Evernote search not finding handwritten pdf notes!!

[Jeffsky 37]

I have tried emailing PDF handwritten-notes from my Remarkable 2 e-writing tablet, to Evernote, but they are not found when searching a word I have written in the note.   I have made sure the word I search was clearly written and legible.    It seems like Evernote is not doing any indexing on these emailed notes.  I am strictly a MAC and IOS user.  This is happening on my iphone and Mac.  Is there a setting or something I need to do, for Evernote to index the emailed PDF note?

This is a critical need for my daily workflow!

Thanks,

Jeff

[DTLow 5,736]

The OCR feature for handwriting works with images, not pdfs

[Jeffsky 37]

20 minutes ago, DTLow said:

The OCR feature for handwriting works with images, not pdfs

Are you 100% sure?

[DTLow 5,736]

27 minutes ago, Jeffsky said:

Are you 100% sure?

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208314518-How-Evernote-makes-text-inside-images-searchable

Images containing handwriting should be added to Evernote as JPG images, not PDFs. PDF files are the preferred format for typewritten documents or scanned pages containing typewritten text. Handwriting is not indexed in PDF files.

[Jeffsky 37]

I emailed the RM2 note to Evernote as a PNG.   Still not found in a search.

[Jeffsky 37]

Also, I am 99% sure Evernote used to find handwritten PDF docs.  In any case, I sent it as a PNG and still not being found in a search.   

[Jeffsky 37]

Can someone else help?  I can’t be the only evernote user having this search issue!  

[Jeffsky 37]

DT Low, I don’t think you are correct about Evernote not indexing handwritten pdf files.   Can someone else chime in.  Thanks,

Jeff

[RPerry 0]

On 4/13/2021 at 2:44 PM, Jeffsky said:

I have tried emailing PDF handwritten-notes from my Remarkable 2 e-writing tablet, to Evernote, but they are not found when searching a word I have written in the note.   I have made sure the word I search was clearly written and legible.    It seems like Evernote is not doing any indexing on these emailed notes.  I am strictly a MAC and IOS user.  This is happening on my iphone and Mac.  Is there a setting or something I need to do, for Evernote to index the emailed PDF note?

This is a critical need for my daily workflow!

Thanks,

Jeff

This problem is plaguing me too. Being able to incorporate written work along with other documents is fundamental to my use of Evernote.

[stocky2605 401]

to say it loud and clear, as stated in the link DT Low has provided to you: Typewritten text and handwritten notes that are in JPG, PNG, or GIF file format are evaluated by our indexing 

just read the provided information. If you have sent an image to EN, their search engine MAY detect text in your handwriting. Please give them a while until the search engine has catched your new content and indexed it.

[Jeffsky 37]

I did read it.   I was questioning DT Low’s response because I emailed the same note as a PNG and the search still did not find any words in the doc.  I will re-email it as a PNG, wait a few days and try again.  
 

DT Low, I was not intending to insult you or your knowledge.  I apologize if I did.  
 

I am hoping my next msg states it worked.   
 

Jeff

[stocky2605 401]

a few days is indeed much tooo long to,wait 🙂 it should be indexed within a few minutes - but, as stated before, it MAY find the text, depending on your „quality“ of handwriting (or the qualtity of EN‘s text recognition).

[Jeffsky 37]

On 4/16/2021 at 5:34 PM, RPerry said:

This problem is plaguing me too. Being able to incorporate written work along with other documents is fundamental to my use of Evernote.

Can you expand on your problem?   type of files you are emailing to EN?  Any other pertinent detail?

[DTLow 5,736]

If someone can post copies of their handwritten note, I'll process them and let you know what Evernote identified

[Jeffsky 37]

UPDATE:  Good news is that Evernote, is searching and finding handwritten words in the PNG documents, that I emailed from my Remarkable 2 (RM2).  When I look at the Note info in Evernote, it depicts 18 words in the PNG document.   I assume this is showing the number of words that were indexed from my hand written note?   I then converted my handwritten note to text in the RM2,  and 39 words were accurately converted.   I assume this means the Evernote OCR has much room for improvement, assuming I am undressing this correctly.   A response from a more knowledgeable EN user than me would be appreciated.   Jeff

[Jeffsky 37]

The other good news is it only took EN minutes to index my notes, rather than days.

 

[RPerry 0]

On 4/19/2021 at 3:28 PM, Jeffsky said:

Can you expand on your problem?   type of files you are emailing to EN?  Any other pertinent detail?

Yes, sorry, just saw this. I am making sure to import photos of my journal entries as JPEG ‘s. And they are not getting read by Evernote, Even though I have a pro account and I wait hours.

[Mike P 2,624]

On 4/20/2021 at 1:09 AM, Jeffsky said:

UPDATE:  Good news is that Evernote, is searching and finding handwritten words in the PNG documents, that I emailed from my Remarkable 2 (RM2).  When I look at the Note info in Evernote, it depicts 18 words in the PNG document.   I assume this is showing the number of words that were indexed from my hand written note?   I then converted my handwritten note to text in the RM2,  and 39 words were accurately converted.   I assume this means the Evernote OCR has much room for improvement, assuming I am undressing this correctly.   A response from a more knowledgeable EN user than me would be appreciated.   Jeff

Here are a few observations. I'm going to use a screen capture of printed text because I don't normally scan handwriting but the principles should be the same.

- The note information no longer includes a statement as to whether the images have been indexed. This is very annoying for problem solving.

- The number of words for me appears to be simply the number of words which are typed in the body of the note. Here is an example. No words in the note but as you can see from the yellow highlight it has found a word 

- In the legacy version if you download the enex file for a note which has been ocr'd there is a list of the found words together with their location coordinates within the image. This also illustrated beautifully the "fuzzy" nature of the process where each word in the image can be assigned several recognised words. If you download the enex file for the same note in V10 the recognition data is missing. It still works so therefore must be stored elsewhere.

I have found in the past that EN sometimes just refuses to carry out ocr on particular notes. At least with legacy it was clear whether the process had happened or not. Now we are completely in the dark. My experience pre V10 was that the best way to get EN to do the ocr was to either:

1. Make a change to the web version of the note. Can be just text

2. Make a change to the image in the desktop version.

 

[PinkElephant 8,071]

Quite a simple issue.

If you go to the help database on the EN web site, you find

• Images containing handwriting should be added to Evernote as JPG images, not PDFs. PDF files are the preferred format for typewritten documents or scanned pages containing typewritten text. Handwriting is not indexed in PDF files.

Alternatives are PNG or GIF. Here is the full document: 

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208314518-How-Evernote-makes-text-inside-images-searchable

For handwriting I use GoodNotes 5. It indexes all handwriting and puts the result into an invisible layer. When I export it as pdf, the search metadata is in that pdf file. After importing it into EN, the handwriting index will be read and made searchable by EN. But this is not the handwriting itself, it is the data already created by GoodNotes.

[Jeffsky 37]

Why do you use Goodnotes, rather than Evernote to index your handwritten notes?

[PinkElephant 8,071]

First I use GoodNotes because it has a far better handwriting engine. It has palm recognition, plus a nice, not too strong smoothing of the handwriting (iPad Pro, Apple Pencil). The it has a page orientation, not the endless paper of EN sketch (which I like for drawing, but not for writing).

GN5 has 2 handwriting to text features. The first is always active, building a search index from the handwritten text. The index can be exported together with the handwriting in a pdf. If the index data is there, EN will use it and not Index it again (and EN will not Index handwriting inside of PDFs anyhow ! ).

The second feature is that I can select a text (using the lasso tool) and click on „converting“ in a menu. This creates a typewritten text from the handwriting, with a close to zero failure rate. So I can take handwritten notes and then convert parts of it into computer text, for example to paste it into meeting minutes.

For me it is the superior package when handwriting is concerned.

[Jeffsky 37]

I wish the Remarkable 2 (RM2) did this handwriting indexing.  This would solve the issue of searching handwritten notes in evernote.   
 

RM2 Is the best digital handwriting tablet I have ever used, and I have owned an Apple Pencil and iPad for quite a few years.  

It will be a lot of extra steps, but if I email or export a RM2 notebook to Good Notes, can I make it index all the RM2 notebook pages?   I would then email the indexed RM2 notebook to evernote.  

[PinkElephant 8,071]

Not sure it would work. If you have an iPad with pencil, you could simply try.

GN5 allows to import pdf, but this is to annotate them, not for handwriting indexing.

[ta.k.pemgrove 2]

On 5/13/2021 at 11:24 AM, PinkElephant said:

First I use GoodNotes because it has a far better handwriting engine. It has palm recognition, plus a nice, not too strong smoothing of the handwriting (iPad Pro, Apple Pencil). The it has a page orientation, not the endless paper of EN sketch (which I like for drawing, but not for writing).

GN5 has 2 handwriting to text features. The first is always active, building a search index from the handwritten text. The index can be exported together with the handwriting in a pdf. If the index data is there, EN will use it and not Index it again (and EN will not Index handwriting inside of PDFs anyhow ! ).

The second feature is that I can select a text (using the lasso tool) and click on „converting“ in a menu. This creates a typewritten text from the handwriting, with a close to zero failure rate. So I can take handwritten notes and then convert parts of it into computer text, for example to paste it into meeting minutes.

For me it is the superior package when handwriting is concerned.

I'm so tired of the issues with indexing handwritten notes that I think I'm going with your suggestion. I had the same issues as the OP here (only mine were JPG and PNGs and not PDFs) and with such shaky indexing (I have impeccable handwriting so there should have been no issues) I can't afford that while in school. I really value your suggestion here. Do you think it is the best solution for me when I get onto a math class? Of course, I'll want the handwritten notes indexed but when it comes to this I'm curious how GoodNotes 5 would handle equations, etc. I'm still going to just spring for an iPad Pro after trying GN5 on my 6th gen if I don't hate it but curious if you have opinions on math.

Thank you for all of the time you give in these forums, PinkElephant.

[jamwin 0]

I've tried using Goodnotes 5 and although it is way better for taking notes and has great search features and handwriting indexing built in, from a workflow point of view I found it too cumbersome moving each note into EN.  What would be great would be if I could automate the moving of notes from GN to EN.

SO - I"ve been using Penultimate, which automatically puts my handwritten notes (on iPad) into EN and makes them searchable.  Penultimate is not as good as GN but good enough.

I also use paper and pen - have been using Whitelines notebooks and Whitelines Link - process is cumbersome but works well.  I"ve also been playing with using the camera feature in EN notes to add handwritten notes, that might end up being the best option.

[gewappnet 79]

On 7/25/2022 at 1:35 AM, jamwin said:

I've tried using Goodnotes 5 and although it is way better for taking notes and has great search features and handwriting indexing built in, from a workflow point of view I found it too cumbersome moving each note into EN.  What would be great would be if I could automate the moving of notes from GN to EN.

SO - I"ve been using Penultimate, which automatically puts my handwritten notes (on iPad) into EN and makes them searchable.  Penultimate is not as good as GN but good enough.

Just use the iPad app Noteshelf. It is the best of both worlds: The app is as good as GoodNotes but it syncs automatically to Evernote  like Penultimate.

[PinkElephant 8,071]

About which handwriting app is better (or as good as) a ton of blog posts, YT videos and press reports have been written. My opinion is simple: As humankind could not get to a conclusion about fountain pen, ball roller or pencil, we will not get to a „one app fits all“ with handwriting. I use GoodNotes because I like how it feels, but this is personal. Others use other apps, and I would urge everybody who wants to move into one of them to simply install the test versions practically all apps offer, and run a test. Stick with what „feels right“, there is no objective measure to it.

[roy.nu 0]

I really wish Evernote would add support for indexing handwriting inside PDF. This would greatly increase compatibility with a range of note taking tools, including pen tablets from Onyx and Wacom. 

[gewappnet 79]

On 8/18/2023 at 11:03 PM, roy.nu said:

I really wish Evernote would add support for indexing handwriting inside PDF. This would greatly increase compatibility with a range of note taking tools, including pen tablets from Onyx and Wacom. 

Evernote does not index pictures in PDFs, but it indexes OCR text if available. Many handwriting apps automatically include OCR data while exporting to PDF, e. g. Apple Notes, GoodNotes and Notability. These PDFs with handwritten notes will be indexed by Evernote and can be found with the full text search.

[PinkElephant 8,071]

An alternative is to save from the tools into EN using picture formats. Pictures (not embedded into a pdf) will be OCRed. File types must be jpg, png or gif. Text must be angled horizontal or vertical - any diagonal text will likely not be OCRed.