(Archived) Notebook is GONE

[paulfeng 0]

Hi there. I'm on the latest build 3.0.0.594 of Evernote on Windows XP, and I am having a serious problem that I'm hoping to be able to get some help with: One of two notebooks in my main Notebook file has simply vanished, and I am really desperate to get that notebook back, since it has ALOT of data in it that I need.

Background : I have a notebook file that I've been using since 2005, and which has thousands of notes in it. This is a work notebook.

In April, I converted to the Evernote 3 Beta, and created a second notebook and all was well (although I didn't sync because I have work notes that I was concerned about the security for)

When I converted to Evernote 3, I notice now that my automatic backups stopped, which is a problem since I wasn't syncing.

Today, I noticed that the ENTIRE "WORK" NOTEBOOK is gone! It has thousands of notes in it. However, I notice that the notebook file that I'm opening is still 22 MB large, even though my personal notebook only has 4 text notes in it. I think the data is still there, and there's just something that's preventing Evernote from 'seeing' that other notebook.

Oh, one thing that happened yesterday that I am thinking might have caused this issue (perhaps a bug) is that I accidentally hit "Syncronize" for that notebook, and then canceled it. This happened right after that.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? This is a really big deal for me, and I'm missing 2 months worth of notes. Thanks!

-Paul

[crane 40]

This is obviously a serious problem. Don't bother with the forum (they do read it but some things seem to get lost), but try sending an email to feedback at evernote dot come.

[paulfeng 0]

Thanks, crane. I appreciate the suggestion - I did that too. I guess I'll just have to see if anyone responds on this forum or to my help request!

[engberg 89]

Paul -

I'm sorry to hear about your problem. Could you clarify a few things for me?

When you created these notebooks, were they normal (private/synchronized) notebooks, or did you create them as Local notebooks?

Had you ever synchronized to the service after creating these notebooks? I.e. did the server ever "see" these notebooks that you had created?

If so, did you ever access this account from another computer? For example, did you ever log in to the web UI and delete this notebook on the service?

Thanks

[paulfeng 0]

Hi, Dave, thanks for getting back.

Hmmm. I am starting to see what you are getting at. See answers below.

>> When you created these notebooks, were they normal (private/synchronized) notebooks, or did you create them as Local notebooks?

The main 'Work' notebook was a notebook I had originally created long ago, in version 1, and was using on I guess version 2.2. It was imported into 3.0.

>>Had you ever synchronized to the service after creating these notebooks? I.e. did the server ever "see" these notebooks that you had created?

>>If so, did you ever access this account from another computer? For example, did you ever log in to the web UI and delete this notebook on the >>service?

Yes, I had accidentally started syncing it when I first started using the Beta of 3.0, and realized I didn't want to sync. At that point, I stopped the sync, and I believe I deleted the notebook on the web interface. I also set Evernote to not sync in the Properties page. So it seems like when I accidentally selected Syncronize (which is right above Properties, which is what I was aiming to select) the thing it did was notice that I had previously deleted the notebook on the web interface?

Wow, if that's what happened, is there any way to recover the notes?

[engberg 89]

I'm sorry to say that I have bad news.

It sounds like here's the sequence that occurred:

1. created a standard (service) notebook.

2. synchronized to the service, so both the service and the client knew about the notebook.

3. stopped synchronizing with the client.

4. used the web UI, told the service that you wanted to permanently delete the notebook. (Said "yes" to the confirmation dialog.)

... later ...

5. synchronized to the service, which told the client that you deleted the notebook. client deletes the local copy.

I talked with our lead engineer, who did the DB work, and unfortunately there's no way to extract the deleted notes from the database file. The fragments you see in the file are no longer part of the database ... this is just unclaimed space that will be reused by the database as you make changes.

Here are a few points for the future, although I realize that none of these are helpful to you right now:

1. if you have a few notes that you don't want to synchronize to the service, you can make a new Local notebook to store those notes. Local notebooks are never synchronized to the service, so you don't need to avoid synchronizing your other notes to get this behavior.

2. you can put your other notes in a normal notebook and sync normally. then you have a backup of those notes on the service.

3. we intend to add a standard (XML-based) export format that will be supported in both the Win32 and Mac clients which you can use to back up one or more local notes, but this is unfortunately not implemented yet at this stage of the beta.

4. we'll look into modifying the client to handle your error in a less destructive way ... possibly by treating these new notes in a deleted notebook as "synchronization conflicts"

[paulfeng 0]

Argh. Wow, that's pretty much the worst possible outcome for me. Two months of notes down the drain. I really do hope you fix that problem - which in retrospect, I kind of suspected might happen. But there's no way to convert a notebook to "local", as far as I could tell.

Thanks for getting back though.

[ThomasStraten 0]

Dear Paul,

Look into your directory My documents.......\My EverNote Files\Databases3

IF you still have a .exb file there, your data is still in.

If its less than 9 MB you may want to open it into Notepad to check it out (will take 30 secs or more to open). Then look down for your data, it is buried into jibberish.

If its BIGGER than 9 MB, you need the indication below:

To recover (no format, probably no tags but at least the titles and the body of the notes (all format lost), you may want to open it with a best TEXT or Binary-hexa-text utility (I cannot recomment any, its been a long time since I needed it)

Then you might want to copy/paste the most relevant notes if found.

I know it is an ugly trick, but...something is better than nothing.

(IF YOU DELETED THE .exb file: open your trash (on the desktop) and recover the file than proceed as said above.)

Best of luck

Tom

[engberg 89]

But there's no way to convert a notebook to "local", as far as I could tell.

Again, I realize this doesn't help you right now, but for clarification:

You can make a Local notebook, and then select all of the notes in your other notebook, move them to the Local NB, and then delete the original notebook. This removes those notes from the service the next time you sync.

(We wanted to make this an explicit operation so that there was never any ambiguity about whether a Notebook was really Local or not, regardless of whether you've synchronized, etc.)

[paulfeng 0]

Thanks guys. Wasn't able to recover much... but it's good to know your fate and move on. Moving back to Evernote 2.2 until backup arrives.

[Jims 0]

I really feel the pain both for this user and for Evernote in seeing how it happened. I think this sort of understandable user behavior begs for reimplementing the local backup feature that was present in 2.2, as well as the option to synch local notebooks to USB.