Tags search does not work on web client

[randomkoala180 3]

Hi, I just signed up to evernote premium for the first time a couple weeks ago. Searching for tags when using the browswer does not work. It returns zero results, even if the tag exists on notes. This is such a basic functionality advertised by Evernote I'm really frustrated this doesn't work.

[gazumped 11,741]

On 1/14/2023 at 7:29 PM, randomkoala180 said:

I'm really frustrated this doesn't work.

Seems to be working for most of us...  Maybe restart your device and try again?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,981]

Hi, and welcome to the forums. Can you say some more about how you're doing the search? If I have my list of notes open, then go to the search bar, enter the search tag:tagname, and press Enter, I get the list of the notes assigned to that tag. Of course, the tag name has to be accurate and complete (or have the first few letters followed by *).

[randomkoala180 3]

Thanks for responding. It seems like it works now and the problem I was seeing is a delay bug from tagging items and them becoming searchable. If I create a new tag and then tag items with it, the search does not work for at least an hour. This is poor practice from a usability perspective. When you tell evernote to search the server should just do a search through all your items for the tag. I'm guessing instead how they do it is actually that when you tag something it is only showing as tagged for you, but in reality they wait for server side to add a column to a table that "x" items have this label now. This would then show up as a delay if you search for newly tagged or a newly created label that haven't been pre-processed and organized by the server. So generally I think this is just poor design practice, but eventually the search does work with tags on the web client if you wait long enough.

[PinkElephant 8,242]

You may believe it is poor practice- which in fact tells more about your IT-Know-how than the ability of the devs.

You create tags on a client. This needs to sync to the server. Then it needs to go through indexing, which is a server side process. This writes the new tag into the search index. In parallel the changed Note syncs to all other clients, from the cloud. Once the search index is updated, it syncs as well.

This assures the integrity of the account data (and metadata) over all clients.

But sure, it can’t happen fast enough …

[randomkoala180 3]

Right that's exactly what I suggested they are doing with the poor design option 2. They don't need to do it this way though - they could choose option 1. It is too slow!

[PinkElephant 8,242]

Just go ahead - maybe they just wait for your professional input:

https://evernote.com/careers

[Mike P 2,718]

14 hours ago, randomkoala180 said:

If I create a new tag and then tag items with it, the search does not work for at least an hour.

The time taken in my experience is very variable. It presumably depends on a whole lots of things like server load etc. An hour was very common in the early days of V10 but is certainly much longer than my current experience. I just timed a change and it took 4 minutes - still too long but not an hour. Given that yuo are now a premium member you should raise a support ticket directly with EN

On my Windows desktop version it's almost instantaneous - in fact if I remove a tag from a note in a list filtered by that tag, the note disappears from the list instantaneously - which is a return to legacy version performance!

If you need fast search performance than I think it's always going to be hard to beat the desktop versions.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,981]

I'm also seeing something strange with tags in the Web client. Just out of curiosity, I tried to create a new tag there. When I clicked the Tags item in the left sidebar, the proper list of tags appeared below it, but the slide-out menu showed no tags at all and it both (A) offered me the opportunity to "create my first tag" and (B) when I clicked the new tag icon at the top of the slide-out showed the message "The tag limit has been reached."  But in the sidebar, both the + button next to the word "Tags" and the green "New tag" item at the end of the tag list were available. Trying to create a new tag with either of them led to a couple of minutes of a spinning green circle, and then nothing. The tag I tried to create there also did not show up in the Windows desktop app, even after I forced a reload. I was able to create a new tag and add it to several notes in the desktop app, and this tagging did show up in the Web client, as did removing the tag in the desktop app. So something is currently borked with tags in the Web client for me as well. (Both the Web and desktop clients are the latest release, v. 10.52.8.)
 

[Mike P 2,718]

22 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

I'm also seeing something strange with tags in the Web clien

I think this just illustrates the variability of experience. I just tried the operations you did with no issues. The tags were also searchable in less than 2 minutes. Inconsistent things are obviously much more difficult to problem solve but I hope EN are addressing it.

[PinkElephant 8,242]

Just gave the web client a little walk through tagwood estate. I compared search (tag:mytag), tags section in the side panel and tag filters from the filter symbol. I compared it with the installed desktop client.

Same number of notes showing, from watching the same notes and selecting more tags reduced the number of results as expected.

No deviation found.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,981]

1 hour ago, Mike P said:

I think this just illustrates the variability of experience. I just tried the operations you did with no issues. The tags were also searchable in less than 2 minutes. Inconsistent things are obviously much more difficult to problem solve but I hope EN are addressing it.

Yes, it does seem to be highly intermittent. I just tried it again, and it works fine (including relatively speedy searchability) in the Web client, in two different browsers on two different computers. All which is to suggest that I hope @randomkoala180's experience will improve as well.

[randomkoala180 3]

Hi all, thanks for digging into this! It does sound like something is up with the web client but that it's variable/intermittent. I think I'll submit a ticket trying to explain the weird intermittent behavior for some people, but I don't know how fast they'll fix it or if at all if it's hard to replicate consistently. Thanks everyone!

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,981]

3 hours ago, randomkoala180 said:

Hi all, thanks for digging into this! It does sound like something is up with the web client but that it's variable/intermittent. I think I'll submit a ticket trying to explain the weird intermittent behavior for some people, but I don't know how fast they'll fix it or if at all if it's hard to replicate consistently. Thanks everyone!

Sounds good. Be sure to include a link to this thread in the support request.