(Archived) iOS-style offline notebooks for desktop Evernote

[dtwhite 9]

As my EN account gradually increases in size, the disk space it takes up on both my personal MacBook Air, and my work Lenovo Windows 7 laptop increases, to the point where I currently don't have a whole lot of free space left.

 

I'm sure this must have been discussed or requested previously, but it would be great if there was the ability in the desktop versions of EN not to download certain notebooks locally, but leave them on the EN servers. This would be similar to the way EN for iOS works. If I could only download certain notebooks onto my local drives on my laptops, and leave less-frequently accessed ones on the EN server, it would free up a good chunk of local drive space.

 

The problem of EN taking up a lot of local drive space is not critical for me right now, but as months move on (and EN is supposed to be a 100 year company!), and my volume of notes gradually increases, this will become more of an issue (I plan on being a EN Premium customer for the long haul).

 

Is there any prospect of this functionality being added to EN for Mac and Windows? It could be a Premium feature.

 

David

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

As my EN account gradually increases in size, the disk space it takes up on both my personal MacBook Air, and my work Lenovo Windows 7 laptop increases, to the point where I currently don't have a whole lot of free space left.

 

I'm sure this must have been discussed or requested previously, but it would be great if there was the ability in the desktop versions of EN not to download certain notebooks locally, but leave them on the EN servers. This would be similar to the way EN for iOS works. If I could only download certain notebooks onto my local drives on my laptops, and leave less-frequently accessed ones on the EN server, it would free up a good chunk of local drive space.

 

The problem of EN taking up a lot of local drive space is not critical for me right now, but as months move on (and EN is supposed to be a 100 year company!), and my volume of notes gradually increases, this will become more of an issue (I plan on being a EN Premium customer for the long haul).

 

Is there any prospect of this functionality being added to EN for Mac and Windows? It could be a Premium feature.

 

David

Hi David. It is sometimes referred to as "selective sync," and the Evernote CEO has said the feature is "inevitable," but I am afraid it is not here yet. It would be nice. I stripped all of my attachments out of my account last summer because my account got too big for my Macbook Air (a couple dozen gigabytes). Now, even with thousands of notes, I don't even have 100MB in my account. If you are interested, here's my thinking on it.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29245-how-to-optimize-your-evernote-experience/#entry173506

[dtwhite 9]

 

Hi David. It is sometimes referred to as "selective sync," and the Evernote CEO has said the feature is "inevitable," but I am afraid it is not here yet. It would be nice. I stripped all of my attachments out of my account last summer because my account got too big for my Macbook Air (a couple dozen gigabytes). Now, even with thousands of notes, I don't even have 100MB in my account. If you are interested, here's my thinking on it.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29245-how-to-optimize-your-evernote-experience/#entry173506

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

Glad to hear "selective sync" may be on the roadmap. I guess EN may have concerns around folk just signing up for an account just to use it as a digital storage locker if they introduced it, but I think it's critical as established users continue to build large volumes of notes. 

 

Stripping out PDFs as you have done would certainly reduce the size significantly (some of the stuff I scan in can be pretty large), but that kind of defeats a core piece of functionality within EN, the ability to search documents quickly.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

 

 

Hi David. It is sometimes referred to as "selective sync," and the Evernote CEO has said the feature is "inevitable," but I am afraid it is not here yet. It would be nice. I stripped all of my attachments out of my account last summer because my account got too big for my Macbook Air (a couple dozen gigabytes). Now, even with thousands of notes, I don't even have 100MB in my account. If you are interested, here's my thinking on it.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29245-how-to-optimize-your-evernote-experience/#entry173506

 

Thanks for your feedback.

 

Glad to hear "selective sync" may be on the roadmap. I guess EN may have concerns around folk just signing up for an account just to use it as a digital storage locker if they introduced it, but I think it's critical as established users continue to build large volumes of notes. 

 

Stripping out PDFs as you have done would certainly reduce the size significantly (some of the stuff I scan in can be pretty large), but that kind of defeats a core piece of functionality within EN, the ability to search documents quickly.

 

Unless, of course, you extract the text from your documents. Everything is just as searchable. If you need the PDFs, you can use your storage locker (Dropbox, GDrive, etc.). 

 

I don't think Evernote is especially concerned about the service being used as a storage locker (in a bad sense). The upload limit each month prevents people from doing that anyhow. I am guessing the issue is really more about getting the sync and search right across every client whether offline or online. 

 

If you look closely, iOS already has weaknesses. It cannot (last I checked) search PDF content offline. It cannot (last I checked) search joined and personal notebooks at once. I am guessing that it isn't as easy as it sounds.