Notes Not Syncing Reliably Between iOS, MacOS, and the web app

[Etihod 19]

Notes are not syncing properly between the iOS app, the web app, and the Mac App. See the attached screenshots. Whenever I create a note in iOS it does not sync correctly with the web app, and does not sync at all with the Mac OS app.

To explain this I created several notes on my phone to test the sync (see screen shots below). This includes a regular text based note, a scanned document using the EN iOS app to create note and scan document, and then I have two documents that I scanned using Scannable yesterday. 

• iOS app shows all of the documents with the title of the scanned document edited in iOS correctly changed
• the web application shows all of the documents but does not show the new title that was edited in iOS (currently 18 minutes since the edit)
• the Mac application does not show ANY of the documents including the two scannable documents that have been sitting in the notebook for over 24 hours

Furthermore, even the sync fail is unreliable: I scanned a document using Rocketbook, and was unable to find the note in my MacOS. However,  I could see it in iOS. So I copied the internal link in iOS, then pasted it into an existing note in iOS. I then went back to MacOS which still couldn't see the scanned note, but correctly synced the existing note so I could see the internal link that I had just pasted in iOS. So the existing note synced correctly.  I clicked on that "internal" link, which then opened in the web app. The web app opened to the note, but when I clicked on the notebook that contained that note ... the note was not there. 

At the end of the day, the app does not sync correctly and this can't be blamed on just timing. The web app has still not synced up the notebook in question (now at 25 minutes) and the Mac OS version hasn't synced the notebook correctly in more than 24 hours. Essentially I have three versions of the app with three different sets of information. This is clearly not a product that is working correctly across multiple platforms. 

Given that none of my other concerns have been addressed by EN staff I'm not expecting much but I wanted to share in case others are having these issues. On a personal note I am heartbroken by how this product has gone from being completely reliable to having issues multiple times a day, literally every single day, doing very mundane tasks like editing notes, making notes, and scanning documents to file in notebooks. I know that the theory is that the detractors are a vocal minority but I cannot believe that. I experience far too many issues for my experience to be an anomaly. And here I've gone and wasted another half hour yelling at the clouds. 

 

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[gazumped 11,661]

OK - what I got so far is "my iOS app is not syncing".  Does this help?  How to troubleshoot syncing issues

[Etihod 19]

5 minutes ago, gazumped said:

OK - what I got so far is "my iOS app is not syncing".  Does this help?  How to troubleshoot syncing issues

This is not a garden variety sync issue unfortunately. I have deleted and reinstalled the app on MacOS and iOS several times recently. I quit and reopen the app dozens of times a day, I restart my computer ... I literally do everything on the list you linked to daily just to get the app to work correctly for day to day use, let alone sync. In most cases I am able to work just on the MacOS on one laptop so I don't have to worry as much about the syncing but the problem has really come to a head trying to create notes on my phone, using scannable, using Rocketbook ... all of the things that I use daily and have been using daily for years ... which now don't work. AND it's not that it isn't just syncing incorrectly ... it's syncing differently between apps ... I see one version on web app, another on iOS, and nothing on MacOS in this case. 

[gazumped 11,661]

In which case I'd suggest Support - https://help.evernote.com/hc/requests/new

Or https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote (sadly not available for iOS)

[Etihod 19]

10 minutes ago, gazumped said:

In which case I'd suggest Support - https://help.evernote.com/hc/requests/new

Or https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote (sadly not available for iOS)

Yeah, I can try support, but last time I waited more than two weeks for a reply, and that reply was basically "we can't help you, try using the legacy version, here, take an extra gig of transfer data to try to fix your problem." And as far as the legacy app goes, it does seem to work similar to the web app (currently it shows the same sync level I think as the web app I believe). But how can I know if the sync is truly working? Check every one of my ~4k notes? Additionally, my concern is that if I rely on the legacy version which is no longer being developed and updated, at what point do I do a security update or OS install and it stops working completely? Using legacy software is usually a stopgap for short period of times, but these problems are long-term and do not seem to be getting any better.

I appreciate the suggestions but these are things that I have tried before. 

[PinkElephant 8,095]

What I simply do not understand is how syncing could possibly fail this way.

With v10, all clients depend on the server data base. There is no real desktop client data base any longer, that could dominate the content on the server. Same with iOS, all real data is downloaded from the server (exception: Offline notebooks).

Note count is +/- 1 note between the new clients and legacy in my setup (iOS, web, Mac, Mac legacy).

Maybe there is some older stuff still blocking something on your installation. Did you ever do a complete uninstall on iOS and Mac ? This means removing the app (on the Mac using AppCleaner), removing all data, switch the device off and on again before reinstalling ?

Support reaction time for me was less than 24hrs lately, and part of it is because we are in different time zones.

[Etihod 19]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

What I simply do not understand is how syncing could possibly fail this way.

With v10, all clients depend on the server data base. There is no real desktop client data base any longer, that could dominate the content on the server. Same with iOS, all real data is downloaded from the server (exception: Offline notebooks).

I agree with you - it makes no sense. My assumption is that the web app should be the most "pure" version since it's basically the database...but why doesn't it match on the other devices which essentially use the same cloud database as a starting point? At bare minimum discrepancies should be synced up correctly with a clean install at a bare minimum. I have uninstalled multiple times on both my Mac and my phone, complete wipe, restart the device etc. Each time it usually works for a minute but then the next issue comes up. I get that weird things happen, but I should not have to completely uninstall my apps every few days to keep the damn thing working. I have as clean a system as possible, no weird apps that could conflict, no stupid zoom cat-face plugins ... I have a system which should be an ideal environment for software to work. The bottom line is that Evernote is buggy AF and they don't seem to be concerned about this. 

[Lemini 12]

I think I've experienced a version of this issue. For the past two weeks i've been doing a major overhaul of my Evernote account which has involved deleting notebooks, moving notes, etc. I made most of the changes in the old web client (not 10) and the changes showed up immediately on sync in the mac client (legacy) but not on my ipad. One really odd thing is at one point I erased all of the local Evernote data and uninstalled the app before making a bunch of changes on the web. I then re-installed the app, expecting the app to pull the latest data from the server. Once I logged and my notes loaded, the data displayed was massively out of date and both the note count and the notebook list appeared to be what it was the last time I opened the iPad app before uninstalling and not what the current version was on the server. I waited five minutes and my iPad appeared to sync and eventually the note count and notebook setup on the iPad matched what was on the web.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that there is some sort of cache between devices that has to reconcile before a sync happens. I can't think of another explanation why a freshly installed iOS version would have a note & notebook list full of things that were deleted when the server and my Mac App showed no trace of them.

[PinkElephant 8,095]

@Etihod Tried support on this yet ?

[Etihod 19]

10 hours ago, Lemini said:

The only thing that makes sense to me is that there is some sort of cache between devices that has to reconcile before a sync happens. I can't think of another explanation why a freshly installed iOS version would have a note & notebook list full of things that were deleted when the server and my Mac App showed no trace of them.

@LeminiI have definitely had that same thing happen: I uninstall the app, re-install it and old out-of-date information appears which then usually syncs up. You'd think it would be a fresh download each time (thats how it worked pre-10).

@PinkElephant No I haven't put in a ticket yet - I got frustrated and deleted all the examples yesterday, so it would be hard to test anything with support. I'll see if I can make some examples again when I get a chance this weekend so I can give them something to work with. If I get any answers I'll report back. 

[Etihod 19]

Ok so sitting in bed this morning I made a bunch of test notes using the iOS app: regular note, scannable note, rocketbook note, web clip using the iOS share function. They showed up in the iOS app and the web app but not my Mac app. So:

1. I uninstalled the app, reinstalled the app: no change
2. Uninstalled app, restarted computer, reinstall app: no change
3. Logged out of my account, chose the option to not keep a backup locally, uninstalled app, reinstalled app, logged back in. WORKED.

So the upshot is that the problem seems to be in the local cache which is causing the syncing issues. So my problem has been resolved for now, after spending two days with the app not working properly and wasting hours of time trying to troubleshoot.

I hate that I have to spend all this time troubleshooting v10 every few days, but what I hate even more is that I can't even threaten to leave EN since there still isn't a competitor that does what EN does. I would love for one of these other companies to step up and start adding features that directly compete with EN so that the developers feel the heat and truly debug this software. I actually tested the beta version, gave a lot of feedback, and then was very surprised when they rolled out the public release before most of the tester's concerns were addressed. It has improved over time, but it clearly is still very problematic. 

[PinkElephant 8,095]

Yes, many regulars are a bit fed up with yet another bug, and yet another ticket.

But it is still the way to get things done.

Thanks for posting that in fact local data can ruin the function of syncing, even after a new release update.