(Archived) Search function broken in evernote for mac

[nbnb 0]

Hello guys, I don't know if I missed something. I found the search function on mac is significantly less efficient compared to iOS and web.

I always trusted Evernote until I searched for some notes on mac and it returned with no results. But I knew I made those notes. So I did some tests with Evernote on mac, iOS, web and searching with spotlight. I found mac version Evernote was the worst with searching. Searching for certain strings would return with no results on mac version, while iOS, web and spotlight could all return with consistent and correct results. Sometimes, searching in mac version simply showed less results than using the other methods.

I also found that, mac version was even worse when searching in Chinese. But again spotlight, iOS and web had no problem in my tests.

I have been using evernote for a while. Searching only becomes important to me when I accumulate hundreds of notes. So I didn't notice how wrong searching went in previous versions. Is this a software flaw, or I didn't set it up correctly? I tried to rebuild the library of evernote, but there is no evernote folder in application support. Weird... Somebody please help. Thanks.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

A more specific answer to your question would be this. When I search for the Japanese name "大友", I get the following results:

OSX 1016

Spotlight 564

Web 36

Android 200

This is appalling. This goes way over the line of simple "inconsistencies", it is a major bug.

Have you submitted a bug support ticket for this specific search results?

Have you seen anything like this with all English Search criteria?

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Hmmm. For same thing on Windows I would suggest:

/Debugmenu -> Debug -> Re-index database.

No idea if equivalent function is available on Mac.

I've been running EN Mac for two years now, and I am not aware of a "Re-index database" function on the Mac.

Obviously, this a very useful function that we urgently need in EN Mac.

Re-indexing is much, much faster that a complete download/reinstall of your EN database.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, we need a set of Evernote database repair tools that do no require a reinstall of Evernote database.

This is a common practice for database apps, both Mac and Windows.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

LOL. I quite like Windows, and use it every day as well, but there is nothing like this wonderful touchpad on the Mac, or the ability to sync a Pages document seamlessly from my computer to my iPad to my iPhone. I might change my mind in October (by the way, the Microsoft store I visited yesterday was well-planned, and brilliantly executed -- that is a thought for another thread, though).

Well, you have me stumped. I am not sure how I would go about getting Evernote to re-index on the Mac.

[Owyn 457]

Heck no. You are one of those poor, deluded, and seduced Mac users.

Seriously. It would be a really WAG if I tried to diagnose a Mac specific problem.

...

Hmmm. For same thing on Windows I would suggest:

/Debugmenu -> Debug -> Re-index database.

No idea if equivalent function is available on Mac.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Try simplify formatting on a problem note.

It would also be worthwhile to export a problem note to .enex and attach it to a support request.

These originated as plain text notes, so there is no formatting to simplify, and it is a total mystery to me. I'll be sending a problem note to Evernote and see what they can do with it. Fortunately, only a few are throwing up errors.

I'm getting strange behavior today. I created a test note, synced (got the error), and saw the note appear on my iPad. That's good. But, I cannot see the note at the top of my note list on my Mac now when I sort by updated (it appears at the top on the Web). I can only find it by an intitle:test search. Something is definitely not right here. I tried to sort by title and scroll through my notes, but I am stuck in the "n"s. There is no activity that I can see (no indexing, syncing, etc.)... Any advice Owyn?

At any rate, please disregard my search results. I may be laboring under the effects of a problematic database, and any results I have at this point are probably idiosyncratic.

[Owyn 457]

Try simplify formatting on a (copy of a) problem note.

It would also be worthwhile to export a problem note to .enex and attach it to a support request.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

A search for the English romanization of that name ("otomo") yields:

OSX 612

Spotlight 580

Web 617

Android 92

Ouch.

Indeed.

Well, I have lots of files I have been waiting to move into my account, and my new month just started. A few of my notes (text files I dragged into my account) are not playing well with Evernote. The problem is that I get an error for a note that search cannot find ("An unexpected error occurred while synchronizing.... The note 'ABC' could not be synced. The content is invalid"). No amount of searches with quotation marks or advanced operands will locate it. LOL. It turns out that the note doesn't exist (as far as I can tell -- sorting by title and looking for it in my account or on the web turns up nothing).

I am beginning to suspect that I may need to rebuild my database in order to get rid of this error and hopefully improve the search results. This is just a guess. Ugh

So, the good news may be that my funky search results could be attributed to my funky account. The bad news is that I will be out of commission for at least a couple of days if I do have to sync the entire thing again (in July, with just 8,000 or so notes it took a couple of days, but now I have about 10,000).

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Interesting... Can you confirm that what you found is OSX > spotlight > web > android ? OSX means evernote for mac, and it found 1016 results matched? In my test, OSX version is worst with strings in Chi characters. I haven't tested this on iPad and iPhone. Maybe someday when I have time.

Yes. I can imagine it will take a lot to narrow down the searching-in-Chi(or Jap...) glitch. I tried to be helpful by giving my detailed description of the problem. I'd love to see them fix it at least for the desktop version. I feel it is weird that spotlight can sometimes come up with more results than evernote for mac, for spotlight only supports evernote, but it is not a part of evernote.

I tested the search a couple of times for each platform. Is OSX better? I don't know. On this particular search it "found" more, but until I go through each result, I cannot know what it is "finding." I really ought to set aside time for this, but we are probably talking about several hours, and I haven't had that block of time open for a long, long time

[Owyn 457]

A search for the English romanization of that name ("otomo") yields:

OSX 612

Spotlight 580

Web 617

Android 92

Ouch.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

A more specific answer to your question would be this. When I search for the Japanese name "大友", I get the following results:

OSX 1016

Spotlight 564

Web 36

Android 200

This is appalling. This goes way over the line of simple "inconsistencies", it is a major bug.

Have you submitted a bug support ticket for this specific search results?

Have you seen anything like this with all English Search criteria?

I think the search inconsistencies with Asian language searches are already known, so I haven't submitted a bug report. Also, I really need to do more testing before I can say what is going on with this. Am I doing something wrong? I don't know yet. The English is generally better, but still inconsistent. A search for the English romanization of that name ("otomo") yields:

OSX 612

Spotlight 580

Web 617

Android 92

[nbnb 0]

Interesting... Can you confirm that what you found is OSX > spotlight > web > android ? OSX means evernote for mac, and it found 1016 results matched? In my test, OSX version is worst with strings in Chi characters. I haven't tested this on iPad and iPhone. Maybe someday when I have time.

Yes. I can imagine it will take a lot to narrow down the searching-in-Chi(or Jap...) glitch. I tried to be helpful by giving my detailed description of the problem. I'd love to see them fix it at least for the desktop version. I feel it is weird that spotlight can sometimes come up with more results than evernote for mac, for spotlight only supports evernote, but it is not a part of evernote.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

A more specific answer to your question would be this. When I search for the Japanese name "大友", I get the following results:

OSX 1016

Spotlight 564

Web 36

Android 200

It isn't scientific, rigorous, or even terribly helpful, but it gives a sense of what I am talking about with the discrepancies using Japanese (actually, it could just as well be Chinese with this character combination). Maybe I am doing something wrong. I don't know. As far as I can tell, I am searching "all notes," and the term is exactly the same. I even copy/pasted the characters and quotation marks to be absolutely sure nothing was different. But, as you can see by the results, something is not working correctly. The issues are not unique to OSX or even the recent builds, but stretch back for quite a while (I don't remember when I first recognized the problem -- about this time last year?).

I've been meaning to devote some time to figuring all of this out, but I've just been too busy. I gotta save time to post on these forums

Anyhow, getting search to work well is a lot tougher than it looks (we take Google's success for granted these days, I suspect). It is a work in progress, the developers know about many of the issues, and they are moving along. In the meantime, I tend to do five or six searches when I really want to make sure I have tracked down all of my memories associated with some search query.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks. I use iOS, OSX, Android, Windows, and the Web. Search results vary, depending on the platform. I've reported this for English language searches in the past. For Japanese, it gets a little more complex, and results vary differently.

[nbnb 0]

Hi. I am trying to figure out the inconsistencies I am encountering with English, Japanese, and Chinese (traditional and simplified) searches as well. My pet theory (totally uncomfirmed by knowledge, experience, or testing) is that my PDFs are throwing things off. I OCR'd them before uploading them into Evernote, but the huge number of differences in hits (sometimes hundreds) makes me think the problem is in a format of some kind.

Do you have any PDFs in your account? I want to stress that this may be a red herring, and totally unrelated. I just don't know yet, and I am curious.

BTW, what platform do you use? Does it have problem with searching Jap strings as well? Thx.

[nbnb 0]

Hi. I am trying to figure out the inconsistencies I am encountering with English, Japanese, and Chinese (traditional and simplified) searches as well. My pet theory (totally uncomfirmed by knowledge, experience, or testing) is that my PDFs are throwing things off. I OCR'd them before uploading them into Evernote, but the huge number of differences in hits (sometimes hundreds) makes me think the problem is in a format of some kind.

Do you have any PDFs in your account? I want to stress that this may be a red herring, and totally unrelated. I just don't know yet, and I am curious.

In early days, when the web clipper was better with saving the whole page as pdf, I did save some pdfs. But I didn't like saving notes in that way. I think the reason was because web clipper (old version) saved pdfs like pictures, so it could only match the strings in the titles. But I have converted all my pdf notes to html notes long time ago. I don't remember all the fuss I had back at that time. And I don't have any pdf notes to test now. Sorry.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi. I am trying to figure out the inconsistencies I am encountering with English, Japanese, and Chinese (traditional and simplified) searches as well. My pet theory (totally uncomfirmed by knowledge, experience, or testing) is that my PDFs are throwing things off. I OCR'd them before uploading them into Evernote, but the huge number of differences in hits (sometimes hundreds) makes me think the problem is in a format of some kind.

Do you have any PDFs in your account? I want to stress that this may be a red herring, and totally unrelated. I just don't know yet, and I am curious.

[nbnb 0]

We are aware of some Chinese character handling issues. Could you please be more specific about any other issues?

Thanks for quick reply. I appreciate that. I just did another quick test and wrote down the results. Hope it will be helpful. Please see the attached spreadsheet.

So basically, I tested mixed Eng and Chi search strings in Evernote web, mac and also in spotlight.I think there may be a limit in how many results spotlight can present. So, in spotlight pref, I turned off everything else (Ex: music) except Doc, which would help to narrow down results. But sometimes spotlight showed significantly less results. I think the reason was because it was showing a number of non-evernote docs.

Evernote web always dug out most results. Evernote mac was close in handling Eng strings, but it was half blind when it was looking for Chi strings. I remember the notes that were not shown in the results (in mac version) were mostly clipped from some forum posts. But, among the notes evernote mac did find, many were from forum posts too. So I have no clue about why mac version is less efficient, if it is true.

Spotlight was better with some Chi strings but not with the others. I know nearly nothing about he searching mechanism evernote uses, and I know even less about spotlight. I didn't understand why spotlight couldn't find anything about "工大" and less results with "科幻“ and "电驴".I am sorry that my test results are flooded with "no clue", "I don't know". Please let me know if you need anything else.

evernote inconsistant search results.pdf

[Jackolicious 808]

We are aware of some Chinese character handling issues. Could you please be more specific about any other issues?