Evernote not starting (& so what happens to clippings?)

[salohcin13 2]

Evernote 10.29 on iPad Air 2, OS 14.7.1

For a good while, Evernote on my iPad won't open properly. It stays on the white screen + green elephant logo for a long time and then cuts out completely, leaving me back on the iPad home screen. Long story short, Evernote support told me that this is a known issue which they're working on, and advised me to use web Evernote in the meantime. I use the iPad Evernote app less often than the apps for Mac and iPhone anyway - plus I have a new iPad coming - so I don't mind this too much.

However the bigger problem I have is the fact that on a daily basis I clip lots of webpages to Evernote from my iPad's browser (Chrome). I've been doing some small tests and found that none of the tested clipped webpages shows up on my Mac or iPhone, so my layman conclusion is that the problem with the iPad Evernote, whatever it is, is preventing these clippings from making their way across to my actual Evernote account - but that the app is somehow still holding these clippings, ready to be synced up as soon as it gets working properly again.

Would my assumption be correct? Is there a way of recovering these clippings by some other way, or is it all totally dependent on iPad Evernote working properly? I haven't deleted/reinstalled the app because I'm worried it could mean losing all the clippings since they haven't synced to my account yet - or is it the case that either Chrome or iPad will 'remember' them somehow, and send them to the reinstalled Evernote app? I asked support about the clippings situation three times but....well, maybe I was just unlucky with the particular support individual assigned to my ticket.

Speaking of which, anyone with any experience of Evernote failing like mine is, or any further information about that particular issue? Support tells me that it's a known issue, but I can't really find anyone else reporting it on this forum, as far as my searches go?

[PinkElephant 8,115]

The iPad Air 2 is the oldest device still able to run iOS 13, which is the minimum requirement to install EN v10. It should be noted, because it is running slow on this device. I know, we have one as well. In fact ours is on iOS 15.4, the latest release.

Opposite to what you describe ours is working ok, including the EN app. 

Did it work before updating to 10.29 ?

After clipping something, did you ever open the EN app and see the clip show up as a new note ?

Because this is needed: You need to open the app to get the clip processed.

If not, the clipped content is queued up in front of the EN app. Unless imported it will never make it to the EN server.

Let‘s see what you can tell about it. 

About the app failing: No, I don’t remember postings with that content. There is a bug, but it is with using the web client in a browser on iPads. This will crash, AFAIK still not fixed. But it is not with the app.

[salohcin13 2]

No - it has been happening for a few months, across various versions and updates. I've just updated OS to 15.4 for good measure and tried again (including on Airplane Mode) and still the same result.

For years, I have always clipped and opened EN app to see the clip show up there, as you said, without problems. But now nothing's showing up (i.e. on Mac, iPhone and web), presumably because EN on iPad isn't working so nothing in the queue is going through.

If I delete EN app and reinstall, is it likely that all clippings currently being queued will vanish?

[PinkElephant 8,115]

All clips that have not yet reached the EN account are in a sandbox storage. Only the receiving app can read them. AFAIK there is no way to copy this data, or save it by any means.

iOS is constructed that way - the sandboxing is one reason why there is few malware on iOS.

When you uninstall the sandbox is removed, and the data lost. If your app has stopped working, it probably is necessary to uninstall it.

To be sure you can ask support.

In general it is advisable to clip only a few things to the iOS app, then open it and let the clips import and sync. Import has happened when a new note appears, syncing is done when the green triangle marker on the new notes disappear.

Especially the older iOS devices are short on memory, they can’t buffer a lot of information between apps.

[salohcin13 2]

All right, your information has been a really big help. It looks like bad news for me in the end. I'll take the loss - and would still like to have slightly more technical information about the clipping and sandboxing so I can educate myself further about how it works for future, just as I've educated myself from what you've said about age of device/memory/clipping a few things at a time.

The support person I'm talking to doesn't seem willing to pass me on to a tech support person. I know that some kind of flag can be raised here on the forum - you're a Level 5 user - do you think it could be done here? My case number is 3490740.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

OK, I have flagged the thread. Will probably be next week until they can reach out.

[PinkElephant 8,115]

About sandbox: This means each App on iOS gets a reserved piece of the RAM memory when it is started. It is only allowed to write into this space - not into the sandboxes of other apps. This insulates the device and other apps from malicious code.

But it would prevent information exchange as well. Here comes Sharing: Each sandbox has an address to which other apps can send information. This buffer is filled when you share something.

The sending app drops the data there, the receiving app picks it up and uses it. The sending app can’t influence what the receiving app does - so things stay safe.

If you now share a lot of content, the queue grows, and the OS may run out of memory. Or the receiving app has a problem with an import, which may make it stall, and will block all following shares.

I think something like this happened on your iPad Air. This is iOS stuff, not the EN app, which maybe makes EN support a little reluctant to dive too deep into it.

However, I think you will be contacted.

[salohcin13 2]

Thank you for all - I really appreciate your time!

[salohcin13 2]

Er, so it looks like EN support isn't going to come along? 🤷‍♂️

[DTLow 5,736]

16 minutes ago, salohcin13 said:

Er, so it looks like EN support isn't going to come along? 🤷‍♂️

You're posting in a user discussion forum   
Evernote support can be contacted at https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action

[salohcin13 2]

Not to be impolite, but the discussion in this thread does show that I have previously contacted EN support who were unhelpful, and also that PinkElephant kindly flagged this topic for EN support's attention. They did indicate that EN support may or may not get in touch. I was simply making a comment that it appears that they have decided not to.

Thanks for your time tho. Maybe you have personal experience of the issue I've raised? If so, feel free to share 😀 👍

[salohcin13 2]

For those with similar issues & wanting to know, I hope this helps somewhat:

I went ahead with getting a new iPad, and tested things quite a bit. So far, it looks like things are going well. I also got notification on both my iOS devices saying that syncing now happens in the background, without needing to switch to the app itself to sync (wish they put that in long ago!)

With no EN support responding to this thread's flag, I suspect I won't get any answer to my hope to know a bit more about how the technical side of things work. I'll still hold out some hope, I guess. But for now, it looks like - as with many things in life - the solution is to get a new device.

My very many thanks to PinkElephant again for such helpful and detailed responses!