(Archived) HELP: Monthly usage gets eaten up much faster than before

[natallica 1]

Hello everyone -

I've been using Evernote for a little over a year and have the Premium account. I'm creating the same type of notes as last year, but since around November/December of last year my monthly usage grows very quickly even when I haven't synced any new notes -- I have Evernote for Mac set to manually sync. Anyone else noticed this problem?

Also, I noticed that when putting QT .mov files into notes, they now show up in the note as being almost 4x the size they are in Finder. What gives?

Any ideas as to what I may be doing wrong all of a sudden would be most greatly appreciated!

-- N

[natallica 1]

Or how about...we are given the opportunity to purchase more bandwidth when we get near the limit for a month?

-- N

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Not to be a contrarian, but your use-case could be accomplished much better in EN. And, just for fun, you could even put those photos into a folder and share them with all of your family. You could encourage them to all write comments about pictures from each year to create a crowd-sourced super family album.

Try that in Picasa

Actually that is why I post most of my photos in Flickr.

After posting my photos, people from all over the world have shared their travel experiences with me. Jokes, insights, introductions all sorts of comments get added to my Flickr photos. I have even had some magazines contact me for permission to use my travel photos in their magazines. For instance, I took this photo of the Mall of America play area and posted in Flickr. An online travel website used it for a couple years.

http://www.flickr.co...nson2/51295167/

Because I do not trust any cloud based program, I keep my originals on my hard drive (with Carbonite as a backup). This lets me created interesting outputs with Picasa. For instance, Evernote does not have facial recognition. Picasa learns to recognize individual faces and suggests names which are tied to my GMail address book.

So, I get the best of both worlds and I avoid the problem mentioned by the users in this post.

I don't have to worry about hitting the maximum upload restriction with Evernote.

.

Thanks for sharing that. Congratulations on having your picture used! I hope you received adequate compensation

Indeed, there is no facial recognition in Evernote. Yet. You could write with a marker on your forehead, and Evernote could read that, but that is about the extent of it! I wouldn't be surprised if it comes along eventually. Heck, it might even be in the trunk now.

As for the backup thing, yes. I love using the cloud, and I have everything in there now, but I also have it all backed up securely in several other locations as well. I think it is just a good policy to do that -- minimal fuss setting it up and no more headaches about lost data.

True story: I experienced my first kernel panic today. That's Mac talk for a blue screen of death that you cannot recover from even when restarting (in my case). Yay! I am not sure what is going on, because none of the online solutions offer much help in my case. I'll figure it out eventually, but the good news is that it would be pretty much impossible for me to lose any data, so no stress in that regard.

[jbenson2 2,149]

Not to be a contrarian, but your use-case could be accomplished much better in EN. And, just for fun, you could even put those photos into a folder and share them with all of your family. You could encourage them to all write comments about pictures from each year to create a crowd-sourced super family album.

Try that in Picasa

Actually that is why I post most of my photos in Flickr.

After posting my photos, people from all over the world have shared their travel experiences with me. Jokes, insights, introductions all sorts of comments get added to my Flickr photos. I have even had some magazines contact me for permission to use my travel photos in their magazines. For instance, I took this photo of the Mall of America play area and posted in Flickr. An online travel website used it for a couple years.

http://www.flickr.co...nson2/51295167/

Because I do not trust any cloud based program, I keep my originals on my hard drive (with Carbonite as a backup). This lets me created interesting outputs with Picasa. For instance, Evernote does not have facial recognition. Picasa learns to recognize individual faces and suggests names which are tied to my GMail address book.

So, I get the best of both worlds and I avoid the problem mentioned by the users in this post.

I don't have to worry about hitting the maximum upload restriction with Evernote.

.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Thanks for sharing. I think that would be easy to recreate in EN, though.

On the Mac, drag photos ino Evernote (creating one note per image), batch tag with her name, type tag:name into the search, and the card view would show you the same thing (thumbnail images). In fact, if you have full screen mode and panes hidden, they will display beautifully across the screen. Clicking on one would take you to the note, of course. It could be accomplished in a few seconds from start to finish, depending on Internet connection / computer processor (the syncing).

Not to be a contrarian, but your use-case could be accomplished much better in EN. And, just for fun, you could even put those photos into a folder and share them with all of your family. You could encourage them to all write comments about pictures from each year to create a crowd-sourced super family album.

Try that in Picasa

Not that there is anything wrong with Picasa! It's just that I think EN does have its advantages too.

[jbenson2 2,149]

As for storing my photos elsewhere, that would probably be a good idea if I took more, or if I was more of a professional, but there are huge benefits to having everything in Evernote. In fact, Evernote is really a lot better than any of the services I have tried, especially in integrating with the rest of my notes. Obviously, we all have different use-cases, but I would encourage people to put photos into Evernote.

The reason I do not encourage people to put their photo collections into Evernote is precisely the problem you and the OP are referencing. Today's photos consume huge amounts of disk space and eat into the Evernote monthly upload allowance very rapidly.

I'm no where near a professional, but I do have a family; which creates a lot of memories. The flexibility in other cloud programs specializing in photos is remarkable. For instance, here is something I can do with Picasa, but not in Evernote.

Family photos that contain my daughter - 25+ years ago. Each thumbnail is linked to the full size photos.

http://www.evernote....964739c02a2ce3b

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

I've got 16,000 note and never, ever came close to hitting the monthly upload allowance.

My monthly quota expires in 15 days.

After running a date search, I have created 462 new notes in the past 15 days.

Evernote indicates I have only consumed 8% of my upload allowance.

In order to hit the monthly upload, I will have to create another 5,300 notes in the next 2 weeks. (Not going to happen.)

One of the reasons the upload quota does not cause me any pain, is that the vast majority (99%) of my photos are stored in services designed for photos (Flickr and Picasa).

.

I use a lot of plain text, so most of my notes are tiny, and I could easily go along under the free upload allowance. But, I have a few notes each month that chew up the entire gigabyte. There are so many wonderful use-cases out there that involve PDFs, images, photographs, receipts, etc. If you have gone paperless, it is entirely possible to hit the upload limit every month (me). I have 7 more days and I am already at my limit. I have a folder full of stuff to upload as soon as the next month starts.

As for storing my photos elsewhere, that would probably be a good idea if I took more, or if I was more of a professional, but there are huge benefits to having everything in Evernote. In fact, Evernote is really a lot better than any of the services I have tried, especially in integrating with the rest of my notes. Obviously, we all have different use-cases, but I would encourage people to put photos into Evernote.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Adding my 2 cents to the fact that I've been a premier user since they offered it, I never even came close to my quota. I was forwarding Internet receipts to my evernote email address. No problem. I began to photograph receipts with my iPhone and send to Evernote (we're talking maybe 30 receipts max). All of a sudden, my use ballooned so much, I couldn't even use my account.

As gazumped mentioned, there is probably a difference in size between the two types of receipts you are loading. IME, a typical email may range from 2-500 KB. OTOH, if I send a photo from my iPhone 4 using it's actual size, that's 2-5 (or more!) MB. So it's easy to see why iPhone photos will more quickly max out your account.

[jbenson2 2,149]

I've got 16,000 note and never, ever came close to hitting the monthly upload allowance.

My monthly quota expires in 15 days.

After running a date search, I have created 462 new notes in the past 15 days.

Evernote indicates I have only consumed 8% of my upload allowance.

In order to hit the monthly upload, I will have to create another 5,300 notes in the next 2 weeks. (Not going to happen.)

One of the reasons the upload quota does not cause me any pain, is that the vast majority (99%) of my photos are stored in services designed for photos (Flickr and Picasa).

.

[gazumped 12,042]

Hi Cinthia. I understand your comment, but you might be criticising Evernote unfairly - the notes you are creating from an iPhone camera might be huge, hence your sudden usage problems. If you look at notes in list view you should be able to see their size - compare the size of the cam notes with the others you have submitted. Don't know if it's possible in iPhone to drop the resolution of images, but you should be able to find some apps that will create notes on the fly - have a look in the Trunk and EN Central.

[cinthia 1]

Adding my 2 cents to the fact that I've been a premier user since they offered it, I never even came close to my quota. I was forwarding Internet receipts to my evernote email address. No problem. I began to photograph receipts with my iPhone and send to Evernote (we're talking maybe 30 receipts max). All of a sudden, my use ballooned so much, I couldn't even use my account. There is some kind of breakdown in communication.

First, the usage quota is very confusing. It's like the APR on a credit card. You know there are rules but can't really monitor them. Unlike, dropbox or other storage places where it's by the GB and easy to monitor.

Second, since apparently it's not just uploading but editing, naming and filing documents after the upload that uses our monthly allotment (bandwidth?) there must be some way to use Evernote's online filing without using bandwidth every time you rename or refile a document. If we have to keep everything in local folders, doesn't that defeat the entire purpose of Evernote? I looked at Evernote for Dummies but even that didn't address the problem of how to figure out how much what you want to do will use of your allotment.

again, just my 2 cents

[natallica 1]

I will be buying more bandwidth this weekend. I appreciate everyone chiming in to this thread and helping me out.

Take care everyone!

-- N

[dlu 628]

I did not know that. I would be great if it were integrated with the Mac client. I never use the web interface.

Thanks!

-- N

Yeah it would make sense if you could purchase through the Mac Client... or we need to at least have a link in there. Duly Evernoted.

And just to iterate on BnF's point, you just purchase on the web and it applies to your account everywhere. Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android, Palm... etc

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You just have to get the extra bandwidth through the web client. Just as if you were buying something from Amazon or most any other online store. They have to be able to confirm payment. NBD. It's very quick & painless. I've done it a few times already. You can then continue to use the Mac (or Windows, Android, iOS, etc) client.

[natallica 1]

I did not know that. I would be great if it were integrated with the Mac client. I never use the web interface.

Thanks!

-- N

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Or how about...we are given the opportunity to purchase more bandwidth when we get near the limit for a month?

You can.

http://discussion.ev...thly-allowance/

[gazumped 12,042]

..But if you keep on adding new notes over your monthly limit and then sync, you're potentially creating housekeeping problems for Evernote, blocking bandwidth that other users share, building up a backlog of notes of which you'll lose an unspecified number and generally creating mayhem for yourself and others. As I said before, I agree there could be more warning that you're about to hit the limit, and maybe Evernote can make it easier to carry over files from one month limit to the next, but you're always going to have to exercise some housekeeping control over the files you edit and upload each month.

[natallica 1]

Fair enough. But I know that I hit my limit when I first started using EN and it let me create a few notes without syncing. Maybe that was a bug?

Currently as soon as I'm anywhere near the limit it complains that I'll be over if I sync every time I create a new note -- making the program the most nagging thing next to my mother! ;-)

My point is that there should be an "I'm a big girl" setting that let's me dismiss the warning the first time it pops up and carry on understanding that if my drive dies and I have no backup I'll lose what's not in the cloud.

-- N

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Not true. I used EN for Mac most of last year and I was able to create new notes even when I was near my limit. I just waited to sync until the next cycle began.

Currently, I cannot create any notes in a synced folder when I hit my limit

Um...there's a difference between "near my limit" & "when I hit my limit". Of course, you can still add notes when you're "near" your limit. But no, you cannot add notes to sync'd notebooks once you've hit your limit.

[natallica 1]

I don't think the client has changed.

Not true. I used EN for Mac most of last year and I was able to create new notes even when I was near my limit. I just waited to sync until the next cycle began.

Currently, I cannot create any notes in a synced folder when I hit my limit.

As to your "editing and adding notes for about an hour" adding 100MB - every edit is a re-upload of any changed data.

But I'm not syncing to the cloud automatically. I'm set to do it manually and the meter reflects the additional space even though I have not synced. What exactly would be uploaded when I'm locally editing and have sync set to manual?

-- N

[gazumped 12,042]

I don't think the client has changed. As far back as I can remember, adding a new note to a synced notebook jumps your usage meter up by an appropriate amount whether or not that note is physically synced to the server. It's sensible to do so, otherwise as Burgers says you could potentially add 5GB to your notebook and then sync, which means they'd have to add whole levels of protection so as not to tie up the server, corrupt your database at one or other end of the transaction, and lose notes in the process. It's far more sensible to have the desktop client call "time" when you get to your (estimated) limit, whether or not the files have actually been sent. At least then you have an early warning of how much capacity you're using, and can save your own notes by putting the excess into an offline folder for the time being.

"..please let me keep creating notes even when I can't sync.." Not ever going to happen for all sorts of security, capacity and practical reasons - except in the aforementioned offline folders, from which you would have to switch files manually.

(Actually: here's an idea Evernote - how about an offline "Import Note Folder" - an option to automatically move files from an offline note folder into another specified synced folder. Users would still have to choose when to apply the move, otherwise you could build up a backlog of files waiting to be transferred... but it would mean a one-click transfer rather than dragging and dropping.)

I've got an issue at present where my desktop client shows a different usage figure than the web/ mobile clients, which both agree on a lower figure. I got caught out when loading some PDF files into my import folder (windows only I think - sorry), using the usage figure from my mobile as a guide for how much I could get away with conveniently upload. About halfway through I got some impressive errors and had to resort to offline storage - which is where the files came from in the first place. I do think Evernote could be much better behaved in the way that it imposes the usage limit, and I believe they're looking at that.

Meantime you should not see (IMHO) a huge difference between the file size in finder, and the upload usage. That's one issue you clearly have, and hopefully the Support Elves will have a look at that.

As to your "editing and adding notes for about an hour" adding 100MB - every edit is a re-upload of any changed data. If you're changing large video files, then that might be the reason you see such a huge change. Once you've sorted out the file size difference issue, I suggest carrying out a trial - save some work you intend for Evernote to your desktop. Use the desktop files to judge how much you have in that folder. Then move the whole lot into Evernote and see by how much your usage changes. If it's by more than you expected - back to Support.

Sorry you're having such a stressful time of it, but stick with the programme - lots of us have Gigabyte-size Evernote folders by now, and once you get used to the system it's surprisingly easy to manage.

[natallica 1]

That's how I plan on getting around it this month. I just don't understand why the change was made to the client?

What would be better is if there was a way for them to show you how much you have used in the cloud for the current month and how much would be taken up if you synced right then!

And, again, please let me keep creating notes even when I can't sync. I should not have to move notes between local and synced notebooks manually.

-- N

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Okay. One of the various people who has my support ticket is claiming that the Mac app is now updating the usage meter based on the local notes I've created without syncing. This is a real problem because as I mentioned before, back in December I stopped being able to create new notes in synced notebooks even though I had not synced anything to the cloud once I approached my limit.

I think this is the way the Windows client works. It's this way so you know you'll be able to upload everything in the sync'd notebooks. Otherwise, people could load up their sync'd notebooks, do a sync & then not be able to sync everything up b/c they exceeded their upload limit.

This is a real problem if the software cannot be changed to allow me to keep creating notes even when the app sees that I've hit my limit locally.

There's a very, very easy workaround. Create the notes in a local (non-sync'd) notebook, if you don't want them sync'd for a while. When you want them sync'd, move them to a sync'd notebook.

[natallica 1]

Okay. One of the various people who has my support ticket is claiming that the Mac app is now updating the usage meter based on the local notes I've created without syncing. This is a real problem because as I mentioned before, back in December I stopped being able to create new notes in synced notebooks even though I had not synced anything to the cloud once I approached my limit.

The older versions of EN updated the meter only once you synced -- in my case I have it set to Manual Sync.

This is a real problem if the software cannot be changed to allow me to keep creating notes even when the app sees that I've hit my limit locally. I'm hoping either it can be changed to function as before (meter updates when you sync) or a dialog box can be presented to let me know that I won't be able to sync all of my notes because I've hit my limit, but allows me to keep creating notes if I check a box to "not show again" in the dialog.

I don't always have high usage months, but I do during the times I'm trying to archive class notes and this is a really big limitation to the current version of EN for Mac.

-- N

[jbenson2 2,149]

I haven't seen anything wrong on the Evernote Windows side.

2 days left in my cycle. I've used 8% so far (83.6 MB of the 1024 MB).

In the past 28 days, I've loaded just over 525 notes made up of PDF's and web-site captures.

[natallica 1]

BTW: I've opened a support ticket about this issue, but it hasn't gotten anywhere yet. I keep getting different people emailing me asking basically the same questions I've already answered in replies to the support email. It would be beneficial if there was one person working a ticket so this wouldn't occur.

-- N

[natallica 1]

I am dragging and dropping the files into the note. I've been creating notes the same way the whole time. Clipping text using the Firefox add-on and then dragging and dropping additional files from Finder.

There is definitely something awry. I have sync set to manual and did not sync at all today.

My usage ballooned today:

Before doing anything today: 500.3 MB

After editing and adding notes for about an hour: 609.5 MB

Now: 883.4 MB

Again, I did not sync today and yet it claims my account is nearly full for the month.

The main problem is that even though I haven't synced anything new to the account today, once I get to 1GB in the app I'll get a dialog telling me I can't add any notes to my non-local notebooks.

So if the developers have changed the behavior of the current usage meter to reflect what the size will be once you do actually sync -- without actually syncing -- they are breaking things for me. Unless they want to let me be warned that I won't be able to sync once I go over the 1GB monthly limit and still continue adding notes (without syncing of course).

This still doesn't cover the issue that the file sizes shown in Finder and inside Evernote for .mov files are so different.

-- N

[dlu 628]

Hrmmm well if you attach files, edit and then save. You'll end up reuploading the entire attachment. That might contribute if you've been using files/images/attachments more

[anjoschu 67]

Consider that your way of use may have changed (certainly happened to me). When I began edit-updating note attachments (spreadsheets, office documents, etc.), my usage went up quite a bit (every save & sync equals a full upload). Additionally, when I replaced my old mobile phone with my current iPhone, photographing receipts suddenly became a big impact (its pictures files are huge).

[gazumped 12,042]

Hi - I'd take a wild guess that your upload bandwidth is being eaten up by inflated .MOV files, but I couldn't tell you why the size difference. Do you add these files to your notes by drag and drop, through an import folder or by emailing them to your account? And how big are the files according to Finder? You have a 50MB note limit, so to use up your upload allowance in one month it would only take 20 notes at that size...

Unless anyone else has an inspiration I'd say raise a support case for the size issue.