Cannot search notes unless they have been recently edited

[WG IT Services 2]

Hi, we use Evernote Teams at our company and seem to be coming across a searching bug in the Evernote web app and Evernote desktop app. I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this bug and knows of any possible solutions / workarounds. 

There are notes within our notebooks that definitely exist, but are not searchable unless they have been recently edited. I haven't been able to determine an exact amount of time that needs to pass before notes stop appearing in search results, but it's pretty much guaranteed that something last edited a month ago will not appear in the search results. You will have to locate it manually in the person's notebook. This occurs on the latest version of the Evernote desktop client.

Attached is an example of a note that exists in a notebook, but cannot be searched for. It needs to be located manually, then if you edit it, it'll start appearing in search results.

[gazumped 11,830]

Hi. This forum is mainly supported by other users, primarily of Personal and Professional accounts. Teams (business) users are normally best off contacting Support direct (through their account Admin) with any issues.  That said,  I've not seen any other reports of notes that are 'invisible' to searches.  Is this happening on the central shared account,  or on one or more individuals' personal accounts?

[WG IT Services 2]

Hey gazumped, 

Thank you for your reply! We are on Teams and have been trying to contact Evernote Support directly through our admin account, however, we don't seem to be getting any response from Evernote. This forum post is mostly just throwing a Hail Mary since it's been about a month without any word from the support channels available on Teams, but I'll continue trying on there as well. We do get automated responses saying they've received our request, but the last personalized / human response seems to be 20+ days old. 

Every user here has their own Teams account, so no central shared account other than the IT account, and we are able to reproduce the issue on all individual personal accounts (as well as the IT admin account). 

It's odd that this seems specific to our Teams account. This same issue affected us in March, though Evernote Support was able to make "backend changes" that resolved the issue. 

We'd appreciate any ideas, though I think you're right we will need to keep trying to contact Evernote Support through our Teams account and hope for a resolution eventually. 

[gazumped 11,830]

Hmmn.  Evernote is doing more to the backend as we speak (see below),  so they may have inadvertently broken your connection again - do you get any references or ticket numbers from the emails you've received?  I can flag your post for a Forum Admin (an employee) to poke Support for you... 

-From https://evernote.com/blog/20-improvements-jan-march-2024 - 

🔄 RENT (metadata sync): RENT is a counterpart to last year's collaborative editing initiative. While collaborative editing focuses on instantly syncing note content across multiple devices, RENT handles note metadata syncing. With RENT, you'll see changes to note titles, thumbnails, dates, and note list content reflected across all your devices faster than ever before.

[WG IT Services 2]

Hm, that's definitely possible! Support didn't give many details, but back when this happened in March (ticket #385089), they said there were "backend changes made by developers," which ended up fixing the issue back then.  

The first ticket we submitted once we noticed the searching issues return in May was ticket #3897443.

The most recent ticket we've submitted is ticket #3909516.

If you could poke an employee we'd definitely appreciate it! We currently started the discussion on migrating to OneNote if we can't get the Evernote searching bug resolved. Thank you for taking the time to try helping us, it's much appreciated. 

[gazumped 11,830]

Happy to help.  Poking has been delivered - can't promise it will help,  but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[WG IT Services 2]

Thanks! We'll give it some time, hopefully the poking helps. Still doesn't seem we've had any response at all from support on our most recent ticket, #3909516. 

I think I may export all notebooks for users and re-import them as "new" ones if it comes to that. That way, all notes have been "recently modified," and therefore become searchable again. Though it wouldn't be a permanent fix since any note that goes 1 - 3 months without an edit will eventually stop appearing in the queries, at least until Evernote resolves whatever backend bug is occurring for us. 

[WG IT Services 2]

Hey Gazumped, 

Your poking may have helped, we recently had someone from Evernote reach out and provide a temporary fix. 

The temporary fix was Evernote manually triggering a reindexing for our business. After the reindexing, we were near-immediately able to search for all previously unsearchable old notes, no update or reinstall necessary. So unfortunately, if this affects us again or any other Evernote customer, it seems like it requires a manual fix from Evernote Support. 

Evernote Support said their developers will investigate the underlying bug and that they're available to trigger the reindexing again if it occurs before the bug is fixed. It's still just very odd to me I can't seem to find any record of this bug ever affecting anyone else, yet this is the second time it's happened to our organization on the most expensive Evernote plan (Teams, as opposed to Personal or Professional). 

Just documenting all this in the forums in the off-chance it ever helps someone else in the future. Thank you for your kind assistance!

[msenokosov 0]

Hello WG IT Services. 
I've had the same problem in my professional evernote account for at least 6 months now. 
Old notes are not found by search, and if you make changes to them, they appear. 
It really seems that the solution to the problem is to reindex the database, but I can't do it on my own. 
Can you tell me how to write to evernote technical support in general? Wherever I click, the link leads either to the forum or to the knowledge base.

[gazumped 11,830]

Re-indexing the database may be as simple as signing out of Evernote (not simply quitting) and opting not to keep a copy of the database on your local device.  If you then power the device off and back on to clear temporary storage and sign into Evernote again,  the local database will get rebuilt along with its support indexes.

If that is insufficient,  a full clean reinstall may be necessary - 

Sign out of Evernote / don't save your data locally / use Revo Uninstaller Free (Win) or Appcleaner (Mac) to uninstall the app.  Power off and back on,  then re-download and reinstall from Evernote.com and leave Evernote running to rebuild the local data.  The new install is still initially a little slow - things get better after a few days.

If that fails,  you need Support - check out the "submit a request" links in the knowledge base... https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new