What is Evernote for anymore?

[Gazebo 49]

I am so sick of trying to make excuses for Evernote.

I decided to get back to using Evernote as my main app, after thinking that the recent updates have made significant improvements. I was wrong.

Yesterday: Needed to access some notes at work. I can only use web version at work. After 15 mins still hadn't opened.  It is not blocked by our servers. It just doesn't work. I did access the note I wanted on my iPhone and then had to email it to myself to be able to use it . Very inefficient.

Today: I was at a meeting and decided to take notes on my android work phone. The app opened ok (though significantly slower than it opened 10 years ago) but notes corrupted as I wrote them (couldn't complete sentences, words added themselves to previous bullets for no reason) and I ended up moving to OneNote which was faultless. Even more inefficient.

What is Evernote for any longer?

I'm not interested in raising tickets - this used to be a fast and usable product and it has become unable to do its core function, surrounded by lots of non-core nonsense.

I've continued to pay every year hoping it would get back to where it was, but it will never be as good as it was, and I have lost faith.

I never thought Onenote would be preferable to Evernote. I used to be such an evangelist for Evernote, then I became an apologist, now I can no longer recommend it, and feel hoodwinked for having relied on it so much.

[PinkElephant 8,772]

It‘s fast and usable on all of my devices, which may be the reason I can’t really comment on your experience.

But using a private service (that by default removes the content from the reach of the company systems) for performing business is not what I think is sound professional practice.

[mizzsmartypants 6]

I agree.  I came here to see if I could find any news on when the Android app will ever actually work again (mine just sits on the elephant logo page indefinitely) and found your post.  I relied on Evernote for many, many years to catalog my massive collection of sewing patterns, even though their stupid thumbnail choosing algorithm is the worst design decision made by any company in the history of anything.  I definitely convinced other sewists to also use this platform for some idiotic reason.  And I also have been paying for this service in the hopes that it'll get better before I finally stop being lazy and just move my catalog to another platform.  I don't know what I'm going to switch to, but I'm definitely too anti MS to go with OneNote.  Maybe I'll just write my own solution and be done with relying on solutions that keep trying to be everything to everyone instead of just focusing on doing it's core job correctly.

[mrb186 3]

I'm also serious about finding an alternative.  Been using EN since 2009 but it is very tedious trying to get it loaded via the web and the Chromebook App isn't much better.  Something has changed in the last few weeks.  

OneNote or Google Keep??  There are also a bunch of other alternatives.  How about it?  Anyone migrate to one of these other competitors??

[Kayla Gao 17]

Evernote has changed a lot since it got a new boss, which is worth encouraging.
But it’s more the small problems that affect the experience.
There are also frequent updates that cause problems
Old problems were not fixed, but new problems were fixed.
There are also new features that are not as expected
The table of contents and titles cannot be updated, and the navigation is not designed well.
I mainly use Notion + Google Keep now
Because the note capacity provided by Evernote is too small
When the note is full, another note must be created to store the follow-up of the same content.
Although Notion is much more expensive, at $10 it has more features, unlimited storage space and 5GB for a single file.
But I still have expectations for evernote, especially after it acquired wetransfer

[cooljake 48]

13 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

It‘s fast and usable on all of my devices, which may be the reason I can’t really comment on your experience.

But using a private service (that by default removes the content from the reach of the company systems) for performing business is not what I think is sound professional practice.

if you have no experience and no idea of what we are talking about please just say nothing, you are as annoying as Evernote itself

[kkarney 146]

Yeah, there is a LOT to complain about nowadays. While the nearly daily updates have kept things in a constant state of confusion, I still feel that in general, things are getting better speed-wise (though obviously nothing like Legacy).

But there is a lot of inconsistency. Having to reload the app simply to refresh a list is a royal PITA (this happens daily for me).

But again on the positive side, I've seen a lot more activity from support recently (any activity at all is a lot more, in this case). This has always been the biggest issue for me, so improvement there means a lot.

For me, the pain of switching to a new app is just too great, especially since I've convinced myself (however foolishly) that EN is getting better, slowly but surely...

I remain puzzled by those who claim v10 performs better than Legacy. I have never seen anything but the opposite. It must be that those folks used Legacy in a completely different way than the rest of us (or perhaps didn't use it at all).

[Feitz 262]

2 minutes ago, kkarney said:

I remain puzzled by those who claim v10 performs better than Legacy. I have never seen anything but the opposite

+1, thanks

[mrb186 3]

I've had a Microsoft account forever, but never used OneNote.  I'm gonna try a migration (plenty of web articles on the topic) and see how it handles 4700+ notes

[TX281 4]

I am a longtime user of Evernote for my personal needs, mainly for recordkeeping, documents, etc., very little note-taking.  I'm also a long-time user of OneNote for my business needs (couldn't function without it).  I also use Keep for quick and easy notes, memos, shopping list, etc.

About a year ago, I determined that EN really was no longer working for me and how I used it.  One reason is that sharing files with family members and such does not work well (for me at least). I still have EN but have migrated over to Dropbox and Dropbox Paper.  For the few months I've been using it, I'm really liking the interface, usability, and search capabilities.  Enough that I signed up for a paid plan.

DB Paper works very similarly to an EN note page, and I prefer the look and feel better than EN.  The only shortcoming I've come across is that only the attachment is captured when forwarding an email to DB, not the email content itself.  If that is needed, I have to copy/paste it onto the Paper page, or print to PDF and then drag or upload the file into DB.  It's also not quite as easy to tag a note, file or folder, but haven't spent a lot of time on tagging yet.

[PinkElephant 8,772]

Sharing works for me, both in a personal setting, and for my professional projects. It was vastly improved with RTE syncing in May 2023 - since then shared notes don’t need to be locked any more when one user is accessing them. We can now work jointly on the same note without causing an avalanche of conflicts.

About alternative solutions anybody has his own preferences and restrictions. Thanks for sharing yours.

[mrb186 3]

16 hours ago, TX281 said:

I am a longtime user of Evernote for my personal needs, mainly for recordkeeping, documents, etc., very little note-taking.  I'm also a long-time user of OneNote for my business needs (couldn't function without it).  I also use Keep for quick and easy notes, memos, shopping list, etc.

About a year ago, I determined that EN really was no longer working for me and how I used it.  One reason is that sharing files with family members and such does not work well (for me at least). I still have EN but have migrated over to Dropbox and Dropbox Paper.  For the few months I've been using it, I'm really liking the interface, usability, and search capabilities.  Enough that I signed up for a paid plan.

DB Paper works very similarly to an EN note page, and I prefer the look and feel better than EN.  The only shortcoming I've come across is that only the attachment is captured when forwarding an email to DB, not the email content itself.  If that is needed, I have to copy/paste it onto the Paper page, or print to PDF and then drag or upload the file into DB.  It's also not quite as easy to tag a note, file or folder, but haven't spent a lot of time on tagging yet.

Sounds like you're a big fan of OneNote, so why wouldn't you use it as a replacement for EN?  (seems like a simpler choice, maybe just the 'sharing' issue?).     

[Scorps1234 3]

On 8/8/2024 at 5:44 AM, cooljake said:

if you have no experience and no idea of what we are talking about please just say nothing, you are as annoying as Evernote itself

Amen..  The “advice” at the end of the post was particularly snarky and off putting.

[TX281 4]

On 8/9/2024 at 6:59 AM, mrb186 said:

Sounds like you're a big fan of OneNote, so why wouldn't you use it as a replacement for EN?  (seems like a simpler choice, maybe just the 'sharing' issue?).     

OneNote could replace EN but depends on your needs and objectives.  OneNote has worked very well for my line of work, especially under MS-Teams, in maintaining information regarding various projects and tasks.  But it works differently than EN. In ON you create a notebook (digital 3-ring binder essentially) for each project and such.  In ON you need to have the notebook open to access the information.  ON does not have a Tag system like EN, and although ON search works very well, you can only search across open notebooks.  By the way, Microsoft seems to be phasing out ON and moving the emphasis to Loop, which looks very promising.

[BLK Dragon 29]

On 8/7/2024 at 11:04 PM, Gazebo said:

I am so sick of trying to make excuses for Evernote.

I decided to get back to using Evernote as my main app, after thinking that the recent updates have made significant improvements. I was wrong.

Yesterday: Needed to access some notes at work. I can only use web version at work. After 15 mins still hadn't opened.  It is not blocked by our servers. It just doesn't work. I did access the note I wanted on my iPhone and then had to email it to myself to be able to use it . Very inefficient.

Today: I was at a meeting and decided to take notes on my android work phone. The app opened ok (though significantly slower than it opened 10 years ago) but notes corrupted as I wrote them (couldn't complete sentences, words added themselves to previous bullets for no reason) and I ended up moving to OneNote which was faultless. Even more inefficient.

What is Evernote for any longer?

I'm not interested in raising tickets - this used to be a fast and usable product and it has become unable to do its core function, surrounded by lots of non-core nonsense.

I've continued to pay every year hoping it would get back to where it was, but it will never be as good as it was, and I have lost faith.

I never thought Onenote would be preferable to Evernote. I used to be such an evangelist for Evernote, then I became an apologist, now I can no longer recommend it, and feel hoodwinked for having relied on it so much.

Backup everything, move whatever possible to Obsidian, move on -- that's my plan after 10+ years of using Evernote (and when my subscription ends).

I see new reasons NOT to use EN almost every day. EN is beyond salvation I'm afraid.

 

[vitar 1]

After some research for an alternative, I am migrating to Joplin. It is an open source app, very much like the old Evernote, without any advanced features, but still has notebooks. Sync across devices can be done via external services e.g. Onedrive or with Joplin Cloud for a moderate fee. So far I have exported only two notebooks with a few dozens of notes, and it works very well.

[Scorps1234 3]

On 8/14/2024 at 5:55 AM, vitar said:

After some research for an alternative, I am migrating to Joplin. It is an open source app, very much like the old Evernote, without any advanced features, but still has notebooks. Sync across devices can be done via external services e.g. Onedrive or with Joplin Cloud for a moderate fee. So far I have exported only two notebooks with a few dozens of notes, and it works very well.

I am doing the same.  I have installed several plugins and have all of the functionality that I used in Evernote.  I really like that the database lives on my computer where I can control it and back it up. I am using OneDrive for sync and so far it has worked well with the android app. 

It is not quite as polished as Evernote but it is far more customizable and does what I need it to do well without a lot of fluff that I don't use. 

It is pretty much like Evernote used to be before they prettied it up and screwed up a lot of the usability, at least for me. That's my number one pet peeve about software when they make it pretty instead of functional.  Joplin for me is just easier to use, is fast, and does everything I need. Others may have a different opinion and that is fine.  For me paying $129 a year for something that I don't like is a non-starter (I was on a much cheaper legacy plan). Even if it were free I would still switch.

 

[Wanderling Reborn 186]

On 8/12/2024 at 10:22 AM, TX281 said:

OneNote could replace EN but depends on your needs and objectives.  OneNote has worked very well for my line of work, especially under MS-Teams, in maintaining information regarding various projects and tasks.  But it works differently than EN. In ON you create a notebook (digital 3-ring binder essentially) for each project and such.  In ON you need to have the notebook open to access the information.  ON does not have a Tag system like EN, and although ON search works very well, you can only search across open notebooks.  By the way, Microsoft seems to be phasing out ON and moving the emphasis to Loop, which looks very promising.

I think people get confused about "keeping it open". It's not like having several Word or Excel files opened at the same time.  What this really means is syncing it to the device. An "opened" notebook is synced to the device, a "closed" is no longer synced. Any notebook you used on a specific device is "opened" until you manually "close" it. Doesn't mean it's using up resources other than some storage and periodic background sync.

That said... Onenote is a very different beast from Evernote, and isn't really a good alternative for someone who is set in their Evernote ways. It requires a fairly drastic shift in one's workflows, and even some basic principles (e.g. no such thing as note tags, although they can be "fudged" via plaintext tags). And it comes with its own sizable pool of weird design decisions and clunkiness.

I've used both EN and ON since about 2010 or so. EN strictly for personal stuff, ON mainly for work and then for quite a long time for my personal notes as well. I am still using ON extensively for work, and I still have some of the notebooks that are 14 years old and full of info from old projects that I sometimes have to reference. Some things are much better, some are worse, It is as awesome system... but it's not a replacement for Evernote unless you're willing to completely change the way you think about organizing your notes.

The closest replacement for Evernote is probably Joplin. And I don't particularly like it, for a number of reasons. But objectively, it's probably the closest. Also Apple Notes, but it doesn't really exist outside of Apple ecosystem.

[StefanW 9]

10 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

Doesn't mean it's using up resources other than some storage and periodic background sync.

Just in case anyone is interested, because way off topic:

To be a bit more precise: Any currently opened Notebooks in OneNote are available in the navigation pane, are included in semi-automatic backups (Win and macOS only) can be searched and -- most importantly: a local copy of all content is stored and taking up space. That copy (the cache) is not in the actual file and folder format of notebooks "at rest" but rather in many fragmented files, actually one for each object (text paragraphs, images, tables...). That cache is getting synced in a very granular way with the actual files on OneDrive/SharePoint. This even applies for locally stored notebooks (Windows only), because in the pre-cloud-era  that was supposed to work on local network shares. Thus it is possible to edit the same page at the same time from different devices, as long as not the very same object is changed.
Those local cache files are (well, should be) getting erased without warning when closing a notebook. That's a trap that some users fall in when ignoring sync error messages because they believe they got an actual local copy.  If you reopen the notebook, all content has to get downloaded again and copied to new cache files. That's an old (based on the MSFSHTTP protocol that has been introduced with SharePoint afaik) and also somewhat fragile mechanism.

/smart-ass mode off

[Elshad 26]

Sorry but I'm with the Pink Elephant man here. Don't understand what all the problems are that people are having. I use my Evernote multiple times daily on two desktop computers and Android. To me Evernote has never been as good as it is right now. The only issue I have is getting two daily notes every day, and that is just a minor annoyance.