Moving notes intermittantly taking a LONG time since last update

[Nathan T 49]

Since the last update a couple of times I've tried to move notes between notebooks and it has taken over a minute for the note to move, with a dialog "Moving 1 of 1" and an infinite progress bar.  This should happen instantly and then sync in the background.  There should certainly be no need for a dialog and a progress bar!

[gazumped 11,703]

1 hour ago, Nathan T said:

Since the last update a couple of times I've tried to move notes between notebooks and it has taken over a minute for the note to move, with a dialog "Moving 1 of 1" and an infinite progress bar.  This should happen instantly and then sync in the background.  There should certainly be no need for a dialog and a progress bar!

I totaly agree - and it doesn't for me in Win 11 and Evernote 10.56.9 - what are you using?

[Nathan T 49]

I'm on 10.57.5 on Windows 11.  Most of the time moving notes is relatively fast (although the whole interface blinks every time I do, which is a bit annoying and didn't happen on legacy). But twice in two days now it's given me that modal box and locked up for a good minute before moving the note.

[Nathan T 49]

Make that three times in two days.  About 45 seconds this time.

[PinkElephant 8,178]

Anything special about these notes, like size, attachments or similar ?

How long since the last full install of v10 ?

[Nathan T 49]

45 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Anything special about these notes, like size, attachments or similar ?

How long since the last full install of v10 ?

No, regular notes with a title and a line or two of text mostly. Has happened a couple more times since my last post; seems to happen as often as not now.  My last (and first) full install of v10 was about a month ago. Regretting that decision some.

[PinkElephant 8,178]

The question about the install date was about the time for a full download. A month is beyond that, 1 or 2 days would not have been (depending on how long the app is running, active or background).

What staff had told us when a note is opened for the first time with RTE, it needs to be converted into the new data structure.

Maybe that’s the reason. In doubt contact support.

[Nathan T 49]

Many of these are newly created notes, not ones from legacy, so it shouldn't be related to conversion.

 

[Nathan T 49]

FWIW Support confirmed that this is a known issue, then claimed it was fixed in 10.58.5, but it isn't.  Still suffering through 30s+ note moves around 1/3 to 1/2 the time.

[PinkElephant 8,178]

What happens if you go offline before moving ?

Same delay => it may be your local database is corrupted, and requires replacement

Fast(er) => The delay is related to syncing

[Nathan T 49]

35 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

What happens if you go offline before moving ?

Same delay => it may be your local database is corrupted, and requires replacement

Fast(er) => The delay is related to syncing

By "go offline", do you mean disconnect from the internet?  Or is there some way within the Evernote 10 interface to go offline?

[PinkElephant 8,178]

No idea on Windows.

On the Mac I use an app called TripMode that can toggle online access for each single app.

[Nathan T 49]

Interesting, so yeah, it does still sometimes do it while offline. I've already tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling, but maybe I didn't delete the profile folder...  Or maybe their fix fixed an issue that was corrupting the local db.  I'll try another clean install.

[PinkElephant 8,178]

On Windows, use Revo Uninstaller to remove everything. The Windows own uninstaller will not remove the database.

[Nathan T 49]

I don't think there's need for a special tool. You can just remove the Evernote folder under %APPDATA% after uninstalling. (Though it would certainly be better if Evernote's uninstaller had an option to clean up its files.)

[PinkElephant 8,178]

The Windows uninstaller process usually does not touch data created by an app. It will remove the app itself, plus settings.

The continued existence of tools like CCleaner is proof that it often fails even with this modest requirements.

[Nathan T 49]

Lots of well-written Windows programs will prompt you on uninstall to ask whether you want to remove the associated data.  Unsurprisingly, Evernote is not one of these.

On the plus side, since deleting the profile folder and reinstalling, I haven't had a slow move yet, so maybe that did it.  Thanks for the idea.

[Nathan T 49]

Ah, nope, problem's back.  Oh well, maybe they'll fix it eventually.

[gazumped 11,703]

11 minutes ago, Nathan T said:

Oh well, maybe they'll fix it eventually.

You do need to let them know there's an issue before anyone is going to look at it at all.  I already raised a ticket on this,  but more feedback helps...

[Nathan T 49]

On 6/19/2023 at 2:50 PM, Nathan T said:

FWIW Support confirmed that this is a known issue, then claimed it was fixed in 10.58.5, but it isn't.  Still suffering through 30s+ note moves around 1/3 to 1/2 the time.

 

14 minutes ago, gazumped said:

You do need to let them know there's an issue before anyone is going to look at it at all.  I already raised a ticket on this,  but more feedback helps...

Yes, I did let them know. They told me it was fixed. I've since let them know it's not in fact fixed.  I'm not confident they understand the issue though, as they've been referring to it as "notes loading slowly", despite me correcting them.

[gazumped 11,703]

Like I said - feedback helps...  I'm at the Activity Logs stage,  so they appear to be taking some interest...

[Nathan T 49]

Yeah, I sent them logs too.  Also got a laugh out of the fact that my logs were absolutely filled with this:

[Unprompted upsell] Tiggered logic to display Unprompted upsell {\"currentTime\":\"2023-06-16T07:31:27.800Z\",\"willBeTriggerdAt\":\"2023-06-26T07:26:52.000Z\"}

 

[JennyOest 1]

I'm still struggling with this on a MAC.  I can drag and drop items to move them, but when I try to click and select the new location from the dropdown choices, it will lock up - you can't cancel, and after 2-3 minutes, I have to complete close the software and re-start.

 

[gazumped 11,703]

22 minutes ago, JennyOest said:

after 2-3 minutes, I have to complete close the software and re-start.

Obviously not ideal - I'd suggest you contact Evernote via Feedback or Support

[JennyOest 1]

3 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Obviously not ideal - I'd suggest you contact Evernote via Feedback or Support

I did submit a ticket

 

[gazumped 11,703]

Let us know the outcome please!

[Nathan T 49]

I narrowed down my issue to moving notes to large notebooks. I have a "done" notebook where I keep completed tasks - often useful to search when or how something was done, and easier to put everything in there than to try and decide what I might need later. It has 17k notes currently, and was consistently very slow to move into since this problem started. For now I've created a temporary done2023 notebook to work around it.

 

Unfortunately in doing so I realized that unlike any filesystem, EN considers moving a note to be an update and changes the updated date.

[oscarp70 3]

I can confirm the issue is with the large number of notes in the notebook it is being moved to.  I implement GTD and move all my notes to "PROCESSED" after I move them out of my "INBOX".  After many years, this has grown tremendously.  I only started noticing the long lag time about 4 or 5 months ago, so perhaps an update EN did caused the issue.

Here is my fix and it worked flawlessly.  I renamed mu "PROCESSED" notebook to "ARCHIVE" then created a new "PROCESSED folder.  Hope this helps!

 

[PinkElephant 8,178]

The use of notebooks is not the best way to install GTD anyhow. As you noticed yourself, it creates a lot of movement of notes. A personal productivity method should result in less, not more movement. Movement is waste, lean philosophy teaches.

If you would use tags instead of notebooks, the notes can stay where they are. Just the tags are applied, and later erased.

[Nathan T 49]

9 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

The use of notebooks is not the best way to install GTD anyhow. As you noticed yourself, it creates a lot of movement of notes. A personal productivity method should result in less, not more movement. Movement is waste, lean philosophy teaches.

If you would use tags instead of notebooks, the notes can stay where they are. Just the tags are applied, and later erased.

Unnecessary *physical* movement is waste. In Evernote moving a note between notebooks is (or should be) instantaneous, and is more convenient than removing one tag and adding another, which you'd otherwise have to do to change the task's status.

[PinkElephant 8,178]

Lean Management has categories of wasteful actions, and one of the top categories is „Movement“. Applies without exceptions, the more you need movement to reach a goal, the more waste is included. When doing a lean audit, it’s one of the simple things you can easily observe.

Tagging is way more efficient than notebooking.

Want an example ? Maybe somewhat special, but less than you may think.

Sharing notes is most efficiently done by sharing a notebook. Everything you move in there is shared, moving it out unshares it.

Say you have a shared notebook with your accountant (coworker, spouse, fishing partner, you name it). If you use tags for GTD, you can move the note in and out of sharing, without an impact on the GTD status of your note. You can’t when using notebooks to give notes a GTD status.

In general: To remove a tag I need 1 click. To add a tag I need a little more, but never more than to move a note into another notebook.

Plus I can add tags beside my GTD tags, or use nested tags to build GTD classes. Like „Waiting for“ - Feedback, Report, Paycheck, … You can look up WF, or any sub-tag level, depending on your system.

But go ahead with notebooking your GTD. As you observed (and I do nothing else than agreeing) it’s slow and inefficient.