How to Decide if it is time to dump Evernote Legacy?

[Aufty 0]

I have kept both versions so far.  There are still some things I appreciate about Legacy (for example how quickly a new scan is right there to view).

How do I know if having it on my Windows Computer is causing more trouble than it is worth??  Any suggestions on this?  Are there any good reasons to keep it now?

Thanks for your input.

[CalS 5,280]

When you don’t use it anymore. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

The operating cost of having a legacy install is the disk space used for a second EN database. As long as you don’t need the GB used, it is no real issue to have a legacy client installed. Just open it from time to time, to keep it syncing.

And when you forget month after month, then in fact you probably don’t need it any longer.

[gazumped 11,664]

...What they said.  Plus,  AFAIK,  Legacy is the only route to an easy and convenient local backup for your stuff.  That's very much belt,  braces and extra safety pins just in case something bad happens - but that's how I roll.

[CentralAla 17]

.....as long as it's the only platform that supports a local notebook

[DTLow 5,736]

45 minutes ago, CentralAla said:

.....as long as it's the only platform that supports a local notebook

.....as long as it's the only product that supports scripting (Applescript on a Mac)

[qwazerty 7]

25 minutes ago, DTLow said:

.....as long as it's the only product that supports scripting (Applescript on a Mac)

.....as long as it's the only product with unlimited note selection

[PinkElephant 8,103]

To me it is not obvious what the use case of "unlimited note selection" might be.

50 notes is a little short, but I don't think I never used anything above 200-250 notes ever - and I could easily work around for the few occasions, by simply repeating a 50-note selection until I've got what I wanted.

It is not really a day to day necessity to me.

[eric99 980]

12 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

...I could easily work around for the few occasions, by simply repeating a 50-note selection until I've got what I wanted.

Repetitive work is what computers should do: even if the current implementation can't handle all notes at once, they can automate it in a loop of chuncks of 50 notes, exactly what 200 million users have to do manually now...

[gazumped 11,664]

There's an easy and immediate cure for the limitation - it's called Legacy. Even in v10 I'd imagine the 50-note thing will disappear soon - Evernote are getting towards a (more) stable release,  so they shouldn't need to be so careful of bandwidth...

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Most of these 200 million users probably do not ever need it - it is not really a hot topic here in the forum.

Those who need practical solutions for their work either select 50 notes and repeat it when needed - or install legacy (what is the lead question of this thread).

I just pointed out that if you want to select more than 50 notes a handful of times in a year, you can probably do without legacy. If it is the same notes, and selection is needed for export, stuff them into a notebook - then you can handle the entire notebook, no matter how many notes are in it.

[dbvirago 502]

30 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

To me it is not obvious what the use case of "unlimited note selection" might be.

50 notes is a little short, but I don't think I never used anything above 200-250 notes ever - and I could easily work around for the few occasions, by simply repeating a 50-note selection until I've got what I wanted.

It is not really a day to day necessity to me.

My backups are done by a Ctrl-A to grab all notes and then Export, which is one reason I still need Legacy. AFAIK, they still haven't fixed the Export Notebook as PDF option in v10, which might give me an alternative.

Plus, forget 50 notes, if I want to do anything with more the 5 notes, it is much quicker to load legacy and do it there than wait for the painful process of watching v10 do everything one.... note.....at......a......time.

Finally, the path from Legacy to other apps is easier should that become necessary.

[eric99 980]

23 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Most of these 200 million users probably do not ever need it - it is not really a hot topic here in the forum.

We've been told that the 50 note limit is caused by V10's very poor performance, and this is a very hot topic on the forum

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Performance is debated, the 50 notes limit much less.

Users voice their problems with lag and CPU usage, not so much with the 50 notes limit.

If it is related to the performance directly can be debated - I don't think this was ever confirmed. My impression is that it was installed more to protect the servers against massive queuing of volume jobs, clogging them up, than the local performance. But this is just my 5ct ...

[CalS 5,280]

Yeah, Windows desktop V10 is not ready for prime time for moderately complex workflows that feature editing and updating in tight time frames.  The overall slowness and built in lags for updates to be refreshed in the client make it mostly unusable for me.  Fringe use case in the new world I suppose.  It's a shame as 6.25.1 enabled me to be a productivity ninja with pretty much instantaneous access to information and task lists (reminder search based).. Orders of magnitude slower with V10. 

And, I have had more duplicate/conflict notes in the last month using V10 IOS and desktop 6.25.1 than I had in the prior 12 years I've used EN.  And I am diligent in trying to sync when I enter the IOS platform.  Problem is you just can't tell when everything is synced.  EN says it is, but it isn't as I have viewed notes I know had changes which aren't as yet changed.  PITA.

[qwazerty 7]

4 hours ago, CalS said:

Yeah, Windows desktop V10 is not ready for prime time for moderately complex workflows that feature editing and updating in tight time frames.  The overall slowness and built in lags for updates to be refreshed in the client make it mostly unusable for me.  Fringe use case in the new world I suppose.  It's a shame as 6.25.1 enabled me to be a productivity ninja with pretty much instantaneous access to information and task lists (reminder search based).. Orders of magnitude slower with V10.

Just for testing, I created 50  notes, selected them and tagged this selection with a single tag. It took more than 4 minutes!  Adding a second tag took about the same time. Deleting the 50 notes was extremely slow as well 🙄

All this on a high end gaming laptop  with 16GB of ram, V10 installed on SSD and a 200 Mbit connection

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Yes, this is a valid observation. It looks to me as if each note is treated individually, synced with the server in the process before the next one is touched. A few seconds per note - this is adding up when 50 notes are selected.

If it is caused by syncing, tuning the local performance will not help much to accelerate the overall process. 

If multi note operations are needed regularly, it is IMHO a reason to keep a legacy client. If it is needed only rarely, do it in v10 and fix a cup of coffee before proceeding.

[agsteele 2,946]

35 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

If multi note operations are needed regularly, it is IMHO a reason to keep a legacy client. If it is needed only rarely, do it in v10 and fix a cup of coffee before proceeding

It has been well documented that it is possible to tweak the 50 note limit up to 1,000 notes. (See the many threads on the topic). Just remember that you'll need a much, much, bigger cup of coffee.. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

At least for the Mac the tweak does not work any longer - the file where an entry could be altered was modified, not holding the "50" limit any longer.

Either it was hard coded, or moved to another place.

Maybe it is all a marketing prank: They found a warehouse with these EN cups, and want to sell it off to users waiting for the 50 notes to hobble through

 🐇

[agsteele 2,946]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

At least for the Mac the tweak does not work any longer - the file where an entry could be altered was modified, not holding the "50" limit any longer.

I still have the line in my config.json file - in my case set to 500.  I was just able to select 500 notes without any problem.

The 'multiselectionlimit' variable doesn't exist in config.json by default any longer in Windows but adding it still works...

 "qa": {
    "multiSelectionLimit": 500
  }

However, I rarely need to select anything near the default 50 limit so it really isn't a benefit to me to have tweaked the setting. I just tried it as an experiment which interestingly continues to work on Windows (EN v10.23)

[timwa 23]

Another Evernote for Windows 10 issue that still requires Legacy is searching attached files. If I have a PDF with a list of 500 students and their class details (for example), and I want to find a specific student, on V10 it will find the document but will not highlight the specific student, which doesn't really help. On Legacy, it will find the document and highlight the specific student.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

You can use the in-note search to locate and highlight the place in the note. You first search for the note, and then inside of the note.

It is located in the Note menu, Search & Replace. There is a shortcut as well to speed up using it. By using the arrow buttons in the search box you can jump between the string, if it occurs multiple times.

[timwa 23]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

You can use the in-note search to locate and highlight the place in the note. You first search for the note, and then inside of the note.

It is located in the Note menu, Search & Replace. There is a shortcut as well to speed up using it. By using the arrow buttons in the search box you can jump between the string, if it occurs multiple times.

Thank you for the tip - I will try that!

[tkramme 5]

Hello

In V10 you also cannot drag and drop files (.doc, .pdf, etc...) into an outlook email. And you cannot copy the file directly in the note. Just downloaded and confirmed that this was not fixed yet. And when I was done the test, the note I was working in created a duplicate. I am sure there are several other issues that I have not discovered yet as I never stayed in V10 for any length of time. I have read it somewhere else on the form, and  I truly believe that the V10 is not nearly ready for prime time. I am a heavy user and the legacy has it all over the V10. I just hope they get up to speed ASAP. If they pull legacy and v10 is not fixed I will be forced to part. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

With Apple Mail on the Mac it works, in both directions. I just dragged a file from EN over a fresh email, dropped it, done. And I moved a pdf from an email to a note, dropped it, it took a split second and was displayed inline.

If it does not work, it is maybe an issue on the PC.

[tkramme 5]

Thanks for the reply. I am using windows 10 on two different PC's. More than likely either a Windows issue, or an Outlook issue. I contacted support a few months ago and they said they were aware and working on it. Not sure why it's not fixed yet. If they get this resolved, I'll try to dabble in V10 again. But for now, Legacy is the way to go. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

What was fixed was the drag&drop feature itself - which was not working for several months.

Maybe give support another try - it may be they are now a step ahead of when you asked them last. I can't really tell, I am on a Mac, and not using any MS Office products.

[Aufty 0]

OK, thanks to everyone.  I got the idea that I don't need to dump Legacy, and from all I heard I think there are still multiple reasons to keep it around.

However, I still have a question that is a little more clear now:

Whenever I do scan with my ScanSnap iX1500 and neither version of Evernote is open, it always opens up the Legacy version, not 10.22...  Is there any simple way to determine which one opens when scanning?

[DTLow 5,736]

16 hours ago, Aufty said:

it always opens up the Legacy version

How did you setup the scanner to point to Evernote?   
You could try redoing that setup

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Depends on the setup.

Personally I have stopped using the direct scan to EN from my ix500 altogether. The scanner creates a guess of a file title, that will become the notes title after sending it to EN. Both are usually *****, and changing them is double work.

My current workflow is to scan to a folder using the ScanSnap Manager software. The file is OCRed, and then I name it. The save dialogue is set up to save into the EN import folder. The file is send there, it is imported within a few seconds, and attached to a new note.

The import folder is a new feature of v10, at least on the Mac.

[DTLow 5,736]

9 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

My current workflow is to scan to a folder

Likewise; I scan to a folder on my Mac
As you posted, an automated import folder is a feature of Evernote's v10 product     
I also use an import folder for Evernote's Legacy product, but this requires Folder Actions and Applescript

[tkramme 5]

On the drag and drop issue with windows and outlook, below is the response I received from support. Not sure how the decision could be made not to provide this functionality. 

From support:

"I understand that you are unable to drag and drop attachments from Evernote to Outlook. I know this was a feature that you've been using in the legacy version of the app, and has contributed greatly in helping your day-to-day productivity. Let me provide the information that you need to know.

I want to let you know that we haven’t built this feature into the new Evernote app. This is one of a handful of features we are still considering. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you, and thanks for letting us know this feature is important to you."

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Just 2 simple ways to solve this problem.

On occasion: Drag it to the desktop, drop it, pick it up from there, drag it to EN, drop it. Yes, takes a little longer than d&d in one go.

If you want to use it more often: Make an import folder icon on your desktop. Or, if you like so, multiple ones, every one connected to a different notebook. Drag it from Outlook on the import folder icon. Drop it, and it will automatically be imported into the designated notebook (not using Outlook, but it works with other mail clients).

 

[agsteele 2,946]

I don't use Outlook but since v10.23 I have been able to copy and paste into Word so I imagine that copy and paste will work into Outlook too.

[Razmataz 218]

I asked myself the same question, as I had to install a brand new laptop. So I took the V10 Windows desktop client, instead of the legacy app.

After a year or so waiting to move the new shiny software, I was absolutely flabbergasted: it is still breathtakingly underfeatured.

I must admit, I thought that by this time the client will come pretty close to the legacy one on Windows.

Well, I still cannot work with it. It is limiting in so many ways that it is impossible for me.

I must be crazy, but I'll give them another year and then I move off the platform.

I've been a customer for more than 15 years and a paying customer for more than 10.

I'd like to stay -- mostly for the feature set of the legacy Evernote and for the fear of the migration. But it is increasingly unlikely that I will be able to.

I don't know what the current management has been smoking but they seem to be determined to get rid of their old customers. Doesn't Evernote have a supervisory board?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

If you want the same as legacy, stick with legacy.

If you want no changes, you will have a hard time to find a 1:1 replacement. There would be more options with a Mac, none real good ones I am aware of for a PC. You need to specify your use cases, and maybe it will not be 1 single app to cover them all.

Using v10 means adapting to how it works, and to learn some new tricks to replace old ones. It is pretty good today, but for some use cases there are painful restrictions.

The question for EN is IMHO not whether they will keep every customer. The question is whether they manage to run a positive balance between customers entering vs. customers leaving. The deadsurest way to drive this into the negative range usually is to stall on innovation - which more or less describes the situation during the last „legacy“ years before v10 launched. I think it was time to take a risk - and nobody needed to smoke anything to come to that conclusion.

EN is a privately help company - which I personally experience as usually having a longer term perspective, less driven by quarterly results. Seems this carries the current strategy as well - it is in fact looking like these once-in-10-years decisions. At least I hope so …

[CalS 5,280]

I don't know, I'm not sure the question is innovation as much as it is innovation done wrong.  The new Windows desktop version is still painfully slow, both in actual performance and user interface. 

Got the new IOS version the other day and it is nice and quick.  It seems to work really well on my phone though on my two year older iPad it still stalls and creates duplicate notes.  IAC, I thought I would give the desktop version a try again.  Same pile of steaming shite, for my use case anyway.  Sorry, I just can't say it any other way.

I will continue to use 6.25.1 but I have started the process of determining how many apps will be required to replace the well oiled machine that is 6.25.1.  Still hoping for a miracle in the next year though.  I do not want to suffer the pain of a migration but it will be what it will be.  🤷‍♂️

[DTLow 5,736]

2 hours ago, Razmataz said:

I'd like to stay -- mostly for the feature set of the legacy Evernote and for the fear of the migration. But it is increasingly unlikely that I will be able to.

Why is it "increasing unlikely"   
Last I checked, Evernote Legacy is running well

At some future date, the Legacy product will fail and you will have to switch to an alternative
The v10 product is still a work-in-progress, but hopefully it will be a worthwhile alternative at that future date

[PinkElephant 8,103]

We are running EN iOS 10.20 on a number of devices, back to an 2014 iPad Air 2 and a 2015 iPhone 6S+ (Both with iOS 14.8, will be updated to the newest iOS 15.1 shortly).

On the newer devices it is snappy, allowing to work fluidly. On the oldest ones it is somewhat slower, but still perfectly usable. No duplication whatsoever.

Wishes from my side ? Better support for the special abilities of the iPad, and a return of a Apple Watch app. Plus this issue - currently search is not working for attachments (PDFs !) when offline.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

We are running EN iOS 10.20 on a number of devices, back to an 2014 iPad Air 2 and a 2015 iPhone 6S+ (Both with iOS 14.8, will be updated to the newest iOS 15.1 shortly).

On the newer devices it is snappy, allowing to work fluidly. On the oldest ones it is somewhat slower, but still perfectly usable. No duplication whatsoever.

Wishes from my side ? Better support for the special abilities of the iPad, and a return of a Apple Watch app. Plus this issue - currently search is not working for attachments (PDFs !) when offline.

Yeah, don’t know what it is but I have a couple notes with tables that just keep duplicating.  No matter if I force a sync, wait 30 minutes or whatever in IOS.  I only use IOS for lookup at this point, too much grief otherwise.  

[PinkElephant 8,103]

My sympathy ! I do a lot on the iOS platform, and would be happy if it would gain some functions that employ what the iPad could do.

I run an iPad Pro 10.5, now going in it's 5th year, still good for anything I dare throw at it - except handling more than one bloody EN note at a time, that's it.