(Archived) Search Trouble - Hidden characters in old notes prevents the search

[I.M. 0]

Hi, I don't use very often Evernote, my principal use is for keep tutorials about how i solved old problems, so not very often but very important if same trouble appears again.

I only use local databases, not synchronized

 

 

I have only 77 notes, and today, when I did a search, Evernote fails in find the note I was searching for.

This note was a transcription of this webpage http://www.enchufa2.es/archives/discos-duros-con-sectores-defectuosos.html made in 06/25/2012.-

 

 

I was searching for the word Seatools, present in this webpage, and present in the note, but, as I said, Evernote fails in the search.

But, if i only write search Sea, Evernote finds the note

 

 

So, i did copy and paste from Evernote to MS Word for entire note.

Pushing Shift+CTRL+8 Word shows hidden characters, and the note was full of hidden characters, even in the middle of the words. And, MS Word shows the word Seatools like this: Sea(hidden character)tools.

 

 

I think the special character prevents the search.

 

But ... I created a new note, exactly as the first, a transcription of same web page.

 

 

I tried same search, and the search works fine for the new note.

 

 

 

So .... is not so simple, the hidden character don't prevent itself the search, but maybe the old note is corrupt.

 

It is not the only case, is just an example, Evernote's search don't work properly for me, as I said maybe the old notes are corrupts.

[jefito 5,589]

Not sure what's going on. I clipped that page, I clipped a translation of that page, and I copied the page content and pasted it into a new note. Search was able to find all three pages by searching on "Seatools".

[I.M. 0]

Yes, same thing for me, the problem is with this old note and several more, if I create again the note, from same source, the search work properly, but not with the old notes.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks for reporting this. I'm guessing that the database was corrupted somehow. I'll start a ticket for you with support? I don't know if they can help, but this will at least get the bug recorded.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Yes, same thing for me, the problem is with this old note and several more, if I create again the note, from same source, the search work properly, but not with the old notes.

Could you share a link to the note itself? This will require you to sync that note. I'd be interested in seeing it.

[I.M. 0]

Could you share a link to the note itself? This will require you to sync that note. I'd be interested in seeing it.

 

 

Hi, i tried to synchronize (the first time since I use Evernote) but i could not. I created a synchronized notebook, moved the notes to this notebook, and tried to sync, but i received this message from Evernote:

 

Synchronization failed

Sync failed due to unexpected problems at server side

 

So, I entered to web app, created a new note, and did copy and paste from local app to web app.

 

And ... the note created in web app, which is not the original synchronized but a copy, has same behavior. If I try the search with "Sea", Evernote finds the note, but if I search "Seatools" don't.

 

The link for the note is https://www.evernote.com/shard/s355/sh/1df5a548-086c-4f68-b547-d033563d113f/29070e132c74b4ff6cf02117d126267c

 

 

If you start a ticket with support for me, I would really appreciate, is a little hard for me write in english, and with a limitation of characters, even more

 

Thank you for your interest

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Could you share a link to the note itself? This will require you to sync that note. I'd be interested in seeing it.

 

Hi, i tried to synchronize (the first time since I use Evernote) but i could not. I created a synchronized notebook, moved the notes to this notebook, and tried to sync, but i received this message from Evernote:

 

Synchronization failed

Sync failed due to unexpected problems at server side

 

So, I entered to web app, created a new note, and did copy and paste from local app to web app.

 

And ... the note created in web app, which is not the original synchronized but a copy, has same behavior. If I try the search with "Sea", Evernote finds the note, but if I search "Seatools" don't.

 

The link for the note is https://www.evernote.com/shard/s355/sh/1df5a548-086c-4f68-b547-d033563d113f/29070e132c74b4ff6cf02117d126267c

 

 

If you start a ticket with support for me, I would really appreciate, is a little hard for me write in english, and with a limitation of characters, even more

 

Thank you for your interest

Hi. Thanks for sharing. I was able to view the note and put it into my account for testing.

(1) The original html from the website is <strong>Seagate Seatools Graphical</strong>. There shouldn't be anything odd happening here if you copy/paste it into your note (you couldn't have used the web clipper if you didn't sync). In fact, though, the entire page is corrupted so that almost all of the words are broken up in ways they should not be.

(2) Evernote has replaced the passage above with invisible character. Opening the document in a text editor reveals what look to be dashes, but when I paste it here, the dashes are all missing, and the words form as they should. If we could see the invisible items, it would look like <strong>Sea-­ga-­te Sea-­tools Grap-­hi-­cal</strong>. I don't know why this would be happening, but it looks to me like Evernote has inserted soft hyphens into the text in order to indicate where words can be broken at the end of lines. It's a kind of zero-width space you can create in HTML using ­. I am not seeing this in any of my notes (foreign language or English), but then again, it is invisible!

(3) Assuming it has never been synced, and assuming that you have copy/pasted the content into Evernote (this works fine for me), then the only thing left (as far as I can tell) is the client itself. It may be that the Evernote client at some point in the past corrupted the file. I would recommend working with support on this.

(4) You should have gotten an email by now with your ticket number. Feel free to use Spanish. They have Spanish speaking staff available. Please let us know how this turns out, and thanks again for reporting!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

By the way, I think we could easily get rid of these invisible characters through a batch find and replace operation, but let's wait and see what support says. They are the experts here, and they might have solutions already available.

In the meantime, I recommend searching with a wildcard, so use sea* instead of sea. This isn't perfect. It ought to catch the information, though it will also pull up all kinds of other things you do not want.