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I am a 10+ year Evernote user, and I am almost at my wit’s end. 

On both my iPad and my iPhone, I continually see sync issues. This happens almost 100% of the time with shared notes, even when I’m very careful to sync a note before editing, but it also happens frequently with non-shared notes. This is the case even when I create and edit a note only on one device, with other devices completely offline. Today for example, I created a note on my iPad, added a few lines of text, and switched to another app to check something. When I switched back to Evernote and added a few more lines of text, I saw the note conflict message. In addition to the frustration, there is no mechanism to determine what is “out of sync” without comparing the notes line-by-line. 

I have filed numerous support cases over the last several months (year?), but each reply comes back with a “working as designed” response, or a request for a long set of reproduction steps, error log and screenshot captures, etc (despite that I check the option to share the logs when I submit the case). 

Evernote has never been perfect, but it has at least been functional once I learned its quirks. Over the past year or so, it has become almost unusable, and I am exhausted from being “Customer QA” and from losing information. I thought I’d post this here to see if anyone on this forum has a better answer than the support team.

Otherwise, I’ll be dropping my subscription to Evernote in favor of something (anything) else. At this point, I’ve lost too much important information and spent too much time trying to debug the service to continue using it as-is. 

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I have found that the only way to be half way certain sync is done is to go through the settings menu on an IOS device to the sync option.  Dragging the screen down is of no use.  The clients sync at their own pace.  To be honest, I click on the sync option twice before I proceed.  Just to be sure.  Major PITA.  I still use 6.25.1 for desktop.  I find myself using the IOS devices less and less as it just takes too long to be sure things are okay.

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For me it is just the other way. iOS is my top client. I find it very transparent:

  • I see if clipped content is still pending
  • I see by the green corner that a sync is waiting
  • I see by the progress bar whether content is downloading for offline use

The Mac desktop client is not transparent at all in comparison. Plus it lacks the sync option, a major setback.

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Yeah, that’s the weird thing, different experiences for different users.  
i made some changes to a text note on desktop.  It was synced.  I opened iOS EN a couple hours later on my phone, the faster of my 2 IOS devices.  It took over two minutes for that text note to sync to the phone.  To add insult it was in an one of my 2 offline notebooks.  Less than 15 notes in the two of them.  Just doesn’t seem efficient. 🤷

Maybe if I left EN open I my phone ALL the time it would do better.  

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I feel your pain. Today I came into work to discover that an Excel file I keep in EN didn't sync yesterday. I was using the Win desktop only. I do use the android ap, but only occasionally. This particular file is something I keep open all day, every day and update frequently. I save it constantly and compulsively. Thankfully I also print a copy of the latest version at the end of the day. That's how I discovered my numbers were off this morning. I checked the note and it last saved at 8:30am yesterday, when I had it open until 5pm. Now I have to recreate all my work AGAIN. This is the 3rd or 4th time this has happened to me on just this note. No telling which other notes I was in yesterday didn't sync. Honestly, I'm not even mad this time, just... resigned.

I have also put in multiple support tickets, provided reproduction steps and logs on various issues, including sync. I've begged for a sync button. They don't appear to care about any of it. I'm going to bring this up to support one more time and switch back to Legacy again, but I think this is my final straw. I realize now that there is no easy swap to something else, so I need to start putting in the work and figuring out new workflows elsewhere.

BTW - I find that using Legacy and v10 side by side is a recipe for disaster. This may be one of those user-specific combos of software versions things, but I lose data when I have both open simultaneously or even switching back and forth during the same day.

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1 hour ago, 10gallonhat said:

This particular file is something I keep open all day, every day and update frequently. I save it constantly and compulsively.

May not be your cup of tea, but I put all important spreadsheets in a local folder for my cloud service with a link in an EN note.  That way any time I save the model I get an automatic backup on the cloud service.  Plus no way for EN to ***** up a sync.  Easy access to the model via the note link to the local file, a bit more complicated with new EN but still doable.  Full disclosure I am still only using 6.25.1.

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@CalS I haven't had very good luck with links to Google Drive, in the past anyway. The idea has merit though. I may have to revisit. Thanks for the reminder.

After my post this morning I checked the other files I worked in yesterday and they were all fine. The difference is they were all straight notes, no Excel, (though one had a couple screen shots). What occurred to me is that EN must not register that the Excel is being saved. The same would be true for any file, whether .xls, .doc, .svg, .ai, .pdf, etc. The possible work around is to enter the note after you save whatever file you're working on and add a return, space, dot, etc. to the body of the note, to force a sync. Not elegant, but fairly unobtrusive. I'll try it with a dummy doc later. I'm back in Legacy at the moment.

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1 hour ago, 10gallonhat said:

I haven't had very good luck with links to Google Drive, in the past anyway. The idea has merit though. I may have to revisit. Thanks for the reminder.

I've mostly used DropBox and OneDrive so not a lot of GDrive experience.  To be clear I point the  link to the local version of the file, so not a web link per se.  That way I can access the file on or off line and it will sync itself whenever.  I use EN on two PCs with this set up, sharing Excel models.  The link looks something like this:

  • file:///X:/\OneDrive\My EN Models\***************.xlsx

The X: appears as I am using BoxCryptor to encrypt the files on the OneDrive servers so I'm pointing to a logical X drive.  Otherwise it would be a C or D drive.  Probably TMI, sorry for that.

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@10gallonhat Thanks for sharing. What boggles my mind is that I’m constantly receiving emails about new features, when the very simple functions like sync are so broken. It’s easy to find threads like this on the forums, but Evernote doesn’t seem to care. I think I’ll start a new thread asking for alternatives to Evernote and migration steps. I filed a support ticket on this two days ago and no response — I’ve been a paying subscriber for 10+ years, so it’s not like I’m expecting support for free. 

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Yeah, that's a unique idea. A thread about alternatives to EN. And another unique idea is to ask support what to pick (?) - Hey, Evernote support, what is the best note taking app ? And how do I get it, and there from here ? ROTFL

Meanwhile we could open a subform, I think, to collect all of these posts.

It boils down to a simple question: Do you find anything that serves your use cases better, and fulfills all the other conditions that are important to you, like available on XYZ / all platforms, no data lock in, sharing of content, etc.

If your answer is YES, then you are ready for a change. We usually help these fellow users here if they have questions about exporting their data and the like. How to get your data INTO the new application, that question is better posted there, wherever it is.

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@CalSNot TMI - that's great info. Thank you. I like seeing when people figure out ways to handle things that probably aren't quite what EN intended. Anyone can use EN plain vanilla, or you figure out a way to adapt and get around its shortcomings. 😃

@evernoteVeteranI agree completely RE promoting new features vs. not fixing broken function. The thing I finally came to grips with is, even though I'm a 12+ EN Premium user with 22k+ notes, I'm not their target user. They don't actually care that a handful (or few thousand) subscribers quit. Those numbers don't affect their bottom line.

The fact is, v10 started with the same general idea of what EN is and does, but was rebuilt from the concept up. v10 is largely or entirely new on the programing side. It bears little relation to Legacy. V10 is intended to look and work across all platforms for EN's own ease. I can appreciate that in theory, but it's not the program I've come to rely on. One of the other inherent issues with having that unified platform, is it's limited by its lowest functioning device type - a touch screen phone. I hate that the new desktop version requires several clicks and/or text inputs to do something like swap what folder a note is in, when in the past I could click on my folder drop down and select the folder, which was often at the top of the list because it was recent. That kind of thing doesn't work so well when the input device is a fingertip. They could improve it somewhat, but those extra clicks are going to remain.

As to the thought of finding alternatives - there are suggestions already on these forums, but if you want to create a new round up, go for it. I personally like to see people's opinions of what the best features are on this option or why that program isn't ready for prime time. I might read about an alt and decide it's worth looking into. So far, I haven't found anything that really grabs me as being a solid 1:1 swap for EN as I personally use it. That said, I'm currently evaluating something that takes more knowledge/effort on my part, but would allow be full ownership and portability of my data, if I can adapt my workflows to it. @CalSidea of linking to local files may be one of the key things I need. We'll see.

And for the record, while this is an EN forum, hosted by them, I haven't seen much evidence that they pay attention the discussions, let alone respond to them. Forums are here for the users to help each other, which works pretty well. Some knowledgeable users are very generous. I've personally gotten very little satisfaction from opening support tickets since v10, unless I find something that is genuinely a bug (vs working differently than Legacy and feeling bug-like).

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