Evernote changed the "updated" date on hundreds of my old notes

[Thorz 119]

At some point this year, Evernote changed the “updated” date for lots of my old notes. There is really nothing to do with this now, the damage is already done, the update dates have already been changed, they are now lost, and I don't see any way to get back to the real ones. The notes' content and creation dates are thankfully intact.

This is very noticeable, especially when viewing old notebooks I haven't touched in years. Many of the notes inside them now have updated dates of this year, something that is incorrect.

Looking at many of these new dates, I guess whatever happened took place around March-April 2024. I don't know if it was something at their end on the database kept at the servers, or if it was something on one of the clients that changed the dates. I use Evernote on Windows, Mac, web, and iOS and my clients have been reinstalled several times this year trying to solve different issues. Reinstalling has involved the fresh downloading of all note content from the server at some point. Reinstalling Evernote shouldn't affect the notes' metadata though, I have done this many times before without consequences.

I have checked the “note history” on some affected notes to see if the date changes were registered there, but as there was no content change, just the date metadata change, nothing was registered.

Not all the notes were altered, there are still thousands that preserve the correct update dates.

This is extremely annoying.

[gazumped 12,054]

40 minutes ago, Thorz said:

This is extremely annoying.

I can imagine - sympathies for the confusion caused,  but even if you're resigned to writing the lost data off,  I'd suggest you raise it with Support.  It may be something they're unaware of,  and if they can put some kind of checks in place,  maybe this can be avoided in future...

[Mike P 2,964]

10 hours ago, Thorz said:

At some point this year, Evernote changed the “updated” date for lots of my old notes.

You are probably aware, but just in case you are not, the updated date is changed when a number of changes we may count as insignificant are made. For example adding a tag, moving the note to a different notebook etc. There have also been bugs in the past where even viewing a note caused the updated date to be changed.

[PinkElephant 8,772]

In general the new system treats every change to a note as update. This includes metadata like tags, the notebook relation. 

Reinstalling the client does not change the date. There were at least 2 periods in time when only opening a note for viewing changed the updated date. This was a bug, which was removed, and then it came back and needed to be removed again.

[Thorz 119]

6 hours ago, Mike P said:

You are probably aware, but just in case you are not, the updated date is changed when a number of changes we may count as insignificant are made. For example adding a tag, moving the note to a different notebook etc. There have also been bugs in the past where even viewing a note caused the updated date to be changed.

Thank you. Yes I am aware that doing those things changes the updated date, but I haven't done anything like that with my notes.

I have seen the bug you describe, that at times just viewing a note changes the update date. This doesn't happens all the time but I have definitely seen it happening. It's frustrating, but it had never happened before with a huge number of my notes.

I see hundreds that have got the update date changed to April 22, 2024

[Thorz 119]

I created a ticket and received an answer from the support AI:

It appears that the changes in the 'updated' date metadata for your notes may be related to the significant update to Evernote's syncing infrastructure called RENT (Remaining ENTities), which was released in August 2024.
(...)
The RENT update ensures real-time synchronization across different accounts and devices, which might have led to the observed changes in the 'updated' dates of your notes around March-April 2024. Unfortunately, if the original update dates have already been altered, there is no way to revert them back to the original dates.

So there you have it, it appears they have seen this issue before and it's something at their end. It sucks.

[gazumped 12,054]

Hmmn.  I just moved a bunch of notes into a new notebook without opening or otherwise editing any of them.  All of their updated dates are now set to 'today'.

[PinkElephant 8,772]

Moving into another notebook = metadata change = new updated date

[s2sailor 2,426]

As has been discussed previously, we could really use a separate note updated variable that we can sort on (based on note content change only) that is independent from the one that the system uses to maintain sync status.  Their current design basically makes sorting on date updated useless.

[Thorz 119]

3 hours ago, gazumped said:

Hmmn.  I just moved a bunch of notes into a new notebook without opening or otherwise editing any of them.  All of their updated dates are now set to 'today'.

Yes this is correct, though it wasn't my case.

[AlbertR 694]

3 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

metadata change = new updated date

It's really a mess. 😞 They insist to ignore that (metadata != note content) and ("update date" != "content update date"). 😡

They should ... 

2 hours ago, s2sailor said:

... use a separate note updated variable that we can sort on (based on note content change only) that is independent from the one that the system uses to maintain sync status.

[Sönke Luck 14]

I can confirm, that most of my years old notes have been touched around 23-27 March timeframe this year. Very bad bug, I think. Will see, what support will answer on this.

[APenNameAndThatA 6]

LOL. This should be the least of your problems with Evernote. 

 

[Feitz 262]

11 hours ago, APenNameAndThatA said:

This should be the least of your problems with Evernote.

I tend to disagree, V10 completely ruined the timeline of my notes and I find this a real problem.

I had certain notebooks where it came very handy that the notes were in chronological order, and now they are scattered randomly on my timeline. Outside of V10 I file every file with a 'YYYY-MM-DD - ' prefix to achieve that, but I didn't in Evernote (which with hindsight was a mistake) since it was by itself keeping things in chronological order.