Bug: checkboxes have stopped displaying in shared notes

[rac1 0]

I often create notes with checkbox lists in them, and share these notes with other people via a link. I use these to let people know of my progress on task lists, as they can see via the shared link when I check off each item on the list. But recently the checkboxes have stopped showing up in the shared version of the note. Instead, they are replaced with bullets, so other people can no longer see which items on the list I have checked off.

Here's an example of how the note displays in Evernote on Windows 11 (version 10.38.3-win-winstore-public (252), Editor: v149.0.18202, Service: v1.53.4):

And here's how it displays via the shared link, in Firefox:

 

[PinkElephant 8,072]

It is a standard in the new editor that checkboxes are not allowed any more in checklists. The checklist format is the only check-list possible. Checkboxes in a list will autoconvert into checklists once you hit Enter in a list of checkboxes. Checkboxes can still be used in a text, but not as a list.

EN has decided to even convert existing checkbox lists - which has already been subject of a heated discussion. This does not only happen in shared notes.

What can you do ?

The way that will work is to convert the existing checkboxes yourself, and set the status accordingly. This is future proof, but causes a rework.

The alternative is or type a „.“ (Period) in front of every checkbox (yes, every one). This will prevent auto conversion. But we users don’t know whether it will stay that way, and it does cause as much work as the first method.

To comment to Evernote about it, use the feedback function or send a support ticket.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

There seems to be something more happening here than checkboxes versus checklists, since the first list is clearly a new-style checklist, with checked items also struck through. I've experienced this annoying conversion of checklists to bulleted lists when lists that were made in the current v. 10 are displayed on older versions of Evernote, e.g., v. 6 in Windows and v. 8 in Android. Is there any chance that the Web Evernote client in Firefox is not updated to the current version 10??

[Tom Sch 0]

Indeed. It's both boxes and lists. They both get turned into dots when viewed on Android. Very annoying...

[PinkElephant 8,072]

Anybody issued a support ticket yet ?

[Tom Sch 0]

6 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Anybody issued a support ticket yet ?

I just opened a ticket.

[Austin G 527]

We're looking into this now. Thanks for the report! 

[Tom Sch 0]

This is the answer I received after submitting the ticket:

Upon checking, it seems that you are running an older version of Evernote on your Android device. To try to resolve the issue regarding chekboxes being converted to bulleted lists you are experiencing between your Evernote Windows app and Android app, please update your Evernote Android app to the latest version. Please note that the new Evernote app requires your device to be running on Android 10 or above. If you are eligible to update to a newer version of Evernote, go to the Evernote app listing in the Play Store and tap Update.
 

I have Android 8, so that is my issue.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

5 hours ago, Tom Sch said:

This is the answer I received after submitting the ticket:

Upon checking, it seems that you are running an older version of Evernote on your Android device. To try to resolve the issue regarding chekboxes being converted to bulleted lists you are experiencing between your Evernote Windows app and Android app, please update your Evernote Android app to the latest version. Please note that the new Evernote app requires your device to be running on Android 10 or above. If you are eligible to update to a newer version of Evernote, go to the Evernote app listing in the Play Store and tap Update.
 

I have Android 8, so that is my issue.

Yes, the current version of Evernote (v. 10) requires Android 10 or higher to run. I've got a phone running Android 9, and it's a no-go, so I also have Evernote v. 8 and checklists converting to bullets. Next year when the supply chain unkinks, I'm looking forward to a new phone, new OS, and new Evernote. Officially, "Our top priority is providing you with the highest level of quality, speed, and reliability in our new apps. Therefore, we’re launching the new Evernote for Android first on devices with Android 10 and newer, and we’re working hard to get the app ready for Android 9 and older." Unofficially, I'm not holding my breath.

[Mr Jones 1]

Ran into the same problem. 

Use the checklist feature in shopping lists.  Make a checklist on the computer. When you get to the store the "checklist boxes" on the phone do not appear.

Have an older Samsung running Android 8.  So Evernote on the phone is 8.13.3 (last  available update was applied June 2020)

How to we raise the issue to Evernote that they have a newly introduced bug,

and their solution of "you have to upgrade your phone to fix it" is not customer friendly?

Workaround:  (From another forum posting)

Reformat your list of tasks and remove the "checklist" format

Place a checkbox in front of the first item in the list

Put "anychar" in front of the checkbox (otherwise Evernote will remove the checkbox, and change back to a "checklist")

     Example has "--" in front of the checkbox

Now cut/paste the chars & checkbox to the front of the rest of the items in your list.

 

 

Edited June 19, 2022 by Mr Jones
Added workaround description

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

On 6/19/2022 at 9:48 AM, Mr Jones said:

How to we raise the issue to Evernote that they have a newly introduced bug,

and their solution of "you have to upgrade your phone to fix it" is not customer friendly?

Hi, and welcome to the forums. You can always raise a feedback/support ticket. But the truth is that not many people are producing apps for people like us who have outdated phones. Like asking Microsoft to fix problems running Word on Windows 7 or XP. I wish it worked that way--ideally, it should work that way--but it doesn't.

[Mr Jones 1]

Agree.  We should not hold our breath.

But since a "server-side" update introduced the bug, there should be ownership on their side to "do no harm" to the established customer based.  

From a forum posting, I discovered a workaround  that works for what I want to do.   Hopefully others can discover the same workaround.  

 

[agsteele 2,942]

Checklists are not supported in Evernote 6, 7 and 8. So they do not display in these older versions of Evernote. The workaround suggested is certainly one option. The other would be to switch to the so-called Legacy desktop program. I won't suggest the third option of upgrading the mobile device

[jola16 2]

Quote

Checklists are not supported in Evernote 6, 7 and 8. So they do not display in these older versions of Evernote. 

Yes, that may be relevant on Android, but the original post was: Checklists (in the latest version of Evernote) have stopped displaying in shared notes.

I updated today, and the checklists still don't display correctly. It's very important when sharing notes that checklists are displayed correctly. I paid for 12 months last week, but discovered this bug today as I shared some notes and got some very confused questions in return when they couldn't see the checklist items. This is not a "showstopper" bug, but it's definitely a "high priority" bug as it makes Evernote quite unusable for sharing notes (and that's what I want to do multiple times per week).

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

@jola16, what version of Evernote are the people to whom you shared the notes using? If they're on older Android devices or running Evernote v. 6 Legacy (on Windows 7 computers, for instance), they will not see the proper checklists, as discussed earlier in the thread. But if they're running up-to-date Evernote apps or the Web client, then there's definitely a bug.

[rac1 0]

To clarify my original post (I guess I didn't make this clear): the problem I reported applies to notes that I share and other people view in a web browser. The people I'm sharing it with are not logged in to Evernote or running any version of the Evernote application. I create the notes in the desktop app on Windows, then share them via the link generated in Evernote with others who view them in a web browser.

They used to be able to see my checkbox lists, with the ticks in the boxes. But now they just see a bullet list in the browser. At some point the web display of checkbox lists stopped working.

The reason it's an issue is that I was using it to let people know my progress on task lists. I'd make a to-do list in Evernote and share it, and other people could see how far through the list I had got from the checkboxes that were ticked off. But now they can only see the tasks, not my progress.

[agsteele 2,942]

I can see that you are using the checklist option which is the new default for lists with a check box at the front.

These lists don't display in old viewers and I suspect that this is what is happening. The web browser shared page may not be displaying.

You could try the old check boxes. The main challenge with this is that these boxes need to be within a text block. Put them at the start of a line and they convert to a checklist.

You type almost anything. For example:

-[] you text for the item.

You can also add a checkbox inside a bullet, numbered or check list.

Check boxes are found inside the blue circle + button menu.

[jola16 2]

At first, I though @agsteele was wrong..., but then I tested and saw the difference between using a "new" checklist and using the "old" checkboxes.

The "new" checklist is not displayed correctly in a public link web page, while the "old" checkboxes are displayed correctly.

I have added these findings to the public test I created for a support ticket in September last year:
2022-09-19 This is a test note for checklists

PS. In the Windows desktop application, the "old" checkboxes have a green border while the "new" checklist boxes are gray/black.

PS. It's tricky to not automatically convert the "old" checkboxes into a "new" checkbox-list...

 

[PinkElephant 8,072]

Your so called "test note" doesn't hold a new checklist.

It holds an indented bulleted list. This is a different list type, out of the 3 available (bullet/numbered/checklist).

Checkboxes are no listable item any longer. They are text elements, active to be used in forms and similar. Nice to generate templates, but no good for anything resembling a list.

If you want a checklist, use the checklist item. It is that simple. Using checkboxes and going to extremes to prevent them to switch into checklists is nostalgia.

[Boot17 1,439]

29 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Your so called "test note" doesn't hold a new checklist.

But it does. If you Save a Copy of jola16's shared note to your own Evernote, you'll see it open as checklists.

Here is another example:

In Evernote:

Public link web page:

[PinkElephant 8,072]

Thanks for checking.

The easiest test is to hover with a mouse over a line of check-somewhat-items.

If a symbol of 4 dots appears in front of the line, it is a true checklist. The 4 dots are the handle by which the entire line can be moved to the adequate sequence. One of the reasons to use true checklists instead of the checkboxes.

[jola16 2]

59 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Thanks for checking.

The easiest test is to hover with a mouse over a line of check-somewhat-items.

If a symbol of 4 dots appears in front of the line, it is a true checklist. The 4 dots are the handle by which the entire line can be moved to the adequate sequence. One of the reasons to use true checklists instead of the checkboxes.

This topic here wasn't about how to use "true" checklists. I really like them, and use them a lot.

The topic/problem here is that a "Shareable link" doesn't display these "true" checklists. As you saw for yourself, they are instead displayed like a bulleted list. I.e. this is a bug, and it causes a lot of problems and confusion when sharing notes. 

[edwincv0@gmail.com 1]

I am having this same issue. When I write a checkbox on my Android, it does not show up in the Web Version. It is replaced by a bullet list.

 

* Update - Updating my Evernote web version solved this problem. You can find it in the settings panel.

[chezbuttons 7]

I am having this issue also. Checklist boxes are showing up as bullets in a note that I want to share via web w my nonprofit group.

I think I've checked everything that can be updated. My Mac OS is up to date. My Evernote app for Mac is updated. The web app shows "Enable V10+ web clients" enabled.

I am pretty sure I'm using Checklists (4 little dots by each box on hover). Attached are screenshots of the app display vs the shared note display via web browser. 

I'm sure what else to do to fix this.

[Boot17 1,439]

1 hour ago, chezbuttons said:

I'm [not] sure what else to do to fix this.

Nothing you can do to fix it directly -- it's just broken/bugged. You can use a Checkbox instead of a Checklist for shared notes though as a workaround.

[chezbuttons 7]

Ah well. Thanks for the workaround. On the Mac side, I inserted checkboxes and put x’s in them. On the web side, these show up as boxes w check marks, but without the indent of a checklist. I can live with that for now. Thanks much for the quick reply. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

When checkboxes were first introduced in v. 10 (if not earlier, actually), the underlying code produced bullets on systems that were not using the latest versions of Evernote. I think this persists today when checkboxes created in v. 10 are viewed in the Legacy (v. 6) or older Android (v. 8) apps. I'm not sure how the people you're sharing to are viewing the notes, but the bullets suggest that the sharing mechanism at some point passes through an older interpreter.

[Boot17 1,439]

There are two different (but perhaps related) issues here.

OP -- @rac1 -- was talking about shared notes that are accessible via a public URL / web page.

On 9/14/2022 at 9:37 PM, rac1 said:

To clarify my original post (I guess I didn't make this clear): the problem I reported applies to notes that I share and other people view in a web browser. The people I'm sharing it with are not logged in to Evernote or running any version of the Evernote application. I create the notes in the desktop app on Windows, then share them via the link generated in Evernote with others who view them in a web browser.

Then others started talking about sharing notes with other Evernote account holders that were using a different version of the app. Related -- but a different issue than what OP was talking about.

I believe @chezbuttons was also referencing the same issue as the OP. These notes are *not* being shared to others with an older Evernote version, rather they are being shared via the publicly accessible URL / web page.

[chezbuttons 7]

For clarity, I came across this problem when generating a shared public link, and that link was sent to others who likely are not Evernote users. Viewing the public link in a web browser caused the switch from box to bullet. My original note was generated with the latest Evernote version, as best I can tell. Hope this helps.

[Mike P 2,624]

13 hours ago, chezbuttons said:

For clarity, I came across this problem when generating a shared public link, and that link was sent to others who likely are not Evernote users. Viewing the public link in a web browser caused the switch from box to bullet. My original note was generated with the latest Evernote version, as best I can tell. Hope this helps.

It appears that some of the new features in EN notes are not being correctly rendered in the browser, if the note is shared using a public share url. For example

• Checklists appear as bullets
• inline code just appears as normal text
• Tasks are truncated

As has been mentioned above, checkboxes still work because they are a long established feature.

Disappointing that EN have not thought this through so I would definitely raise this as a bug through support. 

[Paulfm 0]

As we approach two years since the original post, I am shocked that EN still hasn't fixed this bug. Like others, I want to share my checklists with non-EN users using the shared link. This has become critical for me, so I will likely need to look at non-EN options for these shared checklists.

[janndk 478]

I have also tried to contact Evernote support about this. Never got any response, other than those standard robot-answers 🫤

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

On 8/10/2023 at 3:34 AM, Mike P said:

As has been mentioned above, checkboxes still work because they are a long established feature.

Agreed, it needs fixing. But do checkboxes (not lists) appear properly in shared notes? It's more work and less elegant to put a non-blank character at the beginning of the line before the checkbox, but it might be the available workaround.

[Paulfm 0]

I did use the checkboxes, and they do show up okay. The extra time that it takes to use checkboxes just isn't worth it though. If I create an item with the checkbox, Evernote tries to automatically change it to a checklist. 

[Mike P 2,624]

9 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

But do checkboxes (not lists) appear properly in shared notes?

They do for me.

In app view:

 

Shared view (Chrome):