evernote-backup issue?

[Razmataz 219]

Hi there,

this is from an other thread:

I just realized that there is a big potential issue here -- unless I misunderstand something.

I changed almost 100 notes, assigning new tags (you can't do more than a 100 at a time, feature in V10) and saw that evernote-backup did not update anything in its database.

So, are we doing all these backups in vain (if tags are important)?

Aren't tags saved at all? Or just the first time and never changed?

I have an automated backup scheme set up with evernote-backup and I quite like it. Or liked it, up to now. Do I need to find an alternative?

Has anyone looked at this?

Thanks.

[s2sailor 2,234]

1 hour ago, Razmataz said:

Has anyone looked at this?

I haven’t.  I’ve noticed the opposite issue.  It will report that it updated more notes than I think it should, but I haven’t made the time to look into this.  Do a test and let us know what you find.

[Ant Cooper 16]

I ran into an error on a recent backup but retried the following day and it was fine. With the ending of Legacy support and the API not being publicly updated for years I wondered if evernote-backup had reached the end of life. I know that the ENEX files are missing some new features, like Tasks, but for me these backups are a last resort and I'd only need them if the Evernote service imploded completely and I'd honestly be glad to have the majority of my Notes content grouped by Notebook.

As other companies try to lure users away from Evernote, ENEX has become a bit of a standard import format, so even though it's not as easy to work with as plain text, I know that we'd be welcomed in a number of places with varying degrees of success (Apple Notes, Obsidian etc)

[Razmataz 219]

I am not able to "dissect" the database and as far as I know, one can only export all notebooks from the evernote-backup database. That's too much for me. But I'd like to know if the tags are in the database of evernote-backup. If not, I need a better way to make backups.

Suggestion would be welcome.

Thanks.

[Spark594 5]

37 minutes ago, Razmataz said:

I am not able to "dissect" the database and as far as I know, one can only export all notebooks from the evernote-backup database. That's too much for me. But I'd like to know if the tags are in the database of evernote-backup. If not, I need a better way to make backups.

Suggestion would be welcome.

Thanks.

Hi,

i just tested this with the following:

1 Notebook containing 2 very small text-only notes, each with one tag (OnHand / orte).
I synced down this notebook with evernote-backup an then openened the exported enex-file with notepad++.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE en-export SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/evernote-export3.dtd">
<en-export export-date="20240403T160144Z" application="Evernote" version="10.10.5">  <note>
    <title>Test-Notiz</title>
    <created>20240403T155405Z</created>
    <updated>20240403T155458Z</updated>
    <tag>OnHand</tag>
    <note-attributes>
      <author>XXX XXX</author>
    </note-attributes>
    <content>
      <![CDATA[<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd"><en-note><div>Test-123</div></en-note>]]>
    </content>
  </note>
  <note>
    <title>Test2</title>
    <created>20240403T160049Z</created>
    <updated>20240403T160106Z</updated>
    <tag>orte</tag>
    <note-attributes>
      <author>XXX XXX</author>
    </note-attributes>
    <content>
      <![CDATA[<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd"><en-note><div>nächster Test</div></en-note>]]>
    </content>
  </note>
</en-export>

As you can see, the tags are exported.

But these tags are not viewable in the evernote-backup database, only in the binary files of the notes inside the database.

BTW, you can set evernote-backup to export each notebook separately as a file or even each note as a single file.

[s2sailor 2,234]

45 minutes ago, Razmataz said:

I am not able to "dissect" the database and as far as I know, one can only export all notebooks from the evernote-backup database.

The initial download is everything.  After that, only changes are downloaded.

[Razmataz 219]

26 minutes ago, Spark594 said:

…

As you can see, the tags are exported.

But these tags are not viewable in the evernote-backup database, only in the binary files of the notes inside the database.

BTW, you can set evernote-backup to export each notebook separately as a file or even each note as a single file.

Thank you very much!

What are the command line switches for those kind of exports? My "help" doesn't provide those.

Thanks.

 

[Razmataz 219]

8 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

The initial download is everything.  After that, only changes are downloaded.

Thanks, I understood that. I don't understand however, how changing the tags in many notes leads to no updates in the database and no notes downloaded.

[Spark594 5]

19 minutes ago, Razmataz said:

Thank you very much!

What are the command line switches for those kind of exports? My "help" doesn't provide those.

Thanks.

 

No problem,

you find the switches under step 3 on the github-site.

evernote -backup.exe export "path"
simply exports each notebook as a file to the path you want it to

--single-notes makes each note a single file.

--include-trash exports also files in the trash.

--overwrite simply overwrites the old exported files with the new exported files. Use this, if a single version of the dataset in your backup is enough for you.

-v Simply gives you a verbose output to see, what the tool is actually doing

--help Shows the available options of the tool.
If you want the specific help for the export-option, the command would be evernote-backup.exe export --help

Edited April 3 by Spark594
Added information for the help command.

[s2sailor 2,234]

2 hours ago, Razmataz said:

I don't understand however, how changing the tags in many notes leads to no updates in the database and no notes downloaded.

Just guessing, but tags are metadata and maybe the tool isn't reporting those changes even though it is making them 🤷‍♂️

[Dave Green 210]

16 hours ago, Razmataz said:

Has anyone looked at this?

The issue is with renamed tags (not applied tags nor new tags).

I just looked at this again...

New note with existing tag.

Run evernote-backup, then export from it the ENEX files including  the notebook containing the new note.  Looking at it with editor, I see the note & tag.

Modify this note by adding a new tag.

Run evernote-backup, then export from it the ENEX files including  the notebook containing the new note.  Looking at it with editor, I see the note & the two tags.

Modify the tag name (over in the tags window), renaming it.  Observe in Evernote that the test note has new tag.

Wait 5 minutes for things to propagate.

Run evernote-backup, then export from it the ENEX files including  the notebook containing the new note.  Looking at it with editor, I see the note & the two tags but the tag has the original name not the modified one.

I waited another 8 minutes and redid things again without change.

Couple of notes:

1. I patched my problem after the big rename for portability by killing the local database and then re-initing it.  With my script, Evernote note collection (8000), and my network connection, the scripted incremental backup and complete export takes about 4-5 minutes.  Killing the database and re-initing takes substantially longer.

2. I run evernote-backup routinely every day at 3 AM and then export all the ENEX files.  That way, I have fresh ENEX files, and my (Apple) time machine backup gives me a a history of the ENEX files in case I wish to recover something from a few days ago if things were to go really bad.  Never had to use the history but I am always ready to test another tool's importer tool.

Again, in summary, it looks like the problem is with renaming tags, not with creating new ones or applying new or existing ones.  I guess another workaround might be to never rename tags but to add new ones to all notes that have the old tag, then delete the old tag.

[Dave Green 210]

1 hour ago, Dave Green said:

Again, in summary, it looks like the problem is with renaming tags, not with creating new ones or applying new or existing ones.  I guess another workaround might be to never rename tags but to add new ones to all notes that have the old tag, then delete the old tag.

The good news is that after another 30-40 minutes, the modified tag did come down in another sync/export, so it seems to be just a very slow process but not a "never" process.  This is a very welcome change from earlier.

[MvdH 419]

1 hour ago, Dave Green said:

The good news is that after another 30-40 minutes, the modified tag did come down in another sync/export, so it seems to be just a very slow process but not a "never" process.  This is a very welcome change from earlier.

This slow process looks like one of the problems I have during my daily use of tags-as-a-ninja. Indexes, searches, filters are out of date sometimes a very long time. Editing of a note itself is fast cross platform/cross instance, but metadata is slow ass hell. I believe they are working on RENT, I read that somewhere. RENT is supposed to make these back/forth sync of metadata (read tags and such) much much faster. I hope this is the case.

[Razmataz 219]

4 hours ago, Dave Green said:

The good news is that after another 30-40 minutes, the modified tag did come down in another sync/export, so it seems to be just a very slow process but not a "never" process.  This is a very welcome change from earlier.

Thank you for that, I can confirm that today -- without any apparent reason -- a bunch of notes were updated in the database.

So there is hope, after all.

[Razmataz 219]

16 hours ago, Spark594 said:

No problem,

you find the switches under step 3 on the github-site.

evernote -backup.exe export "path"
simply exports each notebook as a file to the path you want it to

--single-notes makes each note a single file.

--include-trash exports also files in the trash.

--overwrite simply overwrites the old exported files with the new exported files. Use this, if a single version of the dataset in your backup is enough for you.

-v Simply gives you a verbose output to see, what the tool is actually doing

--help Shows the available options of the tool.
If you want the specific help for the export-option, the command would be evernote-backup.exe export --help

Thank you. Perhaps I was imprecise or misunderstood you. What was hoping for is the ability to export a single notebook (or note). My database is 16GB, I didn't feel like testing with everything I have. 

That would be a nice addition to the tool: the ability to export a single notebook. 

 

[MvdH 419]

16 minutes ago, Razmataz said:

That would be a nice addition to the tool: the ability to export a single notebook. 

Yes, it would. Three options, one big ENEX, one per notebook or one per note, and added the choice by name of WHICH to product. On the other hand, I use it for emergencies. I haven't had such an emergency in 10 years. For me it is an insurrance policy. Evernote is so crucial for me and my role in our company, that de impact would be disastrous (level bankruptcy) if not getting to my notes when needed/too long. Low risk, enormous high impact » So overhead restoring 25GB would not be such a problem once every 10 years...... It is open source I believe, so maybe someone feels the call to add such a feature! 😄 

[Razmataz 219]

What a relieve!

I took the time to export all notebooks to ENEX and import one notebook to see what happened to the tags.

Alas, all tags are updated and correct.

Thus it might take some time for tag changes to flow into the database (more precisely: until EN exposes the change to evernote-backup), but they do come down.

That is good news for me.

[VincentC 272]

@MvdH Here's a link to a video by  Federico on plans... He comments on RENT late in the video.

 

Vinnie