Evernote Legacy

[wodtke 1]

On 4/16/2023 at 12:22 PM, agsteele said:

I asked my favourite search engine for 'evernote legacy download' and it provided me immediately with the answer...

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

Always worth asking a search engine 🥴

Your site no longer works.  Evernote continues to try to make our lives hell.

[wodtke 1]

Just now, wodtke said:

Your site no longer works.  Evernote continues to try to make our lives hell.

Your snark thus was unnecessary and smug.

[wodtke 1]

On 4/23/2023 at 4:56 AM, PinkElephant said:

Then it seems the page was removed.

You can ask support if it’s intentional or accidental.

Ha ha!

[agsteele 2,951]

This whole thread has moved on. EN has already announced that the Legacy download page has been removed to discourage use of Legacy apps. If you need it you have to contact Evernote support or search the forums where the actual links have been posted multiple times recently.

[Boot17 1,457]

Not sure if you meant to or not, but it looks like you just told yourself that your own snark was unnecessary and smug. Ha ha! is right! 😉

[LeoKou 0]

@administrator 

Two issues that are stopping me from coming back from Evernote Legacy ( I can only speak for myself) are

1. extremely limited color options of fonts ( only 14 of them right now with four being some shades of gray, my niece has more choices of color for her Dollar Tree markers).

2. The "simplify and make it editable" is a complete mess. I wish I can add notes and annotate web content and clips like I used to.

And the "present" feature was amazing.

[patanne 5]

On 5/3/2023 at 1:21 PM, Federico Simionato said:

Hello everybody!
We are actively working to update more and more customers from Legacy to the latest version of Evernote. Many don't even know they are using an unsupported version, so we are making that more evident through in-app communication and by testing a new update popup on Windows.

As part of that plan, we also removed the H&L article with links to the Legacy versions. The links remain available through Support in case people need them to fix some issues.

The Legacy versions remain available, and the download links continue to work, but we decided to make the download links less accessible at this time.

Hope this clarifies!

I have been with Evernote since nearly day one. There have been more than a few things this company has done that I feel has been executed miserably. There are more than a few changes made to the product I believe is beyond stupid.

This never-ending popup message is a major piss-off. I will never ever upgrade to a supported version unless and until I am once again permitted to use fonts of my choosing. I care not about compatibility with my phone as any device without a keyboard renders the product useless for my purposes.

Either I will get the choice of fonts that I want or they will eventually make a breaking change that renders the legacy version unusable, at which time I will take myself and my employees elsewhere. This company has been monumentally stupid before, like when they tried to remove the "top list" view. They are capable again. 

[agsteele 2,951]

You should use the time that you have to make a plan for the transition you will need to undertake. My sense is that there are months rather than years before the so called Legacy applications will be withdrawn completely.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

4 hours ago, patanne said:

I have been with Evernote since nearly day one. There have been more than a few things this company has done that I feel has been executed miserably. There are more than a few changes made to the product I believe is beyond stupid.

This never-ending popup message is a major piss-off. I will never ever upgrade to a supported version unless and until I am once again permitted to use fonts of my choosing. I care not about compatibility with my phone as any device without a keyboard renders the product useless for my purposes.

Either I will get the choice of fonts that I want or they will eventually make a breaking change that renders the legacy version unusable, at which time I will take myself and my employees elsewhere. This company has been monumentally stupid before, like when they tried to remove the "top list" view. They are capable again. 

After scraping my jaw up off the floor....

Such a shame that Evernote cannot craft a piece of software and a cloud service exactly tailored to your needs and desires, and yours alone... for free, of course!

"Fonts of my choosing" means, as you correctly observe, fonts that only work on your computer. There are two or three other people besides yourself who use Evernote, and at least one of them (me) very much wants fonts to be consistent across desktop app, phone app, and Web client. And that same one is paying Evernote so they can afford to develop such capabilities. But of course everything that does not suit you (even if only you) is stupid. How stupid of me to forget.

Since you refuse to "ever upgrade to a supported version," you must be using Evernote for free--and also your entire company and employees. The only "monumentally stupid" thing I see Evernote doing here is letting you get away with this for so long. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

10 hours ago, LeoKou said:

@administrator 

Two issues that are stopping me from coming back from Evernote Legacy ( I can only speak for myself) are

1. extremely limited color options of fonts ( only 14 of them right now with four being some shades of gray, my niece has more choices of color for her Dollar Tree markers).

2. The "simplify and make it editable" is a complete mess. I wish I can add notes and annotate web content and clips like I used to.

And the "present" feature was amazing.

 

Not an administrator, just another user, but WRT #1, I also find the color limitations unfortunate (and I've always wondered why so much gray). I've assumed this had something to do with consistency across platforms. OTOH, for note-taking I don't actually find the limited colors a deal-breaker.

WRT #2, sometimes it works for me better than others, and I think it's working somewhat better than it used to. A lot depends on the underlying HTML being "simplified." The workaround might be to clip something from the Web (for example), duplicate the note, simplify one copy to make it editable, and then re-merge the two so as to have the best of both worlds.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

If I would have to watch the color palette my nieces prefer while using EN, I would get eye sore within 5 minutes …

[Sugeeth Krish 475]

On 5/16/2023 at 8:13 PM, LeoKou said:

"simplify and make it editable" is a complete mess. I wish I can add notes and annotate web content and clips like I used to

I believe this was a conscious decision, to retain the formatting of the original webpage clip. 

Off course if you need to add annotations and highlights, you can always break the "formatting" and get a effect similar to Legacy. 

[KMB123 2]

The main feature I need from Legacy is the ability to change the "Note info" Updated, time & date, I've been asking for this since I was in the Beta program for V10.

[agsteele 2,951]

1 hour ago, KMB123 said:

The main feature I need from Legacy is the ability to change the "Note info" Updated, time & date, I've been asking for this since I was in the Beta program for V10.

There is every evidence that this is not returning. It isn't obvious whether this technically difficult in the Electron framework, impossible because of other design decisions which have been made, or just no interest, laziness, other priorities.

Whatever, Legacy is on its way out in the coming months. So make a plan for what you will do when that happens.

[eric99 980]

3 hours ago, agsteele said:

Whatever, Legacy is on its way out in the coming months.

Not so sure about that: EN support themselves just advised me to use the legacy windows client to work around the buggy V10 html export. So it seems they still consider legacy as an official V10 extension...

[agsteele 2,951]

I can say with some certainty that the plan is to move away from Legacy within a year or so. The exact timescale is, I think, uncertain. Certainly not a short term event. 

I know that the future of Legacy was considered as part of the roll out of RTE. The decision was made to actively encourage Legacy users to switch and Legacy app will be withdrawn. The removal of the download page and pop up advertising reflect that trajectory.

Will Legacy be with us for a while? Yes. Will it be around in 2025? Unlikely.

[Mike P 2,644]

6 hours ago, KMB123 said:

The main feature I need from Legacy is the ability to change the "Note info" Updated, time & date, I've been asking for this since I was in the Beta program for V10.

It's not quite as simple as that. There is little point in being able to change the updated time and date if changes like adding a tag or moving the note into a different notebook change the update time again. A change back to not counting tag and notebook changes as updates has been requested, but again no indication that EN are wanting to go back to the legacy behaviour.

[Zhao Ting Chen 1]

在 2023/5/4 在 AM1點21分, Federico Simionato說:

Hello everybody!
We are actively working to update more and more customers from Legacy to the latest version of Evernote. Many don't even know they are using an unsupported version, so we are making that more evident through in-app communication and by testing a new update popup on Windows.

As part of that plan, we also removed the H&L article with links to the Legacy versions. The links remain available through Support in case people need them to fix some issues.

The Legacy versions remain available, and the download links continue to work, but we decided to make the download links less accessible at this time.

Hope this clarifies!

Hello Federico,

I would agree to update to the latest version, IF evernote team could add back a feature from the old version.

when I copy a text or anything from a webpage and paste it on a new note, the note automatically shows the source URL.

With the latest version, I need to add the source URL manually every time I copy and paste something from a webpage.

Hope you and your team could consider this.

Thank you

[s2sailor 2,207]

1 hour ago, Zhao Ting Chen said:

Hello Federico,

I would agree to update to the latest version, IF evernote team could add back a feature from the old version.

when I copy a text or anything from a webpage and paste it on a new note, the note automatically shows the source URL.

With the latest version, I need to add the source URL manually every time I copy and paste something from a webpage.

Hope you and your team could consider this.

Thank you

If you highlight the text and then use the web clipper, the resulting note will have the source URL in the note to the right of the title.  You don't need to add it manually.

[Mike P 2,644]

10 hours ago, Zhao Ting Chen said:

when I copy a text or anything from a webpage and paste it on a new note, the note automatically shows the source URL.

I also loved this feature. @s2sailor's suggestion of using the webclipper works well.

The problem with both the original legacy behaviour (from memory) and using the webclipper is that you can only add one link per note as it uses the note's URL field. I therefore like using a chrome extension called Auto Copy https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/auto-copy/bijpdibkloghppkbmhcklkogpjaenfkg which automatically copies anything you highlight on a webpage. It can also be configured to add a lot of extra information like source url, title etc. Obviously you can then add several links to a note. So for example:

 

[Sss99 0]

On 24.04.2023 at 21:24, Nux said:

Windows:
https://cdn1.evernote.com/win6/public/Evernote_6.25.3.9348.exe

Mac:
https://cdn1.evernote.com/mac-smd/public/EvernoteLegacy_RELEASE_7.14.1_458325.zip

Check sum (md5):
6f77a09b933ad0b895b10fad137dcee1 *Evernote_6.25.3.9348.exe
5feefa52d54ac6ef09bd9017814a17dd *EvernoteLegacy_RELEASE_7.14.1_458325.zip

The web page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230326100256/https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

Bro, thank you so much for the links!
I had problems starting newest version V10.57.5 on Win7, there was a "the procedure entry point getpackagefamilyname could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll" error. The legacy version solved the problem.

[notetakeingguy 90]

I still have legacy and like it better, but I also have the v10 on my computer and use it a bit too. Some of the reasons:

 

- when I boot up Evernote, I need it fast. v10 takes forever to load

- when I want to e-mail notes, I often want to E-mail multiple notes at a time, and v10 can't do that

- neither includes the URL of the note at the bottom anymore, which is eliminated many versions ago. I miss this feature dearly

- when importing folders/notes from a file folder, v10 doesn't delete the attachment

- in 2022, on my work computer, v10 ran into lots of problems pulling up PDF files. Neither this forum nor support could help me.

- in the legacu version, it is easier to get to the list of tags

- I move notes a lot between folders, and I find it easier to do that on the legacy version

- Huge issue on Android -- that Evernote pulls up PDF files it it's own viewer, instead of my viewer

 

I have both on my computer, and I use them both, but find I gravitate to legacy.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

If your startup time on desktop is long, it may well be your local database is corrupted.

Select the option NOT to keep a local copy of your data in EN settings (it is a little different between Mac and Windows), then log out of your account. Quit the app, restart it. Log into your account. It will take a little to open now, since it now lives from the web server.

Keep the app running for quite a while, while it builds a new local copy from the server. It can run minimized in the background. You can check network traffic in the task manager / activity monitor - ongoing network traffic means it is not yet done downloading.

Startup time on desktop for me is appr. 5 seconds.

[Alessandra 31]

On 5/3/2023 at 9:09 PM, Federico Simionato said:

Vast majority of legacy users don't know they are using legacy. More than two thirds of them never even installed v10. I saw this personally in many conversations: they think they are using "Evernote". But legacy is breaking more and more with each OS update.

Plus it makes backend teams worry about backwards compatibility. We need to speed up development and legacy is one thing preventing us from doing so.

@HeBoIz What's the key reason you use legacy vs v10?
I daily run v10 and occasionally try using legacy, but I can't stand it, it's too buggy.

I would like to continue using legacy. It is perfect for me. I don't need tasks or calendar synchronisation, I do not collaborate. Evernote is my knowledge base. It is a vast archive where I store things that I retrieve through seraching tags (and other features). That is what I want - I know that soon you will discontinue legacy but could I have some pre-warning so that I can find alterantives? V10 has all these features I do not want (and do not want to pay for) and is worse than legacy for my purposes.

I just wish you could keep it for those for whom legacy is what they want.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

13 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

neither includes the URL of the note at the bottom anymore, which is eliminated many versions ago. I miss this feature dearly

V. 10 has the URL at top right of the note body (including on Android). Is that not as good?

[Alessandra 31]

@Federico Simionato I see from the above that evernote is trying to ascertain how many people use legacy because they want legacy. I am one of them. Please keep it going

[idoc 400]

I have mentioned this before in other threads so I won't beat a dead horse over it.  I use both EN v10 and Legacy on a daily basis.  I like them both and we have discussed the pros and cons already many times.  As many other people have states I go straight to Legacy whenever I have serious work that needs to be done.  I stay on v10 at all other times.  There is some "serious work" that I absolutely cannot do whatsoever on v10.  I have posted this many times and Pink and others have tried to help but nothing has worked.  In Legacy I can selct  a bunch of notes with  pdfs and I can choose to "save attachments".   This will immediately save those attachments into whatever directory I choose.  They look like this:

I can then use Adobe Acrobat to combine these pdfs into one large one:

This sequence is IMPOSSIBLE with v10.  Yes, I know that different people have suggested fixes or work-arounds etc but they do not fix it and there is no way around it.  For some reason v10 saves a kind of file that cannot be manipulated the same way with Acrobat.  This is a non-issue for many people; however, since I do this at least 10X/week this is a serious issue for me.  My work flow is based entirely around generating hundreds or even thousands of pdf files and combining and manipulating them in many ways.  Most people may not work this way, but I do.  This is why Legacy has remained an almost neccessary part of my workflow and I use v10 for everything else.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

@idoc, I appreciate your laying out your scenario. I'm sure you're right that this way of working developed around Evernote Legacy is unusual, and not likely to succeed using Evernote 10 or other note-taking software. I feel sympathy, and hope that they may find a way of keeping Legacy running on ever-developing OSes, without spending a lot on maintaining it. OTOH, this kind of document management is not note-taking, which is what Evernote was and is primarily for. I don't say this to criticize; they added a fairly robust attachment feature, and people naturally developed creative ways to use it. But in the end, EN is meant for taking notes that can have attachments, not for managing documents that can be attached to notes. Truly sympathetic, but that's my view.

[Boot17 1,457]

1 hour ago, Alessandra said:

I see from the above that evernote is trying to ascertain how many people use legacy because they want legacy. I am one of them. Please keep it going

I think they would like to know how many people are using legacy because they want legacy precisely so they can better "create a path of least resistance that brings people to the newest version."

They've also said with regards to maintaining legacy that "it makes backend teams worry about backwards compatibility. We need to speed up development and legacy is one thing preventing us from doing so."

They also thought to deprecate it when RTE was introduced, but decided not to.

They've removed the Evernote-hosted links to download legacy.

We've seen in the forums that legacy has issues on Mac OS Ventura.

All of the above seems to me to be writing on the wall for the end of legacy. It is not "if" -- it is "when"  -- and it's only a matter of time before it is gone.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

I would expect EN to know exactly how many users are still completely, mainly or occasionally on Legacy.

They should be able to track it to the last bit moved which client was involved.

The more interesting question may be WHY a user is on legacy. Simple answer: Ask them !

[idoc 400]

16 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

@idoc, I appreciate your laying out your scenario. I'm sure you're right that this way of working developed around Evernote Legacy is unusual, and not likely to succeed using Evernote 10 or other note-taking software. I feel sympathy, and hope that they may find a way of keeping Legacy running on ever-developing OSes, without spending a lot on maintaining it. OTOH, this kind of document management is not note-taking, which is what Evernote was and is primarily for. I don't say this to criticize; they added a fairly robust attachment feature, and people naturally developed creative ways to use it. But in the end, EN is meant for taking notes that can have attachments, not for managing documents that can be attached to notes. Truly sympathetic, but that's my view.

Thanks Dave,

I still foster a hope that they will simply fix this issue and allow the same functionality.  I don't see why it shouldn't work.  For example, on v10 when I choose "export" I can send the files to a directory and they look like this.  Every one of these files is actually a pdf (when I click any one of them it asks me if I want to open them with Adobe acrobat).  I can see each and every one of the pdfs but Acrobat can not combine them unless I extract the individual pdfs out of that external wrapping.  So frustrating.

Therefore,  there is a technical issue here that should be solvable once the files appear as actual pdfs (as they do with Legacy) and not wrapped in an external "evernote(X)" coat.

With regard to how we all use EN I agree that note taking is the primary use factor.  However, I now use it for all my tasks, reminders, web captures, calendar (somewhat) etc.  For years I've been using it to store all my bills, statements and other paperwork in pdf files.   So, although I agree that it can't do everything, there's no reason why it shouldn't replace as many third party solutions as possible.  I get that EN is not Gdrive, but it is not unreasonable to expect people to want to store the paperwork that they use on a daily basis in pdf based notes amenable to manipulations with Acrobat.  I have already opened up a ticket with EN but they were unable to help.  I'll keep waiting and hoping.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

The wrapping of the content is the key to the integration into a database, holding the search information. It wraps the inconsistent content into a standardized envelope, making it easy for the database to find the content when searched. As an example: We know that the OCR party of search is not adding a search layer to the document itself - it is rooted in the note and metadata, leaving the original file unchanged.

Telling a long story short: What we see when we look at the bare metal storage is at the core of the app. It likely won't change.

[eric99 980]

39 minutes ago, idoc said:

Thanks Dave,

I still foster a hope that they will simply fix this issue and allow the same functionality.  I don't see why it shouldn't work.  For example, on v10 when I choose "export" I can send the files to a directory and they look like this.  Every one of these files is actually a pdf (when I click any one of them it asks me if I want to open them with Adobe acrobat).  I can see each and every one of the pdfs but Acrobat can not combine them unless I extract the individual pdfs out of that external wrapping.  So frustrating.

T

With which tool do you extract the individual pdfs out of that external wrapping? What file extension do these files have?

[idoc 400]

So, if I double click on any of those files I see this:

Theoretically speaking, I should be able to request that it always opens these kinds of files with Acrobat, but this option is not active (not sure why)

Anyway, if I select "Acrobat" it opens up the pdf  file just fine.  The problem is that I often have 20 of these files that I want to combine into one big file, and this means I have to do this 20 times and then combine the pdfs.  This used to be a 30 second process on Legacy but is much more laborious on v10.  I work in an office where we generate 30 pdfs/day on various individual accounts and then combine them at the end of the day.  At the end of the month we combine the daily ones.  At the end of the year we combine the monthly ones.  So, we are constantly generating pdf files, merging them etc.  As long as I have Legacy we can continue to do this.  After that, who knows?

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,127]

It will open on the Mac as well, using Preview.

But I can't easily select Preview, the Mac doesn't offer it as an option, I have to force it. And I can't select Preview as standard app.

The reason probably is that the attachments are stored as "Document", without a prefix (which the Mac ignores, that's a Windows thing) but without any document type information either. It is not embedded that it would be a pdf. But it opens as such just fine.

[CalS 5,281]

2 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

But in the end, EN is meant for taking notes that can have attachments, not for managing documents that can be attached to notes.

@Dave-in-Decatur Not sure that's the case for everyone.  Should someone opt to go paperless and use EN as the repository and search engine would be one use case not in the note realm.  V6 did that well and I think V10 does as well, other than the lack of local notebooks for confidential docs.  Just sayin'.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

For me the main argument is that if content of all types has a logical connection you can throw it together. The type of content is not relevant, it is either interpreted inside of EN, or it is kept for outside apps to use it. But I can add my relations between the content, and enrich it until I am done with the "project" called a note. Then I can keep it, and it is no problem to come back to it and understand what's inside, because it is all neatly wrapped together.

This can reach from just saving stuff (with a very good search) to real projects.

v10 does it, and does it even better than legacy, because EN added the Action and the Timeline with v10. It's called Tasks, and it makes actionable objects out of mere information accumulations. Over all the moaning this is still not truly understood by many users - just need to watch at the complains that it doesn't replace a full task manager. No, it doesn't, but its not intended to either, and what it does is more powerful than a task manager can reach.

As an example, you can easily build a CRM with notes and tasks. Run a housing project. Operate a sports club. Create software in a team. Etc. My feeling that there is not enough discussion about the possibilities we all have received, and too much discussion about not enough colors for the text fonts.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

42 minutes ago, CalS said:

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

But in the end, EN is meant for taking notes that can have attachments, not for managing documents that can be attached to notes.

@Dave-in-Decatur Not sure that's the case for everyone.  Should someone opt to go paperless and use EN as the repository and search engine would be one use case not in the note realm.  V6 did that well and I think V10 does as well, other than the lack of local notebooks for confidential docs.  Just sayin'.

This is kind of my point: What Evernote, versions 6 and 10, could and can do can include storage, though that's not what they're most obviously designed for, and lots of people are doing it. But the kind of management, including keeping PDFs in an easily exportable set to export for other software to operate on, that @idoc's use case envisions does seem to me to be a little beyond what note-making software can always do.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

19 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

For me the main argument is that if content of all types has a logical connection you can throw it together. The type of content is not relevant, it is either interpreted inside of EN, or it is kept for outside apps to use it. But I can add my relations between the content, and enrich it until I am done with the "project" called a note. Then I can keep it, and it is no problem to come back to it and understand what's inside, because it is all neatly wrapped together.

This can reach from just saving stuff (with a very good search) to real projects.

This is kind of a maximal version of what I do and hope to do with Evernote. Ideas, documents with drafts, Web clippings, scans from books, etc., all can go into Evernote, along with my remarks and ideas about how it all connects and what the overall aim can be. Not all in one note, I'd expect, but in multiple notes organized via notebook and/or tags, with links and backlinks, searches, and a TOC note. I used the expression "note-taking" earlier, but this is really "note-making": not just jotting down data and thoughts from a meeting, but creative gathering of ideas and materials.

If Evernote 10 can be gotten to the place where it can do that, and can be a repository for paperless record-keeping (I admit it: I have appliance manuals in Evernote), and can do relatively massive document management like @idoc does, then Legacy will be honored but left behind. But then the "simple note-taking" that many people did and still do use Legacy for may seem to get lost in the shuffle, and that would be too bad also. I do not envy the people who oversee Evernote's product development.

[CalS 5,281]

10 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

This is kind of my point: What Evernote, versions 6 and 10, could and can do can include storage, though that's not what they're most obviously designed for

@Dave-in-Decatur I don't know.  If 2nd brain was the original intent, then dumping anything in and finding it later seems a logical use case to me.  Can't speak to what was most obviously designed for as I was not in the room.  Thing to remember is no matter the designer's intent folks will do what they will do when the product supports it. 

I went paperless with EN V6 and it worked really well.  Ended up with 26k PDFs (of 55k notes) before I moved on.  I think the current incarnation of V10 would support that use case (other than confidential stuff) but without the PDF utilities of V6, which I think is what @ldoc  may be bemoaning.  🤷‍♂️

[eric99 980]

1 hour ago, idoc said:

So, if I double click on any of those files I see this:

Theoretically speaking, I should be able to request that it always opens these kinds of files with Acrobat, but this option is not active (not sure why)

Anyway, if I select "Acrobat" it opens up the pdf  file just fine.  The problem is that I often have 20 of these files that I want to combine into one big file, and this means I have to do this 20 times and then combine the pdfs.  This used to be a 30 second process on Legacy but is much more laborious on v10.  I work in an office where we generate 30 pdfs/day on various individual accounts and then combine them at the end of the day.  At the end of the month we combine the daily ones.  At the end of the year we combine the monthly ones.  So, we are constantly generating pdf files, merging them etc.  As long as I have Legacy we can continue to do this.  After that, who knows?

I can't reproduce this, would it be possible to upload one of these unopened wrapped pdf files so that I can investigate it in more detail?

[PinkElephant 8,127]

27 minutes ago, CalS said:

….  I think the current incarnation of V10 would support that use case (other than confidential stuff) but without the PDF utilities of V6, which I think is what @ldoc  may be bemoaning.  🤷‍♂️

That’s sort of specific for Windows users, maybe.

En v10 Mac uses the Macs Preview app as default „Open with“ app. When you open a pdf from EN and then start to edit it, in the most recent releases you don’t even need to save it: You can see the changes showing in the pdf preview of the pdf in the note while you still do your edits in the Preview app. It saves seamlessly, and when you close the window with the pdf in the Preview app, you are returned to the note, with a now edited pdf.

With this functionality nobody needs PDF utilities build into EN - provided you use it on a Mac. No idea how good the integration works with Adobe Acrobat Reader on Windows, and pretty sure Preview has much more possibilities to edit a pdf than poor Acrobat reader. Apple doesn’t want to sell a full pdf editor down the road, by disabling its free PDF app 😇

[CalS 5,281]

22 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

That’s sort of specific for Windows users, maybe.

En v10 Mac uses the Macs Preview app as default „Open with“ app. When you open a pdf from EN and then start to edit it, in the most recent releases you don’t even need to save it: You can see the changes showing in the pdf preview of the pdf in the note while you still do your edits in the Preview app. It saves seamlessly, and when you close the window with the pdf in the Preview app, you are returned to the note, with a now edited pdf.

With this functionality nobody needs PDF utilities build into EN - provided you use it on a Mac. No idea how good the integration works with Adobe Acrobat Reader on Windows, and pretty sure Preview has much more possibilities to edit a pdf than poor Acrobat reader. Apple doesn’t want to sell a full pdf editor down the road, by disabling its free PDF app 😇

I was referring more to Save attachments from the no list context menu and Print to PDF from the file menu in V6.  Perhaps Windows only as that was my context.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Well, to save attachments (a lot of them, not one by one) it is selecting the notes and then export the bunch to HTML. All attachments will end up in a nice, neat folder from where they can be moved elsewhere.

And print to PDF currently seems to have some nasties with the Windows client - it works fine for me on the Mac. Sorry I keep repeating this - not my fault you guys haven‘t seen the sun yet 😎

[CalS 5,281]

Print to PDF would be a last resort, other than for creating PDFs of non attachment notes. 

PDF save sounds about as easy on either platform.  With Win the move step was skipped. 

Prefer the dark side, and by the way.

  

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Oh, I am absolutely sure Windows is good (enough). I just don't like "good enough" as a definition for the gadgets and software I use.

[CalS 5,281]

Age old argument.  Zealots on both sides.  Not a zealot here.  Just not interested in a conversion.  

[kthesun 101]

On 5/11/2023 at 5:44 PM, AlbertR said:

Regarding freeze-situations in EN10, 

Not here. But saw a similar effect in Legacy now 🤔: With the new sync (RTE - Real-Time-Editing), EN10 opens a so called "RTE room" on server side to distribute note changes immediately to other clients.

As long as such a RTE room is open (means: as long as this note is open to edit in EN10 - and some (unknown) time more), Legacy cannot sync changes to this note. This leads to sync stops for for this time (changes in Legacy are frozen...). In Legacy's log file you will find messages like 

• [ERROR ] xxx EDAMSystemException: errorCode=RATE_LIMIT_REACHED message="Attempt updateNote where RTE room has already been open for note: xxx"
• [INFO  ] xxx Client synchronization finished, status: failed
• [ERROR ] xxx Synchronisierung aufgrund eines unerwarteten serverseitigen Problems fehlgeschlagen

You do not have to explain to me that Legacy does not and will not support RTE, is deprecated and will go to die anytime in future. But as long as [bla bla bla], some of us have to use it and should know about such effects 😉

have the same problem.

i can't use Evernote legacy due to this anymore. Guess that's Evernote's way to tell us: it's time to move on guys. Or do you think they will fix that?

[PinkElephant 8,127]

On legacy nothing will be fixed - it is deprecated, end of life.

When it fails, it fails. We now have the additional situation that RTE means 2 parallel databases for syncing, the old one and the new one, with RTE. I doubt they will carry such a costly structure forever.

[CalS 5,281]

It doesn’t sound so much like two databases as it does a foyer that doesn’t let V6 in.  Seems it shouldn’t affect anyone not sharing with anyone else, no notes to lock. Assuming the above description is accurate. 

[PinkElephant 8,127]

How I read it is this: With classic syncing, you have a note as main body, inside maybe a few containers with files, pictures and similar. The note goes in editing mode, which locks it. When done, it’s unlocked and synced with the server. Syncing is for the whole note, not for the changed elements.

With the new syncing, the note is broken down into small elements. Editing mode is only relevant for a few of these elements, and syncing them is instant. The new structure is created when the note is opened for the first time since introduction of RTE. From this moment the note exists in the new data structure, and in the old one.

Currently old and new structure coexist, since not all notes have been converted. I am not sure if all notes will be converted in the background. Maybe the servers are already crunching on it. And maybe not.But I doubt that we will see an indefinite doubling of the database structure. It is not only costly, but makes app development difficult as well. I think RTE with its granular syncing will take over in the end.

Just my 5ct, no inside knowledge.

[CalS 5,281]

Without a doubt having RTE users and not RTE users can’t go on forever.

How long?  What’s the over/under (rhetorical questions).  😉

[anguila 3]

for me, i'm just thinking to go to legacy because I want to use it in alfred. Seems a bit odd that amazing integration was lost.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Alfred is just a user interface for scripting.

No scripting in v10, if my market analysis is correct, no scripting in any Electron app.

[DTLow 5,736]

14 hours ago, anguila said:

for me, i'm just thinking to go to legacy because I want to use it in alfred. Seems a bit odd that amazing integration was lost.

I don't think Legacy can be considered a viable product; it's sun has set 🙁
Loss of integrated scripting (Applescript) was my reason for converting from Evernote to Devonthink

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Apple Notes would be another alternative which allows scripting (and using the shortcuts app). At least for those who are looking for a basic note app with less bells & whistles than EN, and avoiding the complexity of DevonThink. Oh, yes, and Apple ecosystem only.

[l3utterfish 19]

Boy i miss so much the LEgACY... cant get use to the new

[anguila 3]

It's a bit of a shame having the community so divided by that. It just doesn't seem to be me alone that misses the legacy app. If you build a product and you have your users and especially paying customers screaming for it.. you could just let them have it? Especially if they are willing to pay 🤷‍♂️

Evernote is literally letting its competitors take that chunk of loyal (leave aside the ones who won't care about posting it on their community forum..) customers, and the saddest thing is that they don't seem to care. It's sad.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

The decision to put the whole ecosystem on a new footing was taken 4 years ago - at least. EN with legacy was dying, and everybody was able to see it (no new features, rarely an update, bug fixes taking moire than a year etc.).

It makes no sense to mourn over spilled milk, and the rest is plain inertia.

Nobody forces any legacy user to migrate to v10. Anybody has a choice of other options. Just sticking with legacy is no sustainable option any more - this horse is dead and will drop soon enough.

[anguila 3]

With all due respect, I disagree with that view. It just takes 2min to read through this thread to see whether Legacy it's alive or not. It will be alive for as long as it has users. And is not like the last comment requesting legacy come back was from 8y ago, rather days. Still.

To most of us is not a matter of legacy vs non-legacy. It's legacy vs another tool. I was just echoing that sentiment once more. So for me, I'll stick with legacy now for as long as I can or until I decide to spend the time to migrate my notes to another platform with a similar feature parity...

 

 

[akrde 19]

7 minutes ago, anguila said:

To most of us is not a matter of legacy vs non-legacy. It's legacy vs another tool.

Exactly!

[agsteele 2,951]

Enjoy Legacy whilst it remains available. My guesstimate is that it will be withdrawn within 12 months. Apart from the cost of operating two separate sync systems, the Legacy software was stuck. Different features depending upon platform and no development.

It really is time to plan for the future. If it is Legacy or move then it would be wise to make the plan to move while there is time to make careful decisions.

Of course whatever new software is chosen will come with a similar learning curve to adopting v10. So there will be pain whichever route is chosen.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

4 hours ago, anguila said:

It's a bit of a shame having the community so divided by that. It just doesn't seem to be me alone that misses the legacy app. If you build a product and you have your users and especially paying customers screaming for it.. you could just let them have it? Especially if they are willing to pay 🤷‍♂️

Evernote is literally letting its competitors take that chunk of loyal (leave aside the ones who won't care about posting it on their community forum..) customers, and the saddest thing is that they don't seem to care. It's sad.

Please take time to read the replies from @PinkElephant and @agsteele. It's not a matter of "you could just let them have it." It could not be a passive procedure. Legacy also would have to be maintained, adapted to operating system updates, have bugs fixed, etc. (No question of adding new features, though, since new features seem to be what people using legacy want to avoid.) And all that would have to be done for several separate platforms (Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Web, requiring many more programmers to keep it all current rather than months behind), and be done while v. 10 continues to be developed and improved (which many people do appreciate and want to see, hence the division you mention). "If they are willing to pay" ... but are "they" willing to pay? (How many people are using legacy on free accounts?) How much are they willing to pay to have all that done? If "they" are migrating to other systems (which will take at least as long for them to learn as Evernote 10, and lack at least as many features from legacy as v. 10), will they also resist necessary changes on the other systems when they inevitably come? I feel the sadness; I loved Evernote v. 6 and previous, and there may be one or two things I still miss about it. But I like a lot of what v. 10 can do that v. 6 could not, and the lightning-fast sync that has finally been introduced to v. 10 is the last nail in the coffin as far as I'm concerned.

[EvernoteConnoisseur 18]

Hmm.. I got excited that "Evernote Legacy" finally got an update, without fully understanding that "10.57.5" is just the "regular" (ie. new) Evernote.

It all became clear upon launching the "new" Evernote Legacy.app , which is essential the "new" Evernote.

I feel a bit like a victim of "bait and switch", because of the phrase "a new version of Evernote Legacy." I know it's technically not incorrect, but it is disingenuous.

Why is this "migrated" client's app name still called "Evernote Legacy" whereas it's just the "new" Evernote?

I like everything about the "new" Evernote, but sometimes its still so so so so slow to open large notes with lots of attachments, where the "old" Evernote Legacy opens in an instant.

Also, notes with large attachments often hangs when adding new attachments, but the old "Evernote Legacy" works smooth like butter.

Time to hunt for the old Legacy download link?!

Is this

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Contact support if you don’t like the wording:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[Boot17 1,457]

5 hours ago, EvernoteConnoisseur said:

Hmm.. I got excited that "Evernote Legacy" finally got an update, without fully understanding that "10.57.5" is just the "regular" (ie. new) Evernote.

"A new version of Evernote Legacy is available" is definitely misleading as "Evernote Legacy" and "Evernote" are two different applications.

I also had to chuckle at this line from the release notes: "Some things to look forward to in the new clients: cloud support for all your data".

Is "cloud support for all your data" that just a positive spin on "local notebooks no longer supported"? 🤣

[idoc 400]

Yes, it's an error in semantics.  I would have expected a new version of Legacy also.  However, the clue is in the 10.57.5 ie: Legacy stopped at version 6.25.  When most of us refer to the "new" Evernote we often say v10.  

[kongulu 11]

Dear Federico,

Welcome to Evernote! I understand you are new here and that your role is related to the recent acquisition by Bending Spoons. If I've misunderstood, I apologize, but the following information still stands.

It's come to my attention that a significant number of long-term Evernote users have expressed satisfaction with our Legacy version over the new release. Their preference is not based on an unwillingness to adapt to new features or interfaces, but rather on specific needs that the Legacy version meets and the new version doesn't.

Many of these users, myself included, would prefer to continue using the Legacy version and are willing to pay for it. There is a risk that, if compelled to switch to the new version, some users may choose to stop using Evernote altogether.

One of the primary reasons for this preference is the distinct functionality of the two versions. The original Evernote focused on providing a superior personal note-taking experience with minimal sharing functionality. This made it unique. However, the new Evernote seems to prioritize features common to shared office apps, making it less distinct from other applications available.

Moreover, the new Evernote is reportedly slower than the Legacy version and has omitted some key features, even as it introduced new ones. Unfortunately, many users feel that the added features do not make up for the ones removed, hence their reluctance to upgrade.

In essence, users have built their workflows around the Legacy version of Evernote, and the new version does not support these workflows, leading to their continued use of the Legacy version.

Many Evernote users, including myself, are interested in knowing how long Bending Spoons intends to support the Legacy version of Evernote. A clear end-date would be incredibly helpful for Legacy users as they plan their next steps.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Best regards,

Byron Rupp
Switzerland
 

P.S. For additional context, you may want to check out the numerous discussions on Evernote forums and reviews online, which provide anecdotal evidence of user dissatisfaction with the new version. You may also consider conducting a user survey to collect direct feedback on this issue.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Thanks for posting it here in the public forum. Even when addressed to a person, it's open for discussion.

The decision to abandon legacy was taken at least 18 months prior to the first release of v10, this means 4 years from now. We can at length discuss what led to that decision, but at the time it was taken it was a make or break decision. The old code base - 5 different apps with no possibility to share code - was very costly to maintain, and history shows it was impossible to add any new features.

You can imagine a rocket in flight, that just ignited the next stage with RTE, or a bowl with milk, turned around by the cat. Either way, the situation as it is now can't be resetted. RTE is not about sharing (that's a nice takeaway), it is about syncing. The forum is full of complains about the syncing as it was (duplicates, conflict notes, content not showing up), and to fix this is the focus of RTE.

Some more common misunderstandings: Tasks are not about replacing task managers, Tasks are build to make notes actionable. Home is not about giving users more clicks to get at their content, it is about giving them a unique way to get at the right content in a modern dashboard view. The list can be continued, and if you don't use v10, you have a lack of experience and no vision about how much better the new version supports the use cases of many fellow users..

This my opinion, based on the available facts. I think you can either move your use cases to v10 (which I did), or develop your Plan B. Legacy is no sustainable strategy any more. And be it there are no devs left who could do the revival, which is as good a reason as any other.

[agsteele 2,951]

15 minutes ago, kongulu said:

Dear Federico,

A nicely worded letter but, unfortunately, Federico is unlikely to see it.  These forums are mostly fellow users.  If yopu want to reach Federico you need to send this as a DM or pick up the Email address he suggested users reply to in the Evernote blog post on the updating of the applications. https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-pricing-upcoming-features-update/

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

@kongulu, I would recommend deleting the email address from this post, since this is a very public space and you could be inviting spamming. Besides emailing him directly, you could just use this: @Federico Simionato.

1 hour ago, kongulu said:

In essence, users have built their workflows around the Legacy version of Evernote, and the new version does not support these workflows, leading to their continued use of the Legacy version.

Many Evernote users, including myself, are interested in knowing how long Bending Spoons intends to support the Legacy version of Evernote. A clear end-date would be incredibly helpful for Legacy users as they plan their next steps.

I would disagree with your expressions here. "Users have built their workflows around the Legacy version" is misleading. Some users who built such workflows continue to find that v. 10 does not suit them, and express that in this thread and elsewhere. Many users have adapted their workflows to v. 10, and often found them much improved. But both of us are using the imprecise term "many," since neither of us knows how many. You seem to imply that masses of users wish to use Legacy and only Legacy, but can that be supported with numbers? Then there's this:

1 hour ago, kongulu said:

Many of these users, myself included, would prefer to continue using the Legacy version and are willing to pay for it.

How much are you willing to pay to support the multiple teams of programmers needed to keep Legacy running on Windows, Macs, Web, Android, and iOS, as each of these OSes goes through continuous updates, some of which will break Legacy functions if the functions are not reprogrammed? The whole point of the move to v. 10, initially, was to have a unified code base and user experience. If you do not desire that, fine. But please indicate at least a top end of the subscription price you'd be willing to pay for it.

[anguila 3]

Yeah, @kongulu totally nailed it. That definitively captures it IMO. It is not about the lack or willingness to learn a new UX, it's actually a different tool with the same name (+ legacy).

As a suggestion, since Evernote doesn't seem to value the potential revenue stream coming from legacy, and clearly has its head towards a different product vision why not just open-source the legacy code? Let the community take it. And someone (or an entire community) might want to take on that challenge. 

Instead of taking it as a new version, It should be treated as a different product? Maybe even build integrations between the two if someone needs some missing features

Quote

"If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they're yours; if they don't, they never were" - Richard Bach

#FreeEvernoteLegacy 

[PinkElephant 8,127]

The next argument will be „…. but we paid for it“ and other revolutionary ideas. A major part of what is called „legacy“ happens on the server. You want it as well ? And the server admin tools, to set it up at home on your NAS ? Plus the coding environment, on which experienced devs failed to keep things going ?

Here is a better option: Old habits die hard - enjoy while it lasts.

[anguila 3]

My answer to that would be: Yes.

You'd be surprised by how far an open-source project can go. And to be fair, most likely Evernote is relying already on many open-source libraries to function too (like many software nowadays) developed by plenty of experienced devs.

I'll be enjoying the countdown and I'll cheer and be grateful for what a good tool the legacy was the day they shut it down. 🍻

[Torley_ 13]

The current Evernote client (non-Legacy) remains very unstable at selecting many notes and adding tags or otherwise editing them. I'm currently in a frustrating situation where I can't even launch it after trying to batch-tag multiple notes. Legacy did this a lot smoother.

Then Evernote crashed and I can't relog for a long time. Sometimes if I reinstall, it works. This has been an issue for a long while.

I also have a related issue where if I select a bunch of notes and change them en masse, the edits are inconsistently applied to most — not all — the notes. This is terrible.

For a reassuring path forward, these longtime bugs need to be solved — functionality should be better in the new version. It doesn't surprise me that some want to hang on because there isn't a robust route forward yet.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Can’t confirm any of both, but maybe they are related and due to a corrupted database. Either the crash corrupted it, or vice versa.

To clean the current install, run Revo Uninstaller on Windows and AppCleaner on a Mac. The OS Uninstaller will not remove the database. Make sure everything is purged.

Restart the computer, install the app, using the direct download. Open, log in - when everything is OK, let it run in the background. It can take days until the whole database has downloaded from the server, depending on its size and internet speed.

[Torley_ 13]

@PinkElephant Thanks for trying to help — unfortunately this has repeatedly happened and I have done a total reinstall. It's exhausting at this point, given the large database size. I'm certainly not alone (as evidenced by other forum threads) about multi-select issues. I'm thinking I may just go back to Legacy because I know it will do what I want it to do without this fuss. Or look at alternate solutions since Evernote is not scaling well for me.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

As I said, I can’t reproduce issues with multi note operations.

What you could try is to take the app offline (I use a tool called TripMode on the Mac). Then do the multimeter operation, and after it is done, go back online. What this does is to separate the note operation from the syncing. I use this method when working on the train, where the internet connection is shaky.

[Torley_ 13]

Hm, isn't doing that also indicative that Evernote has reliability issues and there should be a built-in error correction or way that it'd automatically "massage" that for you?

Another thing they could — should — do is fully add robust multi note operations to the web client.

When you move, say, 50 notes from one notebook to another, does it feel very slow to you? Like it's one at a time? Whereas with Legacy it feels a lot more responsive. This is pretty backwards behavior.

[agsteele 2,951]

20 minutes ago, Torley_ said:

When you move, say, 50 notes from one notebook to another, does it feel very slow to you? Like it's one at a time? Whereas with Legacy it feels a lot more responsive. This is pretty backwards behavior.

This is exactly what is happening. In the old days of was possible, for example, to tag multiple notes and the sync then continued in the background. With version 10 each tag is updated one at a time in the foreground and that takes over the app for the duration. 

It is a function driven, I think, by working in the Electron framework. It is why there is a limit to the maximum number of notes that can be managed at one time.

[Torley_ 13]

@agsteele Thanks for affirming my observations.

I don't believe Legacy should be removed until all key functionality is equivalent OR BETTER in the newer version.

To be more specific, here's what I'm observing, which anyone else should be able to repro:

1. Select 100 notes.
2. Add one tag to them.
3. Move all 100 notes to another notebook.

EVERNOTE LEGACY —  It all happens very fast!

EVERNOTE (CURRENT VERSION) — it chokes at adding the tags. I've noticed more problems recently where I can't even reliably do it on 50, let alone 500 (per the config edit shared on the forums). Evernote may very well freeze or crash, and this is AFTER I've restarted with a fresh database. Moving 100 notes is also one by one, and feels painful unmodern.

I'm on an Apple Silicon Mac running Ventura. Most other apps don't feel as dodgy.

Regardless of what code/framework they're using, the end-user experience should be better, smoother, and not inferior to Legacy.

 

[PinkElephant 8,127]

You can ask to get everything as „it was before“. You are probably aware that this is a very conservative position. If mankind would have followed it, we would be still sitting around our camp fire, discussing to sharpen the first flintstone („… but only if it is as difficult to cut yourself as not sharpened …“).

Looked from a pragmatic view , EN currently supports 2 data structures and 2 methods of syncing content. This won’t go on forever, and be assured: It will not be legacy with a technical platform now 15 years old, with a growing debt of unsupported code that will be continued.

So make your plans, either with v10 (I have pointed out a workaround for faster batch editing) or with another solution that works for you. You still have the time to choose wisely.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

To add some hard information (just gave it a try with 10.57.10 on Mac Ventura 13.4): I bulk edited 3 tags on 100 notes. Some notes already had the tags, some had wrong tag that needed to be removed, and most didn't have the wrong tag and got 2 new tags applied. I then selected 100 others, and ran the same operation again but had taken the app offline first.

• Running this took 30 seconds while online. I could see in the middle panel how the tags appeared - this is typical for the parallel syncing of the changes.
• Running the second batch while offline took 17 seconds. Syncing took off a few seconds after I went back online, and took roughly a minute.

Unless you want to change thousands of tags, I don't see speed as a critical issue in v10 using the bulk operation option. If you want to change thousands of tags, I can just remind of the little hack that allows to lift the selection limit to a little under 1.000 notes. In this case I would go offline before applying the changes.

 

[Torley_ 13]

@PinkElephant I need to clarify this is not constructive or helpful, and it's a gross misinterpretation :

Quote

You can ask to get everything as „it was before“.

No, I did not ask or even imply that. I said this: "all key functionality is equivalent OR BETTER". I don't think that's unreasonable. I politely ask that you please read what I said more carefully, since you make it sound like I'm not in favor of progress, when the opposite is true.

Doing similar operations is running a lot slower for me by magnitudes. It also fails unreliably when I'm changing a few dozen tags at a time. I'm unclear as to why, unless it's tied to database size or some factor... what's the size of yours? I'm on very fast Internet so it's not a connection issue, either. The workaround you suggested is OK on occasion if I'm doing one very large batch, but still isn't suitable for my ongoing workflow.

I am having a bad user experience, as are others here, based on their emotional upset around making Legacy disappear. I know you like helping a lot here and previous answers of yours have taught me to use Evernote better, so please add some empathy for those differing perspectives and pain points. What's working acceptably for you is clearly not for me or others.

Here's a related observation: batch-tagging and similar operations also blocks multitasking in Evernote with the progress dialog, unlike Legacy where it happens in parallel, leaving me free to do other things. This is objectively a step backwards.

If someone from the Evernote Team wants to work with me to get diagnostics and solve this — not just for myself but other users who've reported similarly — I'd appreciate it.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

Personally I think that it is unreasonable to expect a duplication of features. Every software is a package, and the featureset is under constant review.

EN intentionally dropped features when going to v10, other went away since the framework based approach doesn't support them. Oh, you mean you didn't mention Presentation Mode (was deprecated) and scripting (does not run on Electron apps). Why do I mention it ? Because you insist on YOUR specific feature set. If I roll this out to ANYBODIES feature set, there would be no Tasks, not Home, no RTE, and just a group of frustrated developers working on a replica of legacy, while the company is going to annihilation by its competitors.

You probably see the nonsense of such a strategy - it would have been suicidal, economically.

See and treat v10 as the new app it is. Be grateful about every single day you are able to continue on legacy, since it now is deprecated for more than 30 months.

And that's it, you will have a decision to take, now or when legacy will stop working. I expect EN to tell before it does, but I don't expect any long transition time. Transition time started on announcement of deprecation, and anybody had more than enough time to get moved.

[Torley_ 13]

@PinkElephant Hey. I get where you're coming from, but it's not constructive to keep going in on it, so I'd appreciate if you take a step back and refrain from making more unfounded assumptions — notice I did not say "duplication of features" either. I said "key features", which is a specific subset. I like some of the new stuff, sure, but that shiny is tarnished by what doesn't work.

Multi-select and tagging and moving notes is a common operation, but it does NOT consistently perform well in the current Evernote. This isn't an obscure niche feature, but a basic function. Even your own test shows it takes 30 or 17 seconds, which is a lot longer than the "almost instant" in Legacy. That is a substantial difference, scaled many times over. It's heck of a lot slower compared to similar operations in various other apps.

So what are my expectations? A performance improvement.

Yes, I'm grateful we can continue to use Legacy. Never said I wasn't. Again — please ask and be curious instead of assuming. Learn more about me, and others on here, so you can see things from diverse perspectives, and give more effective help that you're already so prolific with. But despite the long road to sunsetting Legacy, it's clear from the voices of others here that it still feels premature. I'm just echoing what others have said better than me, but giving some examples.

I'm trying to learn about what makes my setup perform so much worse than yours.

Again, as you didn't clarify: what is your database size and in your experience, does that affect multi-note operations?

[johnm243 55]

For those who prefer Legacy, I think I have found a replacement for Evernote! A friend who is into open-source apps mentioned that she used Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/). I downloaded it and it looks a bit like Legacy.

I have mentioned elsewhere that other apps were unable to import my Evernote ENEX files. As an example, Notion support told me back in January that they had escalated my case to development for a resolution to my import issues.

I just exported my smallest Evernote stack (249 notes in 6 notebooks) into ENEX format then imported it into Joplin. I was stunned: all 249 notes were rapidly (less than 5 minutes!) imported into a notebook with the same name as my Evernote stack! Before this afternoon, I was never able to get more than a couple of dozen notes imported in other apps!

And at the top of the notes list in the notebook were two notes I modified this morning!

For those who use Evernote stacks like I do, Joplin has a Notebook > Sub-notebook > Note type of configuration. So we should be able to reproduce our Stacks > Notebooks > Notes configuration from Evernote.

I'm going to learn how to use Joplin over the next month. Based on my experience this afternoon, I think I will be able move from Evernote to Joplin long before my next subscription payment is due in early 2024!

John

[johnm243 55]

In case anyone is interested, I have 9,856 notes in Evernote and my EXB file is just under 2 GB.

The ENEX File I exported took up 84 MB and the Joplin data directory the import created is 61 MB in size.

John

[PinkElephant 8,127]

The main feature following your explanation is the ability to import ENEX files.

Tell You what: I know an app that does it perfectly: It’s called Evernote, it imports seamlessly.

Thank you for nothing.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

@johnm243, a number of people in the forums have spoken well of Joplin, and there's something to be said for having an exit strategy (though I like Evernote v. 10 myself). Taking a look around Joplin's Website, I notice that it formats using Markdown, about which some people are as fervent as some others are about Evernote; for me it would be a learning curve. I don't see any mention of tagging, or (surprisingly) of searching, but I presume there is searching. I do see mention of conflicts, which generate conflict notes which one then manually compares -- so indeed a lot like Legacy.  (And Evernote 10, until the recent sync upgrade, which hopefully eliminates them.) Hope it will work for what you need.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

It says „end to end encryption“, and this won’t allow building any search functions on a server. That’s the usual trade off: E2E looks like good to have, but prohibits anything like OCR, search index or advanced server based searches. From my experience this works out nicely on smaller volumes of data, and quickly becomes difficult when the volume increases. Very often the results are bound to a device - it would contradict E2E if the search index is in the open.

Looking at prices: If booking with Joplin Cloud, it’s close to the old EN Personal price. This plus a lack of features makes me doubt that it is in fact an alternative for those who just want to avoid subscriptions - or looking for legacy features. It looks like an alternative, but not without a significant change of available features and  a need to remodel the use cases. For sure it’s not „move your notes, and you’re good to go“.

[chilee 26]

On 4/25/2023 at 4:00 AM, Velox said:

Thank You so much for the Links!

Thanks. The current version is completely unusable. 

[s2sailor 2,207]

7 minutes ago, chilee said:

The current version is completely unusable.

We must have different definitions of “completely unusable.”  V10, for the most part, is working fine for me.

[johnm243 55]

20 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

I don't see any mention of tagging, or (surprisingly) of searching, but I presume there is searching.

It actually imported all of my Evernote tags @Dave-in-Decatur! And, when I clicked on a tag in the Tag section, Joplin presented all of the Notes that had that tag, just like Evernote.

Searching is very fast. I chose Dropbox as the place to save my data so that I can sync between machines and to the Joplin app.

20 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

I notice that it formats using Markdown

My initial import was HTML, not Markdown...

John

[johnm243 55]

21 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Thank you for nothing.

Most welcome @PinkElephant!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

21 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

It says „end to end encryption“, and this won’t allow building any search functions on a server. That’s the usual trade off: E2E looks like good to have, but prohibits anything like OCR, search index or advanced server based searches. From my experience this works out nicely on smaller volumes of data, and quickly becomes difficult when the volume increases. Very often the results are bound to a device - it would contradict E2E if the search index is in the open.

Looking at prices: If booking with Joplin Cloud, it’s close to the old EN Personal price. This plus a lack of features makes me doubt that it is in fact an alternative for those who just want to avoid subscriptions - or looking for legacy features. It looks like an alternative, but not without a significant change of available features and  a need to remodel the use cases. For sure it’s not „move your notes, and you’re good to go“.

Hi. Just jumping in to beat my encryption drum in the hopes that the new owners will take a more charitable view of the features. I think PE and I have gone over this ground already, but of the sake of new users and new ownership, I'll restate my position.

I use Evernote relatively little these days, mainly because of performance issues in my use case that remain to be resolved even after the transfer of ownership, and the other app I primarily rely on is DEVONthink. It only exists in the Appleverse, but if you work with iOS (iPads and iPhones) and OSX (Macs), you might want to take a look at it. If you are an Evernote developer, please give a think to some of the features, especially ones related to security. Long story short: (1) end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption of the entire database, (2) complete with robust search capabilities (using Finder on the Mac or the app's search), (3) OCR, and (4) no perceptible performance differences between tiny databases and ones of several hundred gigabytes. You can have both security (top-notch encryption) and performance. Even more impressive, you have flexibility--you can even do all your syncing without using the internet if you'd like (Bonjour).

My hope, as I have expressed for fifteen years now, is that Evernote will implement some (or more) of these security features. Despite being a smaller company, DEVONthink has been accomplishing all of this for all those years and more. In other words, Evernote's situation is not the result of a technical limitation (something that can't be done, or can't be done well) but a choice not to up their game. Maybe the new owners will take security more seriously.

[PinkElephant 8,127]

The difference is that DevonThink is self hosted. You run the main database(s) yourself, on your Mac. A database in DT-speak is somewhere in between a notebook and a stack, EN style. There is a web server version available (quite expensive), as well self hosted. They use cloud services, but only to sync across devices. Everything they do to make notes and other content searchable happens on your own machine  - on a DECRYPTED database. So much about end to end encryption and zero knowledge concerning DevonThink.

It is as I say: E2E and server based functions like search and OCR together in one service are impossible. DT solves this conflict by letting you run the server yourself. They don’t even encourage to run it on a potent server, like a NAS, because DT relies on a lot of functions founded in MacOS or typical MacOS apps like Hazel. So you host it on a Mac, and for DT to be accessible this Mac must be up and running.

Fine, just go ahead, I have checked it myself - hence I can tell. The issues are: Apple ecosystem only, you run the server and the services yourself, the mobile client is somewhat restricted, compared to EN mobile (at least my impression), and the learning curve needed to really master the app and its platform requires a significant investment of time and dedication. The utility bill for a Mac running 24/7 is probably not far away from an EN Personal subscription.

Furthermore you need to take care of remote access, data security and privacy yourself. This is possible (I do it myself for my neat little home network, 10GbE, own VPN and some TB of storage included), but first you have to want to do it, and then you need to work on the abilities you utilize to do it. It takes a little time, permanently, running updates, checking logs, a bit of digital housekeeping, you know. Like it, then it’s fine, nice hobby.

I am not against DT, it’s a great app. But the comparison about encryptions simply sucks. EN can only run the server based services while they hold a key to the stored information. That is clear - the question for the user is to accept it or not. If not, erase your account. Maybe go DT. Simple as that.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,968]

3 hours ago, johnm243 said:

Searching is very fast. I chose Dropbox as the place to save my data so that I can sync between machines and to the Joplin app.

 

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

E2E and server based functions like search and OCR together in one service are impossible.

This discussion has drifted quite a bit from a discussion of Legacy, but there's an interesting point here. Basically, do you want locally based note storage, which you can upload to any cloud platform and then sync to another device, allowing end-to-end encryption and operations like searches as fast as your local machine can manage, but eliminating services that could be run on the notes company's servers? Or do you deal with the additional complexities of a remote-server based system, which makes encryption (among other things) more difficult but opens up some other possibilities.

For me, I see two advantages to the Evernote model as opposed to the Joplin model (assuming I understand them both, which can be questioned--please correct me if I'm wrong). First, Evernote allows for a Web client that does not store a local database of notes. Does Joplin manage that, even with notes stored in Dropbox? It's quite an advantage if you need to access your notes in a public setting such as a library without your own computer. (For that matter, how does Joplin do mobile? Does each mobile device have to have the full database, or does Joplin do a 3-cornered thing between Dropbox, its central operation, and your mobile?) Second, in collaborative and other settings in which it is desirable to have the same note open and editable on more than one device simultaneously, Evernote seems at last to have climbed the mountain (or nearly so) of doing that without conflicts and in (very near) real time. I'm not saying others don't do this (I simply don't know), but Evernote's system with notes and some operations (including also OCR) based on their servers seems like it would have the advantage here. The tradeoff being encryption, and the increase in Internet hops to get everything done, in contrast to operations being done locally.

[Thundarr 4]

On 5/4/2023 at 12:21 AM, Federico Simionato said:

Hello everybody!
We are actively working to update more and more customers from Legacy to the latest version of Evernote. Many don't even know they are using an unsupported version, so we are making that more evident through in-app communication and by testing a new update popup on Windows.

As part of that plan, we also removed the H&L article with links to the Legacy versions. The links remain available through Support in case people need them to fix some issues.

The Legacy versions remain available, and the download links continue to work, but we decided to make the download links less accessible at this time.

Hope this clarifies!

 

The upgrade path from Evernote Legacy to the "latest version of Evernote" was entirely deceptive. I received a MacOS system message saying that Evernote Legacy needed to be updated to a "New Version of Evernote Legacy" for security reasons.

Did I get an updated version of Evernote Legacy? No. (What a shady way of forcing us on to a new app. Way to build trust, guys. Oh and look, you hid the download page at the same time. Slow clap.)

My workflow involves tabs. Tabs are a basic feature of every major notetaking app on the market — except yours.

Now I'm uninstalling Evernote and looking for an old version of Evernote Legacy. If I can't find one, I leave Evernote. Fortunately your competitors have a smooth migration pathway.

Stop forcing stupid design decisions on your users. Bring back tabs, or go away. I work on multiple notes at once. This isn't rocket science. It's a basic feature of desktop software since the 1990's. 

I'm not using the latest version of Evernote. It's bloated and utterly fails at multitasking workflows.  I've been a paid user since the early days, but the company is making bad decisions and this is a line in the sand.

There's a reason Legacy users exist. That fact should alarm your director of product, but it seems to escape him.

... now searching for a download link for a non-crippled version of Evernote that still has tabs.

Super annoyed.

[agsteele 2,951]

I haven't seen the Mac upgrade announcement but if you were misled you have good reason to be upset.

The Legacy app remains available. You can search the forums where the links appear from time to time. Or you can contact support directly and they can help you.

Meanwhile, make a good plan for your future needs. Legacy will be going away. The removal of the public download page was the first early step in the journey. My guess it will be gone within the next 12 months. So once you get Legacy back, you have time to plan at your leisure for the future.