potentially very time-consuming to recover from. What I really want is an option to lock down the notebooks and to have to toggle an unlock to get rid of them.

I use the deleted key on my macbook to backspace or delete text. So, right there, it’s to easy for me to delete notes by mistake, which have no option to confirm before deletion. I have also had the situation take place where I find notes deleted and don’t know how it happened, which I can only assume happened because I may have not been aware that it was selected or that I may have accidently hit the key, or may have thought I was in a text entry field on the note, or may not have known the application was active in a multi-app workflow... any number of accidents.

So, I would prefer a confirm dialog option for note deletion, and I don’t want delete key to delete tags, searches, notebooks, at least unless I can undo the action (preferably multiple levels).

I know this is a long rant, but I want to impress upon you how scared I was when I deleted the notebook and saw no undo. And it happened twice with the same notebook in the same work session. I was very thankful for the fact that I had a server sync that was only a few minutes old to make a clean restore. I have since set my auto sync to 15 minutes (up from 5) to give myself a better chance of not syncing right after making a bad boo boo.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, Dave, and also, to check in and help us out on the weekend!

[engberg 89]

I *think* that you can revert all of your settings to the default (so that you'll see all of the "one time" confirmation dialogs again) if you Quit Evernote from the elephant icon in the menu bar and then:

Start the Mac Terminal application

Type or paste this line into the Terminal:

defaults delete com.evernote.Evernote

[mdave 1]

Nice trick, Dave. I didn't notice any difference behavior (it did seem to reset those delete prefs, as it require some resyncing and a fresh login).

The delete confirm dialog appears for notebooks, tags, saved searches. This is what I had before the command line trick I just did.

From the general prefs options, it appears that the confirm dialog for notebooks, is hardened and cannot be deselected (which is great with me).

Thanks for your help.