Ongoing issues with syncing and losing content of notes

[caesura 1]

I've been having ongoing issues with my notes not syncing between the server, desktop, and phone app. Ever since they took away the ability to force a sync, I have had zero recourse. Uninstalling and reinstalling apps doesn't work. Restarting my device doesn't work. The whole reason I paid for a subscription was so I could access my notes on my android phone, but after 2 months of no syncing and no way to force it to sync I cancelled the paid subscription because I couldn't even benefit from it in the way I wanted. 

Currently I'm trying to do some writing, and everything I wrote last night on the desktop app on an existing note is completely gone as if it never existed. It's not on the server, and I'm not about to pay money to view the note history when this was an ongoing issue when I was a paid subscriber as well. 

Last night when the issue occurred, I had clicked off the note I was working on to reference a different note. When I clicked back, the text would not load. Instead there was just a spinning green circle. I tried giving it about 40 minutes to load. The one other note in that same folder also gave me a spinning green circle, but when I tried clicking on various other notes to see if they had the issue, but they were fine. I right-clicked the problem notes and was able to create copies in another notebook, but the copies only had the old text content and none of the new text. Logging in to my profile through the browser only gave me access to the old version of the note.

This morning I tried to access the problem note again, and again got the spinning green circle. So I uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and now the 2 notes work but all my work from last night that was done on the app is still missing from both the app and the website. 

Is there any way to prevent this going forward? If using this app means I am going to continue unpredictably losing my work or regularly spend hours trying to recover lost text, then I'm going to have to find different software. Which would really suck, because there are so many things I really love about Evernote but this is a very, very basic function and it not working correctly is a major deal breaker.                                                                             

[gazumped 11,661]

Hi.  This issue has been raised many times under various headings in the forums.  You can recover any part of a note that has been synced to the server in 'history',  but you describe swopping to another note to reference something,  then swopping back - presumably interrupting Evernote's background attempt to save the original / download the new content / reload the original note.  Syncing takes time - especially on a mobile device.  It would be far better (and I've suggested this innumerable times before) to do your long-term editing on the note content in a locally-saved word processor.  Copy/ paste an existing note into a blank WP window,  do your editing (which will save to local memory) and save / copy / paste the completed editing back your note note afterward.  Or maybe: just attached the WP file?  Open and edit anywhere,  and you have an automatic local backup copy on whatever device you're using.

[PinkElephant 8,095]

How I read this long initial post, the desktop client is damaged. One sign is a long loading time, with that green circle. 

This procedure will replace the (potentially corrupted) local database with a fresh copy from the server:

1. Go to File > Sign Out [name] from the menu bar.
2. Select the "Remove my Evernote data from this device" option, then click Sign out.
3. Restart your computer.
4. Sign back in to Evernote

If this doesn't work, uninstall using an installer like Revo Uninstaller, and make sure every program part is gone. The reinstall from the EN website.

 

Since sometimes replacing the client makes EN think the new one is a different one, it may be better to unsync the old client before uninstalling. Check you are down to only one synced device before logging in into the fresh install.

[LifeCoachShari 1]

The inability to manually sync evernote has become a dealbreaker for me. I'm switching to something else. I'm sick of leaving my house, expecting all of my notes to be on my phone after updating them at my desk, and yet an hour later, they still aren't synced. It sucks. So I downloaded all of my notes and am migrating them to something more user-friendly.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

3 hours ago, LifeCoachShari said:

The inability to manually sync evernote has become a dealbreaker for me. I'm switching to something else. I'm sick of leaving my house, expecting all of my notes to be on my phone after updating them at my desk, and yet an hour later, they still aren't synced. It sucks. So I downloaded all of my notes and am migrating them to something more user-friendly.

OK, but it is always possible to manually sync: in the Windows desktop app, Ctrl+R (something similar in the Mac desktop, I think); in the Web client, refresh the browser; in the Android app, pull down on a list of notes, or go to Settings > Sync > Sync now. Some of these are more cumbersome than others, but they all work. It may not hurt to do this, then grab your car keys and adjust the thermostat, or whatever, before turning the computer off. I can't say it's always true, but I would guess that most failures to sync happen when a device is shut down, not in the intervening hour or so.

[PinkElephant 8,095]

On the Mac, it is cmd-R. I am just not sure if it pushes an upsync as well - the menu position is called „Reload“, and when I think about a browser, reloading usually means to call the current websites data  from the server again.

I frequently go offline with my MacBook while on the train. I never had any syncing issues after going back online again, provided there is a WiFi or LAN connection. Once the connection is established, sync goes through reliably and fast.

If it is not reliable even on a home network, I would check what’s going on on that network. All sort of security software can interfere, which is sometimes hard to detect. Switching it off one by one, and watching out when it works may be an option. Or using more advanced network sniffing technology - which is not for everybody.