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200mb limit is too small! Raise to 500mb?


jacklee777

Idea

I understand that there has to be some kind of limit to the size of a file, but can we please have something more than 200mb? Can we at least have a 50i0 mb limit per file? And can anyone tell me what else I can use for larger files than 200 mb in the mean time? I love Evernote, but it doesn't meet about 5% of my needs.

 

Thanks

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This has been requested several times. We must remember we subscribers only pay for the upload, not for the storage. Raising the upload might provoke a storage fee on top of that - something I would not like to see.

The only real use of more than 200MB is video footage. Get a YT account, create a private channel, post your videos there, link them to your notes. You can even play them inline. Another option is a link to Google Drive.

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3 hours ago, jacklee777 said:

And can anyone tell me what else I can use for larger files than 200 mb in the mean time?

For videos, what Pink has suggested about YouTube private channel is a great way to go.

There are literally dozens (probably even hundreds) of services where you can upload files of any type greater than 200 MB and then save the URL/link into Evernote: Google Drive, One Note, Apple iCloud, DropBox, Box.net, Mega -- just to name a few. See also https://www.google.com/search?q=file+storage+services

I personally wouldn't want to put too many large files in my Evernote account because then I'm increasing my storage size across any Desktop device that has Evernote installed (since there is no selective sync on Desktop) -- and I have four of them (plus 2 additional installs of legacy). Perhaps one day Evernote will allow for a higher storage limit per note with selective sync for Desktop. That'd be cool.

3 hours ago, jacklee777 said:

I love Evernote, but it doesn't meet about 5% of my needs.

That seems kind of a low number.... like you are hoping that Evernote will adapt and add features to get you closer to 100% What is the other 95% that you are looking for? Edit: read that totally wrong.

 

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It meets 95%. I just need a bit more. It's books I like to access through Evernote. I can take them anywhere, and they're always accessible on my iPad. Problem with links is if I don't have internet I can read them. I guess it's so people aren't uploading a ton of videos. I can imagine if people had access to files twice as large, it would impact Evernote's servers that much more. Maybe 250 mb? Many textbooks are just a tad over 200mb. So it would help.

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32 minutes ago, jacklee777 said:

It meets 95%

Oh sorry - I totally read that backwards.

I also put books in Evernote and like to be able to access them from any device, but I think I've only encountered one pdf book (a textbook with a lot of images) that was over 200 MB. I have a Harry Potter pdf book that is only 3 MB in comparison. Lately for the larger sized books though, I'm getting more hesitant to put them in Evernote because of the non-selective sync on Desktop. Though I guess it's still pretty small compared to the large storage drives that exist today. I probably shouldn't worry about that.

I also use PDF Viewer (love it way better than using Evernote to read PDFs on iPad) on my iPad and use iCloud drive also for PDF books.

 

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I'm using a bunch of college textbooks at the moment that are on PDF. Most of them are under 200, but a few are under 300. I've been trying to break them up into smaller volumes, but it ends up increasing the size of each file so the parts end up even bigger than the first whole one was. I just like to keep everything under one roof as it were. The nice thing about Evernote of course is all the files are then accessible from anywhere: my desktop computer, ipad, iphone, and I can send them or share the files easily. I do love Evernote. Every time I explain to people how useful it is their eyes glaze over, though. But I use it for so many things from taxes to voice memos and books.

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If these books are beyond 200MB, they are either very graphically oriented, or completely inefficient. If splitting them up increases the size, the tool used is adding to the problem, instead of solving it.

So I think it is rather a question of improving the tools, than to raise the note size limit as a result of shortcomings in the books generation.

If you like you could drop an example by a link to a shared note here, and we see what we can do about it.

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On 12/31/2022 at 8:48 AM, PinkElephant said:

If these books are beyond 200MB, they are either very graphically oriented, or completely inefficient. If splitting them up increases the size, the tool used is adding to the problem, instead of solving it.

So I think it is rather a question of improving the tools, than to raise the note size limit as a result of shortcomings in the books generation.

If you like you could drop an example by a link to a shared note here, and we see what we can do about it.

I don’t think it is easy to make judgments about the needs other users have, especially when they bump against Evernote’s limits, because there are so many possibilities for workflows—the files may be scanned at a high quality, they may have a lot of pages, they may be in color, etc. There are lots of reasons why you might scan something and end up with a large file—1GB or more in some cases—and users shouldn’t need to twist their workflows into pretzels to compensate for Evernote’s design deficiencies. Obviously, I am  one of those users who have spent years lobbying for this change :)

At the end of the day, there are users who want to “remember everything,” but Evernote isn’t fulfilling this promise as long as it imposes limits like this. I love the app and want to see it succeed, but frankly speaking, it has competitors that have not been constrained by file size and file count limits for over a decade now, so it is not a matter of if such a feat can be accomplished by someone, or if users can successfully fit themselves into Evernote’s Procrustean bed, but rather a question of whether *Evernote* can or will step up to meet the challenge.

I used to do stuff like split up files, extract text from them, and experiment with other cludgy workarounds. It worked OK at times, but in the end I just used apps that could handle large files without wasting my time with workarounds. Over time, that has meant less time spent in Evernote and more time with others that can meet this need.

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My scans are HQ, with OCR, multipaged and I hardly ever hit 50GB. I can imagine files that create an issue with 200MB, but I regard these as excessive for a notes app.

So why should all users pay for the wish of a small group to directly save such monsters as attachments to a note ?

It is no problem to attach the link, and use a storage made for volume files instead of a notes apps own cloud server.

EN  is not advertising a use as photo or video library.

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Based on what little I know about scanning,  I'd have to agree with @PinkElephant - I only ever had one PDF manual that went over the note limit and that had a lot of pictures.  I used Adobe's standard 'reduce file size' feature though,  and it reduced the size by 50%.  A lot of ebooks come in multiple formats like EPUB, MOBI & AZW3 and a little free app called Calibre con not only read all those (and about 75 more) but can also convert from one to the other. 

The most efficient format is EPUB where file sizes are significantly smaller.  I even have The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in my library - all the plays and (AFAIK) all the poetry - at less than 100MB.  (It's not in Evernote,  just on an external hard drive)

Evernote is currently trying to improve syncing for everyone - both in speed and convenience,  and I hardly think they (or the rest of us) would welcome large uploads taking up maximum bandwidth for long periods and slowing the process down.

Evernote already had the experience of offering "unlimited" uploads a few years ago,  where a small body of users immediately used the opportunity to backup PC's and store their film libraries there for convenience... can't remember how long that lasted,  but it wasn't very long.

I appreciate "all" the OP is asking for is a 500MB limit,  but until there's a clear general need for higher limits I agree it's down to the individual to find a way to reduce file sizes,  or store the material elsewhere.  It is still possible to include a file link to Google / Dropbox or wherever else you may have stashed your library,  so you're not having to step away from your studies to refer to a publication,  you just click or tap the link in your notes and keep reading...

@jacklee777 if you want to post the file type of your large files,  maybe we can suggest other ways to reduce the size...

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Why should users have to modify / degrade the quality of their content to compensate for Evernote’s design inadequacy?

First, and most important—competing apps do not have this problem. Even the Google servers Evernote uses to host its service do a perfectly fine job handling this kind of data in other contexts, so I don’t see why Evernote should be uniquely unable to handle it. We have seen similar arguments about zero-knowledge encryption for the entire database, selecting multiple notes exceeding fifty, note count limits, etc. For all of these, just search around and you will find that competitors manage to do it (and have for nearly two decades in some cases), so it is not that it “can’t” be done well, but that it isn’t.

Second, about this specific issue, I think file sizes larger than 200 MB will vary from person to person and from one field to another, so I am a little hesitant to reject a feature request with a suggestion that users are “holding it wrong” (a reference here to the infamous response by Apple to problems with the iPhone 4, though they actually gave advice on how to hold it better, suggested it was an industry-wide issue, and offered a free bumper case to “solve” the problem). What I can say from my own experience is that I regularly (every day) exceed 200MB with my PDF scans—it is a rather easy thing to do when you set the quality at a high level and don’t compress / optimize, which tends to ruin any fine details (critical for my work). And, my downloads of historical materials scanned and available on the Internet are also similar sizes, which suggests to me that  thousands of scholars in my field are working with materials (marking them up, adding notes,  searching them, etc.) that could not fit into Evernote. If you work with “large” files (by Evernote’s definition)  you are not alone.

However, in the end an app is what it is, and we have to work with what we have rather than what we could have or should have had.

Wait? I have requested this limit to be raised for so long (a decade?) I forget. Once we got the limit raised from 100mb (?) to this new limit, but there has not been movement in a long while.
 

A workaround? Several have been suggested. They have their pros and cons—your mileage may vary.

A different app? The same answer to the workaround.

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35 minutes ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

Why should users have to modify / degrade the quality of their content to compensate for Evernote’s design inadequacy?

All due respect,  but why is this a 'design inadequacy'?  If you had to pick a limit that would prevent someone from backing up their system / saving random video files and generally slowing down general access to the network by backing up large files online,  where would you peg the limit?

And as to 'modify / degrade' - these are the current rules and limits;  you can find a way to operate within them,  or you can explore other options...  unless higher limits were already in a pipeline somewhere already, they ain't gonna happen anywhere soon...

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First there is a sheet in the help database clearly stating the system limits. Anybody can check it out and decide if this is the right App for the own demands.

Second every user can request a change - which includes the limits. This is better done by feedback or a support ticket - the forum is user2user.

Third in this thread a change has been requested - but not explained at all. And the explanation about „monster documents used by researchers“ may be true in some remote corners of the scientific community. But in general scientific stuff tends to be rather coarse, focused on compressing a lot of information into a small space. Up to now these „raise the gates“ threads have never been really popular, which leads me to the conclusion that it is really an issue of a tiny fraction of users. Those who need it can store an annotated document outside of EN, and link it to a note.

Fourth I am opposed to it, because the more storage space is demanded, the larger is the risk we users will be charged for storage instead or on top of upload. Today if you let your account drop to Free, you can stay indefinitely even with a lot of notes collected there. Once a storage fee is introduced, this will not be the case any more. I don’t think this request deserved support - thats’s my personal position about it.

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7 hours ago, gazumped said:

All due respect,  but why is this a 'design inadequacy'?  If you had to pick a limit that would prevent someone from backing up their system / saving random video files and generally slowing down general access to the network by backing up large files online,  where would you peg the limit?

And as to 'modify / degrade' - these are the current rules and limits;  you can find a way to operate within them,  or you can explore other options...  unless higher limits were already in a pipeline somewhere already, they ain't gonna happen anywhere soon...

 

6 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

First there is a sheet in the help database clearly stating the system limits. Anybody can check it out and decide if this is the right App for the own demands.

Second every user can request a change - which includes the limits. This is better done by feedback or a support ticket - the forum is user2user.

Third in this thread a change has been requested - but not explained at all. And the explanation about „monster documents used by researchers“ may be true in some remote corners of the scientific community. But in general scientific stuff tends to be rather coarse, focused on compressing a lot of information into a small space. Up to now these „raise the gates“ threads have never been really popular, which leads me to the conclusion that it is really an issue of a tiny fraction of users. Those who need it can store an annotated document outside of EN, and link it to a note.

Fourth I am opposed to it, because the more storage space is demanded, the larger is the risk we users will be charged for storage instead or on top of upload. Today if you let your account drop to Free, you can stay indefinitely even with a lot of notes collected there. Once a storage fee is introduced, this will not be the case any more. I don’t think this request deserved support - thats’s my personal position about it.

Thanks for discussing the issue with me.I agree that many of the limits have been more clearly delineated over time, users have options besides this forum for requesting changes, and there don't appear to be any changes in the pipeline (even if there were, they wouldn't happen anytime soon), so all we can do here as users is operate within the limits or explore other options. 

In answer to the question about where to peg the limits, note size and number limits have been a pain point for me for over a decade now, and I suppose I have been hoping since the 50mb limit days that the limits would be removed entirely or greatly relaxed by now (see archived post below). Interestingly, limits that I have found to be inconsequential in my use case (the number of notebooks) have massively increased (are we at 10,000 now for teams?) over time while some limits that I have frequently bumped up against (100,000 for the number of notes) have remained unchanged. It will be interesting to see what happens under new ownership. Regardless of what happens, gaz and Pink Elephant have offered helpful advice.

 

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