v10 offline note access & exporting

[BLK Dragon 24]

So, Classic Evernote (I refuse to call it 'legacy', it's an insult to a good software) will stop working in several weeks, and I'm trying to determine if this new Evernote is actually usable (because first releases of v10 felt like something hastily hacked together by some inexperienced hipsters).

Experiment 1 - offline access to notes.
I've waited several days for EN to download all the data, its 'cache' folder is approximately the same size as data-folder of Classic Evernote. So, all the notes should be available without internet connection, right? Wrong! And it's not just oldest notes not available offline, it's kinda random.

Experiment 2 - exporting to ENEX.
It works, kinda. It took 9 attempts and 2+ hours to export first notebook. The same notebook exported from Classic Evernote in 10 minutes, on first attempt.
Exporting failes often if notebook has at least 200 notes and/or more than 1Gb of data. It seems that EN has troubles with very old notes (5+ year old).

Bottom line : v10 is still unreliable.
Maybe it'll change to better in near future (I still have several months of Premium subscription left), but I don't hold my breath. New dev team seems to be more interested in fancy bells-and-whistles stuff than in making basic funtionality robust (or implementing missing features / fixing old bugs).

[gazumped 11,689]

Hi.  Always useful to know what device / OS and Evernote versions you're using...

[Jon/t 1,309]

I use it offline quite a bit when travelling and its always worked. I've always managed to find the notes I want.

I've not run any tests as I just 'use it' so in real life on trains and in cheap dodgy hotels it works as expected.

[Feitz 179]

37 minutes ago, Jon/t said:

I've not run any tests as I just 'use it' so in real life on trains and in cheap dodgy hotels it works as expected.

Testing for essential functionality like backups isn't some fancy nice-to-have but something everyone with somewhat relevant data should do regularly. As long as ENEX exports are a supported feature they should work reliably (like they did in Legacy if I might add).

[Jon/t 1,309]

6 minutes ago, Feitz said:

Testing for essential functionality like backups isn't some fancy nice-to-have but something everyone with somewhat relevant data should do regularly. As long as ENEX exports are a supported feature they should work reliably (like they did in Legacy if I might add this).

Not on about exporting and backups. On about offline access to notes.

[Feitz 179]

 

1 minute ago, Jon/t said:

Not on about exporting and backups. On about offline access to notes.

ok. Thanks for the heads-up, sorry.

47 minutes ago, BLK Dragon said:

Experiment 2 - exporting to ENEX.

[BLK Dragon 24]

1 hour ago, Jon/t said:

I use it offline quite a bit when travelling and its always worked. I've always managed to find the notes I want.

I've not run any tests as I just 'use it' so in real life on trains and in cheap dodgy hotels it works as expected.

I guess it 'just works' - until you suddenly need a 5-year old note from 60Gb database. And you always need it exactly that very hour when there's no internet connection

Strangely enough, mobile version still has 'all notebooks available offline' option.

[BLK Dragon 24]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Hi.  Always useful to know what device / OS and Evernote versions you're using...

Latest version, tried on Windows and Mac.

[Dave Green 210]

Do you find any relationship between notes being local and having made an ENEX of the containing notebook on the desktop where you want the notes to be local?

[BLK Dragon 24]

13 hours ago, Dave Green said:

Do you find any relationship between notes being local and having made an ENEX of the containing notebook on the desktop where you want the notes to be local?

What do you mean by 'local' note? I don't have any local notebooks (all notebooks ae synced across all devices).

Looks like exporting notebook several times forces EN to cache all notes from notebook locally - first export fails at 13%, second export fails at 20% and so on until whole notebook successfully exported. After that BTW all notes (from successfully exported notebook) are available offline.
So, in theory, if I can force export ALL notes (which can't be done in v10, not via UI at least) - this will force to cache everything locally, IF cached notes are never deleted (which I can't really check).

Also, I've tried to backup whole database with evernote-backup tool (on Classic Evernote installation). It worked much more reliably - failed couple of times during 'sync' phase, but all notebooks were successfully exported in one go. Will try to do it with v10 at my work desktop PC today.

[Dave Green 210]

19 hours ago, BLK Dragon said:

What do you mean by 'local' note? I don't have any local notebooks (all notebooks ae synced across all devices).

I should have said locally cached notes.  I was thinking that making an ENEX file might force notes to be read from the server and cached locally more rapidly than working through things one note at a time but it appears perhaps not too quickly.  You obviously have more notes than I do, given the challenge you have had of making a notebook's ENEX file.

[mackid1993 737]

So notes aren't converted to the new format until they are opened once. I'm wondering if with a large notebook, the export also converts the notes which is causing it to stop responding and crash.

[gazumped 11,689]

2 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

with a large notebook, the export also converts the notes

...Wouldn't have thought so.  I think it's mainly user traffic currently - 1% (allegedly) of All Known Users are busy either exporting notes or updating to v10. 

Multiply that by the average number of notes in a notebook and the servers would probably melt...  

[mackid1993 737]

3 minutes ago, gazumped said:

...Wouldn't have thought so.  I think it's mainly user traffic currently - 1% (allegedly) of All Known Users are busy either exporting notes or updating to v10. 

Multiply that by the average number of notes in a notebook and the servers would probably melt...  

I'm not referring to the servers I'm wondering if waiting for the servers to convert each note is causing the export to get really slow and perhaps causing the client to hang.

I only have a few hundred notes in total but I wonder if someone who's been using v10 for a while and has a few thousand notes wants to test, I'd assume it would be more stable. I think a lot of the issues people are experiencing are from this conversion. 

[BLK Dragon 24]

6 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

I'm not referring to the servers I'm wondering if waiting for the servers to convert each note is causing the export to get really slow and perhaps causing the client to hang.

I only have a few hundred notes in total but I wonder if someone who's been using v10 for a while and has a few thousand notes wants to test, I'd assume it would be more stable. I think a lot of the issues people are experiencing are from this conversion. 

I don't think the problem is in servers.

Yesterday, I tried to backup entire EN v10 data using  evernote-backup tool. The 'sync' phase (which basically pulls everything from the server) did pretty well -- there was only 3 errors / retries (I consider that acceptable for 60Gb database). And 'export' phase was completed without single error (all notes of all notebooks of that 60Gb database exported to ENEX files).

So, syncing/exporting notes via API works pretty well. The problem is in the EN v10 client itself.

 

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,157]

Can confirm this.

Offline content is somehow broken on desktop. Ticket is running, with devs at the moment.

[BLK Dragon 24]

14 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

So notes aren't converted to the new format until they are opened once. I'm wondering if with a large notebook, the export also converts the notes which is causing it to stop responding and crash.

Yes, that's probably it - notes are probably converted only when opened (or at least shown in list, and added to download queue).
Alas, there's no way to select all notes and do 'force convert everything now'.

If that so, all my notes are converted by now. Will do some more experiments with offline access on my work PC/mac next week...

[BrooklynBen 45]

On 3/1/2024 at 2:27 AM, PinkElephant said:

Can confirm this.

Offline content is somehow broken on desktop. Ticket is running, with devs at the moment.

Good to know. I just came to report this. I'm in my last two weeks of intense dissertation work with a hard deadline to graduate, and so have been using Freedom to shut down all internet access. Only to find out that doing such renders a lot of my Evernote dissertation files inaccessible, because they haven't downloaded. This is central, key functionality!!!

[BLK Dragon 24]

2 hours ago, BrooklynBen said:

Good to know. I just came to report this. I'm in my last two weeks of intense dissertation work with a hard deadline to graduate, and so have been using Freedom to shut down all internet access. Only to find out that doing such renders a lot of my Evernote dissertation files inaccessible, because they haven't downloaded. This is central, key functionality!!!

That's exactly why I always insisted on explicit 'sync' button – a way to make sure everything is available from your machine.

So, BS should stop pretending EN can automagically sync everything in background, because it can not (lots of issues on the forum illustrate this).
There must be a big green 'Make everything available offline' button. 

Yet again,  evernote-backup tool is somehow able to download everything locally and export all notes/notebooks using the same EN API, but EN client constantly having troubles doing that.

 

 

[thefryhole 50]

This behavior isn't exactly the same but it is somewhat similar to what I've experienced with mobile offline access since summer 2023 (I don't often use desktop offline so no idea of the status there). Some experimenting shows that notes work offline on mobile ONLY IF they have already been opened since the conversion on either desktop or mobile and marked for offline access AFTER that happens. Most people have a batch of notes they reference over and over. In that scenario, those notes have been accessed at some point, even if only briefly, in recent months. If those are the only notes you access, then mobile offline appears to work just fine.

Except it doesn't.

Trying to access a note that has not yet been opened post-conversion returns a "note unavailable" error, despite it showing as downloaded and waiting weeks or months for the download to complete. Basically, it appears that you now need to open every single note that you want available offline and open it while still connected to the internet. Marking an entire folder for offline access doesn't work. Marking individual notes doesn't work. And this isn't just for new notes or just for old notes. It's EVERY NOTE, regardless of age, that hasn't yet been opened in the post-conversion environment.

I realize this isn't identical to the desktop issues but I wonder if they're related and fixing one might fix the other.

[BLK Dragon 24]

51 minutes ago, thefryhole said:

This behavior isn't exactly the same but it is somewhat similar to what I've experienced with mobile offline access since summer 2023 (I don't often use desktop offline so no idea of the status there). Some experimenting shows that notes work offline on mobile ONLY IF they have already been opened since the conversion on either desktop or mobile and marked for offline access AFTER that happens. Most people have a batch of notes they reference over and over. In that scenario, those notes have been accessed at some point, even if only briefly, in recent months. If those are the only notes you access, then mobile offline appears to work just fine.

Except it doesn't.

Trying to access a note that has not yet been opened post-conversion returns a "note unavailable" error, despite it showing as downloaded and waiting weeks or months for the download to complete. Basically, it appears that you now need to open every single note that you want available offline and open it while still connected to the internet. Marking an entire folder for offline access doesn't work. Marking individual notes doesn't work. And this isn't just for new notes or just for old notes. It's EVERY NOTE, regardless of age, that hasn't yet been opened in the post-conversion environment.

I realize this isn't identical to the desktop issues but I wonder if they're related and fixing one might fix the other.

I'd guess notes are missing under-the-hood 'dirty' flag, i.e. flag telling app "you must download this" or add this notes to download queue (and then we need and explicit way to force download everything). Classic Evernote has this, but new one insists that everything automagically synced (not really) and refuses to give me (the user, who pays money for software/service) ability to do what I need.

This maybe an attempt to save some traffic, or just simple f***up on the client development side, Either way it's kinda maddening...

[PinkElephant 8,157]

You were not able to only partially sync content with legacy. You could press a button to make it do what it should have done anyhow: Sync your content and edits with the server. The button was there because it used an aged way of syncing. It always had to sync the full note, even on small changes. So it didn’t sync all the time, it synced in intervals. 

v10 always synced without user interference. One year ago RTE syncing was rolled out. This syncing method will only sync the tiny change, not the full note. It does so continuously - you type a single character, it syncs only this character. You could not move the mouse pointer manually on a sync button before it synced by itself.

Open the same note on 2 devices and watch how a change made on one device shows up on the other with only a brief delay. Then you understand why a sync button would be just pointless in v10.

[JerryN 2]

I only use legacy with pdfs that have been stored as pdfs locally . I use the tools to sync my local folders 

will this aspect still work on legacy?

[PinkElephant 8,157]

30 minutes ago, JerryN said:

I only use legacy with pdfs that have been stored as pdfs locally . I use the tools to sync my local folders 

will this aspect still work on legacy?

No idea what you mean by the first sentence. Local folders (notebooks ?) are never synced.

Do you want to ask in your second paragraph if „this“ will work in v10 ? Legacy will stop working on the 23rd of March. Since I don’t understand the first 2 sentences, I can’t give an opinion on the second paragraph.

[JerryN 2]

Guess I packed too much in one sentence. 

I have version 6.25.2.9198

I have local folders for various topics. For example, health, gardening, etc

In Tools menu, i can Import folders to specific  notes and then just place new pdfs in the folders and they appear in the notes. 

I really dont need the internet to accomplish this.

Three questions:

1) Will this still work?

2) As I paid for the legacy program,  i can understand that sharing will be discontinued. Does this mean they are going to cancel the program I paid for originally (many years ago as a program)?

3) Does support have chat or a phone number? Seems odd if they do not as we do pay for the ongoing support.

 

[PinkElephant 8,157]

There are no local „folders“ (=notebooks) on v10. All notebooks need to be synced with the cloud server. No exception, no workaround.

Your account status says you are on a subscription. You don‘t pay for a certain program, you paid for the use of the EN ecosystem. The clients come for free. The legacy client you are currently using is deprecated since 2020 - it can be discontinued at any time. The only clients included in the subscription are the clients with a version 10 release number (currently 10.78). Legacy will stop syncing on the 23rd of March. This will in effect also stop it to access notes locally, since you need to be logged in for this to work (there may be a workaround, but if it works we only know after the 23rd).

There is not necessarily much time to take action, depending on what you want to do.

You need to convert the local notebooks.

You can do this now yourself in Legacy: Choose the notebook, export it to an ENEX file. After installing v10, you can import the ENEX files again. They will then sync to the server.

Or you install v10 and let the system help you doing it. The details are in this help article:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005107-Convert-local-notebooks

Again, whether you think you need the internet to do what you do makes no difference. V10 is always syncing with the server, all notes.

You can contact support here. Currently the reaction time is not good, a ticket might run for several days before answered.

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

[JerryN 2]

yep - tried the ticket. Support doesnt seem the best compared to other software companies, sorry to say.

WIll there be a tool for importing local folders in v10 as in the old version or will I have to place them as i get them manually into Evernote?

Does version 10 have the ability to store the original pdf locally or am I at the mercy of Evernote and the internet ?

A short time ago I was told I could run both the old and the new one would work. I really dont mind the subscription, but the older version has a number of items that are essential:

1. Can see the pdf in the note - it is NOT an attachment
2. Can quickly click on the search results to see the relative number of hits
3. My notes are PRIVATE unless I wish to share and not able to be hacked as in a cloud
4. If my internet goes down, I can still search and get everything

 

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,157]

If legacy is still available, I would export the local notebooks manually. Even if it is done again using the Tool, the ENEX files serve as backup.

The period of coexistence is nearly over. Legacy will be cut off the server on the 23rd of march. What this means in addition we will find out then (better said: You will, I don’t run legacy any more since more than a year).

Every pdf is an attachment. EN can‘t store a pdf natively as a note. There is always a note, and a pdf attached to it.

The master copy of all content is on the cloud server. The desktop v10 clients download a copy of it to local storage. This is used to speed up operations, and for offline use.

If you want entirely local storage or not is not relevant. If you decide to use v10, all content is synced to the server. The article I have linked holds links to descriptions of the security measures applied for the communication and the notes at rest on the server.

Or you take your data and leave. That is your decision.

[JerryN 2]

"Or you take your data and leave. That is your decision."

Pretty interesting attitude to give to someone that has been a customer for a decade or so.

 

[PinkElephant 8,157]

This is advise from user to user.

Take it as it is - it is the facts, and we communicate without embalming it into sweet marketing chichi.

The new version is build around syncing everything. What you feed it will be synced, period, no exceptions, thank you for your patience.

[JerryN 2]

is that why they dont have support? do you work for evernote?

[PinkElephant 8,157]

If you would have read my posts, you would have found the link to support.

And they are paid (at least I believe they are …).

[JerryN 2]

no worries. Support doesnt seem to have a phone or chat. Seems you work for evernote. 

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,970]

2 hours ago, JerryN said:

I have version 6.25.2.9198

I have local folders for various topics. For example, health, gardening, etc

In Tools menu, i can Import folders to specific  notes and then just place new pdfs in the folders and they appear in the notes. 

I really dont need the internet to accomplish this.

If all you want to do is organize (and maybe search) PDFs on your local computer, then Evernote in any form might be more than you need. Certainly v. 10 will want to sync everything to its servers, the point being that you can then access them on other devices. If you don't want to do that, then some kind of tool to organize things on your computer may be all you need. If I'm understanding you right.

[JerryN 2]

yep - exactly.

I'm going to be looking for something that indexes, previews, highlights search terms and provides result relativity. I do need it to keep my files local. 

Thanks.

 

 

[BLK Dragon 24]

7 hours ago, JerryN said:

yep - exactly.

I'm going to be looking for something that indexes, previews, highlights search terms and provides result relativity. I do need it to keep my files local. 

Thanks.

 

 

You are probably talking about 'local notebooks' -- notebooks that are keeped on one machine and never synced to 'the cloud'. This feature was silently removed from EN quite some time ago.

On PDFs. PDF is an attachment (and always were). By default, it's displayed as full document in Classic Evernote, and you have option 'view as attachment' if you don't want to see whole document (the same goes for any attachment, images fox exmaple). v10 has similar option -- 'view as title' (via right-click context menu for PDF); surprisingly, there's even more options for PDF in v10 - 'single page' and 'all pages'. Search by PDF contents seems to be working in v10 (whole searching experience in v10 is not so good though).

Regarding alternative, I can suggest (at least have a look at) Joplin. If 'local notebook' is crusial feature - this may be a right app for you.

[PinkElephant 8,157]

Actually the demise of local notebooks was put in writing when v10 was launched:

 

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047889234-What-s-new-in-Evernote-for-Windows

[makeitwork 3]

@JerryN do report back when you find it, i'm curious. 

i've been an EN user for years and years. don't post on forums much. been a premium user for years also, and there doesn't really seem to be pro-level support, especially now. other apps are uber-fast at it. (copilot, heptabase, readdle). it's a bummer that there's not a dedicated pro-level support chat given the $ of EN.

@PinkElephant the support link is limited to billing, maintence and team setup options and nothing else, FYI. 

it is my observation from READING these forums that there's a lot of good info interspersed with apologists for the v10 software. it would be nice to get some obvious stuff fixed tho. to wit:

i need to move 6000+ notes from one notebook to another. my options are to export (it won't, fails every time) or move 100 notes at a time (a waste of my time). it's a little amazing that a paid notes app that's been around for years can't move notes easily. or just merge notebooks.

i need to link directly to tags from an external app. just want to have a link in my PKM that opens all the realted tagged notes in EN. (no, i'm not going to set up 50 notebooks, i'm using tags) and actually, you can't link to notebooks either. or a saved search. (this isn't hard... ask todoist)

i need to lock a private notebook, not just a note. 

i need to navigate google drive by normal heirarchy, not just recent stuff or remembering the name of a spreadsheet from a month ago. and i need to add more than one google drive link to a note. 

i need excel files (stored in google drive or elsewhere) to open on my mac. dragging an excel sheet into a note works fine, but microsoft is occasioanlly disinterested in updating an excel stored in EN- i'm guessing that when the EN servers update, the file id changes, and that throws errors in excel when you're saving stuff. nothing more fun than working on a spreadsheet for a few hours and then not being able to save it. (sarcasm. it's not fun at all). this essentially makes EN useless for storing living documents, btw, which forces me to use TWO note/file apps. 

i need paid support that's timely. 

i need a search that makes UX sense. it should be easier to search tag, term, notebook, etc. 

i need AI tagging. AI search is nice but it's not intelligent (try typing "show me all notes tagged with XXX" and you get "no relevant notes were found. really?!?) AI tags would start to recognize regular notes/note content and really make this a filling cabinet with kung fu. would LOVE to auto-forward bills and have them tagged and sorted correctly. this feature would blow people's minds. 

i think evernote is great and that's why i've been on it forever. change seems slow and basic functionality stuff seems slower. there are strange limitations that seem very 1997 (can't move or tag more than 100 notes at a time? scratch pad has a character limit? wtf.) hope it gets better. would appreciate any insights on the above.

ALSO- for BACKUP, since that seems to be an ongoing debate, check out CloudHQ. they will sync evernote notebooks to google drive, dropbox, etc. 

i don't know when i'll see the responses here (because... the EN app doesn't notify you about support or forum stuff, strangely) but hope to pop back soon. cheers!

-reid

(all spelling mistakes are totally on me, i'm pre-coffee)

 

[JerryN 2]

While the upgrade has problems, the more interesting issue is the way the company is acting

The problem is that when they announced v10, I was told numerous times that I could still use Classic/Legacy.

Then, 3 weeks before pullng the plug, after collecting my money, they say it will be stopped/discontinued.

I am SOL unless I upgrade. Not customer friendly.

They could have kept legacy if they really wanted to. 

[PinkElephant 8,157]

V10 was introduce more than 3 years ago. Since then the legacy client are deprecated.

They could be used „as is“, at your own peril and without support.

It was always clear legacy will be terminated on day. The day is close now, whatever illusion you were breeding.

Want a refund ? Talk to support.

[JerryN 2]

Talk to support? how?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,970]

5 minutes ago, JerryN said:

Talk to support? how?

He meant write to them: https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action. No talking. We all know that.

[BLK Dragon 24]

OK, after weeks of experimentation with v10 :

EN v10 randomly fails to export notebooks. Maybe it's because of interoperation with 'legacy' client. Anyway, it feels weird and unreliable.

The only way to make sure all notes are accessible offline is to use evernote-backup to sync/backup data regularly. I'm not even sure if the note are guaranteed to be accessible offline on my machine after it's clicked in client on that machine (it could be purged from 'local cache' for whatever reason AFAIK).

Currently, I feel that it would be easier to do 'alternative' Evernote client (via official API) than trying to (ask BS to) fix v10...

[MvdH 409]

On 3/1/2024 at 10:27 AM, PinkElephant said:

Can confirm this.

Offline content is somehow broken on desktop. Ticket is running, with devs at the moment.

That explains a lot. What is the ticketnumber, if you don't mind? Thx in advance! After notes not working, I looked at the local DB size and it was 4GB~ while the evernote-backups GIT produces around 23GB.

[BLK Dragon 24]

30 minutes ago, MvdH said:

That explains a lot. What is the ticketnumber, if you don't mind? Thx in advance! After notes not working, I looked at the local DB size and it was 4GB~ while the evernote-backups GIT produces around 23GB.

That's strange -- my v10 local cache is roughly the same size as evernote-backup db (~60Gb).

Looks like v10 doesn't download/cache notes for some reason. And this is why we need explicit "Sync" / "Make Available All Offline" button.

[MvdH 409]

1 hour ago, BLK Dragon said:

That's strange -- my v10 local cache is roughly the same size as evernote-backup db (~60Gb).

Looks like v10 doesn't download/cache notes for some reason. And this is why we need explicit "Sync" / "Make Available All Offline" button.

Or at least a % or amount of notes to still sync. They have that info, evernote-backup shows it too...

[BLK Dragon 24]

19 hours ago, MvdH said:

Or at least a % or amount of notes to still sync. They have that info, evernote-backup shows it too...

And another observation about sync :
when I open note with PDF attachment, EN doesn't even try to download that PDF until I scroll down (when it's visible).

That delayed, sync-on-demand is just maddening...

[PinkElephant 8,157]

If your database is already fully downloaded, this shouldn’t happen. At least that’s my observation.