About to Lose Locked Notes on My Phone with Update

[promosinc 16]

I know this is last minute, as I have been using an old version of Evernote on my Google Pixel 7 and will have to update today as Evernote alerts that my version will stop working on March 26. I have two questions - the first includes an explanation of the situation I'm facing.

FIRST QUESTION

Because I create and update almost all of my notes on my Android phone, and some of them were randomly “locked" by Evernote - an issue which I believe was never resolved by the Evernote team - those locked notes did not sync, so they reside only on my phone. When Evernote syncs from my phone, there is a banner that appears at the top of the screen indicating which uploads failed (the locked notes). I have tried to find those notes, but the banner scrolls very quickly. For the ones I've identified, I have done a " copy and paste” to a new note and those notes have synced successfully. I'm not sure I've identified all the locked notes, however, because I have occasionally opened a note on my phone that has a gray padlock at the bottom (indicating it was locked by Evernote), but does not show the red alert in the thumbnail indicating it did not sync. This alert appears in the thumbnails as a red triangle containing a white exclamation point. I'm not exactly sure how that happens (locked but without a " failed sync” icon) - perhaps Evernote locked it after it was created and it synced once, but then I never added to it, so it didn't generate the red alert in the thumbnail. With almost 24,000 notes in my main notebook, it's been impossible to find the padlocked ones - unless there's a way to search for them. If there is, could someone explain how.

SECOND QUESTION

In an attempt to save those notes I can see only on my phone, which is my complete set of notes, I tried to create offline notebooks. My plan was to save those notebooks either to my phone or back up to Google Drive, so I would have some way to access the locked notes. I have been able to create offline notebooks on my phone for my smaller notebooks, but for the large one with almost 24,000 notes, it fails to complete the process. It  starts, then fails and starts again. Furthermore, I cannot locate the offline notebooks on my phone, so I can't access them or back them up. I tried to search this forum, but I only found some older posts (2014, I think) which seemed to indicate there was no way to locate or access the offline notebooks on my phone in order to back them up. Is there any way to do this? And are there limits on the size of offline notebooks which is why my largest notebook cannot seem to successfully create an offline version 

I apologize for asking at the last minute. I keep trying new strategies, but all of them have failed. 

 

[gazumped 11,677]

Sorry to restate the obvious,  but you have a situation.  If you update your phone (if that's what you're intending) any then unsynced notes will likely be lost.  There's a remote outside chance that Evernote have by now built in something to find and add orphaned notes, but I doubt it.  (A recent update on one of my desktops flashed up - "hey you have local notes.  We'll save them for you...")

You could check the total number of notes by Pixel and by Desktop to get a feel for the size of the problem,  but I don't have any way to find a random 100 notes (for example) in a 24,000 note notebook,  or to export / print / backup the whole content or any unsynced part of it.

Since the synced notes will be available to you in any other device that runs the v10 app,  you could take your Pixel offline and raise a query with Evernote Support (we're mainly other users here).  That will take time and may not give you any answers,  but at least it means your notes stored on the phone will be preserved for a while.

Best of luck if you find an out somehow - please tell us if you do!

[promosinc 16]

Thank you for your response, gazumped. Just to make sure I understand your suggestion - to "take my phone offline" - how do I do that - do I just sign out of my account?

I was expecting if I do nothing, by tomorrow everything would just disappear from my phone because on my Kindle Fire, several months ago my Evernote app opened with a message saying "Version unsupported. Please update Evernote" and when I clicked update, it took me to the old version in the Kindle Fire's app store, which shows my app as "open" - and the whole process begins again in an endless loop.  So on my Fire, I've had no access to my notes for months. That was the only version of Evernote their app store offered.

The version I'm running on my Google Pixel 7 was downloaded from the APK mirror site. It's 8.13.3. If I do nothing (or should I sign off?) won't I get that same "version unsupported" message and lose access to my notes? 

[gazumped 11,677]

1 hour ago, promosinc said:

how do I do that - do I just sign out of my account?

Hi again - basically all your notes are saved  to the server and available anywhere you can connect to your account - except for those that have been created on one device and have not yet been uploaded.  You're currently running 8.13,  which is the Legacy app where compatibility is being dropped from the servers in literally a few hours.  You really don't have any time left I'm afraid - it's likely that whatever you do now any notes that were unable to be uploaded will be lost.  

[promosinc 16]

I think I misunderstood when I asked if by going offline, you meant signing out of my account. I think you were telling me there is a setting in the app on my phone to turn off syncing. So is your suggestion to turn off syncing on my Pixel 7 still valid? Will I still be able to see those notes, including the locked ones that did not sync to the server, using the legacy app on my phone -- or will that app become unavailable, as I experienced on my Kindle Fire a few months ago? I very much appreciate your help and advice -- thank you, gazumped.

I am currently scrolling through my notes on my phone looking for any with the failed upload icon. If I can at least get the last few years, that will be most of the important ones. So far I've only found two left, but I have a long way to go.

 

[PinkElephant 8,127]

The easiest way to take a phone offline is through flight mode. But then, nothing will work that needs the internet or mobile data.

Logging out will cut the app off. But it will take you out of your account as well, which doesn’t allow any action on the notes. And you will not be able to log in when the sync is terminated. I would stay logged in from now on all the time.

I’m afraid if you need note access, but remain offline you need to stay logged in, and take the phone to offline mode.

AFAIK you won’t be able to save anything to the EN server once syncing is cut. Think about an alternative way to save the unsynced content somewhere.

All this is speculative since nobody has been where we are now. I don’t know how these old clients will behave once they can’t call home any more.

[promosinc 16]

Thank you, PinkElephant. I thought there was a setting on my Evernote Android app to turn off syncing, but apparently not. I think for now I will not update and see what happens tomorrow -- whether I can still access my notes from the legacy app. If not, I will update. I'm duplicating all the locked notes I can find at this point and syncing them to the server.

[promosinc 16]

Just an update - at around 5 AM yesterday (3.26.24), I lost access to the legacy Evernote app on my Pixel 7, as anticipated. There was a message saying "authentication failed" with a link to update, which, of course, I was forced to do. I'm trying to push through the learning curve. What is disappointing to me is that at least one of the issues which I (and others) complained about in 2021 and that we were told at that time, by the Evernote team, was a known issue and being worked on, was never fixed - that issue was that the updated Android Evernote app failed to recognize or list the default notebook, and consequently, new notes could not be added, apparently because Evernote does not know where to add them. To be clear, my existing notes were not lost, but the inability to add new notes was the main reason I decided to return to the legacy version at that time. When I say the default notebook does not appear in the list, I am referring to the hamburger menu which is in the lower left corner under Notebooks. Oddly, if I scroll down to "Notebooks" on the Home page and scroll horizontally across the Notebook cards to the far right card labeled "Notebooks" and tap on that, my default notebook appears by name but the number of notes is not displayed as it is for every other notebook (if I click on it, it displays the number of notes) and a "Default Notebook" also appears in the list with 0 notes. I have tried to name the default notebook, but I can't.  So I will attempt to rename my default notebook on the web, which was the workaround given to me by the Evernote team in 2021.