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Text pasted into Evernote loses paragraph line breaks


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Often, when filling out web forms, a section will contain several paragraphs. Before submitting a form, I like to save the text in case I need to refer to it later. So, in Safari, I'll select all and copy, then switch to Evernote and paste. But when I do so, all paragraph or line-break info is stripped from the text, resulting in everything getting pasted as one, large block. This happens whether pasting manually (⌘V) or using Clip to Evernote (⌃⌘V).

I'd have to classify this as a bug. If the copied text contains paragraphs, they should remain intact in Evernote. I'd love to see this fixed. :-)

  • Like 1
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  • 3 weeks later...

I'll second this bug report about losing whitespace formatting when it's pasted into EN.

I am trying to use EN to keep technical work-related notes, both from web clippings and from my terminal sessions. I intend to later share these technical notes with my staff.

However, it is extremely frustrating and time-wasting to have the whitespace stripped from a terminal session window when I cut & paste it into EN. It actually prevents me from using EN for collecting technical notes.

For example, I'm saving SQL queries and schemas:

> CREATE TABLE MTICKETALLOCATION (
> FUNDKEY BIT (96) NOT NULL ,
> PRIMARYKEY BIT (96) NOT NULL ,
> SHARES DOUBLE PRECISION NOT NULL ,
> TICKETKEY BIT (96) NOT NULL ,
> PRIMARY KEY (PRIMARYKEY) ,
> FOREIGN KEY (FUNDKEY) REFERENCES MFUND (PRIMARYKEY) ,
> FOREIGN KEY (TICKETKEY) REFERENCES MTICKET (PRIMARYKEY)

Ironically, pasting into this webform preserves more whitespace than does a simple text copy & paste into EN.

My current workaround is to create an image and cutting and pasting it instead of text, but this seems very silly.

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I've read the FAQ and someone on your team suggested using either TextMate or another tool to convert possibly overly rich text into plain text so that EverNote can deal with it.

While I appreciate the explanation, isn't this something the EverNote developers are supposed to manage behind the scenes? I understand very well how HTML, XHTML, XML, and even RTF work, and it should not take more than a few hours of developer time to strip formatting text tags, convert tabs to the appropriate number of spaces (  for HTML), and then insert into the note. That would take care of the current inability to cut & paste what appears to be simple text (to most laypeople) into a note.

However, since a developer is going to work on this, instead of stripping and toss information away (like the formatting), why not make use of it in a "best effort" manner? Convert all tags into the internal representation, where possible, otherwise strip them (but not their enclosed text).

Anyway, until rich text cut & pasting works (whether or not tag stripping is applied), I'm not going to be able to use the desktop EverNote client very much.

As a work around, ironically, the EverNote webclient works really well for cut & pasting -- must be the browser doing most of the work :-)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've had serious issues with Evernote's handling of copy/paste, even from things like TextMate. I'd like to compose a plain-text formatted outline or set of instructions or even source code and bring it into Evernote w/ a copy/paste and not see it totally lose the tabs (even if they're replaced by spaces) and other formatting. I've been a little encouraged by evidence on some of the comments from the Evernote team that they're looking at the copy/paste issues... I just hope it gets better interoperability.

Failing that, I'd appreciate the Evernote editor be a more full-featured Text editor in general, however I guess there's compatibility issues with all the different platforms that it supports.

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Thanks for all of the feedback, this is definitely an important issue for us to get right. As an Evernote user, I'd say that this would be my personal top priority issue, so we do hear you!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Am I missing something here, I've been pasting in text-only content into EverNote and now I want to use this text in another application. So I copy the text and paste it into another app (BBEdit) and all line breaks are removed so my text ends up as one single paragraph. If I export I can only export to Evernotes XML format and then clean up the text by chaning

, removing automatically created links etc.

Does this mean that I can't "round-trip" data and get it back the same way as I put it there???

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jemostrom -

The Mac clipboard uses a large number of different formats and flavors for text. We currently have a bug if you clip from an app that uses one of those flavors, paste into Evernote, and then copy and paste back into an app that uses the wrong flavor.

Thanks for the report

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  • 3 weeks later...

Add me to the list of people who'd love to have Evernote preserve my tabs when I cut from TextMate and paste into Evernote. I like using Evernote to store snippets of code so that I can reference Evernote when I need to remember how to do something. But having to manually reinsert tabs is a serious pain and leaving the tabs out makes everything harder to read.

Hope this is a fix that gets implemented soon!

Erik

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  • 1 month later...

I agree. I use it for grabbing results from mysql, or copying and pasting text.

Whitespace folding seems to be at fault. Drives me nuts! A Paste and Match Style or Paste Raw option would solve this. Or maybe have a checkbox that allows us to make the note unformatted and respects anything pasted into it, no formatting. Or maybe have a "<?>" box in the formatting bar which would format the selected text as code, automatically selecting Andale Mono and preserving/respecting whitespace.

@engberg said on 1/23/2009:

Thanks for all of the feedback, this is definitely an important issue for us to get right. As an Evernote user, I'd say that this would be my personal top priority issue, so we do hear you!

It's been 2 months now -- is it still your personal top priority? Does anyone else in engineering agree with you on a non-personal level? With the number of people who have asked for it in the forums, there's gotta be 3-10 times that number NOT posting on the forums who are bummed by the lack of this feature.

Screenshot description

The first result set is what I expect it to look like when pasting (manually added extra spaces).

The second result set is the same, but exactly as pasted from a Terminal window.

evernote-paste-bug_large.jpg

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Rich text is so integrated into Mac OS X that Evernote stands out from all other competitors on the platform for the lack of such support. I know there are technical differences, but copy/paste into Devonthink, Together or Shovebox is a much nicer experience.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello,

I still have this problem with Evernote. I have lots of notes made with TextMate (they are TXT files) and when i copy and paste in Evernote all blank spaces and tabs are gone. I have to re arrange the text manually and wate a lot of time. Is there any way to fix this?

Thanks,

Marcelo :)

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jemostrom -

The Mac clipboard uses a large number of different formats and flavors for text. We currently have a bug if you clip from an app that uses one of those flavors, paste into Evernote, and then copy and paste back into an app that uses the wrong flavor.

Thanks for the report

Hey fellow-Evernote-fans,

Until they can fix this, can anyone give me a tip on how to do it the "right" way?

Honestly, it seems like I can't copy and paste any text from any program in/out of Evernote without it sometimes stripping all carriage returns/EOLs. It's pretty wild.

Programs I've seen this problem in: I use the Macintosh's default TextEdit (both with RTF and plain text), and Firefox, and the Apple Mail.app. I have not tracked down the pattern of when carriage returns are stripped and when they are not.

Has anyone noticed exactly when/how the carriage returns are stripped?

I just want to know the pattern and train myself so I don't keep hitting my head against this.

I'm using Evernote as my primary word processor now, so this comes up a lot.

-d

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I have stopped using Evernote due to it's incompatibility with the "common" Mac wokflows - no support for webarchives, bad support for RTF/RTFD. Personally, I stick with DevonThink (or before that I used Together). The sync features are great, but since the rest of the application does not "do it" for me, I'll rather pass.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I too have trouble with the tabs and other code formatting details getting lost when pasting in a note. This however does not occur when in the webversion of EN. Then code formatting stays in tact. Even when saved and then viewed in Evernote desktop client, the formatting is preserved. It is kind of a hassle and by no means a permanent solution, but it is at least something until the EN guys crack the code on this subject :). Hope this helps for some people!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can only 2nd this (well, the number should be much larger than 2nd)

It appears that evernote on mac also makes multiple spaces into one space. I went as far as to run 'untabify' on emacs hoping that would help, but it does not.

cheers

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It is great that Evernote is working on this problem,

but in the meantime, maybe there is some way to figure out what is happening, and prevent it happening by adjusting my behavior?

I spend a lot of time copying and pasting text between Evernote and various text editors (most notably, TextEdit, the default Mac program). Sometimes I am working in RTF, sometimes in plain text.

Maybe there is a way I can adjust the preferences of TextEdit, or the default fonts in Evernote, or something similar, that would prevent this problem?

Anyway know the nitty gritty who can point us in the right direction?

I'd love to know EXACTLY what I am doing that the Evernote program doesn't like.

-d

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The Mac clipboard has a crazy number of different representations for "text", and Evernote mishandles at least one of those representations (I think it's "UTF16") in at least one direction. Applications that prefer one of the other encodings don't notice this problem, so you only see it in the handful of applications that accept text paste and choose the broken encoding.

I don't think there's an easy workaround if you're trying to paste into one of those apps, other than paste into something else first, which is obviously a hassle.

geechorama has been hard at work on a long list of things to make text handling (plus copy/paste/import) much better. This will be out in the next Mac release.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't think there's an easy workaround if you're trying to paste into one of those apps, other than paste into something else first, which is obviously a hassle.

I would not mind that hassle. I have tried a round-trip with a couple of other apps without success, and if you can recommend one, or a method involving plain-text conversion, that'd be neato.

Yeah: I am sorry to drag this issue out to the nth degree, I know it is being worked on. It just hits me in the face every single day (along with the font type/size swapping upon saving issue).

So I'll be patient,

but I'll also patiently nag. :-)

All the best,

D

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  • 3 weeks later...

Even worse: text that is copied via WebClipper will at first keep the line breaks.

But when saving the note, it will lose them. This is really awful, when you clip a web site that contains code/xml.

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  • 1 month later...

I have a slightly different problem with missing line breaks: Notes with cut and paste text appear with line breaks on my MacBook, but without them on my iPhone.

I used to have the problem with Notes missing line breaks on my Mac, but now it appears to be okay. But why cant Evernote sync its own notes with line breaks?

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  • 5 months later...

Add me to the list of users having significant problems with the formatting of pasted notes and even imported notes.

I have a lot where I use tabs to line up tables and columns of data. They looked fine in Yojimbo and fine in previous incarnations on the Palm system but are totally messed up in Evernote.

We really need real tabs and decent pasting of text with formats.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

+1 for this too.

I use Notepad for all my drafts and note taking.

I use tabs a ton, and when I'm all finished I copy and paste into the Windows client.

It looks good while I'm looking at it but if I click on another note and then back on that note it loses all the tab formatting.

So then I end up going back through and tabbing all over again.

Very tedious.

Please fix.

Thanks

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 months later...
The Mac clipboard has a crazy number of different representations for "text", and Evernote mishandles at least one of those representations (I think it's "UTF16") in at least one direction. Applications that prefer one of the other encodings don't notice this problem, so you only see it in the handful of applications that accept text paste and choose the broken encoding.

I don't think there's an easy workaround if you're trying to paste into one of those apps, other than paste into something else first, which is obviously a hassle.

geechorama has been hard at work on a long list of things to make text handling (plus copy/paste/import) much better. This will be out in the next Mac release.

Has there been a new Mac version that fixes these issues?

Are the versions with release notes documented somewhere?

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There have been a number of fixes to better handle various Mac clipboard representations from different third-party applications. It's much better than it used to be, but there are still a million possible combinations of source/format/destination, so we'll keep quashing any bugs we find.

High-level release notes are available from within the Mac client, under: Help > Release Notes

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Could you share some examples of what does work? and more importantly how to get these things to work?

As of version 1.11 I can get even the most basic of text handling capabilities to work on the MAC - it still completely obliterates the tabs and linefeeds.

Is there any reason that there can't just be a different note type that is text as opposed to html?

Its disappointing to look at this thread that "this is a priority - blah, blah, blah" for going on two years and still just basic stuff doesn't seem to work.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm copying from TextEdit. I started with text copied from the web into EN. Then because I couldn't get rid of underline text, I copied it out into textedit (plain text, which is my default for text). Then I created my line breaks and copied it back into EN. The line breaks were gone.

However, all web and email addresses became hyperlinked.

Here's another ditty. If text preceding a hyperlink text gets merged with linked text and then is separated out, it retains its link. So, If I have "Joe Smith joe@smith.com" and that gets connected (whether by user error or by EN formatting funkiness) to become "Joe Smithjoe@smith.com" "Smithjoe@smith.com" is the new hyperlinked text. It I then add a space or return to try to correct it, then "Smith" is hyperlinked (mailto:joe@smith.com) and "joe@smith.com" retains its hyperlink (mailto:joe@smith.com).

The only solution is to delete the hyperlinked Smith and retype it.

In addition to this report, I'd like to ask:

1) Is there a way to specify EN (Mac) to use a plain text format mode?

2) Why does do email web addresses not become hyperlinks when I enter them manually, but do if I copy them in (from a plain text editor, TextEdit)?

Thank you.

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In addition to this report, I'd like to ask:

1) Is there a way to specify EN (Mac) to use a plain text format mode?

2) Why does do email web addresses not become hyperlinks when I enter them manually, but do if I copy them in (from a plain text editor, TextEdit)?

I just found this: http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=18160&p=83037&hilit=format#p82634

Getting plain text into an EN Note in both Windows and Mac is very simple:

WIN: CTRL-SHIFT-V

MAC: CMD-SHIFT-V

It works. However, email and web addresses still come in as hyperlinked, and I don't know how to turn that off.

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  • 4 years later...

It's been well over four years since the last post on this issue and over six years since EN stated that it was working on a solution.

 

Evernote developers, at the very least, please give us an update on this problem and some sort of hope of when it will be fixed.

 

Just because users are no longer complaining, doesn't mean we're satisfied with your (lack of a) response. Make an effort, please.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I don't understand why this Mac client was at all if pasting text does not work properly.  At least with Version 6.1 (452115 Direct) pasting text from clipboard does not function properly (I paste link from Safari, but my experience is it happens with many different sources)

Before pasting:

before.tiff
After pasting:
after.tiff

I do not understand how two line breaks between "Układy kwantowe:" and "Quantum... "  get deleted.  It does not seem related with interpreting the pasted contents, but pasting seems to modify text nonlocally. Are some formatting tags from the copied text inserted into text? 

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On 2/19/2016 at 8:44 AM, Paulo_ said:

Uau. EIGHT YEARS later this issue is STILL NOT SOLVED.

Amazing.

Make that nearly 10 years. Pretty pathetic. They have no problems taking your money though. But fix a simple usability bug that has existed for a decade that prevents your users from correctly pasting content into a note? Nope. God forbid they do anything about that.

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  • 1 month later...

Copy and paste from Windows Notepad (plain text) into Evernote Windows does not preserve the carriage returns.

Somehow, copy and paste from iOS Notes into Evernote iOS does preserve the carriage returns.

This makes no sense to me. Why has this bug not been fixed in a decade?

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  • 9 months later...

I sync between Outlook 2007 (yes 2007) and Evernote.

The fact that Evernote doesn't display carriage returns and often combines the last line of a paragraph with the first line of the next is infuriating to say the least.

I tried looking for the solution on Google and so far I've only found this thread.

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  • 1 year later...

Twelve years later, and this issue is not resolved. Ensuring that cutting and pasting text is reliable is such a basic function. Evernote, please assign some people to take responsibility for this. 

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  • Level 5

You're replying to a long, winding thread originating in a no-longer-existing version of Evernote for Mac, which hasn't had any action since the new v. 10 editor was introduced. (And double-posting too.) Please pick which ancient thread you wish to revive and just post there, and with details about Evernote version and operating system. We're user volunteers here, and it helps to have some focus.

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