(Archived) Offline Notes: Any Apps on iOS that Have This?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Hi everyone. I'd like to pick the collective brain of our forum members. I am afraid the Evernote app on iOS doesn't play well with my notes (I seem to have a unique issue), and I cannot use it. I need to have my notes available on mobile, though. Any ideas?

In total, I have several tens of thousands, but I'd settle for just getting four or five thousand notes available for offline use. My understanding of Clever is that it only holds a few notes at a time in the cache. Please let me know if you have found a third-party app that can do this. Thanks!

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Hi everyone. I'd like to pick the collective brain of our forum members. I am afraid the Evernote app on iOS doesn't play well with my notes (I seem to have a unique issue), and I cannot use it. I need to have my notes available on mobile, though. Any ideas?In total, I have several tens of thousands, but I'd settle for just getting four or five thousand notes available for offline use. My understanding of Clever is that it only holds a few notes at a time in the cache. Please let me know if you have found a third-party app that can do this. Thanks!

As much as it pains me to say it, if I want to have access to something when I'm not at home, I put a copy in Dropbox. And if I want to take it a step further, I'll call it up in Dropbox on my iPhone/iPad & "star" it, so it's saved on the device. I know this may not "scale well" with the 4-5 thousand notes you're talking about (see what I did there???). Another option, that I'm sure you've already thought of is simply having a separate account for those notes. With my "duet" system, I use Clever for my main (big) account & the EN iOS app for my duet/incoming/work-in-progress account & that setup works pretty well for me. (I sometimes am not sure which account to search if it's a current note that I may have already transferred to the main account.).

Other Clever flaws you may have already encountered is that it often mucks up the enml during editing. To the point where the note is no longer legible. For that reason, I stick to using Clever for note retrieval (which sometimes does not work, I guess b/c of the caching issue you mentioned & ALWAYS crashes when trying to call up a large note) or note creation b/c I normally have FastEver linked to the duet/incoming/work-in-progress account.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

Hi everyone. I'd like to pick the collective brain of our forum members. I am afraid the Evernote app on iOS doesn't play well with my notes (I seem to have a unique issue), and I cannot use it. I need to have my notes available on mobile, though. Any ideas?In total, I have several tens of thousands, but I'd settle for just getting four or five thousand notes available for offline use. My understanding of Clever is that it only holds a few notes at a time in the cache. Please let me know if you have found a third-party app that can do this. Thanks!

As much as it pains me to say it, if I want to have access to something when I'm not at home, I put a copy in Dropbox. And if I want to take it a step further, I'll call it up in Dropbox on my iPhone/iPad & "star" it, so it's saved on the device. I know this may not "scale well" with the 4-5 thousand notes you're talking about (see what I did there???). Another option, that I'm sure you've already thought of is simply having a separate account for those notes. With my "duet" system, I use Clever for my main (big) account & the EN iOS app for my duet/incoming/work-in-progress account & that setup works pretty well for me. (I sometimes am not sure which account to search if it's a current note that I may have already transferred to the main account.).

Other Clever flaws you may have already encountered is that it often mucks up the enml during editing. To the point where the note is no longer legible. For that reason, I stick to using Clever for note retrieval (which sometimes does not work, I guess b/c of the caching issue you mentioned & ALWAYS crashes when trying to call up a large note) or note creation b/c I normally have FastEver linked to the duet/incoming/work-in-progress account.

I have four accounts, and I have tried my notes in all of them without any success. It always crashes the Evernote app, and it is actually pretty rare for me to have the app run long enough to download all of my notes offline. I got to 576 MB of 892 MB this week before it crashed. I'm using a similar "duet" system (one account for shared stuff and one for my own), but without much success. Interestingly, I tried to share my notes with another account in a shared notebook, but that shared notebook crashed my account as well! The hope was that I could maybe use Evernote Business to keep a copy of the shared notebook offline (only Business has this feature on iOS), but no dice.

I think a few thousand notes in Dropbox that I cannot edit would be a little less than ideal, besides the fact that they would be tough to get offline. Thanks for the suggestion, though! My current thinking is to use either VoodooPad (I haven't yet been able to sync all of my notes with it either) and/or a folder full of text files synced with notesy or some other app. The problem here is that this splits up my work among three apps and it is very difficult to keep track of changes. In fact, it is really quite unworkable for me. I have tried it before and didn't like it much. I guess that is why I keep trying (in vain) to get the Evernote app to work (every beta is another chance to try it out).

The "scale" of things is really a "big" part of the problem. After all, I don't know of many apps that have trouble with ten or twenty notes. Unfortunately, I don't know of any that can handle ten or twenty-thousand on the iPad. It is frustrating, and while Logmein is great when you have a connection, everything falls apart when you don't.

The obvious answer is to just use local notebooks on the Mac, but there are so many situations in my life (at least) when I cannot conveniently whip out the Macbook for notes. One of the most important that comes to mind is the classroom. I move from reading, to handwriting, to viewing, to presentation slides and the iPad is the only thing that can easily handle them all. Well, it can "if" you can figure out how to get the note-taking to work

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

The obvious answer is to just use local notebooks on the Mac, but there are so many situations in my life (at least) when I cannot conveniently whip out the Macbook for notes. One of the most important that comes to mind is the classroom. I move from reading, to handwriting, to viewing, to presentation slides and the iPad is the only thing that can easily handle them all. Well, it can "if" you can figure out how to get the note-taking to work

 

 

GM, I'm very sorry to hear about your troubles.  Is there another thread where you discuss the details of your iOS issues in more detail?

 

IAC, I hear what you say about the iPad, and it IS VERY convenient.

 

However, an MBA-11 is, IMO, just as convenient, and a lot more capable, especially with the 7-HR+ battery run time in the 2013 model.  I know you have a strong preference for the iPad, and that is fine.  But maybe it is just not the device you need today given today's state of technology.  To be clear, my assessment is that the issue is NOT with the iPad itself, but with EN iOS.

 

I wish I could be of more help, but I use the iPad mostly for searching/reading/viewing -- very little for data entry.  So it is unlikely that I will come across the Killer Offline Note app.  :-)

 

Can I do one thing, that just might help?  Let me challenge your need to have 10's of 1,000s of notes ALL offline at the same time.  I realize that might be the ideal, most convenient case, but really, you need ALL of those at once?  Are you really without internet access that often?  I use my Verizon iPhone 5 as a wi-fi hotspot, and it works great to provide both my MBA and iPad with Internet access when I am not near a normal wi-fi access point.

 

Well, I wish you luck in finding a solution to your problem, and if I come across any iOS apps that might help, I'll post here.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

 

The obvious answer is to just use local notebooks on the Mac, but there are so many situations in my life (at least) when I cannot conveniently whip out the Macbook for notes. One of the most important that comes to mind is the classroom. I move from reading, to handwriting, to viewing, to presentation slides and the iPad is the only thing that can easily handle them all. Well, it can "if" you can figure out how to get the note-taking to work

 

GM, I'm very sorry to hear about your troubles.  Is there another thread where you discuss the details of your iOS issues in more detail?

 

IAC, I hear what you say about the iPad, and it IS VERY convenient.

 

However, an MBA-11 is, IMO, just as convenient, and a lot more capable, especially with the 7-HR+ battery run time in the 2013 model.  I know you have a strong preference for the iPad, and that is fine.  But maybe it is just not the device you need today given today's state of technology.  To be clear, my assessment is that the issue is NOT with the iPad itself, but with EN iOS.

 

I wish I could be of more help, but I use the iPad mostly for searching/reading/viewing -- very little for data entry.  So it is unlikely that I will come across the Killer Offline Note app.  :-)

 

Can I do one thing, that just might help?  Let me challenge your need to have 10's of 1,000s of notes ALL offline at the same time.  I realize that might be the ideal, most convenient case, but really, you need ALL of those at once?  Are you really without internet access that often?  I use my Verizon iPhone 5 as a wi-fi hotspot, and it works great to provide both my MBA and iPad with Internet access when I am not near a normal wi-fi access point.

 

Well, I wish you luck in finding a solution to your problem, and if I come across any iOS apps that might help, I'll post here.

 

Thanks for the advice!

 

Reporting

I've been reporting the issue for about a year now on the forums (here is one from October, but this problem dates to September, if I remember correctly http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/30026-constant-crashing-with-ipad-and-iphone/?p=162424). There isn't much discussion of my issue on the forum, because there isn't much to say. It appears that I am unique with this issue, so I wholeheartedly recommend Evernote for everyone else, especially on the iPad, where we have a much better app this year, but I am (ironically) unable to use it. The developers are working hard on a solution. It's tough to criticize them. If they cannot reproduce the problem, then they cannot fix it (I could turn over all of my notes, but I am not comfortable doing that, so we are at an impasse).

Android

One potential solution is to ditch iOS entirely and use an Android tablet. With the exception of notes that cannot be edited on Android, and a search that never turns up more than 200 hits, I think I could manage somehow. It is certainly one of my favorite apps on Android. One problem is that the Nexus 10 is due for a refresh anytime, so I have to wait before I can give Evernote a try on the tablet. Another is that I am pretty fond of the iPad, so it would be a sad parting of ways with iOS. I could do it, though, for note-taking that works.

Windows

I really wanted to like the Surface tablet, and willed myself to use it, but there doesn't seem to be much future there for me. There are lots of reasons, but I cannot see how a new iteration will fix the problems. I will look again when the next iteration comes out, but I have pretty much given up hope (for the short term, at least) for that platform (again, in my case).

MBA

I am using it right now I love the MBA, but it isn't well-suited for reading, handwriting, or using in a classroom situation. It's a great computer, to be sure, but doesn't fit my needs as well as the iPad. In the end, as you said, the technology may not be there for what I want to do.

Fewer Notes

Yep. That has been my solution for about a year now. It's OK, but it requires considerably more maintenance to manage notes spread across (at least) three apps. And, inevitably, there is something I want that I know is in my Evernote local notebook, but unavailable at the moment. As soon as that happens, you know there isn't much point in using mobile devices at all. It might as well not exist if I don't have it in hand. It's the start of a new semester, and my one-year anniversary of this problem, so I'm trying to figure out something different. After all, insanity, according to Einstein, is supposedly doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Offline

I actually am online a lot, and so Logmein and other workarounds have served me well. When I am teaching, though, I cannot guarantee a fast, reliable, or even existent connection. Our Internet was out yesterday morning, for example. In the big scheme of things, it isn't much downtime, but when you try to access the Internet and it is not there, then everything falls apart. Of course, I also have the problem that even if I am connected, I never know if the app will freeze up. I have had this happen in meetings and classroom situations in the past. The Puffin browser is a nice backup, but hardly ideal, and awful if you are trying to do things quickly. In addition, I will be traveling a lot (domestic / overseas) without Internet and I really cannot afford to be without my notes for weeks on end. Again, if they aren't available, then they might as well not exist.

Here is a concrete example that is fresh in my mind: reading in bed last night, I came across a statistic I wanted to Evernote. Evernote froze on me (the second re-install that day). I could have gotten out of bed, turned on the MBA, typed in the information, shut off the MBA, and then gone back to bed. I didn't, though. Maybe I am too lazy. I ended up emailing the information to myself, but that meant I had to deal with it this morning. It's not the end of the world, but it is a constant annoyance, and ultimately makes the iPad a lot less useful. Whatever time I am saving with the iPad and doing things digitally is surely offset by the time I am spending constantly re-installing and trying to work around the issue. I am my own cap and trade program

 

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

GM, thanks for your lengthy reply.  I get it that you would like 100% access to 100% of your Notes 100% of the time.  :-)

But I'm just not sure if that is a practical, realistic, desire.  :-)

 

No computer can guarantee 100% up time.  :-(

 

In the end, I think we all have to find the balance between what's desired and what's practical.  :-)

 

Here are some thoughts:

• When you are teaching, is it really that important to be able to search 10,000s of Note in real time?
• I use the email-to-evernote approach all the time, and find it works great
  • I don't see it as a hindrance, but as another option for getting info into EN
  • Just like with physical mail/files, and email, I spend a small amount of time each day filing my EN Notes (moving from Inbox to appropriate NB).
• For long trips where you do need access to all of your Notes, then carrying both your MBA and iPad seems reasonable.
  • Although for me it would be my MBA and my Kindle, which I use for mostly pleasure reading, including outdoors at the pool, beach.  :-)
• I don't know if this is feasible, but what about just storing an Abstract of your large PDF documents in Evernote?
  • You could make sure you include all of the keywords in the text (or Tags!!!) that you would most likely need to search on.
  • Include a link to the PDF in Dropbox (which on the Mac could also be on your local hard drive if desired)

Finally, if a lot of your notes are NOT personal, like text from PDFs of books you''d find in a library, why not send as many of these as you can to the Evernote Support team to diagnose?  Or just put them in a separate account and give Evernote access.

 

I think it is VERY important the Evernote discover the cause of your problem, so that either they can fix it, or at least they can advise us how to avoid it.

 

I'll close with this:  iPad vs MBA ease of use

• How do you handle reading on the iPad in bed?
• I'm using the iPad Mini, and I don't want to have to constantly hold it up, so I have had to resort to a case that will prop it up for a good viewing angle, and a small piece of Styrofoam to support the case.
• With the MBA-11, it's very simple -- I just open the lid to the best angle for viewing, and rest it on the bed.
• I often want to read in my easy chair in the family room.  Here again I find it easer to use the MBA because I can position the screen to ANY angle, and I don't need to support it other than rest it on my lap

I'm not trying to restart our long-standing debate of iPad vs MBA, I'm just trying to suggest that, even though you may prefer the iPad, the MBA-11 (just lightly larger/heavier) can work quite well.  I understand that it comes down to personal preference, and that, for you, the iPad offers many advantages.

 

Well, again, good luck.  I'm really not trying to debate with you -- just trying to offer some alternatives that might work until EN iPad gets fixed.  :-)

 

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

As always, thanks for the comments JM.

 

GM, thanks for your lengthy reply.  I get it that you would like 100% access to 100% of your Notes 100% of the time.  :-) But I'm just not sure if that is a practical, realistic, desire.  :-)

The Android app works fine, so I'd say it is "possible" for me to use my account on a mobile device. Is it "practical" or "realistic" to desire that the iPad functions as well as my Nexus 7? I think so.

I suppose I don't "need" anything to teach, though. I don't even "need" Evernote or the iPad. Life would go on perfectly fine without all of my notes and devices tomorrow. I spent years using index cards. This person has turned this into an art form.

But, I think the more resources I have at hand in the moment, the better the experience is for me and the students.

For example, during a class discussion, these kinds of questions are not uncommon: "what other scholarship could you look at to know more about X?" Let me do a search and find out. "Is X a topic that is covered anywhere else?" Let me do a search and find out. "How do X's claims about Y compare to Z's claims about it?" Let me do a search to find out. Of course, I have answers to these questions, but often they are significantly better when I can check my notes.

The permutations are endless. I do prepare a certain number of notes for classes, but again, I never know if these will be the ones to crash the app, and almost inevitably there are notes I wish that I had brought with me, but left behind. The whole point (in my mind) of creating a database and syncing it to the cloud is to have it all available. Otherwise, what is the point?

How do I read with the iPad? In bed, I usually prop it on my chest and it is perfect, but if I lay on my side, or on my stomach, I often use my Bookgem (http://www.bookgem.com). I rarely hold the iPad, except when I rest it on a table or on my knee to take handwritten notes. The MBA (the Mini and the Nexus 7) is an awful reading experience, in my opinion, especially for PDFs, because you cannot see the entire page. Again, this is just my experience. If it works for you, then that is great.

I've actually sent a bunch of my notes to Evernote already (several hundred), and I need to gather more for the developers, but it is time-consuming. I have to weed out the data that cannot be shared (either is is mine, and I don't want to share it, or it is someone else's, and I am legally/ethically obligated not to share it). As you correctly pointed out, this is something I need to do better.

[EDIT:] By the way, I have brought my Nexus to class on occasion. It is a pain to work with two devices, but it works in a pinch. When it gets to the point that I have to use two devices, though, I figure it is just easier to pull the MBA out of my bag. And, since that is somewhat inconvenient when you are standing in front of a room to juggle more than one device (especially the MBA), I usually don't bother.

[JMichaelTX 4,119]

 

The whole point (in my mind) of creating a database and syncing it to the cloud is to have it all available. Otherwise, what is the point?

 

Oh, I totally get that.  I have an extensive music library all uploaded to iTunes and iCloud.  It is so great to have my entire collection to play via Apple TV to my high-end home theater -- all directly from iCloud since Apple TV does NOT store any music locally.

 

And, occasionally, I am frustrated when there is a power outage or the Internet is down.  But it is infrequent and I can easily live with it.  OTOH, like you, I want my entire music collection always available.  So that's why I have an iPhone with 64GB and my entire collection downloaded to it.  Don't need any connection to anything to listen to any of my music.  What's really great is that it is all on my iPhone and when I walk out to my car, the car music system automatically links to my iPhone via Bluetooth 4.0 and plays high quality music in my car.

 

So here's where there is a great app (Apple Music/iPod) that works well with a large music DB.  You know this wasn't always the case.  Early on the music on your iPod/iPhone was NOT CD quality, and memory was quite limited.  Fortunately both the HW and SW technology have rapidly advanced to the point that enables us to hold huge music collections in our hand, and play high quality music anytime with the right headphones.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I suppose I don't "need" anything to teach, though. I don't even "need" Evernote or the iPad. Life would go on perfectly fine without all of my notes and devices tomorrow. I spent years using index cards.

Yes, most of us over a certain age & all our predecessors got along just fine (for the most part) without many of the tools that are at our disposal today.  (I often claim I would have been a better student if I'd only had a word processor instead of a typewriter.)  But part of the appeal of Evernote to me is that it's my digital/multi platform version of what some kids call a "smash book" as well as a business (both personal & work) tool for keeping thoughts, tips & tricks at my fingertips.  Evernote has rescued many a Post-It's life as well as keeping my mirrors, refrigerators & monitor screens Post-It free.  But I don't see most portable devices as being able to keep up (at this time today) at least when you're talking about when there is no internet access.  They have certainly improved from early PDAs.  But they're just not quite there.  This can be compounded when you're talking about sensitive data that may only be stored in local/non-sync'd EN notebooks.  A few years ago, I gave up on trying to have so much at my disposal w/o internet access & rely upon Dropbox, as I described above.  Fortunately for me, that works. 

 

Hey, something just popped into my mind...this may be something you've already researched.  You can buy SD card readers that plug into iDevices.  Some are even in the $5-$10 range.  I actually have a couple that I bought last year.  Have you looked into something like that?  IDK if they would work with QuickOffice in that you could load up SD cards with all your docs so you could easily pull up a doc from an SD card.  Of course, you'd need some mechanism (Evernote?) for doing the initial search in order to identify which doc you'd want to look at... not really a good option but brainstorming here...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

I suppose I don't "need" anything to teach, though. I don't even "need" Evernote or the iPad. Life would go on perfectly fine without all of my notes and devices tomorrow. I spent years using index cards.

Yes, most of us over a certain age & all our predecessors got along just fine (for the most part) without many of the tools that are at our disposal today.  (I often claim I would have been a better student if I'd only had a word processor instead of a typewriter.)  But part of the appeal of Evernote to me is that it's my digital/multi platform version of what some kids call a "smash book" as well as a business (both personal & work) tool for keeping thoughts, tips & tricks at my fingertips.  Evernote has rescued many a Post-It's life as well as keeping my mirrors, refrigerators & monitor screens Post-It free.  But I don't see most portable devices as being able to keep up (at this time today) at least when you're talking about when there is no internet access.  They have certainly improved from early PDAs.  But they're just not quite there.  This can be compounded when you're talking about sensitive data that may only be stored in local/non-sync'd EN notebooks.  A few years ago, I gave up on trying to have so much at my disposal w/o internet access & rely upon Dropbox, as I described above.  Fortunately for me, that works. 

 

Hey, something just popped into my mind...this may be something you've already researched.  You can buy SD card readers that plug into iDevices.  Some are even in the $5-$10 range.  I actually have a couple that I bought last year.  Have you looked into something like that?  IDK if they would work with QuickOffice in that you could load up SD cards with all your docs so you could easily pull up a doc from an SD card.  Of course, you'd need some mechanism (Evernote?) for doing the initial search in order to identify which doc you'd want to look at... not really a good option but brainstorming here...

With only text notes, though, there is no way that my stuff is beyond the capabilities of mobile. It's really just this bug that keeps the data from working properly. 10 or 20 thousand web clippings appear to work fine (so I hear), but not 10 or 20 thousand of my notes. I think it might be the dense text or something that is throwing things off. It's not so much a lack of capability then in the device, but a bug in the app, and there is nothing to be done about it right now. Eventually, we may sort it out, but in the meantime, I've got stuff to do

Search is the key. I've got my notes in notesy, so they are all on my device (we are only talking about a couple of GB). Notesy does fine with searching titles (my system really shines here JM). It falls flat on its face searching content. Searches are agonizingly slow, and sorting through them (no advanced search grammar) is quite tedious. I'm still trying to get VoodooPad to work for me. I can use it fine with a few notes, but the more I get, the more problems I have, and I cannot seem to get it to sync everything. If I could search in one place and read it in another, that might be the ticket!

Anyhow, the amount of data isn't a big deal (I don't think), but I need a program that will index the data for searching. I think Evernote may be the only one that is doing it. I could plug in an SD card, but I won't have any way to search it

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

The whole point (in my mind) of creating a database and syncing it to the cloud is to have it all available. Otherwise, what is the point?

 

Oh, I totally get that.  I have an extensive music library all uploaded to iTunes and iCloud.  It is so great to have my entire collection to play via Apple TV to my high-end home theater -- all directly from iCloud since Apple TV does NOT store any music locally.

 

And, occasionally, I am frustrated when there is a power outage or the Internet is down.  But it is infrequent and I can easily live with it.  OTOH, like you, I want my entire music collection always available.  So that's why I have an iPhone with 64GB and my entire collection downloaded to it.  Don't need any connection to anything to listen to any of my music.  What's really great is that it is all on my iPhone and when I walk out to my car, the car music system automatically links to my iPhone via Bluetooth 4.0 and plays high quality music in my car.

 

So here's where there is a great app (Apple Music/iPod) that works well with a large music DB.  You know this wasn't always the case.  Early on the music on your iPod/iPhone was NOT CD quality, and memory was quite limited.  Fortunately both the HW and SW technology have rapidly advanced to the point that enables us to hold huge music collections in our hand, and play high quality music anytime with the right headphones.

Indeed. Music has come a long way. If it were only a matter of music, I could certainly live without 100% access, but this is my career. I'm working with these notes most of my waking hours. I only need a few gigabytes -- my whole database easily fits on the 16GB Nexus 7. I only need a little bit of processing power. Evernote works fine on the N7.

My hope was that someone knew of a third-party app that could do all of this (offline, searchable notes). So far, it is looking pretty bleak out there. I'll cross my fingers for the next beta of iOS.