Word documents (rtf, doc, docx, txt) not previewable, not indexed, not searchable

[Rammy Leeds 0]

Hi,

I'm a  paid user and I take all my notes in Word documents, then tag and organize them via evernote. 
In the old version, I loved the way you can see pdfs, ppt, word documents and images in preview mode within the note - with no need to open them up.   And you could search for a term within those documents and evernote would find it.

But with the new version (evernote 10) - i can only see preview mode for images and pdfs BUT NOT FOR WORD DOCUMENTS.   And whilst search for terms in the body of a file works for images and pdfs and scribbled notes, the search function does not work any of the word documents and their contents.

This is a crazy step backwards.   It is instrumental that I, like many others, see these at a glance.  Otherwise, Evernote just becomes laden with friction.  Why did you remove it?  What on Earth made you think it was a good move?  Are you planning to put it back in? If so, when?    

I want the previewed word documents back, and please make them indexed and searchable.

And please do not tell me to DOWNGRADE to the legacy version.  THis is an unnaceptable solution as I work mostly on the web.

Please fix it

 

Dr Ram

[gazumped 11,713]

1 hour ago, Rammy Leeds said:

Please fix it

Hi. 

The forums here are supported mainly by other users and we don't get to 'fix' anything.

If you use Evernote on the web,  then you can't 'go back' to Legacy - there are various versions available via https://www.evernote.com/Settings.action - look at the bottom of the page for Evernote Web options.  Beware that some of them might not work on your device.

As far as I know it has never been possible to preview a word document or to search inside an Office document in Legacy,  or on the web - the server doesn't even download attachments to the web page to speed up loading the note contents.

For direct contact with Evernote please see the Support page - https://help.evernote.com/hc/requests/new - but the new version has now been around for a couple of years;  it doesn't look like they plan any major changes.

 

[PinkElephant 8,196]

If previews of office documents is of a high value for you, you must be using EN professionally. And if you use EN professionally, you are making a buck from using it. So, if you want to preview office documents, you simply subscribe to the Professional (sic) plan, and off you go.

Not good ?

But that’s how it works, and probably the first paragraph pretty much describes the thinking behind it. I don’t know, as another user I can just watch at what happens, and I believe they did some reasoning before deciding to offer office previews for professional users only.

Sort of „pay to view“, in a way.

P.S. If you are a professional, you should take the rtf format from your wish list. Rtf is deprecated, it should not be allowed to be opened under any circumstances, because it has security deficiencies that could not be fixed. It is not supported any longer, and you should avoid using it.

[Mike P 2,690]

14 hours ago, Rammy Leeds said:

I want the previewed word documents back, and please make them indexed and searchable.

Preview of word documents in legacy was only ever available on Mac. Now all of us have the option, but we need to pay for it (ie professional not personal subscription). Right or wrong, that's EN's decision.

I'm having no problems with searching for words within word documents. The normal advice for search problems includes

• Try the search on the web version as that is the definitive version of your data on the server 
• Try refreshing your local database (file -> sign out XXX -> remove Evernote data from this device. Then sign back in)

 

[Rammy Leeds 0]

Thanks for the suggestions above.  

Gazumped - you say: As far as I know it has never been possible to preview a word document or to search inside an Office document in Legacy,  or on the web.

But the fact is it seems SILLY that you can search pdfs and even images and handwriting scrawl yet you can't preview or search the content of word documents that don't even need any OCR conversion!   Seems very illogical for Evernote to say search all your documents at a glance and find them with ease.  In fact so many YouTube users comment how amazing the search function is so that tells me there must be a way.  People do not just work with pdfs, or images.   Docs are a part of everyone's life and if Evernote is a great repository then why can it not handle Word document searches.    So I believe that there MUST be a way, on the web atleast if not available on Legacy.  

And Pink Elephant disagrees with you.    Pink Elephant says - If previews of office documents is of a high value for you, you must be using EN professionally.  So, if you want to preview office documents, you simply subscribe to the Professional (sic) plan, and off you go.

But Pink Elephant - I have upgraded a few days ago to the Profesional plan, and I still cannot preview/embed Word documents like you can with pdfs and images.    

So, thank you both of you for replying.  Have you any other suggestions (esp Pink Elephant - as your suggestion did not work).

Many thanks again for replying so quickly.  Thanks for the time and effort you have put into a reply.

Dr. Ram

 

[Rammy Leeds 0]

Mike P 

Thanks for replying.  Im on Professional now so thanks for that.

Im trying to refresh the local database.  So I did this for the Evernote App.  Signed back in.  No difference.  There is a Word .doc file with the word "drastically" in it.  And when I search for this word, it does not still find that word document. Furthermore, I still cannot embed/preview the Word file. Options are only - save as, open, rename.  But with a pdf   or image file there are addition options of Preview and Edit/Annotate.

Also, tried signing out of the Evernote web version.   Clearly there was no option to "remove evernote data from this device" as it is all stored online.  But when I logged in, the two problems remain.  Word docs - cannot be previewed/embedded and nor can they be searched.

I'm a medical educator and got a whole load of stuff to teach doctors over the next month and was hoping to have my files uploaded and searchable on Evernote rather than Dropbox, but looks like I'm going to have to hang onto Dropbox for the time being.

Help?  I'm clearly not doing something simple.  Can you advise any further.

Thanks

Dr Ram

PS With the Evernote app, why does the program advise you not to store the repository on a Dropbox account but in another Windows folder instead?  I thought by having it in Dropbox would hypersecure it.

[gazumped 11,713]

Windows 11 / Evernote 10.54.4 - I just tried this on both DOC and DOCX files in my database - there's no option on right-click to show these files as anything more than file names - no 'Single Page' or 'All Pages' options.  In both cases I can find keywords from the search box  - ie here >

That just gets me a list of files containing grey boxes - 

- and searching the note won't find my keyword;  I need to open the file first and use Word's internal search to find the keyword(s)

AFAIK you'd have to do a rough copy and plain text paste of the file content,  or export to PDF to give you a visual representation of the content.  The word and/ or PDF file can still be attached to the note if you need them for future editing or distribution.

Although I do remember some comment from Evernote about Office file content,  I believe that was purely about searchability and not about in-note visibility.

-And re the Dropbox query;  Evernote gets very upset if it can't access it's database 24/7,  so network or cloud storage is not advised.  It is possible...  but really not a good idea!  Sharing notes (or notebooks) might be the way to go if student access is what you need.

 

[Mike P 2,690]

It appears I was wrong! I assumed that all Office files have a preview. It appears that it is only excel and csv files (with a professional sibscription). I expect they will introduce other office files in the future.

I can relaiably find notes which contain word documents containing a particular word. As @gazumped points out there is then a second step of opening the file and using Word's internal search to actually find the word.

If you are not able to find the notes using the web version then it is not a local database problem. I assume that for some reason the notes have not been indexed. Does it work on a newly created note? Given that you are a paying member I would definitely contact support for some additional help.

[gazumped 11,713]

@Rammy Leeds I hesitate to send you off on tangents - I know all too well how easy it is to spend a lot of time with shiny things that 'might' be alternatives,  which then prove to be dead ends - but can you give us a little more information on (very roughly) how many Word documents you're handling,  and the intended final use for each one?

-Are they simply your source for training material / items that you'll share individually with others / a reference resource which needs to be available as a searchable library?

Evernote is a valuable host for many things,  and at one time in MacOS was able to show Office Documents in full within notes.  That was the now-unsupported Mac Legacy version - Windows Legacy never had this feature and now v10 is a rewritten hybrid in different code that has more options than the old Windows app,  but fewer than Mac.

It should be fairly easy to batch convert Word documents to PDF - ChatGPT (sorry) says

"There are several free and paid batch converters available online, such as "Batch Word to PDF Converter," "DocuFreezer," and "Total Doc Converter." Simply download and install the software, select the Word documents you want to convert, choose the output folder, and click "Convert." The software will convert all the files to PDF in one go."

- you may prefer to internet search your own options!

Once shown as PDFs these files will be visible in their respective notes - though there could be a lot of work involved in sorting individual files back to their respective original homes.  If the notes contained no other material you could consider using an Import Folder to re-import the files to new notebooks and notes,   and then either share notebooks or notes with your users,  or add an Evernote extension 'Postach.io' which will publish one or more selected notebooks as a blog.  Any changes you make to pages in that notebook will automatically become available to those who have your blog URL.  It's also possible to protect blogs with password access.

When managing your PDF files,  you may find third party app Docear to be helpful - it can read and manage academic PDF metadata (although that data might be variable in our case depending on the app generating the PDF)

There's also Infranodus (also third party) which will parse PDF text and/ or Evernote notes to show you the most significant concepts in documents or groups of documents.

Import Folder - https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209004967
Sharing - https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005417-Share-notes
Postach.io - http://postach.io/
Docear - https://docear.org
Infranodus - https://infranodus.com/

Sorry to hit you with information overload,  and I know from your earlier comments that you find it illogical not to have access to the information you want in the format that you have - but in my experience,  technology is always the fastest way to get to the next problem: solutions tend to be more elusive!  Feel free to ask more questions if we can help,  but having the additional information I mentioned should help us target your needs more precisely.