Can't find all notes on new version

[VISUS 2]

Dear Evernote users / developers. 

We're encountering a very annoying problem. On our new windows 10 + 11 PC's the newest version of evernote is installed. 

If i search for a specific phraze in our notebook on the newest version of evernote i doesn't give me all the notes that an older version of evernote DOES show on an older workstation. 

This means i cannot locate important files via webversion or newer versions of evernote that i CAN find on the older version. 

Does anyone know how to fix this? 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

It would help to have more information, especially about the structure of your search terms. Search does operate differently in the newer version of Evernote from how it does in the older version. The new version is discussed here: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040282613. The older version has fewer options, and an identical search term may return different results in the two versions.

[VISUS 2]

Ok i will try to give more complete information:

We are a shop that sells products. These product are sent to us and we scan the doccuments, invoices credit forms etc etc. 

I.E. i search for a Name. I just type in the searchbar the name of the client. 

If i do this the text recognizing software from evernote will usually flawlessly find the scanned documents containing this name. In some cases though the same search request does not find the same results. Some scanned documents can only be found on the older evernote version.

 

Hope the pictures help. As you can see there are more search results on the older version than the new. I cant find all my old documents if i update the version of evernote. 

[PinkElephant 8,075]

Maybe you have a locally corrupted database on the new version. You can try this to rebuild it 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. Keep the app open while it downloads your notes from the server.

[VISUS 2]

Hmm but you'd think that if i'd search via the web version there wouldnt be any problem right? I can only find certain documents via old evernote versions. Web version had the same problem as newer versions.

[VISUS 2]

It feels like there are tons and tons of documents im not able to find anymore. If you look at the images i posted, i only used one word and get only one result instead of the 6 results on the previous version. 

[Alxa 478]

Did you check, if the old EN did sync everything properly. I once had an occurence where it simply did not sync certain notes to the cloud. You could check if you see the documents you find in the old app also on web client through manually looking them up to see if everything is on the server. A good indicator may be the all notes count as well.

[VISUS 2]

Thats the funny part. The PC station with Evernote legacy on it is the PC that has nothing to do with uploading or scanning our documents. It's merely a laptop with evernote legacy on it that is being synchronized. 

An extra example of how frustrating this is: 

I scan documents on the new version and it gets synchronised. If i try and search on one word from that document i cannot find it in the new version of evernote OR in the web client. But if i go on legacy it can find the document instantly. Actually the only thing we can do is install legacy and hope it will run for ever and never get taken down. Cause if we cant search in our documents our entire structure, how we do things, will collapse...

[agsteele 2,942]

@VISUS Can you say whether you are a Free plan user or have a paid subscription.

[VISUS 2]

We have a paid subscription. For over 6 years now already 

[Alxa 478]

Wow I just checked my EN 10 vs. EN legacy and get different search results, too. Tested with 5 different search terms and in 3 out 5 I get different number of search results between legacy and EN 10 web/desktop. Although slightly different not as dramatic as with your experience but EN legacy is better in search than EN 10 (always more hits with legacy than with EN 10) - very unsettling experience... 😒

[VISUS 2]

Yep, its really unsettling eh! I soley rely on the results to pop up, as if it doesn't pop up i just rely on it that it just doesn't exist. 

[PinkElephant 8,075]

When I compared legacy and v10 last time, there were some fixes needed - on legacy. Seems the local search index had degraded over time, so it needed a refresh. There are hidden tools in the help menu, accessible by (if I remember it correctly, I am on a Mac) holding down strg/ctrl before clicking on the help menu. Legacy is not the holy grail, and its local data can accumulate errors.

On v10 desktop the easiest way to rebuild the search index is to download a fresh copy from the server (Settings, app, don't keep a copy on logout, then log out, quit the app, reopen, log in again). It will download a new local copy then, including a fresh search index.

[VISUS 2]

You'd think the developers would have a solution for this by now. I've been reading up on it today and it seems a bigger problem in the community.

[PinkElephant 8,075]

You can wait for the devs to solve it, or follow the advise.

As a hint: As long as there is a local copy, differences between cloud and drive can happen. Legacy had 12 years for maturing, and the tools to repair a local database are still there, until the last version. EN could easily avoid all that trouble - just skip a local database all together, move everything into the cloud.

[gazumped 11,652]

7 hours ago, VISUS said:

I scan documents on the new version and it gets synchronised.

Are you scanning to a searchable PDF,  or allowing Evernote to OCR the document for the index?  If the document is OCR'd locally it would be searchable quickly (but probably not instantly because the index still has to be updated and synced to all linked devices).  If Evernote is doing the OCR you may have to add a few hours to the delay,  because that's done on the server.

For interest I have a current search anomaly ticket running with Support - I'm on Win 11 and Evernote 10.46 and I've been unable to locate a specific tag - my Legacy, v10 and Web instances of the app all seem to have different numbers for my search term.  I'll report back when I get a result...  meantime I'd recommend you raise it with Support too!

[VISUS 2]

Yes, everything is scanend as a searchable pdf. I'll make a ticket for EN support as well. Im curious what your ticket results will show as well. 

[PinkElephant 8,075]

Searchable pdfs still need to be integrated into the search index, even when they come holding their own text layer.

This is a server side function, and may take some time.

[VISUS 2]

Ok but still, these notes that only legacy can find are from 2020 or some even older than that. 

[gazumped 11,652]

1 hour ago, VISUS said:

Ok but still, these notes that only legacy can find are from 2020 or some even older than that. 

Hmmn.  I'd suggest you contact Support about this - I have PDFs going back to 2013 that are perfectly legible.  Is the issue that you can't find these notes,  though they do still exist on your system;  or that they are not visible on the system at all? - Maybe test that out by finding one or more 'old' notes in Legacy and flagging them with a unique tag,  then check whether you can find that tag (or something else unique like creation dates) in v10.

[VISUS 2]

No it's not that the files are'nt in the system, its just that they can't be found using the search option. I just downloaded legacy on a fresh laptop and it found everyting back to 2016 when we started scanning everything. It's super weird

[FrankC 74]

Just to add to this, I logged a Ticket with Evernote on a similar issue back in February 2021.

At that time, they said they could reproduce it, but couldn't give me a date for resolution.

I tried it again just now in legacy and current versions, and it still appears to be happening I.E. finding more notes in a legacy search than on the current version.

My analysis of the problem (though not confirmed by Evernote) was that for OCR'd notes some indexing was not migrated fully/correctly to the new version. I prepared a test set of notes with a mixture of scanned (i.e. OCR'd) and text occurrences of the phrase. The legacy version search returns 15 notes, the new version 14 notes.

To further analyse the situation, I created a new note, in the new version - with exactly the same contents as the missing (search result) note.

The newly created note can be found in the new (and legacy) versions. This confirms for me that it is an index migration issue for OCR'd notes.

 

[gazumped 11,652]

42 minutes ago, FrankC said:

it is an index migration issue for OCR'd notes.

Don't know enough about the technical aspects to comment intelligently - I'd assume that in creating v10 the search process was re-coded,  so I guess there might be differences there...  I still have a ticket running with Support myself.  I'll reference this thread and see if they have more to say.

[FrankC 74]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Don't know enough about the technical aspects to comment intelligently - I'd assume that in creating v10 the search process was re-coded,  so I guess there might be differences there...  I still have a ticket running with Support myself.  I'll reference this thread and see if they have more to say.

It seems to be an index-related issue to me because : a specific old note note, created (and OCR'd)  under legacy is only found in the old system. An identical note (i.e. I copied the contents) created in the new version is found in the new and legacy versions (including the new web version).

This issue only applies to some notes and the "missing" note can be found by using different search terms. So it looks to me as if the OCR'd index data in old notes was not always migrated correctly.

[FrankC 74]

19 hours ago, FrankC said:

It seems to be an index-related issue to me because : a specific old note note, created (and OCR'd)  under legacy is only found in the old system. An identical note (i.e. I copied the contents) created in the new version is found in the new and legacy versions (including the new web version).

This issue only applies to some notes and the "missing" note can be found by using different search terms. So it looks to me as if the OCR'd index data in old notes was not always migrated correctly.

One thing I forgot to mention - if you update the old note e.g. by editing and adding a word to the note, then this seems to rebuild the indexes, and the note will now be found.
If there was some other way to rebuild the indexes for old notes, then this would be a solution - however I don't know of any bulk method to do this.

[gazumped 11,652]

1 hour ago, FrankC said:

I don't know of any bulk method to do this.

Depending on your OS and expertise - I'm looking into Power Automate;  free with Windows 10/11,  which adds scripting possibilities to Windows automation.  It would (in theory) be possible to add a unique character* to the current note;  search for notes without that character;  select the next note and add the character again.  Rince and repeat in quantity.  Don't know how long it would take per 1,000 notes,  but it might be viable.  Maybe...

Edit:  actually - you need more than one character for search to find it.  Maybe a unique word.