MORE MISSING ATTACHMENTS (brought to you with love by Bending Spoons)

idoc · May 27

2 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

The enex files are for each notebook and they would be versioned for each date the export was ran. So you'd have a folder 2024-1-31/Notebooks/Stack/notebook.enex

So what is the process of actually finding a missing attachment once you have this system? I assume you need to take the enex file and reconstruct it by creating a new notebook in EN and then exporting the file to that. You would then need to guesstimate when did the attachment go missing because you would need to drill back through time to find it. If it went missing 8 months ago (and you never noticed) then you would literally have to reconstruct dozens of enex files before you found the attachment. Or am I missing something in this process?

mackid1993 · May 27

Just now, idoc said:

So what is the process of actually finding a missing attachment once you have this system? I assume you need to take the enex file and reconstruct it by creating a new notebook in EN and then exporting the file to that. You would then need to guesstimate when did the attachment go missing because you would need to drill back through time to find it. If it went missing 8 months ago (and you never noticed) then you would literally have to reconstruct dozens of enex files before you found the attachment. Or am I missing something in this process?

Import the enex into evernote and look for the attachment.

mackid1993 · May 27

If you double click it will drop all of those notes in your default notebook.

Paul A. · May 27

4 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

Understood, it makes more sense that RTE would cause an issue like this anyway.

Regardless, I heard from Gigi, he says he fixed the cache issue I was having... so that's some progress! I'm curious if anyone else had luck seeing their attachments come back.

Do you have any insight on why only a small percentage of people appear to have run into this bug? Or could it affect more people and only a small percentage have actually noticed?

3 hours ago, FredJ said:

FYI...
Of my 3 examples, one note has the Untitled Attachment problem cleared
(Still 2 notes to go, in progress...)

Fingers crossed for you.

1 hour ago, mackid1993 said:

The good news is they didn't lose any data! They are working on a way to generate a list of notes with missing attachments and then they will provide download links for those attachments. It's a caching issue that broke the links to the attachments in the notes but the attachments are still in a shard on the server. I believe Gigi is a server side developer so he is working with the client side people to help find a way to generate a list of anything missing last I heard. He also said the same to @FredJ.

Thank you for the update; that is positive news. I haven't been communicating directly with Gigi as I don't have a current note that I'm interested in recovering and I don't want to distract him. (I did run into this issue very recently but caught it and re-uploaded the file).

That said, I am very interested in seeing a list of all affected notes / attachments and having the opportunity to recover any which have been impacted. Once you learn more about the process involved in requesting / retrieving a list of affected notes, I would really appreciate if you would share.

mackid1993 · May 27

1 minute ago, Paul A. said:

Do you have any insight on why only a small percentage of people appear to have run into this bug? Or could it affect more people and only a small percentage have actually noticed?

Fingers crossed for you.

Thank you for the update; that is positive news. I haven't been communicating directly with Gigi as I don't have a current note that I'm interested in recovering and I don't want to distract him. (I did run into this issue very recently but caught it and re-uploaded the file).

That said, I am very interested in seeing a list of all affected notes / attachments and having the opportunity to recover any which have been impacted. Once you learn more about the process involved in requesting / retrieving a list of affected notes, I would really appreciate if you would share.

I would reach out to Gigi for this info. He is working on a way to figure out what notes have missing content.

s2sailor · May 27

1 hour ago, mackid1993 said:

The good news is they didn't lose any data!

The comment from Gianluigi said that the fix was not retroactive. I took that to mean that attachments which were lost stay lost. I would be happy if my interpretation was wrong.

idoc · May 27

25 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

If you double click it will drop all of those notes in your default notebook.

Thanks. However, as far as I can tell there is still no way of knowing which enex file contains the attachment you are looking for. The other day my employee was looking for a financial data pdf file from last year (which she adds to on a regular basis). The file had disappeared. Which enex file is it in? The backup from last week? Last month? This is why we relied so extensively on the "save attachments" features of Legacy ie: it allowed for a backup of pdf, word, excel attachments that could be easily saved, searched for etc. I think that your batch file could be a workaround but it sounds awfully complicated to look for that one missing attachment (within enex files) when you don't even know when it went missing. I never thought this was even an issue until last week when both me and my assistant found that we had lost important attachments.

mackid1993 · May 27

Just now, s2sailor said:

The comment from Gianluigi said that the fix was not retroactive. I took that to mean that attachments which were lost stay lost. I would be happy if my interpretation was wrong.

It is, the attachments are on the server. They need to provide links to download the files which they are looking for a way to do. The notes themselves are not able to be fixed but the data will be able to be recovered then readded to the note.

mackid1993 · May 27

2 minutes ago, idoc said:

Thanks. However, as far as I can tell there is still no way of knowing which enex file contains the attachment you are looking for. The other day my employee was looking for a financial data pdf file from last year (which she adds to on a regular basis). The file had disappeared. Which enex file is it in? The backup from last week? Last month? This is why we relied so extensively on the "save attachments" features of Legacy ie: it allowed for a backup of pdf, word, excel attachments that could be easily saved, searched for etc. I think that your batch file could be a workaround but it sounds awfully complicated to look for that one missing attachment (within enex files) when you don't even know when it went missing. I never thought this was even an issue until last week when both me and my assistant found that we had lost important attachments.

It will be in the enex file for the notebook that the note was in. If you know which notebook the note is in, you'll know what enex to look in.

FredJ · May 27

This whole V10 thing is taking a GREAT toll on productivity, and INCREASED stress. I can't tell you how many times I'm going to enter something into a note and it takes so long for the note to come up that I get interrupted and forget the actual thing that I originally went in to do... it's just ridiculous and maddening! Then all the troubleshooting, etc, on missing attachments, failed syncs, blah blah... it's NUTS! And now needing scripts that only run in windows, etc... where have we GONE??? (NO DISS ON YOU mackid1993 !!!)

mackid1993 · May 27

4 minutes ago, FredJ said:

This whole V10 thing is taking a GREAT toll on productivity, and INCREASED stress. I can't tell you how many times I'm going to enter something into a note and it takes so long for the note to come up that I get interrupted and forget the actual thing that I originally went in to do... it's just ridiculous and maddening! Then all the troubleshooting, etc, on missing attachments, failed syncs, blah blah... it's NUTS! And now needing scripts that only run in windows, etc... where have we GONE??? (NO DISS ON YOU mackid1993 !!!)

I could implement this in bash. I just don't feel like it! You could semi-easily buy a cheap vps, script this in bash and use rclone to run these backups all in the cloud if you wanted to get advanced.

Ideally they fixed the issue so these missing attachments shouldn't ever be an issue again.

FredJ · May 27

Just now, mackid1993 said:

I could implement this in bash. I just don't feel like it!

You shouldn't have to! Evernote used to be my help buddy, stress reliever.

Now I have to pay more, and feel like I just took on another job!

Doesn't seem right!

mackid1993 · May 27

Just now, FredJ said:

You shouldn't have to! Evernote used to be my help buddy, stress reliever.

Now I have to pay more, and feel like I just took on another job!

Doesn't seem right!

Well they fixed the bug. It's unfortunate. They did give us all discount codes and it shouldn't ever happen again going forward.

So running the backups is for peace of mind but this issue should be fixed now.

mackid1993 · May 27

Question for anyone who knows. I applied the discount code to my account but I can't activate it until my subscription is up in August. He said it's only good for 30 days. Since it's saved to my account I assume I can use it in August once my subscription expires?

Does anyone know how this works. I was hoping to apply it and the use it prorated for another year of professional.

s2sailor · May 27

13 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Question for anyone who knows. I applied the discount code to my account but I can't activate it until my subscription is up in August. He said it's only good for 30 days. Since it's saved to my account I assume I can use it in August once my subscription expires?

Does anyone know how this works. I was hoping to apply it and the use it prorated for another year of professional.

In the past, as I recall, a discount moved out the subscription end date, so if you have a two month gift code, I would expect to see the renewal date move out two months. If you don't see anything changed in your account by tomorrow, I would suggest contacting them.

mackid1993 · May 27

3 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

In the past, as I recall, a discount moved out the subscription end date, so if you have a two month gift code, I would expect to see the renewal date move out two months. If you don't see anything changed in your account by tomorrow, I would suggest contacting them.

He gave me a code I have to use within 30 days. It shows up on my billing page like this but I can't activate it.

s2sailor · May 27

14 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

He gave me a code I have to use within 30 days. It shows up on my billing page like this but I can't activate

If clicking on it doesn't activate it then it is time to reach out to support, or reply to the email you received about the code, if that was how you were notified. Don't wait, you only have 30 days and it may take them that long to respond 🙂.

mackid1993 · May 27

13 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

If clicking on it doesn't activate it then it is time to reach out to support, or reply to the email you received about the code, if that was how you were notified. Don't wait, you only have 30 days and it may take them that long to respond 🙂.

Gigi said he'd double check for me but he think my initial assumption was right. I should be able to redeem it in August. Then since it'll give me two months of personal I assume I can then upgrade to professional at a slight discount.

idoc · May 27

3 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

It will be in the enex file for the notebook that the note was in. If you know which notebook the note is in, you'll know what enex to look in.

This is not entirely true. If you have a notebook " Family" and you are backing it up weekly, then in 6 months you will have 24 backups of "Family.enex". Let's say your "2022 tax return" was a pdf in this notebook and it disappeared 4 months ago without you noticing. This means that every Family.enex file since 4 months ago will not have your 2022 tax return. So when your accountant asks you for this pdf and you suddenly realize that it's disappeared, which of the 24 Family.enex files do you check? Let's say that you go back to the first one(6 months ago) and you actually find your 2022 Tax return pdf there; how do you know that it's the latest version (we add to these pdfs constantly)? You would then need to check every subsequent Family.enex file going forward to find the exact week at which the pdf disappeared (ie: the last version of the pdf). These are probably not issues for the majority of us but for anyone, who exists on pdfs, excels, word docs and who changes thousands of these files on an ongoing basis, then EN has stumbled badly with eliminating the "saved attachments" feature of Legacy. Those new users to this forum who never had Legacy would probably not even understand what a huge feature this was. Even if EN fixes the lost attachments issues my confidence has been shaken.

mackid1993 · May 27

11 minutes ago, idoc said:

This is not entirely true. If you have a notebook " Family" and you are backing it up weekly, then in 6 months you will have 24 backups of "Family.enex". Let's say your "2022 tax return" was a pdf in this notebook and it disappeared 4 months ago without you noticing. This means that every Family.enex file since 4 months ago will not have your 2022 tax return. So when your accountant asks you for this pdf and you suddenly realize that it's disappeared, which of the 24 Family.enex files do you check? Let's say that you go back to the first one(6 months ago) and you actually find your 2022 Tax return pdf there; how do you know that it's the latest version (we add to these pdfs constantly)? You would then need to check every subsequent Family.enex file going forward to find the exact week at which the pdf disappeared (ie: the last version of the pdf). These are probably not issues for the majority of us but for anyone, who exists on pdfs, excels, word docs and who changes thousands of these files on an ongoing basis, then EN has stumbled badly with eliminating the "saved attachments" feature of Legacy. Those new users to this forum who never had Legacy would probably not even understand what a huge feature this was. Even if EN fixes the lost attachments issues my confidence has been shaken.

I would logically check oldest backups first that correspond to the note creation date. I agree the fact this could happen is not acceptable. Fortunately it seems like they've caught the bug, they've listened to our concerns. Those that reached out as requested were compensated, and they are working on a way to find what is missing for those who are affected and provide download links.

Paul A. · May 27

3 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

I agree the fact this could happen is not acceptable. Fortunately it seems like they've caught the bug, they've listened to our concerns. Those that reached out as requested were compensated, and they are working on a way to find what is missing for those who are affected and provide download links.

It's a bit early to declare victory, isn't it? How confident is Gigi that he's fixed all the bugs that cause lost attachments? I hope the issue is well and truly sorted, but I personally will be cautious for a while. From experience, there are often a range of bugs that manifest similarly but have different root causes.

mackid1993 · May 27

6 minutes ago, Paul A. said:

It's a bit early to declare victory, isn't it? How confident is Gigi that he's fixed all the bugs that cause lost attachments? I hope the issue is well and truly sorted, but I personally will be cautious for a while. From experience, there are often a range of bugs that manifest similarly but have different root causes.

This is what he said to me. When we were troubleshooting on Friday he was able to get my attachments in my particular situation to reappear by clearing some cache on his end. It sounds like there were multiple manifestations of this issue but all cache related.

mackid1993 · May 28

It was painstaking to do and took a few hours, but I just went through everything and I'm missing nothing thankfully.

FredJ · May 28

13 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

It was painstaking to do and took a few hours, but I just went through everything and I'm missing nothing thankfully.

And all I keep thinking, is, "no no no this is NOT the way it supposed to work"!!!
That is Serious hours of your life you will never get back!!

But then again, they are called "bending spoons" for a reason i guess!

FredJ · May 28

6 minutes ago, FredJ said:

And all I keep thinking, is, "no no no this is NOT the way it supposed to work"!!!
That is Serious hours of your life you will never get back!!

But then again, they are called "bending spoons" for a reason i guess!

New name:
"Bending Perfectly Good Spoons Til They Break"
Goes over and over in my brain...

mackid1993 · May 28

41 minutes ago, FredJ said:

And all I keep thinking, is, "no no no this is NOT the way it supposed to work"!!!
That is Serious hours of your life you will never get back!!

But then again, they are called "bending spoons" for a reason i guess!

It's not really that big of deal. Nothing was permanently lost. They are looking for a solution to find the missing attachments programmatically and provide the files as they are still on the server. The linkage to the note was lost, not the file.

Complex software like this can have bugs, I think we really got some white glove service here handling this so I'm quite pleased as a user and my confidence is restored personally. I think it depends on how you look at it.

They had a major issue, and handled it with class implementing a fix, compensating affected users, and working towards a solution to root out and recover any missing data.

mackid1993 · May 28

Not to mention many years ago Evernote had an incident where data actually was lost, forever.

Affected users got a year, because they actually lost data. In this case, no one lost data just a little sanity, I think 2 months is fair.

https://www.cnet.com/culture/thousands-of-evernote-users-affected-by-data-loss/

mackid1993 · May 28

Moreover ones only copy of any important data shouldn't be in one place, especially a cloud service where things like this can go wrong.

We should all always follow the 3-2-1 backup rule with important data. 3 copies, 2 backups preferably one local and one off-site, and a primary copy which could be on Evernote.

ferol · May 28

This is my comunication...So we'll see if the problem is resolved in time...

Dave Green · May 28

8 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

It's not really that big of deal. Nothing was permanently lost. They are looking for a solution to find the missing attachments programmatically and provide the files as they are still on the server. The linkage to the note was lost, not the file.

Was the missing file (that was not linked) in the files section of Evernote after the cache was resolved?

mackid1993 · May 28

2 hours ago, Dave Green said:

Was the missing file (that was not linked) in the files section of Evernote after the cache was resolved?

In my situation my attachments reappeared on their own.

s2sailor · May 28

7 hours ago, ferol said:

This is my comunication...So we'll see if the problem is resolved in time...

Were they able to get back what you were missing?

ferol · May 28

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

Were they able to get back what you were missing?

Currently I have given permission in a private message to run a script on my corrupted note. And I look at it, and voila... those missing attachments came up

So now they can restore it on demand. But it doesn't work retrospectively and you have to run those scripts manually on demand.

At least at the moment, this is the state of the solution. He is now solves how to bulk find all the erroneous notes without rendered attachments and how to bulk execute a script on them.

mackid1993 · May 28

16 minutes ago, ferol said:

Currently I have given permission in a private message to run a script on my corrupted note. And I look at it, and voila... those missing attachments came up

So now they can restore it on demand. But it doesn't work retrospectively and you have to run those scripts manually on demand.

At least at the moment, this is the state of the solution. He is now solves how to bulk find all the erroneous notes without rendered attachments and how to bulk execute a script on them.

That's good news. Hopefully they will have something they can just mass deploy across all users to help recover the people that didn't notice this.

PinkElephant · May 28

We will see. Since yesterday I have 3 foul attachments, together with 3 others that show ok. All 6 were created by dragging 6 pictures from the Photos app on the Mac into a new note.

The 3 that show as attachment symbol only have a significant size (2 MB), and open fine as pictures when downloaded. I have not taken any action to correct them, and will wait if they will be corrected one day.

CalS · May 28

You are extremely kind, @mackid1993.

mackid1993 · May 28

4 minutes ago, CalS said:

You are extremely kind, @mackid1993.

Thank you, but what are you referencing?

ferol · May 28

5 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Thank you, but what are you referencing?

I assume that your positive mood and indulgence towards the Evernote team.

mackid1993 · May 28

19 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

We will see. Since yesterday I have 3 foul attachments, together with 3 others that show ok. All 6 were created by dragging 6 pictures from the Photos app on the Mac into a new note.

The 3 that show as attachment symbol only have a significant size (2 MB), and open fine as pictures when downloaded. I have not taken any action to correct them, and will wait if they will be corrected one day.

Send a message to @Gianluigi Oliva, if there's another bug that he hasn't yet caught it would benefit the community as a whole if you let him know.

CalS · May 28

48 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Thank you, but what are you referencing?

Pretty serious fail on BS's part and you are being quite accommodating is all. Not a bad thing.

Data loss of any sort (temporary or otherwise) for a second brain app isn't becoming. One might ask if they have modified their test script processes in light of this. Losing data is like dropping babies, you just don't.

mackid1993 · May 28

3 minutes ago, CalS said:

Pretty serious fail on BS's part and you are being quite accommodating is all. Not a bad thing.

Data loss of any sort (temporary or otherwise) for a second brain app isn't becoming. One might ask if they have modified their test script processes in light of this. Losing data is like dropping babies, you just don't.

Thank you. Just trying to help, it isn't reassuring to see this. What is reassuring is the way Bending Spoons is handling it. Just to remind everyone perminent data loss happened in 2015. This has so far been recoverable.

Also this should be a lesson to not keep a single copy of important data. 3-2-1 is important for anything critical.

PinkElephant · May 28

Just as a reminder: A 3-2-1 approach won’t help if already the initial version of a note comes with compromised attachments. Then you have 3 copies, 2 on different storage media, 1 offsite - and all are compromised.

mackid1993 · May 28

1 minute ago, PinkElephant said:

Just as a reminder: A 3-2-1 approach won’t help if already the initial version of a note comes with compromised attachments. Then you have 3 copies, 2 on different storage media, 1 offsite - and all are compromised.

You misunderstand, my point is the sole copy of any important documents shouldn't be in Evernote. If you are storing a PDF in Evernote there should be at least two other copies such as one on cloud storage and another on a NAS device or external drive.

This is just best practices everyone should follow and learn from.

enfan-01 · May 28

13 minutes ago, CalS said:

Losing data is like dropping babies, you just don't.

YOU ABSOLUTELY NAILED IT!

PinkElephant · May 28

@mackid1993 https://github … will execute in a Docker as well.

Not sure what other users do, but I run my own operational NAS, plus 2 more, the later ones just as backup targets. One is offsite, switches itself on only to run a backup that it pulls from the main machine (which means that the main NAS has no access data stored for the remote NAS). Plus protected snapshots as a first line of defense on the main NAS already.

Believe me, I know what we are talking about. BTW this is overkill, because EN holds the primary copy in the cloud. So the first copy is already offsite and on a different physical storage.

mackid1993 · May 28

1 minute ago, PinkElephant said:

@mackid1993 https://github … will execute in a Docker as well.

Not sure what other users do, but I run my own operational NAS, plus 2 more, the later ones just as backup targets. One is offsite, switches itself on only to run a backup that it pulls from the main machine (which means that the main NAS has no access data stored for the remote NAS). Plus protected snapshots as a first line of defense on the main NAS already.

Believe me, I know what we are talking about. BTW this is overkill, because EN holds the primary copy in the cloud. So the first copy is already offsite and on a different physical storage.

That satisfies one copy, but you still need two other copies. Having one copy in Evernote doesn't give you 3 copies, it gives you one copy, offsite. That isn't 3-2-1. What happens when Evernote fails, like it did. If you had followed 3-2-1 you'd have two more copies.

mackid1993 · May 28

I'm also not sure what type of NAS you're running but I personally have a custom built Unraid server in a 12 bay 4U rackmount chassis that also doubles as a hypervisor for my virtual machines. I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to data storage.

I also make my living in public sector IT.

dbvirago · May 28

3 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

That satisfies one copy, but you still need two other copies. Having one copy in Evernote doesn't give you 3 copies, it gives you one copy, offsite. That isn't 3-2-1. What happens when Evernote fails, like it did. If you had followed 3-2-1 you'd have two more copies.

I've always used a back it forward approach. I don't load everything in EN (Or whichever system I am using) and then trying to figure out how to back it up or extract it from there. I put the original PDF, email, Doc, or whatever onto my hard drive first. In the case of Evernote, it goes into the default upload folder. At that point, I have two copies, one on my hard drive and one in EN. Within the hour, the hard drive copy is backed up to my cloud service. That night, it is copied to two locations each on two external drives, which are in turn, also backed up to the cloud. Overkill, but seamless and as foolproof as I need.

PinkElephant · May 28

3-2-1 by definition is 3 copies of data, 2 on different storage, 1 offsite.

You can argue about an EN client-server setup to already fulfill several conditions, because each client holds an own copy, and the master copy being held on a cloud server (in itself being backupped again). But all these are synchronized, which means that 1 mistake would propagate itself by syncing to the other copies. On the other hand there is note history, which is a version management able to undo most syncing errors.

But even then, if I treat all this as one copy of my data, I hold backups that in themselves fulfill 3-2-1 even when completely discounting the main EN setup in that perspective. Good enough ? Maybe not, if that one big stone falls from the sky …

… but then I have other worries than my EN backups.

mackid1993 · May 28

3 minutes ago, dbvirago said:

I've always used a back it forward approach. I don't load everything in EN (Or whichever system I am using) and then trying to figure out how to back it up or extract it from there. I put the original PDF, email, Doc, or whatever onto my hard drive first. In the case of Evernote, it goes into the default upload folder. At that point, I have two copies, one on my hard drive and one in EN. Within the hour, the hard drive copy is backed up to my cloud service. That night, it is copied to two locations each on two external drives, which are in turn, also backed up to the cloud. Overkill, but seamless and as foolproof as I need.

This is the way to do it. Take whatever it is, store in on cloud storage or a NAS first, and then move that copy into Evernote. Then the local copy should also be getting backed up to something like Backblaze, or any object storage, Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Storj, iDrive E2 etc.

mackid1993 · May 28

Just now, PinkElephant said:

3-2-1 by definition is 3 copies of data, 2 on different storage, 1 offsite.

You can argue about an EN client-server setup to already fulfill several conditions, because each client holds an own copy, and the master copy being held on a cloud server (in itself being backupped again). But all these are synchronized, which means that 1 mistake would propagate itself by syncing to the other copies. On the other hand there is note history, which is a version management able to undo most syncing errors.

But even then, if I treat all this as one copy of my data, I hold backups that in themselves fulfill 3-2-1 even when completely discounting the main EN setup in that perspective. Good enough ? Maybe not, if that one big stone falls from the sky …

… but then I have other worries than my EN backups.

Version history helped no one here. There is no need to argue about this, there should be copies of important data outside of Evernote's system completely.

CalS · May 28

I guess maybe the point is one expected the EN history function to perform like other cloud providers and it didn't. That's the rub. I don't know, did History take a hit in the V10 process?

(Doesn't mean the others won't fail at some point but I haven't heard of many Google, DropBox, OneDrive, MEGA, pick a service failures.)

When I left EN all my old and new attachments made their way to MEGA. The few times I have had a DAA (DumbA$$Attack) their versioning has saved me.

bmcl26 · May 28

I was carrying out a regular review of files today to delete the ones i no longer require. While doing this I came across two files that were blank with only the Title visible. I was able to restore both from File History. Both files had been originally created in 2023.

eric99 · May 28

14 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

This is the way to do it. Take whatever it is, store in on cloud storage or a NAS first, and then move that copy into Evernote. Then the local copy should also be getting backed up to something like Backblaze, or any object storage, Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Storj, iDrive E2 etc.

But what if you’re unaware that you’ve lost an attachment? In that case, your backup system becomes useless because you won’t actively search for it.

PinkElephant · May 28

@CalS Version history is still there, and it works as it used to. With RTE it can’t save all changes, because they now happen and sync in microscopic sizes, one character at a time.

But the main versions are still preserved.

The problem is more that if a new note is already created with „unknown attachments“, these are what you find in version history as well. No level of versions or backups can avoid a compromised initial version of a note.

s2sailor · May 28

6 minutes ago, CalS said:

I don't know, did History take a hit in the V10 process?

Not that I’m aware of. The problem with note history is that you need to have some version of the note to restore history from, but if the note has been deleted, you are SOL. History is helpful at times, but not a complete solution.

CalS · May 28

I was asking re history as some reported losing attachments that were once there, tax files if I remember being one example. I thought a version pre "untitled" might exist in history if that were the case. 🤷‍♂️

eric99 · May 28

5 minutes ago, bmcl26 said:

I was carrying out a regular review of files today to delete the ones i no longer require. While doing this I came across two files that were blank with only the Title visible. I was able to restore both from File History. Both files had been originally created in 2023.

Are you talking about notes that were blank or the attached files?

s2sailor · May 28

Unless something has changed, note history is just a snapshot in time of your data taken a few times a day. I don’t think the change to RTE affects this one way or another.

bmcl26 · May 28

1 hour ago, eric99 said:

Are you talking about notes that were blank or the attached files?

Both these notes had no attachments. They were blank with only the Title still there..

mackid1993 · May 28

53 minutes ago, bmcl26 said:

Both these notes had no attachments. They were blank with only the Title still there..

That's something different. It sounds like they didn't sync. I've had this when I create a note on Android and close the app right away, sometimes the Android app goes into doze and it stops talking to the server.

This is specifically attachments that once opened showing as Untitled Attachment and not being able to be accessed.

mackid1993 · May 28

Oh surprise! I got a reply from support earlier today, I can apply my credit once my plan expires in August. I can't believe they got back to me in under 24 hours.

s2sailor · May 28

It would be better to have a way to apply it now and push out your renewal date. Waiting until August means you could forget. I know you won't, but many would.

bmcl26 · May 28

3 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

It would be better to have a way to apply it now and push out your renewal date. Waiting until August means you could forget. I know you won't, but many would.

I am sure @mackid1993 will be able to create a Task as a reminder LOL

mackid1993 · May 28

21 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

It would be better to have a way to apply it now and push out your renewal date. Waiting until August means you could forget. I know you won't, but many would.

I won't forget. I cancelled auto renewal so I'll be greeted with ads prompting me to upgrade, in other words daddy Evernote will remind me to give him money.

thefryhole · May 29

Hopefully they deploy a fix for users who didn't get in on the personal support group over the holiday weekend. I ended up deleting several missing attachments, since tracking them down seemed like a fool's errand. I kept one note just to see if the lost content reappears at some point. If this bug is ever truly fixed, that note should have its missing content restored. We shall see.

s2sailor · May 29

Trolling post deleted.

mackid1993 · May 29

Update:

eric99 · May 29

2 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

Update:

I still believe that implementing a robust consistency check in the enex export tool would already help a lot. My own enex consistency checker (in html4ever) recently identified two missing attachments in @ferol’s enex file. So the problem can be dedected in the enex, but unfortunately evernote's enex tool silently ignores these errors now.

In any case, regardless of this issue, a thorough consistency check during the enex export process is absolutely needed to ensure the reliability and accuracy of our exports (missing attachments, untitled notes, ...)

mackid1993 · May 29

2 minutes ago, eric99 said:

I still believe that implementing a robust consistency check in the enex export tool would already help a lot. My own enex consistency checker (in html4ever) recently identified two missing attachments in @ferol’s enex file. So the problem can be dedected in the enex.

In any case, regardless of this issue, a thorough consistency check during the enex export process is absolutely needed to ensure the reliability and accuracy of our exports (missing attachments, untitled notes, ...)

Share that with @Gianluigi Oliva. I would send him a DM, perhaps your findings could help them.

ferol · May 29

So I will add my news today. Gianluigi found in my account (among about 6500 notes) another 2 notes where attachments were wrongly drawn. He ran a script on them and the attachments are now working for me.

So he found a way to find these wrong notes in the whole account. This is exactly what he wrote:

" Yeahhh!!! now i have to find an easy way to list all "corrupted" notes "

mackid1993 · May 29

10 minutes ago, ferol said:

So I will add my news today. Gianluigi found in my account (among about 6500 notes) another 2 notes where attachments were wrongly drawn. He ran a script on them and the attachments are now working for me.

So he found a way to find these wrong notes in the whole account. This is exactly what he wrote:

" Yeahhh!!! now i have to find an easy way to list all "corrupted" notes "

He said he'd check my notes in the morning! That is awesome news, thanks for sharing! I'm curious now, is your faith in BS/Evernote somewhat restored? You are a valuable member in this community so I'm curious of you'll be sticking around now that they made things right and rescued your data from the graveyard!

ferol · May 29

1 hour ago, mackid1993 said:

He said he'd check my notes in the morning! That is awesome news, thanks for sharing! I'm curious now, is your faith in BS/Evernote somewhat restored? You are a valuable member in this community so I'm curious of you'll be sticking around now that they made things right and rescued your data from the graveyard!

We'll see. It's almost too early to make a hasty statement. In any case, I'm now working in Evernote and Obsidian. Obsidian is clearly better for some of my activities.

And for the things where I need to maintain ease of use for my colleagues in time, Evernote is the way to go for now...

I did a rocky subscription a month ago... so there is plenty of time to evaluate...

mackid1993 · May 30

No corrupted notes in my account! If anyone else is concerned about this I would suggest reaching out to Gigi.

Feitz · May 30

On 5/28/2024 at 10:52 PM, eric99 said:

But what if you’re unaware that you’ve lost an attachment? In that case, your backup system becomes useless because you won’t actively search for it.

That is exactly the issue here, you just can't constantly make sure your files are all there with say 20.000 notes / attachments. You have to rely on our 'second brain' with this, that's what it is there for and that's what you are paying for.

Even with a 3-2-1 backup routine you might have to go back a long time once you figure out something important is missing. This simply isn't viable for most users, even with an IT background.

And there are users with important files that don't make their living in IT.

Now we have a couple of users that work with EN staff individually to resolve their issues, which is good, but the glitch might have affected thousands of users and then this 'personal service' would simply not be feasible any more.

So a reasonable amount of testing before they roll out new stuff would really be welcome.

mackid1993 · May 30

11 minutes ago, Feitz said:

That is exactly the issue here, you just can't constantly make sure your files are all there with say 20.000 notes / attachments. You have to rely on our 'second brain' with this, that's what it is there for and that's what you are paying for.

Even with a 3-2-1 backup routine you might have to go back a long time once you figure out something important is missing. This simply isn't viable for most users, even with an IT background.

And there are users with important files that don't make their living in IT.

Now we have a couple of users that work with EN staff individually to resolve their issues, which is good, but the glitch might have affected thousands of users and then this 'personal service' would simply not be feasible any more.

So a reasonable amount of testing before they roll out new stuff would really be welcome.

Have you reached out to staff about your attachments. If you have any, they will identify and fix them for you. Just send Gigi a DM. He's been responding to me pretty quickly.

Feitz · May 30

18 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Have you reached out to staff about your attachments.

Yes, of course, I have several open tickets concerning attachments, but none of them have been answered:

In the meantime I deleted all affected notes - at least those I was aware of - and recreated those that I could and still needed. As far as I remember these were all recent notes created with V10 / mac since 08/2023.

What I'm concerned about are important notes / scans from years ago that I had never touched again and that might be gone without my noticing.

A server-side process that sifts through all notes with attachments and repairs missing ones would probably be a relief for everyone.

FredJ · May 30

Gigi scanned my account, and really only had 4 notes, of which 3 weren't needed, and one was recoverable, thankfully. (Of course I'm trusting his sleuth script). So, Yes, he does respond!

Feitz · May 30

Just now, FredJ said:

Gigi scanned my account

That's great news but with 200 mio. users (that's what I recently read) this has to be automated or else Gigi will have to work for BS for a very long time.

mackid1993 · May 30

4 minutes ago, Feitz said:

That's great news but with 200 mio. users (that's what I recently read) this has to be automated or else Gigi will have to work for BS for a very long time.

Gigi was hinting that something may be done globally if deemed necessary.

You should DM him, indicate your support tickets so it's documented internally that you've been sounding the alarm for a while and have him repair your notes.

He's been working hard to fix this for us, you may even get a few months of Evernote free.

Feitz · May 30

2 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

you may even get a few months of Evernote free.

unfortunately I paid until Dec. 2024, then I will only use V10 as an additional archive. I'm quite happy with my current setup, no issues I am aware of and very responsive developers if I have any suggestions.

Still I haven't deleted anything from V10 in case I find that my ENEx exports miss something or had 'untitled attachments' in them.

5 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Gigi was hinting that something may be done globally if deemed necessary.

That's good to hear, there are probably many affected users that are not on the forum but will miss their attachments one day.

mackid1993 · May 30

Just now, Feitz said:

unfortunately I paid until Dec. 2024, then I will only use V10 as an additional archive. I'm quite happy with my current setup, no issues I am aware of and very responsive developers if I have any suggestions.

Still I haven't deleted anything from V10 in case I find that my ENEx exports miss something or had 'untitled attachments' in them.

That's good to hear, there are probably many affected users that are not on the forum but will miss their attachments one day.

Well you might as well get your notes fixed so your exports are complete before you sunset Evernote.

Feitz · May 30

26 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Well you might as well get your notes fixed so your exports are complete before you sunset Evernote.

You're right, I'll give it a try.

EDIT: Done...

Feitz · May 31

11 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

you might as well get your notes fixed

Gianluigi has already reacted to my mail, thanks for the tip. I will post how this went but I am confident he can verify my notes.

eric99 · May 31

I tried to import in obsidian @ferol's enex file in which my html4ever tool detected 2 missing attachments.

Interestingly, similar to Evernote developers, Obsidian developers also silently ignore these two missing attachments. Is this programming style considered normal practice these days? Am I the only one who tries to show decent error messages to help the user and myself?

ferol · May 31

42 minutes ago, eric99 said:

I tried to import in obsidian @ferol's enex file in which my html4ever tool detected 2 missing attachments.

Interestingly, similar to Evernote developers, Obsidian developers also silently ignore these two missing attachments. Is this programming style considered normal practice these days? Am I the only one who tries to show decent error messages to help the user and myself?

What does Obsidian have to do with my missing attachments?

eric99 · May 31

1 hour ago, ferol said:

What does Obsidian have to do with my missing attachments?

While they can do it perfectly, they don't let you know that the enex is corrupt, so you don't know if you imported all your notes correctly. Developers of note-taking apps don't seem too concerned about the integrity of our notes

eric99 · May 31

47 minutes ago, eric99 said:

While they can do it perfectly, they don't let you know that the enex is corrupt, so you don't know if you imported all your notes correctly. Developers of note-taking apps don't seem too concerned about the integrity of our notes

I imported @ferol's enex in evernote and don't get an error message either.

The Evernote developers do not consider it necessary to report missing attachments during either the export or import process within their own system. This programming style leads to undetected bugs persisting for extended periods, and when users finally report an obscure symptom, identifying the root cause becomes very challenging

PinkElephant · May 31

Not sure how to detect a „missing“ attachment. Since last week I have a note with 3 missing attachments, that are only untitled versions of otherwise healthy picture files. When I export them, I can open them as the pictures they are.

If they just go for the title, they would miss correctly titled but corrupted files.

eric99 · May 31

23 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Not sure how to detect a „missing“ attachment. Since last week I have a note with 3 missing attachments, that are only untitled versions of otherwise healthy picture files. When I export them, I can open them as the pictures they are.

If they just go for the title, they would miss correctly titled but corrupted files.

My html4ever tool detected it in ferol's enex file with two missing attachments:

This is the error report:
      Error: resource not found with hash: 7c1d8c729a0a5792c1a7422e823817bc
      Error: resource not found with hash: 62aba1b64443d916f97b45ec76b2567d
Errors=2   totalNotes=1, totalLinks=0, invalidLinks=0

So, the hash reference is still there but the corresponding attachment is missing. It's essentially a dangling reference.

ferol · May 31

2 hours ago, eric99 said:

While they can do it perfectly, they don't let you know that the enex is corrupt, so you don't know if you imported all your notes correctly. Developers of note-taking apps don't seem too concerned about the integrity of our notes

This is a bit of logic on its head.

If I'm an Obsidian programmer and I'm dealing with an ENEX import, I assume it contains everything it should contain.

Why would I substitute a bug on Evernote's part as the native ENEX export.

eric99 · May 31

7 minutes ago, ferol said:

This is a bit of logic on its head.

If I'm an Obsidian programmer and I'm dealing with an ENEX import, I assume it contains everything it should contain.

Why would I substitute a bug on Evernote's part as the native ENEX export.

Rule number one for programmers: never assume the correctness of your input files! In this specific case, they definitely have detected it internally but they refused to throw an error message to the user. (My html4ever is also 'just' an enex importer but it does show detailed error messages)

mackid1993 · June 1

7 hours ago, eric99 said:

Rule number one for programmers: never assume the correctness of your input files! In this specific case, they definitely have detected it internally but they refused to throw an error message to the user. (My html4ever is also 'just' an enex importer but it does show detailed error messages)

I wonder if the activity logs show anything when set to error. They may obfuscate it for "end users" because end users are in many cases not tech people but I wonder if debug logs show anything.

eric99 · June 1

5 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

I wonder if the activity logs show anything when set to error. They may obfuscate it for "end users" because end users are in many cases not tech people but I wonder if debug logs show anything.

I agree that end-users aren't interested in the technical details but everyone wants to know which notes failed during export or import

Cristiano478 · June 1

15 horas atrás, eric99 disse:

My html4ever tool detected it in ferol's enex file with two missing attachments:

This is the error report:
      Error: resource not found with hash: 7c1d8c729a0a5792c1a7422e823817bc
      Error: resource not found with hash: 62aba1b64443d916f97b45ec76b2567d
Errors=2   totalNotes=1, totalLinks=0, invalidLinks=0

So, the hash reference is still there but the corresponding attachment is missing. It's essentially a dangling reference.

What is this html4ever? Can you explain better?

eric99 · June 1

4 hours ago, Cristiano478 said:

What is this html4ever? Can you explain better?

It's my own enex to html converter:

https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/151862-more-missing-attachments-brought-to-you-with-love-by-bending-spoons/?do=findComment&comment=736459

Cristiano478 · June 1

3 horas atrás, eric99 disse:

É meu próprio conversor enex para html:

https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/151862-more-missing-attachments-brought-to-you-with-love-by-bending-spoons/?do=findComment&comment=736459

It looks very promising, but from what I understand it is not available for anyone to download. Is that correct?

eric99 · June 1

3 minutes ago, Cristiano478 said:

It looks very promising, but from what I understand it is not available for anyone to download. Is that correct?

Yes, my project is currently private on GitHub, but I might consider making it public if there’s enough interest. In that case I’ll need to further develop and refine it first.There’s a significant distinction between creating something solely for myself and contributing to the broader community.

ferol · June 1

2 hours ago, eric99 said:

Yes, my project is currently private on GitHub, but I might consider making it public if there’s enough interest. In that case I’ll need to further develop and refine it first.There’s a significant distinction between creating something solely for myself and contributing to the broader community.

Just because you publish it doesn't mean you change your approach to development. You can make it public with it clearly written that you are doing it for your own purposes and you are making it public. And whoever wants to use it, let them use it at their own risk. And thou shalt not address any user service. And everyone will be able to decide whether to take that risk..

The terms of disclosure are, after all, at your own discretion as to how they are worded.

Feitz · June 1

2 hours ago, eric99 said:

might consider making it public

please do...

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