Accidental Deletion of Notes / Sort by Size Needed?

[Jim Donovan 0]

I am a long time Evernote user and I have significant amounts of important data stored in my account.  I am also a software developer for what it is worth.

The major problem that I have encountered since the introduction of the new version of Evernote with "automatic data synchronization" is that on a number of occasions I have accidentally deleted a note under the following scenario:

1. I have been looking at a note in the bottom portion of my Evernote desktop window to gather some data from it.

2. Some time passes doing other tasks or being interrupted and I return to my computer and I accidentally think that my cursor is in a different window than the Evernote window and I start typing something which deletes the Evernote note that I was positioned on and replaces it with whatever I "typed" on the keyboard thinking I was in another window.  The automatic Evernote synchronization then "updates" the note, replacing the correct original note with an incorrect one.

3. This only came to my attention recently when I discovered a number of "empty" notes in my database where my bank statements should have been.  Today I have learned that Evernote does maintain a "Note History" which allows me to restore previous versions of "incorrectly deleted" notes which is obviously a very good and necessary feature for a mission critical application such as Evernote.

4. The problem that I am still facing is that I have no way to determine which notes I have accidentally deleted in this way.  If there is a simple solution please point me to it. (e.g. a list of "Note History changes" for the entire account which would be a desirable feature.)

5. Another potential solution would be the ability to "Sort by Size" for all notes in the account, or to Search for Notes by Size (for example search all notes <10KB <100KB etc.).  This would allow me to identify the accidentally deleted notes and restore the correct versions.  I would also like confirmation from the development team that the previous versions of notes contained in the "Note History" are never expunged from the system.

Regards

Jim Donovan, B.Math

President

We Think Solutions Inc.

[gazumped 11,669]

Hi.  We're mostly users here,  so your best bet for some technical answers would be to contact Support - though you'll have to get through some 1st line script kiddies first...  I don't know how far along the road they'd be prepared to go to make changes which specifically cover an issue related to your process,  but I do know they're dealing with some specific issues at present so any changes aren't likely to happen in the near future...

AI natural language search is planned soon(ish) so maybe that would have an option to cover this situation.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,965]

On 9/4/2023 at 10:04 AM, Jim Donovan said:

2. Some time passes doing other tasks or being interrupted and I return to my computer and I accidentally think that my cursor is in a different window than the Evernote window and I start typing something which deletes the Evernote note that I was positioned on and replaces it with whatever I "typed" on the keyboard thinking I was in another window.  The automatic Evernote synchronization then "updates" the note, replacing the correct original note with an incorrect one.

Welcome to the forums. I'm all too familiar with forgetting which window the cursor is in! But I don't see how accidentally typing in Evernote could overwrite text in a note, unless the text was selected/highlighted. A simple Ctrl+Z undo would fix that. IAC, that would create notes with the wrong data, not empty ones. Or am I not understanding the situation?

To find the accidentally edited notes, esp. if they are now missing attachments like bank statements, take a look at the advanced search syntax: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313828.

[gazumped 11,669]

Hmmn.  Come to think of it,  a daily search or a re-sort of the notes in updated date order would show you all notes changed today.  If some of those notes weren't meant to be changed you might find them there...