Massive multiple copies of Notes

[path156 3]

I've been using Evernote for several years in both the Android and Windows PC versions and nothing like this has been happening to me before with any of the roughly 200 Notes I've created. Starting a little over a week ago, I noticed one of the Notes I had most recently edited suddenly and inexplicably had 5 seemingly identical copies and another recently edited Note had 4 identical copies.

I wasn't sure where that came from or what I should do about it. I was kind of afraid that if I deleted the copies that might somehow delete the remaining Note's underlying content as well, since I couldn't imagine why this had happened in the first place (having never experienced anything like this in the preceding years of using Evernote).

So I renamed one of the copies to a different name (to distinguish it as my "real" ongoing Note) and continued to make changes there. A few days later I discovered that this Note had now mysteriously proliferated during the preceding couple of days to a mind-boggling almost 9,000 copies!

That is not a typo--I opened the Evernote app on my PC and saw that it said I had 9,053 Notes (keep in mind that I only had roughly 200 various Notes total prior to this). I also checked my Evernote on Android and found the same massive number of copies of Notes.

After searching around I found this article and tried doing what it suggests using Evernote for Windows:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313658-Remove-duplicate-notes-from-your-account

But as is mentioned elsewhere in an Evernote discussion, I'm limited to selecting 50 Notes at a time. I also discovered that to delete just 50 notes all at once takes a whopping 8 minutes. (Perhaps that exorbitant length of time is somehow driven by the fact that there are now so many Notes in my account?)

To delete 9,000 Notes manually like this would take 180 repetitions. And if each repetition is about 8 minutes that's 1440 minutes or 24 hours. That would be 3 complete business days of 8 hours just to manually delete the spurious copies, which is obviously not viable for a "time-saving: software tool. Plus, how likely is it that this mysterious duplicating of Notes won't keep suddenly happening all over again?

So...what to do? How do I get rid of the multiple Note copies in a plausible manner so that I can use Evernote again? And what do I do to keep this spurious creation of multiple copies of a Note from happening again?
 

[gazumped 11,666]

Hi.  I also use Android and Windows,  and haven't seen anything unusual - though I'm on Legacy apps on both.  No clue what could prompt thousands of duplicates - I'd suggest you raise this with Support and go from there!  If nothing else they should be able to help you mass-delete the extras...

[path156 3]

Gazumped, thanks for the feedback. I'm guessing your use of the Legacy apps may be why you haven't seen anything of this nature happening. Hoping it stays that way for you.

[bread2u 3]

Here is a possible work around.

1. Select your original notes (Their creation dates will be the oldest - hopefully)

2. Export them

3. Delete everything

4. Import the notes

5. Clean up by making your latest updates again (if those you exported aren't the latest, and if you can remember the changes you made recently)

You've got quite a mess. The most I ever had was 6 duplicates. 

[Robynkessler 0]

I don't have 9000 duplicates of my note, but I do inexplicably suddenly had 19 copies. 

I read in an old forum from Sept 2020 that people were having this issue and it was solved with the latest update (I think it was 10.3? at that time). But I only started using evernote at the beginning of this year so I should be using a version well past that update. 

Help would be greatly appreciated as this is super annoying. I can't keep track of which note to make my changes to

(I've been working on this note, going back and forth on my Macbook Air (Catalina 10.15.7) and my MacPro desktop)

[gazumped 11,666]

On 10/24/2021 at 6:21 AM, Robynkessler said:

I've been working on this note, going back and forth on my Macbook Air (Catalina 10.15.7) and my MacPro desktop

Because Evernote uses wheel-and-spoke synchronisation - every device sends and receives changes directly from the server - changing something on device A does not necessarily change the copy on device B if you move between the two with* making sure both are fully synced up to date.  In this case the cause of your duplicates appears to be you,  and the cure would be to stick to one device only when you're working on a specific note.

Edit: *without

[Dr. Vishal Gohil 7]

I have experienced this multiple times. Today it is the 3rd time. First two times, number of copies was small and thus I deleted them manually. But today, hundreds of copies are there and I am very sad. Evernote must take the note of such issues and help. 

[PinkElephant 8,114]

Issue a support ticket from the device where it happened, attaching the activity log.

No other way than to feed the devs with tickets and information until they get it fixed.

[Dr. Vishal Gohil 7]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

Issue a support ticket from the device where it happened, attaching the activity log.

No other way than to feed the devs with tickets and information until they get it fixed.

I have submitted a ticket as live chat was unavailable. I manually deleted files this time too.  But lost whole day's productivity. 

[PinkElephant 8,114]

You have my sympathy - it sucks when it happens.

To reduce the probability these are possible measures:

• Never open the same note on two or more devices at the same time
• Keep your notes short, especially those with a lot of typed text. Link them together by a table of content note and links from one to another.
• If on a less stable internet connection, work offline, sync at the end
• Last resort: Install the legacy client (can be done side by side with v10)

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

[ericMB 16]

Developers should know that the issue has nothing to do with working on multiple notes at the same, the length of the note,
or sync issues. They should also know that it has persisted through the last 2, and possibly three revisions.

The screen shows a note a created a few minutes ago. It has maybe 10 lines. I'm working on a single computer.
I sync to a laptop, but it's not even turned on at the moment.

About time I added the 8th line, I noticed the error message at the top of the window. Then I noticed 2 duplicates under
the original. A second later, I noticed a 3rd duplicate under the original.

This is the third note I've created in the last several weeks. Each of them has had the problem. (I updated to 10.24.3 last
night, before the occurrence below (#3) I was on the previous version before then. There may or may not have been an
upgrade between occurrence #1 and #2. I'm on Windows 10, automatically updated to latest version.)

When it happened before, I copied the note and saved it to a Word file, and then began deleting duplicates from the bottom
of the list. That worked fine. The original note is preserved, and the duplicates are gone. 

They don't seem to appear when editing an existing note. Only when creating a new one. And the number seems to be fixed
at 4 total copies, 3 of which are duplicates.

I'm a cash-strapped solopreneur startup, so I use the free version. This it seems, is the only way to report a bug.
'm not looking for "support", because it has nothing whatever to do with any action I am taking.
It's a bug they need to fix. But the only way to tell them about it is to broadcast it to the world in a forum like this one.

[PinkElephant 8,114]

If you read carefully, I said "to reduce the probability". This is all I can do, user 2 user.

The issue is obviously there, has been reported with sufficient detail, no doubt - although I personally never ran into this problem (yet). I am using EN on a number of devices, all synced, all more or less on the latest update level, except 2x legacy on a PC and my Mac. I am following my own advise ...

Bug reports in the forum usually are not followed up. If there would be a release of a fix, it would probably be for all users - either by an update of the clients, or maybe a change for the server side software. And given the prominence of the issue, I am sure it would be commented here.

[Dr. Vishal Gohil 7]

I will like to mention that whenever such things happen, I immediately uninstall windows app of Evernote from my laptop and I'm not sure but I think that stops duplicating notes for me. May be because I work on phone and laptop only. Then I reinstall fresh. This might help who face this problem in near future. If not controlled, notes can multiply into thousands. And support is not that good, you will have to manually delete them. 

[PinkElephant 8,114]

From what it looks to me, it may be rooted in a syncing problem. Then it might help to go immediately offline.

Not sure about it, just an idea.

[Dr. Vishal Gohil 7]

This problem reoccured today (4th time overall). Now, I think, the problem is with windows app only (as today I was working on one device only) and it might have some links with slowness of the computer.

[gazumped 11,666]

2 hours ago, Dr. Vishal Gohil said:

This problem reoccured today (4th time overall). Now, I think, the problem is with windows app only (as today I was working on one device only) and it might have some links with slowness of the computer.

Oddly,  the fact that this is such a persistent problem for you may help Evernote identify the causes - have you been in touch with Support?  What has been their reaction so far?

[Dr. Vishal Gohil 7]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Oddly,  the fact that this is such a persistent problem for you may help Evernote identify the causes - have you been in touch with Support?  What has been their reaction so far?

I have sent them activity logs (when it happened third time). And I manually delete notes, and all is fine then

[gazumped 11,666]

26 minutes ago, Dr. Vishal Gohil said:

I have sent them activity logs (when it happened third time). And I manually delete notes, and all is fine then

But do you have a ticket number? Has Support actually responded with any comments?

[Dr. Vishal Gohil 7]

15 hours ago, gazumped said:

But do you have a ticket number? Has Support actually responded with any comments?

Yeah, via mail I contacted them. On Twitter and here, they are way too slow. I managed to delete 600+ notes by myself just in few hours. And when I got reply back from them, I just elaborated the issue, gave them activity log so that they can check and asked not to do anything else, as I already solved the problem

[PinkElephant 8,114]

Here, nobody from EN will show up to solve individual post by users (except on very rare occasions). EN employees have a „Staff“ in their user badges.

In general the forum is user2user. No promisses made regarding reaction time …