(Archived) Adding Mass Metadata

[bilbo_b 1]

Hello together,

 

since i installed Evernote V5 on Windows i wonder if it is possible to edit Metadate via Mass Editing. Is this possible? How can i do that? I mean such things like Author, Geodata and so on. Keywords is no Problem, i can do it after marking some notes but there seems to be no way for other Metadata.

[gazumped 11,652]

Which OS are you using?  There may be scary ways to edit your database file and bulk change atttributes,  you might be able to set up AutoHotKey (only slightly less scary) to do automatic search-and-replaces,  but I don't think there's any bulk option in Evernote directly.

[bilbo_b 1]

Im primarly on Windows and Windows Phone (7.8). What can i do? If you talk about editing the database, which database format is the DB? SQLite or any other SQL? Whats going on, when i edit the DB file "offline"? Will the changes to the DB are synced back to the online DB and so to all my other devices or do i lost the changes, since i dont have edited them with Evernote directly?

[gazumped 11,652]

Whatever you do,  I'd look up the various comments on 'backups' in the forums here and make sure you have one clean backup of your data before you even try changes.

 

It is possible to edit the database,  but for all the reasons you mention I'd tend to avoid this unless there were really REALLY no other alternative.  AHK should be able to perform a search for you,  change an attribute and go on to the next change all within the standard Evernote window,  thereby updating the changed date properly and triggering a sync when you finish. Unless you;re changing a purely local database (which is not synced to the servers) all your changes will go to the server and then back to your additional devices.  If you're changing lots of notes,  beware the sync times may be lengthy...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hello together,

 

since i installed Evernote V5 on Windows i wonder if it is possible to edit Metadate via Mass Editing. Is this possible? How can i do that? I mean such things like Author, Geodata and so on. Keywords is no Problem, i can do it after marking some notes but there seems to be no way for other Metadata.

Hi. The simple answer is "no." The slightly more complex answer is "yes." I have done this before for my notes by exporting as .enex, opening with a text editor, doing find and replace on attributes, and then dragging the .enex file back into Evernote. Just look for the "attributes" in the file.

I suppose you could do this on the Mac by just modifying the files in the data folder, and presumably it would update everything without any problem, because everything is easily accessible without digging around in a database. I have NOT tried this, though. It doesn't seem worth the effort (for me), because having uniform metadata is not terribly important to my workflow.

On Windows? I'd try the .enex export before I'd mess with the database, but that is up to you. Anyhow, as Gaz said, backups, backups, backups.

[jefito 5,589]

It is a SQLite database. Definitely on your own if you edit it yourself. Conceivably it would work, and the client would pick it up and sync changes correctly, but that means that you'd have to know and apply all of the things that the client expects.

[gazumped 11,652]

It is a SQLite database. Definitely on your own if you edit it yourself. Conceivably it would work, and the client would pick it up and sync changes correctly, but that means that you'd have to know and apply all of the things that the client expects.

 

I prefer "scary"  

[jefito 5,589]

I have a tendency towards understatement.