Help! Password-protected note section no longer accessible

[BobRay 2]

I have (or had) an extensive list of my private information in a password-protected note that has worked fine for years.

Today, I tried to access it. I got the button with the dots that I normally click to make the password-protected input appear. But when I clicked on it, nothing happened. I tried right-clicking, single-clicking, and double-clicking -- nothing.  Then the button with the dots disappeared. The web version shows the same thing. Please tell me there's a way to recover the many years of critical data in the note. 

 

Windows 10 Desktop Free account

EN Version 10.58.8 

[PinkElephant 9,253]

My first and only advise is to upgrade to a personal plan (one month will do) immediately.

This unlocks the note history function. Note history takes snapshots of your notes and stores them on the server. It is running on all accounts, but access is a subscriber feature.

Through note history you can go back in time and create a duplicate of the note at a past date. Hopefully this will still contain the information you are looking for.

Subscribing gives access to support as well.

[BobRay 2]

Thanks!

It occurred to me that I have a backup on a separate hard drive. Would it be worth copying the entire User/MyName/Evernote directory from the other drive to see if that gets things back (or is there a way to make EN use the DB on that other drive)?

[PinkElephant 9,253]

In general: The encryption is military grade - it can’t be broken, only unlocked by official means.

You can try a database switch, but it could create a mess once the replaced database and the data on the server try to merge. Either it replaces new data by old on the server, or you get new notes created.

Both will very fast eat your entire upload limit - it’s only 60MB on FREE. And then you can’t edit anything for 30 days, unless you subscribe.

I wouldn’t try this to recover a single note.

The straightforward approach is to subscribe for a month, and then use note history.

[BobRay 2]

Thanks for the very valuable advice!

[BobRay 2]

When I select "history" for the note with the password-protected section, I get a "Permission Denied" message. Did I just waste $15?

[PinkElephant 9,253]

It is not the expected behavior. This is the situation when you should contact support - which is part of the subscription package:

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

[BobRay 2]

It worked!  It took a day for my subscription to update.

Thanks again!!!