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Selective Notebook Sync


csbrown

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Selective sync of notebooks does not exist at this time. 

You can however create local notebook(s), File - New Notebook - New Local Notebook, and move the notes you don't want syncing to your work computer to those local notebooks.  Be sure to backup those local notebooks yourself using the EN export feature. 

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3 hours ago, osibert said:

Should be able to turn sync on and off on a per-notebook basis so that devices with limited capabilities or roles do not need to have an account's entire note database stored locally.

This is a different request than posted above.

Selective Offline Notebooks have been implemented for users with limited storage (small SSDs), on IOS/Android devices.  We need this feature for Windows/Mac devices
- Offline Notebooks provide access for users when not connected to the internet.
- When online, ALL notebooks are available; they "show up" on all devices.

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I completely agree about Selective Sync. Since the monthly quota for paid accounts is now 1 GB, my Evernote database is getting unwieldy. In addition to the large size, there's significant performance degradation, especially when starting Evernote (Mac and Windows).

I have a number of notebooks I don't need on every computer but I do want to access via the Web interface. For example, on my Macbook Pro, I use Boot Camp and use both the Mac and Windows clients. I don't need every notebook in both locations, but at the same time, a local notebook is the exact opposite of what I need.

I had a similar situation with Dropbox until they implemented selective sync. I would have 1 paid account an 1 free account and then "share" the folders I needed from the paid account to the free. It was a PITA, but it worked in the short run. I don't think I can set up a similar setup with Evernote and have a decent experience.

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This seems like such a basic feature to want and by definition it will be the evernote power users (i.e. their paying clients) who want it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE implement this instead of vanity projects like Dark Mode.

 

Edit: Just noticed my Subscription:BASIC badge... do you know why? Because I have developed master and slave accounts with certain notebooks shared between my accounts as part of the workaround to this missing feature.

 

Evernote is a productivity tool, therefore help us remove information bloat and contextually irrelevant interruptions by helping us build a system that works for people in their various life roles and focuses. Come on guys!!

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7 minutes ago, DTLow said:

This identifies the account subscription tier; Basic, Plus, Premium

You’ve misread my comment. I know what it is. My point was that I am a premium user but I have multiple evernote accounts. One premium, two basic. I then share certain notebooks between these accounts. I didn’t realise I was signed in here as my free account ID. 

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If you're using a desktop client (Windows or Mac), you can set up notebooks as "local", meaning that they do not sync to the cloud. Caveats:

* You mush choose whether they're local or synced at notebook creation time; there's no changing once they're created.

* Notebooks that aren't synced are not backed up automatically. You'll need to do that yourself.

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Thanks, I understand that. I'll try to explain my question better. I have 20+ note books. Several are career related. One is for photography, one is beer making, one is kayaking. I want them all to replicate on the computers that I own.

When I am using a computer that is owned by my employer, I only want to replicate the career related notebooks (as my employer would not appreciate beer related material). Is there a setting where this can be done?

I would guess that I have to set up a user id that I use at work; and then share the career notebooks with that user. But I really don't want to pay for two accounts. Does this make it clear?

Thanks!

Craig

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When I am using a computer that is owned by my employer, I only want to replicate the career related notebooks (as my employer would not appreciate beer related material). Is there a setting where this can be done?

I would guess that I have to set up a user id that I use at work; and then share the career notebooks with that user. But I really don't want to pay for two accounts. Does this make it clear?

Check out http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=8108#p107704

The post has a link to a 3rd party app called Jazzaround that facilitates switching between Evernote accounts.

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I would like to ask for this too.

Some folders contain a lot of files that can be in the size of gigabytes and I would not want this on my client, but do on the cloud.

Using the web-based version can be painful sometimes as you cannot select multiple notes and attribute to a tag.

Please have some form of switch on the desktop client that allows notebook to be a virtual or local+cloud.

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I would also like to see selective sync with the full native Mac client. I have a premium Evernote account which I use for work and personal. I would like to keep just the work stuff on my work laptop. I have thought about using the Evernote web client, but it just ins't there yet. It really sucks up CPU utilization with all the JS in the background. Do like toe looks of it though. Would be nice to see this features as an option.

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+1 for Selective Sync. This seems like a basic feature as we approach 2012. Apple's given EN a head start, but they're coming for this segment, too.

If Apple does as good a job with whatever-their-competing-client-is on Windows as they did with iTunes, well, I will wait to be impressed.

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+1 for Selective Sync. This seems like a basic feature as we approach 2012. Apple's given EN a head start, but they're coming for this segment, too.

If Apple does as good a job with whatever-their-competing-client-is on Windows as they did with iTunes, well, I will wait to be impressed.

In any event, I'd like Evernote to offer Selective Sync.

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+1 for Selective Sync. This seems like a basic feature as we approach 2012. Apple's given EN a head start, but they're coming for this segment, too.

If Apple does as good a job with whatever-their-competing-client-is on Windows as they did with iTunes, well, I will wait to be impressed.

This is irrelevant to the request.

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Me too request: Please add selective sync of notebooks to the desktop apps / Clients (as in dropbox).

I want to loose the sync-all desktop client (mac) today required for "automatic scan to cloud" in a secure way (with Cannon P150). The scanner connected computer is not where I look up notes.

Or is there a scan to cloud solution without user interaction, where you do not use the Evernote email inbox or give your login away to 3rd party?

Selective sync seems like such an obvious missing feature that i wonder what policy is behind it. in fact it is so obvious that it is on iPad and smartphones, and obviously, small laptops or desktops with other disk filling chores need it too ... obviously :) Yes?

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Me too request: Please add selective sync of notebooks to the desktop apps / Clients (as in dropbox).

I want to loose the sync-all desktop client (mac) today required for "automatic scan to cloud" in a secure way (with Cannon P150). The scanner connected computer is not where I look up notes.

Or is there a scan to cloud solution without user interaction, where you do not use the Evernote email inbox or give your login away to 3rd party?

Selective sync seems like such an obvious missing feature that i wonder what policy is behind it. in fact it is so obvious that it is on iPad and smartphones, and obviously, small laptops or desktops with other disk filling chores need it too ... obviously :) Yes?

Hi. Welcome to the forums!

I believe that Phil Libin (CEO) mentioned that this kind of feature would have to come eventually (see Evernote podcast #28), so I think they are aware of the need. I imagine that it will take some time, though, to implement such a major change. I am looking forward to it :)

By scanning to the cloud, I assume you mean scanning directly into Evernote without having it on your local drive. Even if this were possible, it is a moot point, because Evernote automatically syncs everything to your local drive.

As for the third-party apps and giving away your login information, as I understand it, we no longer give this information to third-party developers.

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Me too request: Please add selective sync of notebooks to the desktop apps / Clients (as in dropbox).

I want to loose the sync-all desktop client (mac) today required for "automatic scan to cloud" in a secure way (with Cannon P150). The scanner connected computer is not where I look up notes.

Or is there a scan to cloud solution without user interaction, where you do not use the Evernote email inbox or give your login away to 3rd party?

Selective sync seems like such an obvious missing feature that i wonder what policy is behind it. in fact it is so obvious that it is on iPad and smartphones, and obviously, small laptops or desktops with other disk filling chores need it too ... obviously :) Yes?

Hi. Welcome to the forums!

I believe that Phil Libin (CEO) mentioned that this kind of feature would have to come eventually (see Evernote podcast #28), so I think they are aware of the need. I imagine that it will take some time, though, to implement such a major change. I am looking forward to it :)

By scanning to the cloud, I assume you mean scanning directly into Evernote without having it on your local drive. Even if this were possible, it is a moot point, because Evernote automatically syncs everything to your local drive.

As for the third-party apps and giving away your login information, as I understand it, we no longer give this information to third-party developers.

---

Thanks!

I need to scan documents to Evernote exactly without having all my notebooks sync back to the originating desktop computer where I don't want/use them. For that the Evernote desktop client needs to have selective sync.

Alternatively I want to delete the Evernote desktop client and instead use a 3rd party app for uploading scanned docs to evernote cloud directly, and that 3rd party app would preferably have a "no user interaction" option and only have online access to one "inbox" notebook in my Evernote account for security reasons.

I found Scandrop, but it gets access to all notebooks and seems to need user interaction in the "scan to cloud" proces.

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Yes, this is going to be a deal breaker for me if it isn't implemented by the time my subscription runs out.

I want to selectively sync notebooks, and ideally:

  • The ability to have note summaries synced for a notebook (so that you don't have to download the whole note, but can still browse: e.g. thumbnail with text)
  • Be able to view a note that is not synced where a summary is available if connected to the internet. Note is only cached temporarily
  • The index for all notes to be downloadable so you can still search all your notes even if the note is not downloaded

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+1

totally necesarry when you want to use evernote as announced (Capture anything. Access anywhere.). all avaliable workarounds (local notebooks, several accounts) are not really satisfying, especially for premium customers. looking forward to selective syncing.

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This really is becoming an issue for me and for many others. I have a MacBook Air with a 128GB SSD and I find myself relying on Evernote more and more. I scan everything into Evernote and then shred/recycle the originals. If you have a small amount of data in Evernote then selective sync isn't a big deal...but if you're like me it is a HUGE deal and will eventually (likely by the first of 2013 for me personally) force me to delete the Evernote app from my Mac which I hate to do.

The web client is certainly good, but there are things I need offline on my MacBook Air. I only need certain things mind you, but it's critical that this be an option.

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This really is becoming an issue for me and for many others. I have a MacBook Air with a 128GB SSD and I find myself relying on Evernote more and more. I scan everything into Evernote and then shred/recycle the originals. If you have a small amount of data in Evernote then selective sync isn't a big deal...but if you're like me it is a HUGE deal and will eventually (likely by the first of 2013 for me personally) force me to delete the Evernote app from my Mac which I hate to do.

The web client is certainly good, but there are things I need offline on my MacBook Air. I only need certain things mind you, but it's critical that this be an option.

Hi. Welcome to the forums!

I am in the same boat, but I am afraid that removing the OSX app from my computer is inconceviable at this time (I get way too much done with it), and the Web app (while useful) is woefully inadequate for my needs, so I have shifted a lot of my files to the Web. This is quite unwieldy, and I lose important functionality like Spotlight searches and easy browsing of research. Hopefully, selective sync can be implemented sooner than later!

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This really is becoming an issue for me and for many others. I have a MacBook Air with a 128GB SSD and I find myself relying on Evernote more and more. [...] If you have a small amount of data in Evernote then selective sync isn't a big deal...but if you're like me it is a HUGE deal and will eventually (likely by the first of 2013 for me personally) force me to delete the Evernote app from my Mac which I hate to do.

Ditto.

Am on an Air with 250Gb, and still contend with space management problems.

I've been relying more and more on Dropbox for that very reason. Selective sync gives me the ability to store only what's necessary on the Air while keeping all files on the Mini in the office. If I'm missing something on the Air, I just go to Dropbox online and download the specific item. Tight, clean, controllable.

The MBAir only has just-so-much space, then :::poof!::: Dead in the water with a maxed out hard drive.

Please, please, please...selective sync, soon. I dearly love Evernote, but can't afford the risk of having it crash my drive. :)

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This really is becoming an issue for me and for many others. I have a MacBook Air with a 128GB SSD and I find myself relying on Evernote more and more. [...] If you have a small amount of data in Evernote then selective sync isn't a big deal...but if you're like me it is a HUGE deal and will eventually (likely by the first of 2013 for me personally) force me to delete the Evernote app from my Mac which I hate to do.

Ditto.

Am on an Air with 250Gb, and still contend with space management problems.

I've been relying more and more on Dropbox for that very reason. Selective sync gives me the ability to store only what's necessary on the Air while keeping all files on the Mini in the office. If I'm missing something on the Air, I just go to Dropbox online and download the specific item. Tight, clean, controllable.

The MBAir only has just-so-much space, then :::poof!::: Dead in the water with a maxed out hard drive.

Please, please, please...selective sync, soon. I dearly love Evernote, but can't afford the risk of having it crash my drive. :)

Yeah. I crashed a lot over the last few days.

I think what happened is that I was doing something with PDFs that seems to have temporarily eaten up all available extra space (that was a surprise), and I had a bunch of shared notebooks with thousands of notes in them (many gigabytes). Crashing was not much fun, but running out of storage during a sync caused Evernote to have to re-index all of my notes (10,000+) as well. That took a long time.

Deleting the shared notebooks freed up space, and now I am more careful with the program that I am using. None of this crashing is Evernote's fault. However, ideally I wouldn't have to delete shared notebooks at all, and I could certainly use the 13GB + my account is taking up (it will likely be 25GB or more by this time next year). Selective sync would be a welcome feature indeed.

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Update: I ran out of space again on my Mac today, so I did some digging around to see what was happening. Somehow, Evernote has grown much larger since I last checked, and it now occupies about 1/4 of the available space (26.98 GB of 120GB) in my local drive. I underestimated its size in the previous post, but I have to admit that I have no idea how it could have grown so large -- a month or two ago it was about half this size. I have already deleted almost all of the notebooks people were sharing with me, and removed things like iTunes and all but a handful of my files. I am sure I will be able to scrounge around and find enough space for the application, but I don't see how I am going to continue through the year at this pace (Macbook Air 128 GB). I do hope selective sync is coming sooner rather than later.

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With regard to the selective sync, can I add an Amen! Yes! Please! Indeed! Why Not!? and Yes (did I already said that?)

Honestly, this really is an important function that would make a mahoosive difference to the way I use Evernote at work and at home.

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Any comments from EN on this? cheers

EN reads all the posts on the board but does not comment on them all. Nor do they publish their roadmap or ETAs. The most you usually get is a "thank you for the suggestion".

Yep. And, they have already commented on it. See Evernote Podcast #28 (40:25-43:28). It is "inevitable." However, we don't know the timeline, so it could be anywhere from tomorrow to a hundred years from now :)

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+1 on selective sync. I have a single premium account that I use for both my career and for very personal things (finances, journaling, etc). Having selective sync is really needed as more of us put our entire lives into Evernote.

-Jack

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This 'selective sync' feature would be useful for me too.  I had been using Evernote frequently for several years and my usage has decreased significantly to conserve hard drive space in my laptop. 

This feature is also stopping me from upgrading to premium since I do not even upload 60MB per month as a result. (Of course, there are other premium features than just extra space.) 

 

This selective sync feature would be useful if I can choose to archive some of my notes to be stored on evernote servers only, just like Sugarsync provides a 'web-archive' feature. 

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I have been a paid customer since 2009.  I've struggled with some early versions of the software, and been very happy with the development of the product and service.  However, this one feature has been asked for since I started, and while a random comment in some podcast says "inevitable", that doesn't help me in any way.  This one feature will be the reason I pack up and move to a different service.  There is way too much competition for Evernote to deny such a simply and obvious feature.  

 

Stop with the UI polishing and get one with features that actually matter to the customers that pay your paychecks. 

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I have been a paid customer since 2009.  I've struggled with some early versions of the software, and been very happy with the development of the product and service.  However, this one feature has been asked for since I started, and while a random comment in some podcast says "inevitable", that doesn't help me in any way.  This one feature will be the reason I pack up and move to a different service.  There is way too much competition for Evernote to deny such a simply and obvious feature.  

 

Stop with the UI polishing and get one with features that actually matter to the customers that pay your paychecks. 

Hi. You might want to take a look at this post for some insight into why it is not here yet, and Evernote's continuing interest in implementing it.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/34234-evernote-505/?p=186642

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Alright Evernote, we've waited long enough for this feature.  This is basic functionality for a server-based solution with client software.  It's starting to look like amateur hour at the sh*tshow out here.  Can we have a date for selective sync or not?  

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I have been a paid customer since 2009.  I've struggled with some early versions of the software, and been very happy with the development of the product and service.  However, this one feature has been asked for since I started, and while a random comment in some podcast says "inevitable", that doesn't help me in any way.  This one feature will be the reason I pack up and move to a different service.  There is way too much competition for Evernote to deny such a simply and obvious feature.  

 

Stop with the UI polishing and get one with features that actually matter to the customers that pay your paychecks. 

Hi. You might want to take a look at this post for some insight into why it is not here yet, and Evernote's continuing interest in implementing it.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/34234-evernote-505/?p=186642

Where in that post are the limitations on implementing selective sync at?  I didn't see it.

 

-j

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I have been a paid customer since 2009.  I've struggled with some early versions of the software, and been very happy with the development of the product and service.  However, this one feature has been asked for since I started, and while a random comment in some podcast says "inevitable", that doesn't help me in any way.  This one feature will be the reason I pack up and move to a different service.  There is way too much competition for Evernote to deny such a simply and obvious feature.  

 

Stop with the UI polishing and get one with features that actually matter to the customers that pay your paychecks. 

Hi. You might want to take a look at this post for some insight into why it is not here yet, and Evernote's continuing interest in implementing it.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/34234-evernote-505/?p=186642

Where in that post are the limitations on implementing selective sync at?  I didn't see it.

 

-j

 

Hi. I don't know what you mean by "limitations." Here are some of the reasons, though: " there are a host of usability issues that have made this impossible in the past and will continue to hinder progress in the near-term future." I don't think Evernote has ever given a date for the implementation of any feature, though we once got a month when they said Evernote Business would roll out in December 2012. As the post I linked said, they are working on it, and Evernote staff are also wanting to see this feature, so we'll just have to wait until it is ready. 

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+1 My vote for selective sync.  I recognize that it is probably a difficult thing to sort out how the online/offline behavior should work [and then make it a code reality] but I think I need it.  

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Boy, what a pain.  I left Evernote a year or two ago for Dropbox, due in large part to the absence of selective sync in Evernote.  But, frankly, the note-taking experience in the Dropbox-based iOS solutions I tried sucks compared to Evernote.  So I decided to come back, after I took stock of where Evernote was, development-wise.  I was aware that selective sync was not implemented yet, but I conned myself into thinking that the stock answer around here -- use two accounts, and share notebooks as necessary -- wasn't all that bad.  It is and anyone who thinks that's a good solution doesn't understand why the people asking for selective sync are so desperate for that functionality. 

 

But, I gave it a shot, and was irritated that there isn't a way to share (or accept) notebooks in bulk -- nope, one-by-one is the only option.  But I kept conning myself, as once the notebooks were shared, things seemed good.  The last straw, though, is that you can't take joined notebooks offline!  I didn't see that coming!  Why not -- support says it's a limitation of the device (iOS).  I don't get why your own notebooks can go offline, but not shared notebooks.  Assuming there's a good reason, it doesn't change the fact that there remains no alternative for people seeking selective sync. 

 

Taking the foregoing into account along with the other compromises Evernote makes to my own preferred organization structure (which requires more than one level of hierarchy, put simply -- sorry, tags aren't the be-all, end-all), I'm left completely disappointed (AGAIN!).  So close, Evernote!

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I have many files(pdf, doc) archived in Evernote. These files could possibly not be used in a long time. And I don't want it to occupy my disk space. 

 

I hope Evernote could come up with ONLINE ONLY notebooks in next release. 

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I have many files(pdf, doc) archived in Evernote. These files could possibly not be used in a long time. And I don't want it to occupy my disk space. 

 

I hope Evernote could come up with ONLINE ONLY notebooks in next release.

Yes :)

I hope you don't mind that I merged your thread with this one. There are others asking for this feature. The good news is that Evernotes is listening, and they are also interested in developing it, but it may not be here for a little while longer.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/34234-evernote-505/page-3#entry186642

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I want...

  • The index for all notes to be downloadable so you can still search all your notes even if the note is not downloaded

 

That raises some interesting issues for third parties trying to implement this feature.

 

I manually create "home pages" where I have a table of internal links to the most important pages relating to given topics. Those are in a special notebook of their own. I wonder if there's some scope for an automated "abstracting" app doing something similar to create a notebook that you use offline, as an index page.

 

Would you settle for the text content only being stored offline without markup or media?

 

Evernote's index of terms from scanning may not be available for offline searches - if so that would make this feature dramatically more difficult.

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We can have fully synchronised notebooks and local notebooks.... but what about something in between?

 

I.e. 'Sync on request'.

 

What do I mean by that?

 

A notebook that will sync to the cloud (and thus be available everywhere) - but will only sync to a particular device when explicitly requested to do so.

 

When a device is 'unsyncced' the notebook remains in the cloud, but all traces of the notebook are removed on that device.

 

Each installation would have an option to 'get "sync on request" notebooks by default' - and the default would be 'off'.

 

Application: When using evernote on a work machine, I may not want to have private notebooks synchronised to it, however, I would want them to synchronise to all my other devices.

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We can have fully synchronised notebooks and local notebooks.... but what about something in between?

 

I.e. 'Sync on request'.

 

What do I mean by that?

 

A notebook that will sync to the cloud (and thus be available everywhere) - but will only sync to a particular device when explicitly requested to do so.

 

When a device is 'unsyncced' the notebook remains in the cloud, but all traces of the notebook are removed on that device.

 

Each installation would have an option to 'get "sync on request" notebooks by default' - and the default would be 'off'.

 

Application: When using evernote on a work machine, I may not want to have private notebooks synchronised to it, however, I would want them to synchronise to all my other devices.

 

Hi. I think this is the same as the longstanding request for "selective sync." I have merged your thread with the existing one. The good news is that Evernote has said it is "inevitable" and developers have confirmed that they are working on it. However, the bad news is that we don't have it yet. 

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Indeed, it does seem to be. Thanks - apologies for not spotting the pre-existing thread (I didn't spot it as I didn't get the right buzzword of 'selective sync' )

 

No worries. That's what I am here to do! 

 

By the way, Evernote has termed them "online-only" notebooks, and said we will get to the point when people's accounts are huge and it is no longer feasible to sync to every device (I reached that point in August last year). However, there are search issues involved with this, and so it is not here yet. If you want to hear them talk about it, check out 40:25-43:28 in "Evernote Podcast #28 – Gnarly, Dude," June 30, 2011,  http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2011/06/30/evernote-podcast-28-gnarly-dude/

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Just to poke the hornet's nest a little - just a teensy weensy bit...

 

Are they working on selective sync for their other product - Penultimate?

 

THAT'S the one for which I and many others are also waiting for selective sync.  I used to love Penultimate (and I know this isn't the Penultimate section of the forum) but have had to change to a different app, when Evernote introduced non-selective sync-everything between PU and EN.  Every little scribble and doodle gets synced to EN, and if I delete it in EN it disappears from PU.

 

So, maybe if they're looking into selective sync for EN itself, perhaps they could be looking to tie in a system of selective sync between PU and EN as well - said he, hopefully... ;)

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Not sure is +1 will help - but this is something I see coming very soon.

 

I am imagining an SSD super  light laptop with only 64GB of disk space - I currently am in trouble on a 250 GB LT

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+1

I'm at 15GB in my Evernote. I use it for archiving of my mail and documents, so I can search them later from anywhere. I would like to put more, but I can't keep an archive live on all my machines. I can't get away from using the client, as I have some script on my Mac that automatically imports certain type of files, and it requires the client.

I hope it is included soon, on the Mac client as well :)

Thank you!

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There's been a lot of discussion and many requests in the past about being able to selectively sync some notebooks (but not others) on the desktop version of Evernote.

 

Has this feature been implemented yet?

 

If not, is there any indication of when? (even a ballpark estimate?)

 

With computer storage space shrinking and the greater need for cloud-only accessibility for some files, seems this feature is overdue.

 

Thanks!

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No, the feature has not been implemented and EN has not made any indication when it may be implemented.  But that is their MO in regards to most features.

 

All we can do is sit on the sidelines and watch.

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August,

 

You can create a desktop-only notebook by defining it as a "local notebook".  When you create a new notebook, the window that's displayed in which you name it also gives you the option to make it a Local Notebook as opposed to a Synchronized Notebook.

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Thanks Phils, but it's actually the opposite that is of more value to me:

 

I want to have cloud-only folders that do not store the contents on the computer -- the contents of these notebooks are ONLY stored in the cloud.

 

My Macbook Air has such little storage capacity, and I use Evernote to store so much that it's impossible to sync all my notebooks locally on this computer. But the Evernote desktop software is so superior to the web-based version.

 

There does not seem to be a solution.

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I totally agree with August. I would like to save some of my notebooks to the cloud. They contain big files which I do not want/need on my laptop with small SSD disk. 

 

There should be an option to select the notebooks that you want to download or sync locally. Or perhaps an option to only sync the 'headers' of the notes, together with the Index. This way you could search all your notes, and only download the content of a note (or the attachments/images) when you need to. 

 

With the rapid growth of data in Evernote, such a feature is becoming essential. Please Evernote crew, look into this. 

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Just a note: this has been requested previously, so it's on Evernote's radar (they read every post). But that doesn't mean that it's necessarily on their roadmap (which they tend not to divulge anyways).

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Thanks Phils, but it's actually the opposite that is of more value to me:

 

I want to have cloud-only folders that do not store the contents on the computer -- the contents of these notebooks are ONLY stored in the cloud.

 

My Macbook Air has such little storage capacity, and I use Evernote to store so much that it's impossible to sync all my notebooks locally on this computer. But the Evernote desktop software is so superior to the web-based version.

 

There does not seem to be a solution.

@August

This may be a workaround in regards to storage space on the MB Air:  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/60462-the-mini-drive/

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Hello,

 

I use Evernote for many things in my personal life, and in my work life. 

 

I have EN downloaded on my personal computer, my phone, ipad, and work computer. 

 

There are some personal notes that I would prefer not to have downloaded on my work computer. Do you know if, when installing evernote, it is possible to prevent certain notes and notebooks from downloading, so that no local copy of them exists on a certain computer?

 

Thanks so much,

Leo

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About the best you can do is to create Local Notebooks on the computer where you want the Notes to reside.  Local NBs are available only for EN Win and EN Mac.

Local NBs are NOT sync'd by design, so they won't show up anywhere else.

If you use Local NBs, be sure that you have an active, frequent backup system to protect them.

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Thanks for the reply!

 

Yes, that's what I figured. I was hoping there was another solution, because I still want to the notes to sync with the server, I just don't want them to download to my work machine, which does not belong to me and probably shouldn't contain too much of my personal stuff, if you no what I mean. 

 

Anyway, maybe for the future. 

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Another approach is to create separate Evernote accounts, one for personal, one for work.

Then you could share from your personal account only those Notebooks you want to share with your work account.

 

Of course, while at work, you could use the EN Web client to access your personal account.

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How is it possible that this super basic capability is not available in Evernote yet?

 

This is so much more important than work chat -- and so much easier to implement.

 

It's already available on the mobile apps. We need it on Computers too.

 

Please Evernote, this is essential functionality.

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I'm using Evernote as my external brain, but I don't want the entire contents of my brain on my work computer. If corporate IT comes to collect my computer, they're collecting all kinds of personal data I don't want them to have access to.

Easy solution. Have two accounts, one for work, one for personal. If your personal account has work-related notes, put them in a notebook and share with your work account. If you work at home, share your work notebooks with your personal account. This is what I do, and it works fine for me.

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Easy solution. Have two accounts, one for work, one for personal. If your personal account has work-related notes, put them in a notebook and share with your work account. If you work at home, share your work notebooks with your personal account. This is what I do, and it works fine for me.

 

Have tried this and it's not as effective as it seems it would be.

 

   1. You cannot add tags from the second account. 

 

   2. You cant move posts to folders that are not shared (and therefore downloaded on the computer).

 

   3. You cannot search for or retrieve (in the cloud) posts in the unshared folders.

 

So you have limited functionality and access when sharing notebooks with a second account.  Seems so much better just to give the computer software the same selective synching option as the mobile apps.

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I use it every working day, and as I say, it works well for me.

 

1. You can only add tags to notes that exist in the account the note comes from, and you cannot create new tags in someone else's account. That's by design, per Evernote. Not a big deal for me as I don't create tags all that often any more. To work around it when you need to, you can use the web client as need be. You can maintain duplicate tags in the different accounts, but Evernote handles this situation weirdly, so you may not want to go there (I do, in a few limited cases).

 

2. Correct. That's sort of the point. You need to think about what you're doing before you implement such a system, but it's not that hard.

 

3. Correct, and again, that's the point. You claim you don't want your personal stuff laying around when IT comes for your computer; that's how you ensure that that happens.

 

You can claim that the functionality is limited; I'd say that you have to understand the rules that are in place. It works, and it's available now. Better to use that than wait for a feature that may never come.

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A work-around is fine to deal as best as we can with today's limitations.

 

But selective sync solves a lot of issues well beyond work vs home usage.

GrumpyMonkey and I (and others) have both been advocating selective sync for quite some time.

One of the key reasons/needs is that at some point, over a lifetime of usage, we all will run out of available local hard drive space.

Selective sync allows us to manage our storage on a variety of devices, including some that have very limited local storage available.

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Wow! Thank Buddha that I upgraded past 640K RAM at last. No, I'm not worried about running out of disk storage any time soon.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, notebook sharing *is* a form of selective syncing, just using multiple accounts. Set up your master account, and only access it from the web or from a device that has enough disk space to handle the notes database, and share the notebooks that you want to a slave account on devices that have limited storage. Done.

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I've asked for this before, I want to have notes on a machine I'm obliged to use for a security conscious client and i don't want my personal notes on that. Can't believe I am alone.

 

Instead I get work chat - a feature i never dreamed I wanted - promoted all the time which is of no use to me

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I've asked for this before, I want to have notes on a machine I'm obliged to use for a security conscious client and i don't want my personal notes on that. Can't believe I am alone.

 

Instead I get work chat - a feature i never dreamed I wanted - promoted all the time which is of no use to me

So set up a separate account for that, that's used only on that machine. A free version may suffice for your needs. If you need access to notes in that account, then share notebooks as appropriate to your own account. You'd just be using Work Chat to do the sharing.

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I use Evernote extensively. I create about 50% of my notes on a MacBook Pro, 45% on a Mac Pro, and about 5% on MacBook Air (MBA) that I primarily use for travel. Unfortunately, each time I launch Evernote on the MBA, it can take 30 minutes or more for it to sync -- bogging down the processor and slowing the machine to a crawl -- because I haven't launched Evernote on that machine in a while. I fully understand the reasons for this and am not being critical of syncing.

 

The problem, however, is that 90% of what's being synced to the MBA is stuff that I simply don't need on that machine. Not only is it taxing the processor unnecessarily, it's unnecessarily taking up precious space on the MBA's hard drive.

 

Dropbox brilliantly allows us to specify which folders get synced to each computer. Don't need that folder full of movies taking up space on a certain computer? Just disable syncing of that folder on that machine. Done!

 

Why can't Evernote do this?

 

The UI implementation could be super-simple: At the left, we have a list of our notebooks:

 

Notebook 1

Notebook 2

Notebook 3

 

There could be a menu command (with keyboard shortcut of course) to "Select Notebooks to be Synced." Upon invoking the command, checkboxes would appear next to the notebooks, allowing us to easily enable or disable syncing of individual notebooks:

 

▢ Notebook 1

▢ Notebook 2

▢ Notebook 3

 

When finished, we'd hit "Done," the checkboxes would disappear, and Evernote would sync — adding or deleting files, as necessary.

 

Evernote already "knows" the names of our notebooks and knows which notes belong where. Adding Selective Sync would not be that complicated... C'mon, guys... Please!!

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I somehow don't think EN would welcome premium users making good on the hefty 4GB/ month upload limit up for grabs. That might be scary to them. Selective sync would allow us to go to town... That's almost 50GB/ year allowance for premium users. Unlike Dropbox, I think Evenote would be inviting trouble if people were to use anywhere close to the upload limit consistently from month to month. The desktop clients would be worse for wear, freezing up, as a number of power users have already commented in detail elsewhere. I just don't think Evernote is ready for that.

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I somehow don't think EN would welcome premium users making good on the hefty 4GB/ month upload limit up for grabs. That might be scary to them. Selective sync would allow us to go to town... That's almost 50GB/ year allowance for premium users. Unlike Dropbox, I think Evenote would be inviting trouble if people were to use anywhere close to the upload limit consistently from month to month. The desktop clients would be worse for wear, freezing up, as a number of power users have already commented in detail elsewhere. I just don't think Evernote is ready for that.

 

 

If Dropbox can do it, Evernote can.

 

It also seems you're failing to understand that selective sync will result in less data being pushed, not more.

 

I look forward to hearing Evernote's thoughts on this, rather than users' speculation on what Evernote can and cannot do.

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In the meantime, while you're waiting for an implementation that may or may not come, you can implement this yourself, using two accounts, your main account, that lives only in the web, and an account that lives on your MacBook Air. Share only selected notebooks to your MBA from your main account. Probably a little clumsy, but two accounts is definitely workable.

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This is a user forum so if you are holding your breath waiting on Evernote to discuss functionality that may or may not happen in the future then you are probably going to turn blue and fall over.

 

I very much doubt whether it's technically difficult so throwing out examples of other companies that do so doesn't help a great deal, at the moment Evernote have decided not to implement this.

 

Search the board for selective sync and there's more discussion on the subject. In the meantime, Jeff's given you a decent solution for your use case.

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If Dropbox can do it, Evernote can.

I look forward to hearing Evernote's thoughts on this, rather than users' speculation on what Evernote can and cannot do.

Interesting juxtaposition there, though... :)
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I somehow don't think EN would welcome premium users making good on the hefty 4GB/ month upload limit up for grabs. That might be scary to them. Selective sync would allow us to go to town... That's almost 50GB/ year allowance for premium users. Unlike Dropbox, I think Evenote would be inviting trouble if people were to use anywhere close to the upload limit consistently from month to month. The desktop clients would be worse for wear, freezing up, as a number of power users have already commented in detail elsewhere. I just don't think Evernote is ready for that.

If Dropbox can do it, Evernote can.

It also seems you're failing to understand that selective sync will result in less data being pushed, not more.

I look forward to hearing Evernote's thoughts on this, rather than users' speculation on what Evernote can and cannot do.

Sure... Less data is going to be pushed to individual devices... And the very fact that we can't do so currently has many people, myself included, using Dropbox and other apps for part of their workflow. Having most of my stuff be accessible only on the EN web client would be great. We all want that. You would be hard pressed to find anyone against the implementation of the feature you mention.

You're right about less data being pushed with selective sync... And I got my wires crossed on the comment about computers freezing with too much data to process... But still, I think the thought of selective sync scares Evernote presently. I don't think they relish the idea of the Premium hordes giving the 4GB monthly upload limit a good run for its money.

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Dropbox brilliantly allows us to specify which folders get synced to each computer. Don't need that folder full of movies taking up space on a certain computer? Just disable syncing of that folder on that machine. Done!

 

Why can't Evernote do this?

. . .

 

Evernote already "knows" the names of our notebooks and knows which notes belong where. Adding Selective Sync would not be that complicated... C'mon, guys... Please!!

 

@soundsgoodtome:  I think that's a great idea!  I'm in a similar situation with multiple Macs, including a MBA I use much like you described.

 

IAC, I think it is inevitable that Evernote provide selective sync.  It is just a matter of time before we accumulate more Notes than can fit (or that we want to allocate) on the local drives of some of our Macs/PCs.  Evernote has long advertised itself as a "100-year company" and encourage us to put most of our stuff into Evernote.

 

Since Evernote has already provided selection sync (AKA Offline Notebooks) on iOS devices, it would seem they understand the method.

 

Another approach, perhaps easier to implement, would be a "recent notes sync", much like Apple does on its iPhones -- it only downloads mail for the last 30-60-90 days.  It would be great if Evernote would allow us to sync only those Notes updated in the last TBD days.

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Some relevant prior discussion on the issue: https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/11193-selective-notebook-sync/, circa 2010

 

Includes comments by Evernote staff, mention of the Dropbox case, plus the sharing workaround. Also, a reference to a Phil Libin claim that selective sync is "inevitable" (but of course no reference to any timeline for implementation). 

 

Hard to imagine that individual accounts are going to outstrip drive storage capacity, even if the note limit cap (currently 100,000 notes) is lifted...

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Hard to imagine that individual accounts are going to outstrip drive storage capacity, even if the note limit cap (currently 100,000 notes) is lifted...

 

Actually it's not hard to imagine at all.  It is NOT the number of Notes, but the size of their contents.

I'm pretty sure GrumpyMonkey could fill up his local drive quickly with his large PDFs (which he doesn't use any more because of EN issues)

 

The issue here is NOT whether or not we can find a local drive large enough to hold our entire account.

The issue is that we may not want to pay premium prices for large local storage on ALL of our computers.

And, equally important, many of us don't want to wait for Evernote to download GB of Notes on some of our computers, like MacBook Air, or Surface Pros.  

 

I have 3 Macs that I use Evernote on.  I certainly don't need my entire Evernote account downloaded on all of these machines.

I use my MBA as the OP described -- it is a very light Mac that I take with me on short trips and, like my iPhone, I don't need ALL of my Notes downloaded on that Mac.  I am very comfortable with pulling from the EN Cloud most Notes I need,  But, like with the iPhone, it would be great to have certain Offline NBs on my Mac.

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I'm not sure what you're arguing about. Device capacities are already beyond what Evernote can use while performing well, according to anecdotal evidence from users like GM (who is an outlier, as I'm pretty sure he'd admit). My own, and probably more typical, use case is ~6K notes in a ~3GB notes database; 100K notes at that rate gives me a notes database size of ~50GB, which would fit comfortably on my terabyte hard drive, twenty times over. The history of drive capacities is that they exhibit exponential growth over time. Drive capacity isn't the problem here. Oh, and you can get a 5GB internal drive for $165 currently, which is hardly a premium price.

 

Meanwhile, back to the actual point: you can solve your small device problem, today. You don't need to wait for selective sync, when or whether it comes. This statement says nothing about whether I think that it's a good or bad idea; it's just a fact. Sure, it would be easier if true selective sync existed, but making this work using multiple accounts shouldn't be too hard a problem to figure out, particularly for the power user crowd...

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'Twould seem 

 

The problem, however, is that 90% of what's being synced to the MBA is stuff that I simply don't need on that machine. Not only is it taxing the processor unnecessarily, it's unnecessarily taking up precious space on the MBA's hard drive.

Selective sync seems a good idea to me.  But, as stated many times in other threads, it's EN's call as to whether they want to implement it or not, easy or hard, other software models or not.

 

'Twould seem though that a second account on the MBA sharing the 10% notebook of the OP is a simple and reasonably elegant solution.  Definitely the same result, though not a pure selective sync deployment (whether it be notebook based or only sync the headers based).  

 

Relative to storage you can get 240 GB of SSD for under $100 these days, not exactly a kings ransom.  You can spend $250 as well if you like.  My experience with performance on SSD says I'll never have another PC without it.

 

The above is just the view of the writer, not meant to be gospel by any stretch.   :)

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Yes, the Internet still works, but you do have to read what you find.

I don't see any SSD upgrades for MacBook Airs after the 2012 models.

 

IAC, it is a very tricky change, not one that many would attempt.  The MacBook Air is NOT designed to be serviced by the end user.  Doing so risks damage to your Mac, and voids all Apple warranties.

 

But we are now getting way off-topic.

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I had the same problem you do. The workaround I used was to only use the Evernote web app for my primary EN account (almost all personal, but some stuff I wanted to get to at work. We have MS Office 2013 at work, so I just used the OneNote for work-related stuff. If I want to send something to EN, it's easy enough using my EN email address.

 

Not optimal but it works.

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I would like a selective sync feature, as on the iPad, for Windows, I have a small touch laptop/tablet pc that has limited hard drive space, and don't want all the,notebooks to sync. at the moment the choice is ,if you don't want it on the tablet PCs don't put it in Evernote leave it in Dropbox, but have noticed that requesting a download on the iPad Evernote, is quicker than a Dropbox download, so I would like to be able to use Evernote more and reduce the use of Dropbox.plus Evernote searches PDFs docs, Dropbox does'nt.

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I am sorry if the answer is already in this forum, but I searched and could not find one.

 

I have notebooks that I do not want to sync to my local Windows client. (e.g. Personal notebooks I do not want on my work laptop).

 

I have a Premium account.

 

How do I accomplish this? I am unable to find any settings.

 

Thank you.

 

Al

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You have this problem with any product that installs an application locally.  It's the same conundrum enterprises have with USB / external drives.  The solution, do not use local apps.  It comes down to "security vs convenience".  I used to prefer the latter, until my vehicle was broken into, and laptop stolen.  Laptop was PW protected, and I never knew if the thieves got access to my data, however it did force me to rethink what I install and store locally.  I keep everything out in the cloud.  I no longer use external drives and storage, too much of a security risk.

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