Note Content Disappeared

[RMC 0]

Hello all

I've just spent the entire morning creating a note that was to be the basis of a long and complicated email.

Having just finished it I clicked save, intending to email it, and the content of my entire note disappeared.

I have no idea how this happened and if there is any way I can retrieve it.

It took a lot of effort to compose as I am ill and I really do not want to start from scratch again. I did save a previous version as a Yahoo draft email but had done a lot of work on it since then.

My note is still there with a title but no content.

I am using an iPad 2 and the Evernote app over my home wireless connection. I've only been using Evernote a few days and my other three notes are still present and correct. I was really enjoying using the text editor with it too. I've checked on my web account and see the same, my note with no content.

I have raised a support request and the ticket number is 16051-65315.

Please help me to fix this and explain how it could possibly happen.

Thank you!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

unfortunately, it is probably gone for good. if you didn't get it saved, it didn't get synced, and it doesn't exist on evernote's servers. evernote on ios sometimes crashes, and sometimes fails to save notes, so you need to save often yourself. unfortunately, saving means you have to restart the whole process again, so it is quite a pain. some people prefer to use thrid-party apps (see the Evernote Trunk) for note creation. sometimes, i compose in elements (an ios app), because it pretty much saves every keystroke to dropbox.

hopefully, someday, evernote will include in ios:

1. save and continue

2. automatic saving to your device (at least) after every keystroke

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

When creating a complex document in any app it is always advisable to Save, and Save often.

This is particularly true with Evernote on the iPad and iPhone.

I would save my note at least after every paragraph.

[RMC 0]

I'm sorry that I didn't say this before but I had saved it a number of times and then each time re-opened it to edit some more. I am paranoid about losing stuff and I'm annoyed that I hadn't copied the entire note content before I saved as that's what I usually do!

All previous times had worked like a charm but this last and ironically final time my content disappeared.

[RMC 0]

And thank you for your advice

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

oh no. well, the hope then is that evernote can resurrect what you saved. this is very sad and distressing to here.

[FGol 2]

I'm sorry that I didn't say this before but I had saved it a number of times and then each time re-opened it to edit some more. I am paranoid about losing stuff and I'm annoyed that I hadn't copied the entire note content before I saved as that's what I usually do!

All previous times had worked like a charm but this last and ironically final time my content disappeared.

I often experience the same thing as the OP. After more than a few crashes in iOS 5.0.1 and EverNote 4.1.8 on an iPad 2 I've gotten paranoid and save, save, save.

- Last night I saved and reopened a note and got the N-1 version of the note rather than the most recently saved version. I closed the note, took a breath, and watched as the Nth version of the note appeared in the note browser. I re-edited it and the Nth note showed up with the changes I most recently saved. Odd.

- When EN crashes it seems random when I restart it. I might get might get the note back as it was when I was editing before the crash. Other times I get the note as it was when I last saved it.

A question is, beyond semi-frequent crashes, is why does the "Save" button exit edit mode anyway? In what other software does "Save" mean "Save and exit?" Usually Save means save and continue. EN should offer the standard Exit, Save, and Cancel buttons with their usual meanings.

Thanks,

Frank

[sawyer 0]

I had the same problem; I reopened Evernote on the iPad after having saved and sync'd a note a few days previously. (I had left Evernote with the note open in edit mode, but had previously saved and sync'd the content up to that point.)

When Evernote resumed, the note was empty; I had to upgrade to Evernote Premium to restore from the note history.

This seems to clearly be a bug where when Evernote on iPad gets suspended by switching between apps and a note is open in edit mode, it wipes out the content of the note.

It also raises the question, noted above, about why (1) Evernote doesn't save-and-sync frequently in the background, at least on WiFI, or (2)at the minimum why we don't have a save button that doesn't save-and-exit.

Does anybody from Evernote monitor these forums for bug reports, or is there somewhere else to report bugs?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

This seems to clearly be a bug where when Evernote on iPad gets suspended by switching between apps and a note is open in edit mode, it wipes out the content of the note.

i've never had this happen, and i swipe a lot. but, it is a scary possibility, and i certainly worry about it.

It also raises the question, noted above, about why (1) Evernote doesn't save-and-sync frequently in the background, at least on WiFI, or (2)at the minimum why we don't have a save button that doesn't save-and-exit.

i couldn't agree more. again, mind-boggling. save local. save on the evernote servers. save somewhere! but, a button to save that closes out the note is a button that isn't going to get much use, even by people like me who have been burned before

Does anybody from Evernote monitor these forums for bug reports, or is there somewhere else to report bugs?

you can create a support ticket to alert evernote. but, it seems to me that the evernote staff pop in every once in a while to read these kinds of things. whether it prompts the right person to do the right thing, though, is anyone's guess.

[lrfletcher 1]

I want to report that I am another victim of this malfunction. Today, using my iPad2, using Evernote for the iPad, I began to edit a note in which I had previously written 4 or 5 lines. I worked for an hour, adding a considerable amount of content, then I saved and exited for the purpose of looking at another note from which I wanted to copy some material for the first note. I found that material, copied it, went back to the "saved" note, reopened it, and discovered to my surprise that it only contained the 4 or 5 lines previously written, so all the new material was lost.

I am a Premium member for more than a year, and I think Evernote is in general an extremely impressive product. But for a product whose home page slogan is "Remember Everything," this sort of failure is extremely disappointing, to put it mildly. It's like putting your money in a bank, then finding that the bank has lost it, and being told, "Oh, well, that happens sometimes."

No! If Evernote is losing note content, then the people who run Evernote need to treat this as an emergency that needs to be corrected without delay.

Lancelot

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

@lancelot

i hope you consider opening a support ticket. this sounds like a serious issue.

[sawyer 0]

I just submitted a support ticket, and included a reference to this thread in it. I'll let you know once I get a reply. Since I traded up to premium this morning to recover the note history in the note that got wiped out, they promise me an answer within 24 hours.

[lrfletcher 1]

@lancelot

i hope you consider opening a support ticket. this sounds like a serious issue.

Yes, I have done that. Since I am a Premium member, I received a response pretty quickly. They told me that Evernote takes any report of data loss very seriously (in my report I pointed out that what we are discussing in this thread goes directly against Evernote's slogan about remembering everything). The reply asked me a series of tech support questions and also asked me to email them a copy of the activity log.

I did that, and then later, while reviewing the log, I discovered something very interesting that may be of interest to others who have experienced this problem: Amidst all sorts of symbols, program statements and error messages, I discovered most, or all, of my lost content! It will take some work to extract it from all the other text, but I think it's all there.

So, for my fellow victims of content loss, I recommend that you check your activity log, which you can do by going to the home page of your iOS Evernote app, then click on the gear-shaped settings icon and scroll down near the bottom of the settings window (might be good to sync before opening the activity log).

Lancelot

[archism 0]

Hi,

I have noticed similar issues in the past few weeks and experienced data loss again this morning. I am wondering whether this is related to the offline mode not syncing properly when the iPad is back with an internet connection.

I am going to open a support ticket, but I indeed hope that someone at Evernote is looking at this seriously.

Cheers,

Art

[bbenz 89]

I think this is generally related to other entries in this thread. Here's what I just sent to Evernote support forums:

ipad running 5.1, first generation running evernote 4.1.9 for ipad

longtime evernote pro subscriber

Working on a note all day. Started on Macbook pro.

Moved to iPad, added several screen shots by copying out of iPhoto and into note

When it synched/saved, the note had the images but all text was gone.

Did manage to recover the portion written earlier on the PC by killing the wireless connection and creating backup of the local file

When PC synced, it also overwrote the file with just images.

Any way to recover? I'm seeing a lot of similar reports in the forums ...

[lynettemeyer 0]

I had a similar issue. On my iPhone, I had a running note with tons of information from a business trip, taken and edited over a week. I always saved my content. After the last sync, all of my text disappeared, but photos remained in the note.

This is very disturbing. Why would anyone rely upon a program with an unreliable syncing algorithm? The information I lost can not be reconstructed, and I don't see any clear strategies for looking for the data.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I had a similar issue. On my iPhone, I had a running note with tons of information from a business trip, taken and edited over a week. I always saved my content. After the last sync, all of my text disappeared, but photos remained in the note.

This is very disturbing. Why would anyone rely upon a program with an unreliable syncing algorithm? The information I lost can not be reconstructed, and I don't see any clear strategies for looking for the data.

hi. welcome to the forums. sorry to hear about your problem. have you opened a support ticket? if not (see my signature) this might be a good time to do it and see if you can recover something.

[Jenny Luca 0]

@Lancelot You have just made my day. I followed your advice to check the activity log and my content is there. I have to figure out how to get it out of there because emailing it didn't seem to work. Quite frankly, I don't care if I have to type it all out again, just so long as I don't have to go back to square one with the three hours of thinking it took to get it written in the first place.

[Jonesm1983 0]

I'm having a similar issue of lost data, but it happened a slightly different way to the experiences mentioned.

I loaded up a note on my iphone this morning, but it failed to open, probably due to a poor connection, I'm not sure. It loaded up the title, but not the content. Going back to the list of notes, I see that this note now seems to have been replaced by the blank version I saw when the content failed to load.

If I upgrade to Premium, will I be able to view the history of this note from the period before I upgraded? I've used Evernote for over a year without problems until now, and it's really worried me as now I'm thinking I should be savingn back ups of all my notes elsewhere, which spoils a lot of the convenience that comes from using Evernote in the first place.

[Jonesm1983 0]

I'm having a similar issue of lost data, but it happened a slightly different way to the experiences mentioned.

I loaded up a note on my iphone this morning, but it failed to open, probably due to a poor connection, I'm not sure. It loaded up the title, but not the content. Going back to the list of notes, I see that this note now seems to have been replaced by the blank version I saw when the content failed to load.

If I upgrade to Premium, will I be able to view the history of this note from the period before I upgraded? I've used Evernote for over a year without problems until now, and it's really worried me as now I'm thinking I should be savingn back ups of all my notes elsewhere, which spoils a lot of the convenience that comes from using Evernote in the first place.

Managed to retrieve my note by disconnecting the wireless router before waking up my iMac. This let me go into Evernote, which I already had open, and do a quick copy and paste into a new note before connecting to the wifi and syncing. Phew!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I'm having a similar issue of lost data, but it happened a slightly different way to the experiences mentioned.

I loaded up a note on my iphone this morning, but it failed to open, probably due to a poor connection, I'm not sure. It loaded up the title, but not the content. Going back to the list of notes, I see that this note now seems to have been replaced by the blank version I saw when the content failed to load.

If I upgrade to Premium, will I be able to view the history of this note from the period before I upgraded? I've used Evernote for over a year without problems until now, and it's really worried me as now I'm thinking I should be savingn back ups of all my notes elsewhere, which spoils a lot of the convenience that comes from using Evernote in the first place.

Managed to retrieve my note by disconnecting the wireless router before waking up my iMac. This let me go into Evernote, which I already had open, and do a quick copy and paste into a new note before connecting to the wifi and syncing. Phew!

Hi. Glad to hear that you avoided losing the data. Thanks for posting with the update! In general, I think it's always good to have a backup of anything. Storage these days is really inexpensive and backups are easy to do (really, you just plug in the drive). I recommend versions (like Time Machine does with the Mac) so that even if something happens (you accidentally overwrite a note) you can easily go back and find it. In a digital age, I think this is just a good practice to follow, no matter what services we are using.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I'm having a similar issue of lost data, but it happened a slightly different way to the experiences mentioned.

I also am glad you were able to recover your lost data yourself.

However, this loss represents a growing concerning I have about the reliability of Evernote:

• Over the last month or so there have been many reports of lost notes and/or attachments
  
• This seems to be occurring on multiple platforms, including Win, Mac, and iPhone/iPad
  
• One of the worst cases is the lost attachments in the EN Win client that go back quite some time, but were only recently discovered.
  

While I agree with GM we should all make appropriate backups of our Evernote DB, this does not relieve Evernote of the responsibility of providing a highly reliable storage system.

At first I naively attributed these losses mostly to the users. It is now very clear that are some serious storage issues that Evernote must urgently deal with. Unless the user deletes data outside of the Evernote app, the responsibility lies 100% with Evernote to ensure that no loss occurs on any platform.

[BigAl 0]

I experienced the same issue on my android phone. I had important notes on my house, trying to sell it. Had a problem syncing after I added some text, now the note is blank everywhere I look, online and on my phone. Very distressing and I will not be upgrading to pro because of it. I have talked my wife into using it for everything, but now I'm not so sure. This should be an easy problem to fix.

Update: 09-07-12: Even though I do not have a premium account, I opened a ticket and the evernote support team granted me access to my note history long enough to get my old note back. It was there, and I recovered it no problem. The support was a quick response and I couldn't be happier. I will be upgrading soon to the premium service.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I'm having a similar issue of lost data, but it happened a slightly different way to the experiences mentioned.

I also am glad you were able to recover your lost data yourself.

However, this loss represents a growing concerning I have about the reliability of Evernote:

• Over the last month or so there have been many reports of lost notes and/or attachments
  
• This seems to be occurring on multiple platforms, including Win, Mac, and iPhone/iPad
  
• One of the worst cases is the lost attachments in the EN Win client that go back quite some time, but were only recently discovered.
  

While I agree with GM we should all make appropriate backups of our Evernote DB, this does not relieve Evernote of the responsibility of providing a highly reliable storage system.

At first I naively attributed these losses mostly to the users. It is now very clear that are some serious storage issues that Evernote must urgently deal with. Unless the user deletes data outside of the Evernote app, the responsibility lies 100% with Evernote to ensure that no loss occurs on any platform.

Without sidetracking the thread too much, I just want to remind everyone that the link JM has posted refers to an issue with a beta version. Every potential data loss that gets reported doesn't connect back to that thread. I think we should be careful not to conflate different issues to form an opinion about the products.

Specifically, betas are not public releases for a reason, and there is a disclaimer telling users: "Beta versions give you access to features and functionality before they become publicly available.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

GM, to be clear, there have been reports in these forums of data loss when using public releases of EN Win, EN Mac, and EN iOS.

There have been a sufficient number of reports that I believe the data was lost, and was NOT the fault of the user.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

GM, to be clear, there have been reports in these forums of data loss when using public releases of EN Win, EN Mac, and EN iOS.

There have been a sufficient number of reports that I believe the data was lost, and was NOT the fault of the user.

I don't know the details of each case. I am responding to the link that you posted. I think you are drawing conclusions from a broad range of reports about which we know almost nothing, so rather than jump to those conclusions, I prefer to advise caution (lots of backups) to users (I would say this for any service), continue reporting bugs to developers/customer service, and hopefully get more people to post the details of their cases (that is why you see me asking people to post ticket numbers and report back to us about the progress). This keeps all of us better informed, and makes the threads potentially valuable to future users as well.

One thing I think we can agree upon is that ideally, a service would make it difficult or even impossible for users to unintentionally lose data. I think in this regard Evernote still has some work to do on several platforms. While not "bugs", so to speak, these are areas in which better designs are needed. I'll use an example from a TOTALLY different service, but one that used to cause me no end of headaches from crashes and lost data. In the late 90s and early parts of this century, Microsoft Word was notoriously bad about losing data, and when combined with the incessant screens of death (Windows 95 and I exchanged many words unfit for public forums), it was almost expected that you'd have regular data loss in offices. Flash forward to now, and I honestly cannot remember the last time that Word or Pages (Mac) lost data. It just doesn't happen anymore, and if it does happen to someone, you immediately wonder what in the world the person using it could have done to lose it. I'd like Evernote to get there someday.

[teamssc 0]

Just to add to the conversation. I have Premium service and an iPhone 4 with iOS 6. Evernote on phone is current. I took 5 pictures of meeting notes in Evernote on my iPhone and after syncing with the Evernote web service the pics were gone and the note was empty on the phone, web and my computer.

This happens about once a month and is a real weak point with Evernote. I'll continue to use Evernote but it is very frustrating to lose data.

I'll submit a ticket as suggested.

Thanks for reading.

[janeiowa 0]

I've just experienced this loss of content of a long text item I've worked on for months. It's been saved each time I added to it on either my IPAD 4 or my pc laptop. I tried to get to my laptop, but it was syncing and I watched the content disappear before my eyes, leaving me with an empty note. In my panic, I didn't think to get off the internet immediately.

Sometimes the sync between the two takes a long time. Not this time, of course.

I have no idea what I touched or pressed to cause this loss of content data.

I guess I'll have to go back to the old way of saving everything in multiple formats, and not assume Evernote will be there always.

[Kay La 4]

I have lost a note AND the title of the note. Some of the missing data may be on another note, but when I tap the title of that up, the note jitters and causes Evernote to crash. I am running iOS 9.0.1 on iPad Air 2.

I found a suggestion that I delete the Evernote app and reinstall it. I am afraid to delete it because when I begin the delete process, a popup says if I delete Evernote, all my data will be deleted.

I have exactly the same problems on my iPhone 6, also run nine iOS 9.0.1.

[amanda_h 300]

I have lost a note AND the title of the note. Some of the missing data may be on another note, but when I tap the title of that up, the note jitters and causes Evernote to crash. I am running iOS 9.0.1 on iPad Air 2.

I found a suggestion that I delete the Evernote app and reinstall it. I am afraid to delete it because when I begin the delete process, a popup says if I delete Evernote, all my data will be deleted.

I have exactly the same problems on my iPhone 6, also run nine iOS 9.0.1.

 

Hi Kay La, 

 

I've converted this into a ticket so we can help troubleshoot this issue. Let me know if you don't receive that email.