Back button and Forward button do not work

[jhf555 5]

All within a single notebook:

1. Click on Tag 1 in left nav.  Some notes show up in Notes pane, and Note 1A (first note in the Tag) is auto-selected.

2. Click on Note 1C still in Tag 1

3. Click on Tag 2 in left nav.  Note 2A is auto-selected.

4. Click on Note 2D still in Tag 2

5. Click on Note 2F still in Tag 2

5. Hit the Back button 4 times.

Expected: It will navigate backwards to Note 2D, Note 2A, Note 1C, and Note 1A, in that order.  The Forward button should become enabled so I can navigate forward as well.

Actual: After the first click it navigates to Note 2A.  All subsequent clicks on the Back button just keep the note on Note 2A.  The forward Button stays greyed out and I can never use it.

 

Version info:

10.10.5-mac-ddl-public (2487)
Editor: v120.1.15587
Service: v1.31.4
© 2019 - 2021 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

[jhf555 5]

Still broken for me.  Is this not broken for others?  Or is this just not an issue that Evernote cares about fixing?  It feels like such a basic feature to have been broken this long.

[Mike P 2,661]

1 hour ago, jhf555 said:

Still broken for me.  Is this not broken for others?  Or is this just not an issue that Evernote cares about fixing?  It feels like such a basic feature to have been broken this long.

The behaviour of the back button, even in the legacy product, has always been a bit strange. The only way I can rationaise it is that it goes backwards through the note list views rather than, as I would expect, backwards through the notes viewed. I'm not even sure that is correct.

[Michaelh1234123 10]

I vote that this should be fixed. It's completely broken for any rational user.

When I do back and forward in Onenote, it does exactly that and that is really nice...

Evernote gets stuck in certain places because apparently it doesn't keep track of the complete state to know that at step X a filter was being used etc.

[Michaelh1234123 10]

I am just going to post here about my frustration with this.

It's one of those behavior quirks that becomes acceptable simply because it has always been there.

Back and forward is broken in Evernote. It gets hung up all over the place (in one tag or another as described by the original poster).

Onenote search is simply fantastic in comparison with Evernote - you just search and it navigates super easily - AND foward and back mean forward and back.

Please fix this

There are many nice features in evernote and nice improvements, but basic quirks like this should also be fixed.

 

Please other people add your two cents so this can be fixed

Thanks

 

[PinkElephant 8,170]

It is no quirk by definition, and I think you should not assume it is one just because you think so.

In the example posted as the first post in this thread, the back/forth button are tested in a setting where a selection is made active. First Tag 1 is selected, and then within of that selection some notes. Then Tag 2 is selected, and again inside of this selection some notes.

The basic question is: What gets priority ? The selection, or the back/forth buttons independent from the selection.

EN designers decided that the selection is more important than the back/forth chain of notes. This means if you don't "produce" this conflict by setting up a selection, the back/forth works as usual: It moves back and forth in a chain of notes that have been selected before. If there is a selection, the selection overrides the back/forth action. 

If you want it changed, you can reach out to EN PM via the feedback function of the clients.

If you still mean it is a bug, you can report it to support.

In both cases I think it makes sense of what you initially wanted to do, and why it doesn't work with the current implementation inside of EN. Personally I would  as well prefer it to cycle through the notes, quitting or overriding the selection. But I can do with the current solution as well.

[jhf555 5]

PinkElephant: I don't totally understand your terminology.  e.g. what do you mean by "a selection is made active"?

Also, can you explain why the "Actual" behavior described in my original post might not be a bug?  For example, why does the first click of the Back button navigate back to 2A instead of 2D? And why does the Forward button never become clickable?

[PinkElephant 8,170]

What I wanted to say: The selection of filters seem to override the forward / backward tabbing. The table of recently visited notes is resetted, when a filter is applied. This means that the back / forth is not taking you beyond a filtering action.

If you want to claim this as a bug (which IMHO is debatable, there is no general definition of how a back / forth button has to work in an app), contact support.

[jhf555 5]

"The selection of filters seem to override the forward / backward tabbing."

What do you mean by "filters"?  Is clicking on a different tag a "filter"?  Even if this is what you mean, in the repro example I gave, the Back button doesn't work even through notes clicked within a *single* tag (see again how it goes back to 2A instead of 2D when you click "Back" the first time in my example).  So there is no "filter" applied in that case that I can think of.

If you're able to explain why my example works the way it does based on some reasonable model of how Back/Forward buttons should/might work in real life, I'm interested.  I don't have any reasonable explanation for it though, so it just seems like broken behavior.

[PinkElephant 8,170]

If I tap on a tag, it will add this blue button on top of the notes. It is the same as selecting the tag in the filter options - it adds a filter.

As it looks this filter interrupts the back/forth chain.

That is the core of what I see when I try. Since I am a user like you, that’s it from my perspective.

If you feel it is a bug, you can report the issue by a support ticket (provided you are a subscriber).

 

[jhf555 5]

Per your suggestion, I tried the Back/Forward buttons with no filters selected, simply clicking a series of notes in the left nav and then hitting Back/Forward afterwards.  The buttons behave as I'd expect in that case.  But if I have any "filter" selected (e.g.I've clicked on a Tag), then Back/Forward no longer behaves in this expected way.  So I would still consider this a bug, but it seems to only occur when there is at least one filter selected.

[PinkElephant 8,170]

Yes, it reflects what happened when I tried to reproduce your initial post.

You can reach out to support to report it as a bug (subscribers only).