Tags are complete missing in notes - when trying to add one it says "you need authorization to edit this note"

[kuhli81 3]

I have already contacted support with this issue, but so far nothing has come of it. Now I'm hoping that perhaps one of you has already experienced a similar problem and at best has also found a solution.

A bit context information beforehand: I'm using Evernote for work. In fact, it is the most important tool for me in my daily work to keep track of processes, document them, complete tasks for processes and document them in turn and more. I'm working in Evernote together with my boss, he shared different notebooks with me, that already contained several notes, but in the meantime I added also a lot. Tags play an important role for us, also to keep track of notes, to prioritize, to structure them, to keep them apart.

It first appeared more than a month ago: When logging into Evernote, I get access to all notes, but the tags are missing for all of them. When I try to add a tag to a note, it says "you need authorization to edit this note". You can be sure, that it was the first thing to check with my boss, if he had (by accident) changed something with my authorization, but he didn't.

In addition my saved searches and favorites are only partly loaded. Unfortunately the important ones that matter for my daily work are missing.

I can edit the notes as far as altering text is concerned (although it says below, I need authorization). But there where occasions when I clicked through a few notes, and suddenly they weren't loading anymore and then it also said that I would need authorization for access. This happened a few times, but without a clear pattern

What's strange is that even during the login process, I can see from the way it behaves that the problem is still there. Normally, logging in is pretty quick, a matter of seconds, and I'm on the home screen. Then I can see how all the notes are being loaded bit by bit, and while this is happening, the associated tags and my favorites and saved searches are also being loaded. Now, with the problem consisting, logging in takes forever, about 8 to 10 minutes - during this time I only see the login screen with the bar. When I get to the home area, all the notes are loaded, but the tags and saved searches are not, and nothing comes up after that.

What is also strange is that there were two times when it suddenly worked again without any noticeable change. But sooner or later the point came when I had to restart my computer or the browser and bang, the problem was back again

Of course I tried all the standard procedures - clearing cache, try different browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Chromium) also in private mode, restarting the Laptop. My operating system is Ubuntu 20.04., but I've also tried it on a machine with a "newer" 22.04.-Version.

Because of Ubuntu, I didn't use the App so far. But I've tested it on a private device and interestingly, that worked in a normal way, the notes did load with tags and all.

Thank you for your help in advance!

[Allie R 0]

I am having the same issue. 

[boohound 3]

Same here.  I contacted support but still no reply.

My message says "You need permission to edit this note - F3"

The same via web and desktop app.

Also, when I look at the existing tags, I can see the tags names but all tags have zero notes -- which is true!

Shared notebook that I've used for years - no change made by owner of the notebook. We did try unchecking and rechecking 'share' but it's still the same.

 

 

[gazumped 12,021]

Report Share issues to Support,  and make sure to reply to all standard responses.  I have an issue on the go at the moment,  and the response said - 

❗If you don’t reply to this email including the information listed above, your ticket will be considered solved and your request will be closed.

[boohound 3]

I've done that already days ago with screenshots and attached activity logs.

[boohound 3]

I'm getting super frustrated. After contacting support over a week ago, and sending them screenshots, detailed description and activity logs, still no resolution to this issue. I'm tempted to dispute my recent Evernote charge.

[gazumped 12,021]

8 hours ago, boohound said:

contacting support over a week ago

Support have routinely been taking several days to react to reports - are you editing notes that you have created,  or is this a shared notes issue?

[boohound 3]

I can edit the notes without any issues.

It's also not a sync issue because it's the same via web and desktop app.

[Jon/t 1,612]

Did you reply to the support ticket after the first response? I think you need to do this for a human response.

Also send in a copy of your logs as this helps.

[boohound 3]

I did with screenshots, logs and detailed description.

[boohound 3]

Has anybody found a solution to this problem?

[gazumped 12,021]

21 minutes ago, boohound said:

Has anybody found a solution to this problem?

I take it you've not heard from Support?  I've not had any issues of this type with tags - it seems like it involves web client / linux / shared note (shared account?) users which are somewhat edge cases - is anyone having tag issues with the installed client - mobile or desktop?

[Paul A. 673]

14 hours ago, gazumped said:

I take it you've not heard from Support?  I've not had any issues of this type with tags - it seems like it involves web client / linux / shared note (shared account?) users which are somewhat edge cases - is anyone having tag issues with the installed client - mobile or desktop?

I am. My tag kingdom is blank (although you can see at the top I should have 168 tags). Works fine on web. Has been this way on my Mac desktop client for at least a week or two.

[Jon/t 1,612]

5 hours ago, Paul A. said:

I am. My tag kingdom is blank (although you can see at the top I should have 168 tags). Works fine on web. Has been this way on my Mac desktop client for at least a week or two.

What version are you on? There was an issue a couple of weeks ago displaying tags when using the filter. Doing a search for tag:<tag name> worked OK.

Current version should be 10.101.7.

[boohound 3]

OK, folks, I am using the latest Evernote version and have been in contact with the highest levels, directly from Italy:

This is not a bug.

In fact, tags are now personal and cannot be shared, even if the owner of the notebook has shared the notebook and notes and given you editing access.

A tag is only visible to the user who attached it.

So if a note is shared by the notebook owner, it won't be visible to the other users with whom the note is shared.

Moreover, only the owner of the notebook can tag notes in the notebook, and the tags are only visible to him/her.

 

If you still want the same kind of functionality as until recently, such as shared tags, you need a team subscription.

Shared tags: If you've been given edit access in a particular shared notebook, you can add and remove tags in any of the notes in that notebook. When you remove tags from notes in the shared notebook, they aren't deleted from tags listed in the notebook creator's account. Once a tag has been removed from all the notes in a shared notebook, the action is irreversible. You'll need to ask the creator of the notebook to add the tag(s) back into the shared notes. (still on the website, updated April 26)

 

[Paul A. 673]

12 hours ago, Jon/t said:

What version are you on? There was an issue a couple of weeks ago displaying tags when using the filter. Doing a search for tag:<tag name> worked OK.

Current version should be 10.101.7.

This is with no filter at all. I'm running that version on Mac, specifically:

10.101.7-mac-ddl-public (20240816092121)
Editor: v178.23.0
Service: v2.5.8
© 2019 - 2024 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

[gazumped 12,021]

42 minutes ago, boohound said:

tags are now personal and cannot be shared

 

42 minutes ago, boohound said:

If you've been given edit access in a particular shared notebook, you can add and remove tags

?? Those two statements don't seem to make sense...  is there a published instruction on any of this?

[boohound 3]

As per email from Italy,  it is not a bug that for the past 3 weeks,  I can't see, add or remove tags from a shared notebook for which I have been given edit access.

Rather, the New Functionality is:

1. If you have a Personal or professional subscription, tags are now personal and cannot be shared. Only the owner can see the tags on existing notes.

2. If my team wants "Shared tags"  as described on their website: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209006097-Tips-for-organizing-notes-notebooks-and-tags , then we need to transition to team subscriptions.

What is, of course, extremely upsetting, is that the tags that I or my team members added to our shared notebook over the past 8 weeks are now all gone. Only visible to the owner. Nor can I add tags to any new notes I am creating.

 

[gazumped 12,021]

Hmmn.  I just submitted a Support request...

Quote

 

You changed the functionality of shared notes.  Up to now it has been the case that notes shared with other users show the tags applied by the owner of the account,  and if shared as editable notes,  tags created by the owner of the account can be added or removed by recipients of the share.  This means that a note tagged “foo” by user A could be shared to users B & C who would be able to see and change that tag for any other tag created by user A,  or simply delete it.  This is a logical and necessary process for collaboration with others from any account.

However - https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209006097-Tips-for-organizing-notes-notebooks-and-tags (edited 4m ago) says

Shared tags: If you've been given edit access in a particular shared notebook, you can add and remove tags in any of the notes in that notebook. When you remove tags from notes in the shared notebook, they aren't deleted from tags listed in the notebook creator's account. Once a tag has been removed from all the notes in a shared notebook, the action is irreversible. You'll need to ask the creator of the notebook to add the tag(s) back into the shared notes.

I just shared a note from my Professional account to a free test account as “can edit and invite” with three tags attached.  When received at the test account I'm unable to see any tags,  and clicking in the tag field gets a “you need permission to edit” error - which is incorrect because I already shared it with editing permissions.  I can add or edit the content of the note,  but I cannot see or edit the tags.  

This destroys the usefulness of notes for collaboration.  Please reinstate the original process.

 

I'd suggest anyone seeing this as an issue raise their own ticket and reference ticket# 3969129 as above.  Interestingly I sent this from the 'submit a request' link while logged in to the free account,  so it seems free users do have full access to Support requests now...

[kuhli81 3]

@gazumped Did you receive any useful reply to your request? For me it's still completely unclear, if that change regarding the ability to edit shared tags was brought in on purpose or if it's some kind of bug. Outside this thread I haven't seen or read anything that underlines that development.

For me it would still be a very weird development. The problem occurred to me nearly three months ago now in the browser version. In the meantime there were two instances, where I logged in and suddenly it all worked again the way it was before. But they didn't last long enough (till the next time I was forced to log out and in again. I did open more than one support ticket in that time and one reply said, they have classified it as a bug and they are working on its removal. For me that makes it very strange to believe, they changed their minds and made it a deliberate function in the meantime. Also I couldn't understand, how it would be possible, that half of my saved searches based on tags are still there and working, the other half is gone.

I didn't involve myself in this thread after opening it for some time, because I had succesfully found a way, to get the Evernote app running on my Ubuntu system. It wasn't perfect, but it worked, I had the tag functionality back, I could do my stuff as supposed to with the help of Evernote. Till last week, the app was updated and restarted and after that - I already suspected something bad because it took a very long time to load, it was the same ***** as with the browser version, all tags gone, no opportunity to edit them, and so on.

So now it is totally the way, as gazumped described it above: the usefulness of notes (and I would say Evernote as a whole) for collaboration is destroyed.

Still hoping that one of you has a groundbreaking experience or insight with the help of which the tag functionality can be brought back eventually.

[gazumped 12,021]

9 minutes ago, kuhli81 said:

Did you receive any useful reply to your request?

Nope - I had the usual autotext and replied to that,  but I've heard nothing since...  The change does seem to be by design - although I can't think why or how it helps.  It's still possible to share with editing (and inviting) rights,  so the note has to be synced to all accounts.  I guess some work-arounds are possible by including keywords in titles or note content - but I'm not sure how effective searches would be in shared notes... I seem to remember there being issues there too!

Evernote has been trailing a new feature with users able to share more easily with non-users - maybe we'll see more when that rolls out.

[boohound 3]

Like I said, I received a detailed reply from the top honchos in Italy  that tags are now only visible to the owner of the notebook and tags cannot be shared anymore, meaning that whoever you share the notebook doesn't see the tags and cannot add new tags.

Also meaning that whatever notebook you have built over years is now quite useless, especially since the links between notes are also screwed up, and the search functio is a mess.

It's by design so that you are forced to buy a team subscription for each member of your team.

I suggest that you contact Luca directly at bendingspoons.com to share your unhappiness with what they are doing - but doubt that they care.

[kuhli81 3]

 

Thanks to the both of you, gazumped and boohound!

Okay, so it is obviously changed by design...But I agree is not at all clear how this would be helpful or bring any progress in working with Evernote. For now it is nothing but a big step back for me and presumably many others who used Evernote with shared notebooks as a small team, or in a manager / assistant constellation or similar like it's the case with me and my boss.

I've looked into the team subscription, and what I take from the description and q&a stuff, it seems rather complex for a team of two people ... It might well be a good fit, if you like to run the collaboration of a whole department or even more with that.

2 hours ago, boohound said:

I suggest that you contact Luca directly at bendingspoons.com to share your unhappiness with what they are doing - but doubt that they care.

Well, maybe I will do, but not with the expectation, that they would change something. And even if they could be convinced or change their minds at one point, I'm afraid we can't afford to wait much longer for a solution, and in the meantime continue using a version of Evernote that is less than half as useful for us while still paying a premium price. But I would still love to tell him about our disappointment about how the product developed.

[gazumped 12,021]

20 minutes ago, kuhli81 said:

it seems rather complex for a team of two people

I'd agree - I looked into Teams a while ago,  but it seems to me there's a ton of extra administration that's totally not required for less than 6 people.  If it's just you and your boss using this,  can you share more about why tags are so essential?  I'd have thought a lot can be done with notebooks and moving notes around -vs- changing tags around.  Mind you mass-moving notes might have it's own issues when syncing between two accounts!

As I said,  more changes have been suggested for sharing - they should be announced soon.  I wouldn't make any hasty decisions just yet...  

[ferol 514]

21 hours ago, boohound said:

Like I said, I received a detailed reply from the top honchos in Italy  that tags are now only visible to the owner of the notebook and tags cannot be shared anymore, meaning that whoever you share the notebook doesn't see the tags and cannot add new tags.

Also meaning that whatever notebook you have built over years is now quite useless, especially since the links between notes are also screwed up, and the search functio is a mess.

It's by design so that you are forced to buy a team subscription for each member of your team.

I suggest that you contact Luca directly at bendingspoons.com to share your unhappiness with what they are doing - but doubt that they care.

This has completely killed my use of Evernote. I've been paying for several accounts for over 10 years , but several of my external coworkers use Free accounts. I don't force them to purchase paid accounts for the sake of occasional use..
I have shared some notebooks with them including tags. Without the tags, it's absolutely unusable...

In addition, my wife and I share notebooks including shared tags.... She also has a paid account... 

So now I'm migrating my company to Obsidian as well. I've been doing private stuff only in Obsidian for a few months now.. and yesterday I switched my wife to Obsidian as well...

[kuhli81 3]

23 hours ago, gazumped said:

If it's just you and your boss using this,  can you share more about why tags are so essential?  I'd have thought a lot can be done with notebooks and moving notes around -vs- changing tags around.  Mind you mass-moving notes might have it's own issues when syncing between two accounts!

Well, they are essential, because they help us to differentiate between all the different notes, but also to categorize, to get an overview, what has already happened in a certain realm. I know, that this is certainly not the only way, to ensure that, as you said, one can also work with notebooks representing specific categories. I'm sure there are also advantages of using that method, but also disadvantages, you have already hinted to in part. An obvious one would be, if you got different notes linked to each other and you move them to other notebooks, you will always have to replace the links.

My boss started with Evernote several years ago, a long time, before I joined, and he had already had piled up a couple of thousand notes. He chose the tag system as suiting best for his needs (I guess that was also a big argument for him for initially turning to Evernote). He is juggling with a lot of different topics (I guess most bosses do) there were a lot of processes to track and document, note taking during events, cover ideas, but also built a kind of knowledge base with papers, clipped articles and so on. 

Then I've joined and we did pile up a couple of thousand notes more with the tag-based system. It always worked very well for us, it never seemed like a burden to move all the tags around and for me the notes never felt complete, till they also had at least one or two tags. In addition, it was very comfortable to have your own custom searches, based on one or more tags.

Again, I could well imagine, that there are other ways to organize the work in Evernote I've described before, and that there are also many who just considered the tags as a nice supplement but not compelling.

Maybe it's also a bit of an outdated fashion (especially considering the way Evernote developed) and also a bit of "we always used to do it that way..." But the truth is, it would be hard to change it now and still go on with Evernote. What would have helped would have been some kind of early announcement, some advanced warning, so we could have had the chance to restructure, to think of what to do with the existing notes, and how to deal with newly created ones. Even if we neglected the tags from now on, there would still be enough work to do in terms of creating some order, and that would mean that everything would be up to my boss, and that's just not possible. 

[AlbertR 689]

On 9/2/2024 at 5:14 PM, gazumped said:

I'd agree - I looked into Teams a while ago,  but it seems to me there's a ton of extra administration that's totally not required for less than 6 people.

It's some more administration - but not a ton. If tags are running really OK there, it's worth to look into (my opinion).

Until now, tags in Teams accounts had and have problems:

• Tags cannot be managed in tag hierarchies. All tags are on listed flat.
• It's impossible to distinguies between global and personal tags
  • If a team member adds a tag, it's not clear, whether this or an other (new!) tag (with the same name!) is used if a collegue tries to attach this tag to a note in his notebook.
    • But: As I looked into our Teams account to verify my statements, I was no more able to get into such a situation - now all tags seem to be really global...

If a team is working well organized, this might not be a big problem. That means:

• If they define usage rules and everyone apply to these rules, it might work.
• If someone uses new tags (not following their common rules), you'll come to a tag-hell because it's hard to rename tags later...
  • Any newly defined tag in EN-client has to be renamed by using the EN-Teams administration console (a web based application)

To manage the tag usage around a bigger team (where not all members have to know about all rules in detail), to following should be possible:

• Strenghly destinguish between global and user-local tags
  • currently all tags seem to be global (addable and seen by all)
• Allow only dedicated team members to create new global tags
  • all other should be bound to use these will defined (global) tags
• Allow to users to define user-local tags
  • this would allow users to easily organize local work with own rules
• Allow to define tag hierarchies
  • but do not mix up global and user-local hierarchies (it's impossible 😉)

Maybe they're working on such functionalities - at least our former concern about mixing up tags with identical names seem to be solved.

6 hours ago, ferol said:

I've been paying for several accounts for over 10 years , but several of my external coworkers use Free accounts. I don't force them to purchase paid accounts for the sake of occasional use..

I've to agree: For such use cases (you and your clients are not a team in EN's meaning), Teams accounts are far too expensive to solve your needs 😞 

@Federico Simionato Why didn't You make tags simply read-only to sharing-consumers?

[AlbertR 689]

1 hour ago, kuhli81 said:

Well, they are essential, because they help us to differentiate between all the different notes, ...

Couldn't have described it better 🙂

[boohound 3]

We're using tags in a similar way as described. Our project is a book with lots of research notes, bibliographies etc, but also tracking work process

-for content categories, because the search function has been really screwy, not to mention that the links between notes don't work most of the time

- but also to indicate change in status, once we process the content of a note, we can indicate this by adding or removing a tag, or indicate that there's more work to be done, questions, content check.

- indicate who initially created a note with a tag (creator's initials) to ask for info

To spend 250/person on this team, which frequently changes, some people moving in, others leaving, is prohibitive

[kuhli81 3]

20 hours ago, AlbertR said:

It's some more administration - but not a ton. If tags are running really OK there, it's worth to look into (my opinion).

Okay, would you say, that this also hold's true for a team of two people? Do you think, the Team accounts can fit for that kind of constellation too? So far it seems rather daunting when I read what needs to be considered there in the setup alone, furthermore it seems to me far from being a pure, do the upgrade and we'll unlock new features process, but a different approach to working in Evernote. As said before, for a team of several people this may be just the thing

TBH  "some more" could already be too much for us, considering that my boss owns the notebooks and the notes contained, so it would be on him to administrate and that would be certainly nothing he is eagerly waiting for.

Considering, if the Teams account and how it is meant to work could be the right thing for us and makes sense for our small team of two, is only one thing.

The other is that I'm still hesitant to believe that an upgrade can fix my problems so that everything works as it should afterwards.

Because there are several things in Evernote's behavior - which are parts of the problem, why I contacted support and opened the thread - that just seem odd to me and not like - from now on we only make the following functionality available to a different account level:

- why are only part of my saved searches gone? Those gone have nothing in common apart from the fact, that they are tag based, but they can be tag combos as well as singular tags - and so are the searches that have "survived"

- I can still view a tag list - but it's far from complete and of course a click on the respective list does nothing - instead of showing me the notes that contain the tag

- I can still search for some tags manually - even tag combinations, but it does not work with all of them - I haven't figured out yet, where the difference might be

- And last but not least - I know I'm repeating myself, odd is also the way, Evernote (or the mother company) is treating all this. I'm sure I would have a different view an all this, if it would have been announced publicly in some way, that there are plans like this with sufficient time beforehand to think about if the working with Evernote needs to be changed, or if the planned changes would be a knock-out criteria and the path would be to look for an alternative elsewhere, or if an upgrade or similar could be the right way to go. The last one would also require that someone at Evernote would explain to you what the path with this application should look like after this massive intrusion into functionality , what you have to do so that you can continue to use all the functions you need reliably...

[AlbertR 689]

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

Okay, would you say, that this also hold's true for a team of two people?

Depends on the business you are driving: 500 bucks/year means app. 42/month or a little more than 1/day. Is it too much? 😉

But before considering to switch, some other aspects have to be thought over:

1. Is it only one (chief's) account sharing all notes with you?
2. Or did you drive two accounts with local notes shared to the other?

Case 1 should be no problem...

Case 2 might be difficult to merge to Teams because at least one account has to export its notes to ENEX and import them to Teams notebooks. By doing this, you will loose all links between notes because note IDs are not retained 😞

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

it seems to me far from being a pure, do the upgrade and we'll unlock new features process, but a different approach to working in Evernote.

It's not a different approach - but offers some functionality that might be used. For example...

• Spaces - collections of notebooks that can be managed together
  • Not a must.
• Sharing notebooks offer some additional features
  • Managed by a so called "Administrator's console" - a Web application) regarding access permissions
  • not a problem in small teams.

Tags have some restrictions (see my posting above) - but well designed tag usage rules will help to ease it's management. Necessary for all teams 😉

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

TBH  "some more" could already be too much for us, considering that my boss owns the notebooks and the notes contained, so it would be on him to administrate and that would be certainly nothing he is eagerly waiting for.

OK, so you are working according to case 1 -> not problem to elevate the account. The administator role can be played by you - if he likes... 🤔

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

I'm still hesitant to believe that an upgrade can fix my problems so that everything works as it should afterwards.

Regarding the ownership of Tags, your problems will be solved.

But be warned: If you have defined any Tag Hierarchies, these will go lost. All tags are arranged "flat" side by side (but sorted). We arranged our tags to start with special characters to get them grouped. (somthing like described in Using tags to implement dynamic ToDo lists).

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

why are only part of my saved searches gone? Those gone have nothing in common apart from the fact, that they are tag based, but they can be tag combos as well as singular tags - and so are the searches that have "survived"

Sorry - never heared aboun such a problem 😞 
Saved searched have been implemented better in former (Legacy) versions. See 011 - Saved Searches cannot be changed or deleted.

But there's no difference among account types.

 

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

I can still search for some tags manually - even tag combinations, but it does not work with all of them - I haven't figured out yet, where the difference might be

Maybe this is a result of the last changes around Tag ownership (that you can't see tags of shared notes that you do not own).

Within Teams accounts, this is not a problem.

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

I'm sure I would have a different view an all this, if it would have been announced publicly in some way ...

Full agree...

4 hours ago, kuhli81 said:

... someone at Evernote should explain ... what the path with this application should look like after this massive intrusion into functionality...