(Archived) Show-stoppping bug in Evernote 5.0.5 Mac deletes most new notes (!)

[Mason 4]

I am seeing a gnarly bug in the new 5.0.5 version. All new notes that I create outside of the main Evernote window are deleted as soon as they are closed. (!!!)

Reproduction:

1.) Use the "Save PDF to Evernote" feature from the print dialog to make a new note in Evernote. The note opens an a new window.

2.) Close the note. Boom! Your note is now gone. It does not appear in the notebook list and there is no way to access it.

Or:

1.) Open a note in its own window (e.g. by double clicking).

2.) Use the New Note command, which opens your new note in its own new window (since the frontmost window is not the main all-in-one window).

3.) Enter some really important text that you don't want to lose, then close the window.

4.) Boom! Your note with the really important text is gone.

New notes created within the main all-in-one window seem to work normally. All notes that get created in their own window are gone forever as soon as the window is closed. You can tell, because you can leave the main window open to your default notebook in the background, and then create a new note. You can see it does not appear in the list in the background.

I really can't believe how bad this bug is. Either there has to be some weird edge-case problem with my particular setup, or Evernote's software quality control system is utterly broken. I have reproduced this bug on my MacBook Pro and Mac Pro, and confirmed it does not happen with 5.0.4.

Can anybody else confirm this problem?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi. I tested the second scenario (new note in its own window (CMD + N) and double-clicking a note to edit in its own window. Both worked fine for me. Are you using Version 5.0.5 (400808)?

[Mason 4]

Hello, thanks for the reply and for trying that out. Yes, I am using version 5.0.5 (400808). However, my vanished notes subsequently reappeared (after about half an hour).

Now I suspect that it might be caused in part by the large size of my EN database. It was 12:51 my time when I noticed that my new notes were vanishing. Looking in the Activity Log, I found a bunch of entries like this at that exact time:

2013-01-25 12:51:11 main [ENWKNoteContentEditorView] INFO: Trying to commitEditing, but note has not finished loading.

The note seemed to be completely gone and I then verified the problem on my Mac Pro. But after a while (about 45 minutes) I noticed the note was now present in the index list. Checking the Activity Log again, I saw thousands of "Reindexing note" log messages, including this one, eventually:

2013-01-25 13:44:26 [ENNoteReIndexOperation] INFO: Reindexing note: '2013-01-23 XXXX contract unresolved issues' [1c2f04b8-0f37-49c1-bef1-1c41431336ee]

( '2013-01-23 XXXX contract unresolved issues' is the name of the first note that vanished)

So it appears to me that after upgrading, EN began some asynchronous process whereby it had to re-index thousand of notes for some reason, and until this was done, new notes created per my description above would not show up. But, once EN caught up with the re-indexing, they did show up.

Still looks like a bug, but perhaps more 'heart-stopping' than 'show-stopping', in that it appears the notes are being deleted, but if you wait half an hour or so they re-appear. And now that this reindexing thing appears to be done, it seems like EN is working normally.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Glad to hear that you got it back. You should have had a "processing" notification in the bottom left part of your screen. If you didn't then that is a little odd. Mine usually takes an hour+ to process everything after upgrading. I'll keep an eye out for the issue. I have to reinstall everything now, and I think I'll just go through an initial sync to get everything off on the right foot.

[jbkendrick 0]

I agree with GM. Be sure to watch for "processing" in the lower left of the screen when things don't seem to update properly. And it can be processing for awhile during certain operations, e.g. changing a notebook name that contains a lot of notes.