Before you say "silly person, you unwittingly created two accounts" -- well, I certainly did that in iTunes a couple years ago, much to my eternal shame and annoyance. Stupid Apple can't merge my accounts either, and although I've abandoned the account, the App Store reminds me of my old purchases every time it checks for updates. AAARRGH! Anyway, since then, I've been a lot more careful with my account management. I even purchased 1Password for both Mac and iOS and have been using it regularly for 2 years. Now on to my question.
I've been a casual Evernote user for 3 years, and this past week started in on a daily workflow. During my last iPhone sync (yesterday) I checked the box that said sync over wifi. Not sure if that had any effect on Evernote… but this morning, I got a notice on my desktop app that it's trying to sync with another account. Every time it tried to sync it kept giving me this error - an error I'd never seen before. After an hour of googling, much head scratching, and invoking "forgot password" for the alleged second account -- which AFAIK I'd never used -- I was finally able to view both accounts.
They have the EXACT same information and number of notes. They were created on the same date - in 2010. They are linked to the exact same email account. The ONLY difference is that one is my full email address, and one is my email handle, i.e. the text that appears before the @ mark in my email address. It's as though my account just divided, like a cell.
I didn't create a new EN account this week. It just suddenly appeared, warning me that synching is going to delete all my data… which of course puts me into a 2-hour frenzy to resolve the problem before I dare enter anything else into Evernote.
WTF EN? How did this happen? WHY did this happen?
Yes I have read the forums. I've already changed my passwords and have the one I'll "standardize" on saved in 1Password (it was already there). But it still sucks rocks. And it's just bizarre. And now, of course, it will be VERY easy to confuse these two. What if I'm at a tradeshow on my iPhone and forget? I'm in a hurry, I can't log in and so I do password recovery, accidentally log into the old account, and happily type away... whoops. Can it be resolved? Yes. But why is Evernote making more work for me? That defeats the purpose of a helper utility. Sometimes my notes don't save right, either. I've had to retype two mysteriously disappearing notes this week alone. And no, I did not stomp on them by synching another device. So that's mystery #2.
All in all, a shaky start to my greater reliance on EN.
It used to be that data loss was unacceptable in the software world. But in the world of the beta-ware web, seems like it's "once we chuck it over the fence, it's someone else's problem" and "tough luck, caveat emptor" if your data gets deleted. When exactly did "reliability" go out of fashion? Apple has screwed up royally with its shoddy implementation of iTunes and iCloud… and Dropbox also has a horrid, stupid usage model that forces the creation of multiple accounts and double-paying for bandwidth. The entire Internet of Services seems to not give a care that they are making it difficult or impossible to control your own data, or heaven forbid, recover from a common mistake that leads to potentially critical data loss.
Please, Evernote, don't let this be the standard by which you measure your success.
If there are idiomatic workflows we should be following, PUBLISH them. Tell us upfront, "this is the official way to avoid ***** yourself" rather than leaving us to learn it by making the mistake first.
And fine if you don't want to support deleting accounts. But why can't I merge my own information from accounts that clearly belong to me? Please, give us an easier way to do that. And please adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward deleting data. Give us the opportunity to merge data sources on sync. Better still if we can resolve duplicates or conflicts in-process (or after the fact).
Yes, it's a rant, and tl;dr, and I am sorry if I'm being a jerk... but today, I just feel like The Cloud is made of fancy air-puffed cowsh*t. And the cloud-minders don't care how deep it gets for us. And that's just not right.
Aside from the venting, my feature requests are sincere. And I really would like an answer as to how and why Evernote mangled my account today.
Idea
pcolley_23 0
Before you say "silly person, you unwittingly created two accounts" -- well, I certainly did that in iTunes a couple years ago, much to my eternal shame and annoyance. Stupid Apple can't merge my accounts either, and although I've abandoned the account, the App Store reminds me of my old purchases every time it checks for updates. AAARRGH! Anyway, since then, I've been a lot more careful with my account management. I even purchased 1Password for both Mac and iOS and have been using it regularly for 2 years. Now on to my question.
I've been a casual Evernote user for 3 years, and this past week started in on a daily workflow. During my last iPhone sync (yesterday) I checked the box that said sync over wifi. Not sure if that had any effect on Evernote… but this morning, I got a notice on my desktop app that it's trying to sync with another account. Every time it tried to sync it kept giving me this error - an error I'd never seen before. After an hour of googling, much head scratching, and invoking "forgot password" for the alleged second account -- which AFAIK I'd never used -- I was finally able to view both accounts.
They have the EXACT same information and number of notes. They were created on the same date - in 2010. They are linked to the exact same email account. The ONLY difference is that one is my full email address, and one is my email handle, i.e. the text that appears before the @ mark in my email address. It's as though my account just divided, like a cell.
I didn't create a new EN account this week. It just suddenly appeared, warning me that synching is going to delete all my data… which of course puts me into a 2-hour frenzy to resolve the problem before I dare enter anything else into Evernote.
WTF EN? How did this happen? WHY did this happen?
Yes I have read the forums. I've already changed my passwords and have the one I'll "standardize" on saved in 1Password (it was already there). But it still sucks rocks. And it's just bizarre. And now, of course, it will be VERY easy to confuse these two. What if I'm at a tradeshow on my iPhone and forget? I'm in a hurry, I can't log in and so I do password recovery, accidentally log into the old account, and happily type away... whoops. Can it be resolved? Yes. But why is Evernote making more work for me? That defeats the purpose of a helper utility. Sometimes my notes don't save right, either. I've had to retype two mysteriously disappearing notes this week alone. And no, I did not stomp on them by synching another device. So that's mystery #2.
All in all, a shaky start to my greater reliance on EN.
It used to be that data loss was unacceptable in the software world. But in the world of the beta-ware web, seems like it's "once we chuck it over the fence, it's someone else's problem" and "tough luck, caveat emptor" if your data gets deleted. When exactly did "reliability" go out of fashion? Apple has screwed up royally with its shoddy implementation of iTunes and iCloud… and Dropbox also has a horrid, stupid usage model that forces the creation of multiple accounts and double-paying for bandwidth. The entire Internet of Services seems to not give a care that they are making it difficult or impossible to control your own data, or heaven forbid, recover from a common mistake that leads to potentially critical data loss.
Please, Evernote, don't let this be the standard by which you measure your success.
If there are idiomatic workflows we should be following, PUBLISH them. Tell us upfront, "this is the official way to avoid ***** yourself" rather than leaving us to learn it by making the mistake first.
And fine if you don't want to support deleting accounts. But why can't I merge my own information from accounts that clearly belong to me? Please, give us an easier way to do that. And please adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward deleting data. Give us the opportunity to merge data sources on sync. Better still if we can resolve duplicates or conflicts in-process (or after the fact).
Yes, it's a rant, and tl;dr, and I am sorry if I'm being a jerk... but today, I just feel like The Cloud is made of fancy air-puffed cowsh*t. And the cloud-minders don't care how deep it gets for us. And that's just not right.
Aside from the venting, my feature requests are sincere. And I really would like an answer as to how and why Evernote mangled my account today.
Can anyone clue me in?
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