(Archived) My Evernote grew huge in one week: "alternate" files?

[huib 0]

I am used to export my Evernote notes as a safety measure every two weeks.

Before the 6th of march my last export was 291 MB size, and the last one of today 462 MB.

I added max 50 notes (of 1000 now in total). So the EN file exploded in a few days.

Checking the database on Windows gave me an .exb file of 400 MB. I cannot do anything with this info.

But on my Mac I found in the "content" folder some huge (and recent) subfolders.

Looking further I saw large (15MB or larger!!) files that look like this one :"0209ad2d77897c85be1befc3b0ab8197-alternate"

The corresponding notes are never larger than 1 MB in the EN note list.

I can open those files with preview, and when I "save them as" on a different location they are only just some 20 K.

Is my database corrupted?

I already started with an Empty EN and let it sync fron start, but the same size.

I also could not view some new notes on my Ipad. The notes show, with "Pdf" in it, but do not open.

We are mostly talking about notes consisting of Scansnap PDF files.

I use EN on Macs, Windows, Ipad and Windows mobile.

---------------e d i t e d:

I looked at one single note that I found in the content folder. It is 29 MB large with a huge "alternate file in it.

I exported this one record and the sizes stays huge.

Can I delete those alternate files?

They look like corrupted versions of the original PDF's

Huib

[engberg 89]

Those are OCR versions of your PDF scans. In a few cases, those may be larger than your original PDF document, but we need them to perform text searches in your scans.

[huib 0]

Those are OCR versions of your PDF scans. In a few cases, those may be larger than your original PDF document, but we need them to perform text searches in your scans.

OK, but there is some corruption there.

1. I open the "alternate" file with OSX preview (20 MB large)

2. I see only two PDF like pages.

3. I save it on a different location and.....the file became 20K

Then:

4. I delete the note.

5. I make a new note, but with the same original PDF file, and

5a: Sometimes I get an nice alternate file from the server with a normal (<50K) size.

5b: Sometimes I keep getting a huge search file back from the server. In that case I start over at 4 but change the original PDF in a JPEG file and all seems OK.

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Question Dave: Am I allowed to, brute force, throw away alternate search files without corrupting my whole EN database?

For me the searching in PDF's is not so important.

Thx in advance anyway.

Huib

[engberg 89]

It's not safe to delete those files, no. We are investigating why a few of the OCR documents are getting particularly large OCR versions (due to fonts being included in the PDF).

[huib 0]

It's not safe to delete those files, no. We are investigating why a few of the OCR documents are getting particularly large OCR versions (due to fonts being included in the PDF).

OK,

I deleted the corresponding notes and the size is back to normal now.

For Windows I had to reload the data from scratch to make the DB smaller.

If you want I can send you a folder with suspect PDF's from which even the second time your server made a large alternate file (>10 MB)

Not 100% sure, but of a 37 Kb PDF the server made 9 MB search file!

Huib

[huib 0]

It's not safe to delete those files, no. We are investigating why a few of the OCR documents are getting particularly large OCR versions (due to fonts being included in the PDF).

Any news about this problem?

Or do you have an advice for the best settings for Scansnap.

Should I use a higher resolution?

Here are my settings .:

Huib