Entering numerals

[Gerry Atrick 1]

Every time I enter a numeral in an Evernote note on my Android phone it appears to be treated as a telephone number, though when synced to my PC version it is not. I find this extremely annoying, being in at my grumpy time of life.   I am sure there must be a way to solve this but so far it has alluded me. Can anyone suggest a method please?

 

Gerry

 

[Wordsgood 526]

Are you sure it's not your phone's keyboard that's the problem? If you're using a smartphone with a touch screen keyboard, try looking at your Settings, Language options and if possible, disable the Predictive text/Auto-correct function. This was a huge issue for me and I finally figured out how to stop it.

Of course now spelling suggestions don't show up now, but I prefer that to it taking over what I want to input.

Hope this helps.

[Gerry Atrick 1]

Hi Wordsgood - thanks for your suggestion.  Don't think it is my phone keyboard set up that is at fault. I tried altering various settings but the issue remains . I have also discovered that numbers included in notes created with the Evernote PC version  will appear as "active" numbers when synced to the Android version.   The problem seems to arise only with numbers containing 9 or more digits.

 

Gerry

[jefito 5,589]

I am not seeing this on my Android phone (Motorola RAZR HD). You might try contacting support, see the link in my signature.

[dbeipi 0]

Evernote does this on my iPad, too. It is a frustrating behavior. I'd like to turn it off, but there are precious few text editing preferences available in Evernote. 

[Gerry Atrick 1]

Many thanks for replying dbeipi.  I am very glad to know that someone else has noticed the same problem on a different device. The behaviour is therefore unlikely to be a fault or wrong setting on my phone.

 

Best wishes to you.

 

Gerry

 

[Gerry Atrick 1]

I did eventually take the matter up with EverNote support and got the following reply yesterday (3 Mar 2014):-

 

"Unfortunately this feature cannot be disabled due to that [sic] your operating system determines the link detection."

 

I do not know enough about Operating Systems etc to know if that is a sensible answer or, if it is, whether the restriction can be readily overcome. 

 

Gerry

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

The response from Evernote support seems sensible to me. 

iOS, the operating system that runs on iPads and iPhones and iPod touches and is created by Apple, has "Data detectors". These data detectors look for sequences of characters that may resemble phone numbers, addresses, dates, package tracking numbers, etc. This means that you can simply tap a phone number and have it dial that number (rather than copying the number, opening the Phone app, pasting the number, and initiating the call), or tap a tracking number to immediately load the tracking website, or select a date to bring up a new event at that date and time. 

 

When these work, they are great, but sometimes it produces false positives, such as Social Insurance Numbers or Social Security Numbers interpreted as phone numbers. Now, these false positives are pretty benign because there is not real modification of the text being applied (which is why these things don't show up as highlighted on other clients). 

 

These data detectors are applied globally - that is, they are done at the level of the operating system. There is no facility that allows Evernote to include a setting in their own app to allow a user to turn it off.

 

Also, Apple (and presumably Google, though I don't own an android device) doesn't offer the user a global setting either, so it cannot be turned off on a global basis. 

 

Annoying though it may be, there's no real harm being done. Any string that is highlighted can be copied by long-tapping it. These are also not changes written into the text, so if you send it to someone else or view it on a different device, the formatting (say, blue text with underline) is not going to display either. 

[dbeipi 0]

Actually, it is more than a benign behavior. The Apple iOS takes some time to figure out it is a number, assign a data type to it, and format it. In that time, I have usually typed several more characters, but then when iOS gets finished with its work, it places the cursor at the end of the number string. Then the typing sequence is all screwed up. I am glad to hear it is not an Evernote problem, though if it were there might be a chance of an option to disable it!

[Gerry Atrick 1]

Many thanks to SottLoughheed and also dbeipi for their very interesting contributions.  Somehow when I know a little more about why an annoying problem exists it makes it a little more bearable. I have to admit that an active number link in an appropriate setting is worthwhile and helpful - but it does not seem unreasonable to expect software designers to realise that not all numbers are telephone numbers.

 

Thanks again to those who replied. 

[tmercerhursh 2]

I keep a diary of some health information which I input on my Android phone and then periodically copy out and paste to a spreadsheet in Windows. Normally, the last four data items on a line are the time, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and pulse rate so a typical line might look like this:

Tu 7 2 0 0 3 2d m 810 120 67 67

My issue is that on the phone the last four numbers are underlined, as if they represented an IP address or something, i.e., all lines in the note will look like:

Tu 7 2 0 0 3 2d m 810 120 67 67

The underline and the numbers underlined are blue, making a rather distracting display.  I don't see this or get this behavior in Windows.

Any way to get this to stop.

[DTLow 5,736]

26 minutes ago, tmercerhursh said:

My issue is that on the phone the last four numbers are underlined, as if they represented an IP address or something, ...

I merged your post with an ongoing discussion

As you can read, it's an OS feature

[tmercerhursh 2]

The annoying part of this explanation, although I recognize that it is Android, not Evernote, is that the first number treated this way is the time, almost always at breakfast, when I am recording the observation, i.e., something like 810 ... and, of course, that can never be a legal IP address.

[yankru 8]

Hi, 

Unfortunately I only have this Screenshot in French, try to change this notes setting, may be this can be resolve your problem! 

Regards 

Yannick 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

@tmercerhursh, as @yankru is apparently suggesting, it may be that the numbers are being interpreted, not as an IP address, but as a phone number. Try turning that setting off, and see if it helps. Of course, then you won't get automatically dialable phone numbers if you want them....

[jefito 5,589]

3 hours ago, yankru said:

Unfortunately I only have this Screenshot in French, try to change this notes setting, may be this can be resolve your problem! 

In the English version, it's Settings / Notes / Auto-link phone numbers