Evernote printing and pdf-export problems

[tired... 683]

(Evernote 10.112.2 Windows)

Printing is a total mess: 
- page content is squeezed and zoomed down
- longer notes (more than one page when printing) are missing content

PDF export works somehow, but some elements are missing, and formatting get deformed:
- tasks missing due dates, flags, reminders...
- divider lines missing
- attached files become "Untitled Attachment" 
- line spacing and formatting totally different from the original note
- spaces between word missing
- links missing color
- blockquotes and code blocks not working
- ect, etc...

Anybody else experiencing this?

I have tried to contact Evernote so-called "support" numerous times, but getting no help - not even any real response.

[mackid1993 1,379]

feedback@evernote.com

[tired... 683]

Trying to figure out how widespread this problem is. If other EN Win users are experiencing this too, or am I the only one with printing and pdf problems.

[AlbertR 747]

Also: - tasks missing due dates, flags, reminders...
Also: - divider lines missing
Also: - attached files become "Untitled Attachment" 
In Parts: - line spacing and formatting totally different from the original note
       ... but not a real problem...
OK on my site: - spaces between word missing
OK on my site: - links missing color
Also: - blockquotes and code blocks not working

[gazumped 12,110]

Easy fix - use a better word processor or a full-featured PDF editor to create a file and attach it to a note.  Some of those apps cost more than Evernote (and yes,  some are free) but in general you get what you pay for.  None of them offer the extra features that Evernote does,  so it's maybe understandable that Evernote doesn't try to build all the externally available features into their Editor.  Plus the content is called "notes" for a reason...  And messing with the editor is likely a very very complicated and hazardous task given how interrelated the content is with the other features and its host browser(s).  Improvements might be planned,  but I'd guess they're going to be collecting issues for a while so they can all be tackled in one operation.

So:  as ever (you may have seen this before...) as we're (mostly) only other users here - feedback@evernote.com to alert Evernote in a timely manner,  or https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/29101069844371-How-to-contact-Evernote-Support if it's causing an issue you need to address.

PS - I got the full Adobe package a little over a year ago because it was a deal...  if you think you have issues with Evernote you should try them out.  I feel like Acrobat has taken over my desktop and is only reluctantly allowing me access to my own files.  And there's an exit penalty if you cancel!!

I hear PDFGear is a good free option...

[tired... 683]

Uh?? I think you posted on the wrong thread (...or didn't read the problem description?) 

[gazumped 12,110]

5 minutes ago, tired... said:

Uh?? I think you posted on the wrong thread (...or didn't read the problem description?) 

In more simple words then...

1. If you're having trouble printing content,  create it in an external editor (or copy it to one) and attach it to a note.  Print from the editor software.
2. If you're printing to PDF see (1) above.

[tired... 683]

You probably don't know Evernote and its functions so well !? Unfortunately it's not possible to copy tasks and a lot of other elements from Evernote to an external editor.

[gazumped 12,110]

22 minutes ago, tired... said:

You probably don't know Evernote and its functions so well !? Unfortunately it's not possible to copy tasks and a lot of other elements from Evernote to an external editor.

? Are you in the right thread?  The original query was about printing,  not 'other elements'.  I'm (mostly) ignoring the snark and trying to help,  but if you just want to whine about things I'll leave you to it.

[mackid1993 1,379]

2 hours ago, gazumped said:

Easy fix - use a better word processor or a full-featured PDF editor to create a file and attach it to a note. 

I was going to come in and say this. But I'd be accused of belittling others problems, so I deleted my comment and backed out of this post. Notes aren't intended for document layout to be printed. That's what word processors are for.

[tired... 683]

9 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Notes aren't intended for document layout to be printed. That's what word processors are for.

Do you speak on the behalf of Evernote / Bending Spoons?

[tired... 683]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

? Are you in the right thread?  The original query was about printing,  not 'other elements'.  I'm (mostly) ignoring the snark and trying to help,  but if you just want to whine about things I'll leave you to it.

"Easy fix" and giving a workaround that doesn't fix the fundamental problem, and doesn't even work. It's not possible to copy content, as it is, from Evernote to an external editor. As a long time Evernote user you for sure know that. So I wondered if you by mistake had written to the wrong thread.

I think we all appreciate the work you do trying to keep the forum running. I'm not here to argue with you - just trying to figure out how to keep Evernote at least somehow working, until I find another solution.

Shouldn't be too much to ask for a professional notetaking and productivity app to be able to print and export content as pdf.

 

[mackid1993 1,379]

7 minutes ago, tired... said:

Do you speak on the behalf of Evernote / Bending Spoons?

Brb, gonna change my username to Mr. Spoon

[gazumped 12,110]

34 minutes ago, tired... said:

It's not possible to copy content, as it is, from Evernote to an external editor.

That seems overly sweeping and at least partly incorrect - most standard text formatting will copy across.  I'll grant tables and images might be a problem,  but they're (mostly) fixable;  and in this case it's a once-and-forgotten fix rather than every single time you want to output.  I'm sure Evernote will fix the print problems eventually,  but how high it is on their agenda is unknown.  I'm guessing if it were easy and quick it would already have been done.  In fact it may even be that they can't fix the print issues until they've finished tweaking the features and general layout - or at least they won't want to fix it now,  only to have to do it again later...

Anyhow.  External apps are an option.  Take 'em or leave 'em..

[tired... 683]

6 hours ago, AlbertR said:

OK on my site: - spaces between word missing

This is an old bug. Seems to happen especially when there is non-formatted space between formatted words or sections. But also on other occasions. Can't figure out the whole pattern or logic behind this strange behavior. 

   

I reported it for the first time about 9 months ago (and probably even before), but the Evernote team seems not to care? 

[AlbertR 747]

3 hours ago, tired... said:

This is an old bug. Seems to happen especially when there is non-formatted space between formatted words or sections.

Sorry, can't reproduce it. In my test case, both print and PDF export work correct:

Original note:

Printout and PDF export:

<offtopic 😉>
But all-in-all I think we really should not look for workarounds. We and EN are interrested in getting the product to work as users expect.
</offtopic>

[tired... 683]

39 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

Sorry, can't reproduce it. In my test case, both print and PDF export work correct:

Original note:

Printout and PDF export:

<offtopic 😉>
But all-in-all I think we really should not look for workarounds. We and EN are interrested in getting the product to work as users expect.
</offtopic>

My "Evernote pdf-test note" is here: https://share.evernote.com/note/83c701b6-b04b-3bc4-cd32-54e0fc1f2f5c

Don't know if it is possible for others to open it in EN desktop and export as pdf?

[AlbertR 747]

2 hours ago, tired... said:

Don't know if it is possible for others to open it in EN desktop and export as pdf?

It's possible to open it in EN-Web. I copied it to my test-notebook. There it was synced to EN-App on my desktop.

It show some interresting effects:

• all except the task has been copied
• printing in EN-App shows the following

• Box around content is not visible
• striked-through checked text is visible without strike
• links lost colour
• blockquote lost the vertical line on the left
• blockquoted text is reformatted and lost auto-colours
• devider is lost
• line wie formatted text lost spaces between words 😉
• attachment is shown as "Untitled Attachment"

[tired... 683]

And the empty line (with one empty space) seems to have disappeared already when sharing? 🤔

Many thanks for your help 👍🤩

[mackid1993 1,379]

Maybe it's worth mentioning that they recently completely rewrote the entire sharing mechanism as well as the viewer for shared notes. A lite editor is also coming so when you share a note with a non EN user they will be able to soon edit the note as well. Perhaps sharing the note had something to do with this. It may be worth opening a ticket and sharing a screen recording. I find screen recordings ie. video really help get past first tier support. Especially if you can prove if it is happening on your primary account and doesn't happen on a test account for example. I'm having an issue that is isolated to my shard right now and am working with an engineer on it right now. Maybe your issue is isolated to your account.

[tired... 683]

28 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Maybe it's worth mentioning that they recently completely rewrote the entire sharing mechanism as well as the viewer for shared notes. A lite editor is also coming so when you share a note with a non EN user they will be able to soon edit the note as well. Perhaps sharing the note had something to do with this. It may be worth opening a ticket and sharing a screen recording. I find screen recordings ie. video really help get past first tier support. Especially if you can prove if it is happening on your primary account and doesn't happen on a test account for example. I'm having an issue that is isolated to my shard right now and am working with an engineer on it right now. Maybe your issue is isolated to your account.

Yes, the new sharing seems quite promising already. And yes, the missing line (when sharing) might be caused by coding not finished yet. So, i'm probably not going to take it as any bigger issue  ...yet 😉

My main concern in this case is printing and pdf-export problems.

[mackid1993 1,379]

10 minutes ago, tired... said:

Yes, the new sharing seems quite promising already. And yes, the missing line (when sharing) might be caused by coding not finished yet. So, i'm probably not going to take it as any bigger issue  ...yet 😉

My main concern in this case is printing and pdf-export problems.

Give it some time. They are very clearly rewriting things component by component, so many of the bugs you report that are going unfixed are known but are likely part of a larger project related to a rewrite of a larger component. Unfortunately they don't share their roadmap and they likely focus on features that are used by more people first based on their analytics. Printing is going to be less popular than sharing. I'm sure down the line they'll continue their improvements. It's a new company with a new vision, the first year was kind of getting the business in order and getting acclimated learning the codebase, we are just closing out year two where they rolled out loads of new features and a big redesign and huge backend overhaul. It's gonna take time. 😉

[s2sailor 2,486]

4 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

Give it some time.

Says the guy who has been hammering Evernote, from all angles, over his own personal problem 🤣.  Couldn’t resist.

In fairness, these printing problems have been reported for a long time.  If they are knowingly in the backlog and planned to be fixed in the future, a brief comment from support to that effect is not asking too much.

[mackid1993 1,379]

Just now, s2sailor said:

Says the guy who has been hammering Evernote, from all angles, over his own personal problem 🤣.  Couldn’t resist.

In fairness, these printing problems have been reported for a long time.  If they are knowingly in the backlog and planned to be fixed in the future, a brief comment from support to that effect is not asking too much.

Hey they solved my problem. I've been going back and forth with the engineer all weekend. She's been great. Just waiting to see why the webclipper is calling a deprecated API on my shard and I should (hopefully) be all good. In total I got 6 months of free Personal. I'm happy now. Federico responded to me at 2AM his time on Twitter. It's all good in the end.

[AlbertR 747]

9 hours ago, tired... said:

And the empty line (with one empty space) seems to have disappeared already when sharing?

No - the shared note shows the empty line. After copying the note, to a local one, the empty line disappears.

[AlbertR 747]

8 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

They are very clearly rewriting things component by component,

I often have the impression that they're not rewriting components but try to get foreign components (OpenSource) running. Have a look to the license information file of EN-App and count references to such foreign component ("^[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*.*https"). You'll find 876 URLs - mostly to Github projects 😉

I know that it is impossible to completely avoid to use such components. Nobody should re-invent all that stuff.

But especially around the note editor I expect some more activity to improve it by own development. 

[Jon/t 1,688]

16 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

But especially around the note editor I expect some more activity to improve it by own development. 

 

They also contribute and donate to some of the projects as well. They did with the sync engine they used for RTE. They also donated I think 10K to the ivebeenpawned service  for using their database to secure logins and passwords so not just a one way thing.

9 hours ago, mackid1993 said:

They are very clearly rewriting things component by component

Yup. The backend has been shifting from a single monolith to micro-services.

[AlbertR 747]

59 minutes ago, Jon/t said:

They also contribute and donate to some of the projects as well. They did with the sync engine they used for RTE. They also donated I think 10K to the ivebeenpawned service  for using their database to secure logins and passwords so not just a one way thing.

OK, fine. Why don't they "Do good and speek about"? 😉.

[Jon/t 1,688]

12 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

OK, fine. Why don't they "Do good and speek about"? 😉.

I think they did on one or two of the blog posts and also on social. That's kind of how I found out. 

[mackid1993 1,379]

2 hours ago, AlbertR said:

I often have the impression that they're not rewriting components but try to get foreign components (OpenSource) running. Have a look to the license information file of EN-App and count references to such foreign component ("^[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*.*https"). You'll find 876 URLs - mostly to Github projects 😉

I know that it is impossible to completely avoid to use such components. Nobody should re-invent all that stuff.

But especially around the note editor I expect some more activity to improve it by own development. 

This is how software development works. Do you think Electron is developed in house or an open source project by a foundation? What about React Native used by the mobile apps. Every piece of software includes open source components. This is nothing special or new. 

[AlbertR 747]

<sorry> I know that it is impossible to completely avoid to use such components. Nobody should re-invent all that stuff. 
But especially around the note editor I expect some more activity to improve it by own development. </sorry>

@mackid1993 Do you really work with your note lists and texts every day most your time? Never got/get upset with unpredicted cursor hops (around attachments, headlines, collapsable lists, TOCs) in notes or even sudden note deletions because of focus changes in lists?

Every nice feature is OK for itself. But many of them seem to have problems in connection with the others...
And here the developers often come to the same questions:

• Which component causes problem? (It's not easy to figure this out!)
• Should I replace it or go into foreign code to change it? (Both is complicated and needs many tests...)
• Or isn't it better (on a long go) to re-implement it by myself?

[Jon/t 1,688]

7 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

• Which component causes problem? (It's not easy to figure this out!)
•  

Should be easier when using microservices as each service will be separate from the whole and using its own dependencies. Theoretically it should(!) be easier to debug.

[AlbertR 747]

39 minutes ago, Jon/t said:

when using microservices as each service will be separate from the whole

Are you sure, EN uses microservices on client side? My arguments point especially to the note editor. It's the UI that feels wildly screwed together in so many parts.

At the end (when we users want to print), every single component needs adjustments (i.e. boxes with auto-formatted content - see examples above). It is no coincidence that the new features within the notes show problems on printing...

[mackid1993 1,379]

1 hour ago, AlbertR said:

<sorry> I know that it is impossible to completely avoid to use such components. Nobody should re-invent all that stuff. 
But especially around the note editor I expect some more activity to improve it by own development. </sorry>

@mackid1993 Do you really work with your note lists and texts every day most your time? Never got/get upset with unpredicted cursor hops (around attachments, headlines, collapsable lists, TOCs) in notes or even sudden note deletions because of focus changes in lists?

Every nice feature is OK for itself. But many of them seem to have problems in connection with the others...
And here the developers often come to the same questions:

• Which component causes problem? (It's not easy to figure this out!)
• Should I replace it or go into foreign code to change it? (Both is complicated and needs many tests...)
• Or isn't it better (on a long go) to re-implement it by myself?

Android yes, it's bad. Windows no, I have no issues.