iOS app deleted PDFs and JPGs from desktop!

[bobb 2]

Some notes did not show PDFs or JPGs on my iPhone that showed on my Windows 10 Pro computer.  To make things worse, to "test" the issue, I typed test into the note on my phone.  Boom!  12-15 PDFs and a few photos all got deleted from my note in Windows.  That was months of gathering info to prepare for a trip and copies of confirmations, passports, tickets, all got deleted.  I suppose I can find the original emails and re-scan documents, but it's a fair amount of work.  AND the main problem is even if I get them into my desktop, they don't seem to want to show on the mobile device that I'll be traveling with. I noticed PDFs missing on other notes on my phone, but some were there.  So I'm also terrified to use my phone/EN as I might wipe out PDFs from desktop since often, I can't know what PDFs aren't showing in which notes. 

I am on the Legacy version of EN.  I tried the web version and it was a disaster: slow, PDFs all showed as documents, and I could not drag and drop attachments from notes to Outlook emails.  Not implementing drag and drop was a deal-killer for me.  Support (below) said that "some scenarios where using an older version is necessary or desired."  So I rolled back to the Legacy edition in October 2023. 

Running latest iOS (17.1.1) on a new iPhone.  I'm not certain which tier of EN I have. I pay $129.99/year and have it syncing on four devices (2 Windows / 2 iOS).

ANY IDEAS ON HOW TO GET ALL THE ATTACHMENTS BACK? Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Extra points if you can tell me how to get PDFs to sync to an iOS device.  I'll try support, but I can't wait a few weeks for a response.  They still haven't gotten back to me about another question I sent them in October.

I understand you are unable to drag and drop a PDF from Evernote to an email to add it as an attachment. Thank you for sending your app and device details in advance.

 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.
 While we encourage everyone to give the new Evernote app a try, we recognize that there are some scenarios where using an older version is necessary or desired.
 To install the Evernote Legacy app for Mac or Windows, follow these steps:

 

[Boot17 1,467]

Are you familiar with the version history feature? Hopefully, you should be able to restore your note to how it was using that: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313858-Use-note-history-to-view-older-versions-of-a-note

I myself don't have problems with syncing PDFs to my iPhone, but I only run the new version 10 of Evernote on all my devices: MacOS (2), Windows (2), iPad, iPhone, and Web.

[PinkElephant 8,171]

@bobb It is in general not recommended any more to use a mix of legacy and v10.

Both never sync device to device - using the one can never touch directly the other. They all sync to the server, and from the server to all other devices.

And here the problem starts: Since May 2023 the new clients use RTE Real Time Editing as syncing method. It is far better than the old legacy syncing, that always needed to sync a full note (with all the consequences regarding sync conflicts and duplication). It only syncs what was changed. This requires a completely new data structure.

This structure is not compatible with the legacy structure. Using both client generations, the notes need to be converted on the server. Every time a note is changed on v10, conversion for the legacy clients. Each time changed on legacy, conversion for the v10 clients. It is expected to work, but with legacy deprecated, there is no guarantee.

So first advise: Skip this outdated software called legacy.

Second advise: I run EN on several iOS devices, and have a ton of pdfs in my data hoard. They all sync seamlessly to my iOS platforms. Since the mobile platform doesn't hold all data locally, it needs to download the attachment when you want to open it. Depending on your network speed, this is hardly noticeable, or may require a moment on a slower network. If you want to have them available while offline, you need to run the offline download.

Number 3: I don't know which support you asked, and when. Maybe there is something specific to drag & drop on Windows, depending on the Email-client used. Especially MS Office-Apps sometimes do not interact nicely with EN. On my Mac I have no problems at all to pick up a pdf in a note, drag it to an email and drop it there as attachment.

If you want another forum user to try, you should post the clients you use, both EN and email client. 

[VincentC 272]

Regarding the missing documents... I can't tell from your description -- have you checked the notes using the web client?  It's possible, maybe even likely, that they are missing from your local devices but still on the Evernote servers, which you can see more directly using the Evernote web client.

Vinnie

[bobb 2]

Boot17,  Thank you so much.  This saved me quite a bit of work.  I knew how to undelete a note, but didn't know about the rollback machine!

PinkElephant, For the record, I tried the new version of EN and was advised by EN support to use legacy if I wanted to be able to drag and drop attachments from EN to Outlook emails on my Windows desktop and laptop. So I'm not mixing legacy and V10. 

Regarding the inability to drag and drop from V10 to Windows Outlook emails, below is the complete email from support.  They were very clear that this is not supported and might never be.  FWIW, I just gave up and re-installed V10. Still can't drag and drop to Outlook.

As far the Legacy/V10 debate: I realize Legacy isn't supported but it had features, like drag and drop, that I use frequently.  Also, V10 is slower. Not tons slower, but a bit slower each time I click on a different note. 

And since it shows each PDF as a preview, those seem to take even longer to appear if I click on a note with many PDFs in it.  I thought there was a way to show all notes as titles, but I'm not seeing it now. I have a recollection that I handled this in my previous experiment with V10. Appreciate any ideas on how to make all CURRENT PDFs as titles.  If a note has ~10-20 PDFs in it, that's a lot of scrolling to get to the bottom of PDFs to see any written comments I put in the note.

Shortcuts don't appear across the top now on V10.  Which means on my laptop, I have scroll down to see the stack of notes I use most of the time.  On Legacy, there are shortcuts across the top, and Notebooks (and stacks) on the left.  

And is it true that even if I set my iPad and iPhone to download EVERYTHING from EN to store locally, PDFs and other attachments still are not on the iOS device? In the past, I think I previously had access to them.  But I'm reading in some posts that now I still need an internet connection to see attachments?!?  This will be problematic if I'm off the grid or need attachments when I don't have cellular or wifi when traveling.

I appreciate the time you take to reply and I wasn't looking to re-litigate the Legacy/V10 debate.  I know that V10 doesn't replace the functionality I had in Legacy. But I SURRENDER. I'm reinstalling V10 on desktop and laptop, as I can't risk losing attachments again. I don't see one benefit of V10, and only negatives, but the tide is against me.

I understand you are unable to drag and drop a PDF from Evernote to an email to add it as an attachment. Thank you for sending your app and device details in advance.
 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.
 While we encourage everyone to give the new Evernote app a try, we recognize that there are some scenarios where using an older version is necessary or desired.
 To install the Evernote Legacy app for Mac or Windows, follow these steps:
 

Edited November 12, 2023 by bobb
Additional reply

[PinkElephant 8,171]

You do mix them - on iOS you won’t get the legacy client since 2020 for download.

So either you are below iOS 13 and still have a legacy iOS client (sounds unlikely) or you have a jailbreak (quite rare), else you do run a v10 client on your iPhone. Just go to the mobile apps settings and check the version number - it should be 10.58.1 if you keep it up to date.

Which is enough to create the situation you describe, by mixing up data formats.

[bobb 2]

Appreciate the clarification re: mixing.  Now I'm reluctantly not doing that.

[PinkElephant 8,171]

It’s the best advise we can offer.

Sometimes it just takes a few seconds wait after opening a note, while the format conversion takes place in the background. But the permanent conversion always carry a risk of corruption of data.