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Restore note function from Note History - not working as I would expect...


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Greetings,  I am a paid subscriber and have some observations on the restore function within Note History.   I am running EN 10.41.5 on Win10 Pro & Android phone.

I somehow "pocked edited" a note, and removed some data. No worries, I just opened the note, and restored the previous version from the note history. When restoring, there should be an option to have the "restored note" replace the current one, along with the notebook assignment, original date stamps, tags, and note history. I was surprised to see this does not happen. So if I end up re-establishing the tags, notebook, etc. all is good but the note history is gone. The only way to preserve the note history that I can see, would be to take the restored note, copy all the note contents, and then paste it into the "current version" of the note, that I had accidentally removed some data from.

All of this seems less than intuitive, and there should be an option (or maybe even this as the default behavior) upon restoring a note, to have it become the "active note" including notebook assignment, tags, and note history, and then the current one can be moved to trash.  I opened a Support ticket on this and below is the response.   I am not sure how others feel about the current functionality of the restore function but if you agree with the changes I am suggesting, please chime in.  If there is interest I can summarize and post to the requested features area of this forum, assuming the EN team monitors that.   Cheers!

Feedback from EN support is below

Upon testing this myself, I can confirm that the restored version of the note will not include all of the data associated with the original note. The restored note would also be added to your default notebook as another copy of the original note. Currently, there is no way to change this default behavior, or to have the restored note replace the original one.  
 
Unfortunately, we haven’t built a more intuitive way to restore notes into the new Evernote app. This is one of a handful of features we are still considering. I know that this improvement may provide a better experience for our users, and we appreciate you for sharing this feedback with us. Rest assured that I will share this information with our product team.

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Thanks for the heads-up.  I think I've used Note History about twice in 14 years,  and clearly not in situations where I'd notice any shortfall in the data restored since this was news to me!  I do keep an exported backup of my database which would cover this situation,  but since it also involves running Legacy and using an external app to export the data I had planned on giving up.  Maybe I'll hold off doing that for a while...

A 'proper' backup system within Evernote v10 might answer both our concerns though - ATM it's possible but just a pain to get backup copies.  If it were easier,  backed up notes would be a good option to have if a simple restore didn't contain the data you need...

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49 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Thanks for the heads-up.  I think I've used Note History about twice in 14 years,  and clearly not in situations where I'd notice any shortfall in the data restored since this was news to me!  I do keep an exported backup of my database which would cover this situation,  but since it also involves running Legacy and using an external app to export the data I had planned on giving up.  Maybe I'll hold off doing that for a while...

A 'proper' backup system within Evernote v10 might answer both our concerns though - ATM it's possible but just a pain to get backup copies.  If it were easier,  backed up notes would be a good option to have if a simple restore didn't contain the data you need...

Great, so it sounds like you are in favor of the suggestions as well.  Like you, I have not used the restore function much, but when I did just recently, I was surprised to see these (in my opinion) shortcomings.    

Like you, I also continue to run Legacy (for various reasons) and have it on my list for a proper backup/export of my data.  Would you kindly share more info on your process and the external app involved.  Thanks!

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15 minutes ago, Steve2014 said:

share more info on your process and the external app involved.  Thanks!

That's easy - there's a third-party app called Backupery which will export each notebook in your account to either an ENEX or HTML file.  It works on the installed desktop database in Windows and Mac - and obviously doesn't translate to v10 because there is no local database (that we're aware of...).  There are other services like CloudHQ that will work with the server copy of your data (and I believe Backupery is going that way too) so backing up from v10 should become possible in future,  and -maybe- Evernote will wake up to the fact that data backups would reduce their support calls because we'd all be able to handle lost or corrupted data issues from our own resources... and actually provide a built-in service to export all notebooks to separate files.  I wait,  as they say,  with interest,  to see where this goes.  Meantime I keep my powder backups dry and trust in Backupery!

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A backup may be a good idea. It should be mentioned that when I checked last, the yearly cost of a backuppery copy of my EN data was roughly twice that of a full Personal subscription.

Personally I rely on TimeMachine (Mac) and Acronis (Windows) running copies of the local data folders.

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