Searching deleted items

[thehiers 1]

Just upgraded to v5. Why in the world can we still not search for deleted items?  If you can't search for deleted items, why does evernote even bother keeping them?

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

 

+1 I just wasted 10 minutes searching hundreds of trashed notes for the one I needed... all the more frustrating because I needed it quickly. Maybe creating a trash notebook is a possible workaround, but then I can't use the trash can icon and "retiring" notes becomes more complicated in the mobile app, which I use quite often to close out a note. Please consider adding a trash search feature. If server space is evernote's concern, ping users to review & empty their trashed items that are TBD days old or something.

On the Windows client, you can sort by date deleted. Per post #3 above, you can do this on Mac, too.

 

I agree this is probably a sufficiently good solution for most cases of accidental trashing or post-tras-regret.

 

That being said, I can definitely see the utility of allowing the trash to either:

1) Be included in a general search at the user's specification (useful if, for example, you search for a note, cannot find it, extend search to trash to see if it ended up there)

2) Dedicated trash search when viewing the trash notebook (useful if, for example, you know or suspect that you trashed something, but it was a long time ago or you don't remember when, and a search would be the most efficient way of tracking it down)

[DTLow 5,749]

On March 20, 2015 at 6:08 AM, BurgersNFries said:

it just may be that Evernote doesn't want to add that (or any other long sought after & requested feature).

Oh yeah - that makes sense
or maybe its priorities, work involved ....

I did like @forever-evernote's suggestion.
In my house, trash is to be discarded.
If I put something in the trash but then think I might need it, I move it to my "Pending Trash"
This could also work with notebooks.

I've moved this thread to the feedback forum so that it can be voted on.  
I up voted - its now at 1

[danielg_dk 2]

Need a search through deleted notes.

[MAKEVERNOTE 3]

 

 

[CUT]

 

I look forward to this usability issue being addressed.

 

 

+1

I quote everything nibzzz has just said

 

+1

me too.

 

 

+1 Agreed.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

What's the problem with having a tick to include trash? This is really annoying in a rare occurance I need it.

It can't be that hard to add a tick that includes trash in search results.

No one said it was. But in addition to the tick, of course the coding would need to be changed to search the trash. So it's simply not a matter of adding a tick to the UI. That's probably not all that hard to do, either. But regardless of how hard or easy something would be to add, it just may be that Evernote doesn't want to add that (or any other long sought after & requested feature). For whatever the reason. Their app & their choice as to what to add. Or not.

[Denapolis 0]

How has this not been added yet??

 

It doesn't matter how Spotlight takes care of searching - this isn't Spotlight. Evernote is fully capable of implementing a better search workflow than that.

 

Allow search of the trash.

[boneycur 19]

Please add this feature soon.

[jbenson2 2,149]

My solution: delete my trash each evening.

There is no need for a search because I have very few notes in the trash.

[davekp 1]

I would really love to be able to search through deleted notes by clicking on the deleted notebook and performing a search. Just seems obvious that this should be possible without restoring all notes. 

[Marticos 1]

[cut]

 

 

I look forward to this usability issue being addressed.

 

+1

I quote everything nibzzz has said

and...

I      W A N T       A        S E A R C H A B L E           T R A S H

 

                 

[Peyton Stafford 3]

Here's a workaround that seems to work:

 

1. Create a notebook called Archives or something similar. 

2. Open your Trash folder and highlight all notes.

3. Use the "move to" function to move them to your Archives notebook.

4. Sync

5. The notes are now searchable. 

6. Delete selectively to move notes back to trash, if you have time. I don't.

7. Limit searches to exclude archived notes as needed or sort search results by notebook, etc., to keep them from cluttering your normal searches. I use GTD priority tags so the notes I want to find are usually at the top of my searches.

8. Going forward, notes that are merged into a single note will be added to Trash automatically. This should not create a problem since the content is preserved in the new note. Everything else I am tempted to delete, I will move to Archives.

[Pgn1 0]

+1 for searching Trash, either specifically searching the Trash folder, or an option for it to be included.

 

I like the way gmail does it - you can choose to search trash, but it's not the default.  If you search all email and nothing turns up, it asks you if you want to expand to Trash.  Searching "all notes" with no results could offer to search in trash too.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

+1 I just wasted 10 minutes searching hundreds of trashed notes for the one I needed... all the more frustrating because I needed it quickly. Maybe creating a trash notebook is a possible workaround, but then I can't use the trash can icon and "retiring" notes becomes more complicated in the mobile app, which I use quite often to close out a note. Please consider adding a trash search feature. If server space is evernote's concern, ping users to review & empty their trashed items that are TBD days old or something.

On the Windows client, you can sort by date deleted. Per post #3 above, you can do this on Mac, too.

BTW, it's doubtful the lack of searching trash has anything to do with space, since the trash gets sync'd, too. It's probably more b/c it would affect search, since the search engine would need to be able to know not to display results in the trash when doing searches...unless you were specifically searching trash. (B/C 99% of the time, a user is NOT going to want notes in the trash showing up in the results pane). Not that this would be impossible. Just that it may be a burden (translate: SLOW) when dealing with thousands of notes and/or simply not a high priority at this time.

[ShaunLando 0]

+1 I just wasted 10 minutes searching hundreds of trashed notes for the one I needed... all the more frustrating because I needed it quickly. Maybe creating a trash notebook is a possible workaround, but then I can't use the trash can icon and "retiring" notes becomes more complicated in the mobile app, which I use quite often to close out a note. Please consider adding a trash search feature. If server space is evernote's concern, ping users to review & empty their trashed items that are TBD days old or something.

[Ciarán 1]

 

[CUT]

 

I look forward to this usability issue being addressed.

 

 

+1

I quote everything nibzzz has just said

 

+1

me too.

[Gangun 29]

[CUT]

 

I look forward to this usability issue being addressed.

 

 

+1

I quote everything nibzzz has just said

[nibzzz 1]

The assumption is that if something is in the trash, it was there for a reason that you don't need or want it anymore.

False. If that were the assumption, the notes would just be deleted. By keeping them, you're assuming correctly that mistakes might be made.

 

If you wish to search for an item in Trash, you need to first restore it. 

If only I could find them to restore them!

 

This also follows standard Mac behavior, as Apple Spotlight does not search for deleted items either. 

False.

 

You may want to create another notebook to funnel potential trash items (that will still appear under search queries) until you are sure you really want to delete them before moving to Trash.

This is exactly how the Trash should work, a place for potential trash items kept until you are sure you really want to delete them.

 

Now I understand that Trash items should not show in the normal searches. But you need a way to target the Trash for searching. This could be done by a search modifier like "notebook:trash" or by automatically searching Trash when you initiate your search while viewing its contents.

 

I look forward to this usability issue being addressed.

[davidscottsmith 4]

I just ran into this trouble, and sorting by date deleted definitely helps.

 

But just like the "sort by" menu modifies itself to include "date deleted" when looking at the trash, I would love Evernote to modify the tags menu to allow us to search the trash for specific tags, and the search field to allow us to search the trash.

 

Would be most helpful!

 

Thanks,

David

[Derek Traynor 0]

Also having great difficulty as I need a note that's somewhere in my 'trash' along with 5k other items!

 

If the plan is to follow Mac search functionality then this does allow searching within your trash.

 

Is there a way to 'archive' similar to Gmail?

[sgp77 3]

All of your deleted items are located in your Trash notebook. The assumption is that if something is in the trash, it was there for a reason that you don't need or want it anymore.

 

...

 

This also follows standard Mac behavior, as Apple Spotlight does not search for deleted items either. 

 

 

Bumping an old thread, but just hit this limitation today and found this on Google. I have 690 notes in my trash, and there's one in there somewhere I decided I actually do need. Very hard to find.

 

Regarding the Mac behavior, I can still click the trash icon in my doc and then search only trashed files. I think this would be useful in Evernote, too.

[Gangun 29]

Hey, just seen it on EN Windows too

 

Furthermore, I can also sort by "Shared": a workaround to find shared notes.

 

If I change the View Mode into "List" (instead of Snippet or Thumbnail) I can choose to see the "Shared" column with the "Shared since" date inside.  Great.  Thanks everybody.

 

Cheers.

[Pop Loser 0]

The problem with this workflow (I've just discovered) is that you also don't allow "Undo" on deletes. So, I was just sorting through some old notes, accidentally deleted two of them to the trash. Now I have to manually look through 7,000 notes in my trash to find them again. It's not ideal and the simple fix would be to give me some way to search my trash, even if it's completely separate from the regular search or I can only do it in the web interface.

 

UPDATE: Oh look, I can sort by date deleted. That helps.

[forever-evernote 29]

Hi thehiers,

 

All of your deleted items are located in your Trash notebook. The assumption is that if something is in the trash, it was there for a reason that you don't need or want it anymore.

 

We do not permanently delete items until you wish to erase a deleted item from Trash. If you wish to search for an item in Trash, you need to first restore it. 

 

This also follows standard Mac behavior, as Apple Spotlight does not search for deleted items either. 

 

You may want to create another notebook to funnel potential trash items (that will still appear under search queries) until you are sure you really want to delete them before moving to Trash. That is just one workaround idea.

 

Nonetheless, thanks for your input