Ability to modify the "updated" date/time of a note within the Note Info function

[Steve2014 9]

It has been awhile since I checked status of this.. I had a ticket opened with EN support and also decided to ask them again, on why this important ability is STILL NOT part of the current EN, when the ability was there on EN Legacy.  Ugghh.  Here is the response.   I have been searching on the forums as I am sure this is a common question with other threads, but I have been unable to find.  Is anyone else in need of this feature, and does anyone have an idea how the EN team is prioritizing this?

At the moment, we haven’t built this feature into the new Evernote app. This is one of a handful of  features we are still considering. Thanks for letting us know this feature is important to you. I will share this information with our product team.

[agsteele 2,952]

6 minutes ago, Steve2014 said:

Is anyone else in need of this feature, and does anyone have an idea how the EN team is prioritizing this?

Personally, I have no need for this function but there are a number of threads by other users asking for it. So you are not on your own.

We have no idea whether this has any priority in the development plans. We're mostly fellow users and unlikely to know before anyone else.  My guess... It is very low on the list of priorities. There are many more urgent matters at the moment. My further guess is that it will not arrive within the next year but I may be wrong - it has been known.

Perhaps there are a bunch of Legacy features that will arrive when a decision is made to remove the Legacy application support. But perhaps not...

[Mike P 2,661]

I think there is a practical problem with being able to change the updated date in V10. In V10 the updated date changes whenever anything about the note changes. This includes changing the notebook, tags etc,. In fact changing the creation date (which you can do) changes the updated date to the current date and time. For the user to be able to meanigfully change the updated date would mean V10 would need to revert back to the legacy behaviour, otherwise it would be far to easy to reset the updated date to the current date/time.Thinking logically, the very act of changing the updated date would constitute a "change" and the updated date would become the current date/time!

Both the criteria for a note to be "updated" and the ability to modify the updated date therefore need to be considered together (they have both been requested) and we need to realise it's not just as easy as making the updated date field modifyable.

[gazumped 11,698]

2 hours ago, Steve2014 said:

Is anyone else in need of this feature,

Also no,  I'm afraid - I use a text-expander to keypress the current date / time in this format 20230625 1742 with one keystroke.  I'll routinely head my notes with the date most relevant to the content - of an event, a received email or some such.  Where I have a timeline of events or documents to cover in one note,  I'll use a table with the latest entry at the top.  Can you give us any more information on why changing the updated date is so important to you?  (You should probably beware that we'll likely suggest a dozen different ways of achieving the same thing - at least until / unless Evernote offers an alternative.)

[Steve2014 9]

On 6/25/2023 at 12:57 PM, gazumped said:

 Can you give us any more information on why changing the updated date is so important to you?  

Thanks all for the responses.  I use tags heavily, and I will often use the Tags option to show all notes for a given tag, and would like them sorted with most recent at the top, as that is often what is most relevant for me.   Yes, I can drop a date/time stamp into a note (I use Autohotkey) but that does not really help in this situation.    Sometimes, I just need to fix or clarify something in a note, or add a tag, and with V10 this means it will go to the top of the filtered list, which I do not always want.  With EN Legacy I would simply modify this field.     I am open to suggestions if someone has a better way to approach this... as it sounds like this could be a long time coming, if ever, for EN to add this functionality.

[gazumped 11,698]

Hmmn.  Would filtering the list by created date or title help the issue? 

[Steve2014 9]

On 6/26/2023 at 4:48 PM, gazumped said:

Hmmn.  Would filtering the list by created date or title help the issue? 

Perhaps in some instanced, but overall, not really.  At the end of the day the way I look at it is that EN introduced the new version WIHOUT this feature, and to my knowledge no consultation or advance notice with the user community.   Therefore this feature should be implemented with V10, and perhaps some options to also control what activities/updates (such as moving to a new notebook or adding/removing tags) will result in updating this date.

[gazumped 11,698]

38 minutes ago, Steve2014 said:

Therefore this feature should be implemented with V10

unfortunately it's not that simple a transaction - in the conversion Evernote prioritised the features that most users were actively using and has been adding back individual features if and when it's cost-effective to do so.  One user needing this access is not enough;  the fact the feature used to exist and now does not, is not enough.  It's Evernote's product,  and while feature requests are welcomed,  they're also a business and will add and drop features as they need to.

[p1154 12]

I'd like to bring this discussion back up.  There are quite a few Legacy users who really depend on the ability to change the "updated" field of the note.  It is part of my workflow and when I review a note from 5 years ago without changing it or if I make only a minor change it is important for my workflow to be able to keep the "updated" field with a date from 5 years ago.  Could we get the developers to chime in on whether they will add this feature to V10?  I am stuck using Legacy because I depend on this feature.  Thanks!  

[agsteele 2,952]

8 hours ago, p1154 said:

Could we get the developers to chime in on whether they will add this feature to V10?

Probably not. I suspect it would be easier to add an amendable last modified field which doesn't have a system function. Until then others suggest adding a date in the note title or as a tag on the form yyyymmdd Of course, you can use the Created Date which is amendable.

[4d4m 29]

I've also opened a ticket on this. When v10 came out it was missing, together with the ability to edit Created Date, so I went straight back to Legacy. 3 years on, although created date has been made editable, updated date has not. If anything the opposite would make more sense, but many of the functionality decisions on v10 don't make sense to me.

As to should this metadata be editable, ideally there would be user editable metadata and non-user editable metadate such as ActualCreatedDate and ActualUpdatedDate.

I also prefix notes such as meeting notes or journal entries with a yyyy-mm-dd stamp so whatever happens to the metadata at least I can order in the actual chronological order.

[Steve2014 9]

I periodically open a new support ticket with EN on this topic.. as a paid subscriber I may as well use their support -- for which response time is still very unacceptable!  I opened a ticket on Dec 22, and got this response below on Jan 6th - see below FYI

I can confirm that this feature isn’t available and we are unable to provide you with an ETA. However, we’re happy to consider this for future updates.
We appreciate you taking the time to contact us—we’re always listening carefully to our users’ opinions to guide our projects.
In the meantime, I truly hope you enjoy Evernote! Please let me know if I can help you with anything else.
Kind regards,
Evernote Support Team   Help & Learning | Youtube | Forums

[PinkElephant 8,170]

Don’t expect this to happen ever.

The updated field is under system control. It shouldn’t update just on viewing (as it does recently), but apart from this making it editable is just an idea out of the box with the mothballs.

If you want to set a marker, use a tag.

[Steve2014 9]

18 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

The updated field is under system control. It shouldn’t update just on viewing (as it does recently), but apart from this making it editable is just an idea out of the box with the mothballs.

I've noticed this field updating a few times recently where I did not think I had made any changes.. is this a recent bug?

18 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

If you want to set a marker, use a tag.

OK, so what are the best practices here.. like others have also said, sometime I like to apply an update without the updated date changing, so that I can still keep the chronological, by date, note order.  So what would be the best way to compensate for this, assuming this feature never comes to v10?

Thanks!

[PinkElephant 8,170]

Yes, this is a recent bug. I think it was solved with 10.70.2, but I had no time yet to check myself.

With tags, it depends if you want to find a exact date, or which Intervall. The editing of the field means it would never be overwritten again when once edited ? That’s the only way I think would be sustainable (else the edits would be overwritten again fast). Or means editing having it just once to keep attention on that note, but after that is starts updating again ?

[4d4m 29]

On 1/10/2024 at 3:14 PM, PinkElephant said:

Don’t expect this to happen ever.

The updated field is under system control. It shouldn’t update just on viewing (as it does recently), but apart from this making it editable is just an idea out of the box with the mothballs.

If you want to set a marker, use a tag.

As has been mentioned several times before, the ability to edit updated date existed in prior versions for many years.  At least since I started using it in 2012. It was in v5, v6 and Legacy. I was using the feature until Legacy got canned

So it's not some weird off the wall idea, it's a feature that was in the product, heavily used and deemed important by those that use it. Then was removed in v10 without explanation and no explanation why it's not going to return.

[agsteele 2,952]

Actually, there have been many explanations why it will not return.  The primary one is that it is a system generated date/time based on when changes are made to the note.  So everytime I add, remove, resave or whatever the update information changes.  Even changing the updated date will trigger a change so I would expect that the date would actually never reflect the users intentions.

The best that could be offered would be an additional editable meta-data field which enabled a search, sort etc.  There is no evidence that this is being considered but changing the updated field will not happen. The software has a different set of code that updates more frequently than the old Legacy.

You can change the created date so that can provide a means for sorting etc.

[ufrei 7]

I do not understand why the behavior has been changed at all. Update means that I have changed something in the notes content or metadata.

Just looking at the note might be a metadata 'viewed last'.

I am looking at my notes (Windows) with the sort criteria 'updated'. So I always see the notes last edited.