Local notebook on iPad

[Castille 0]

Hello,

 

I want to use Evernote voor taking notes in meetings at work. Company securitypolicy prohibits me te use any kind of application that syncs company-information on an external server (or in the cloud). As far as I can see Evernote syncs automatically and it is not possible to turn autosync off.

 

I read that it is possible to create offline notebooks on my computer, but is it also possible te create a local notebook on my iPad?

 

Thanks!

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Just to clarify:

There are two types of "offline-like" notebooks: Local notebooks and notebooks available offline. 

On desktop machines there is "Local Notebooks", which are stored locally and never uploaded to the server or synced to another device.

On mobile devices, there is the ability to make notebooks available while offline (a premium feature). These notebooks are still always synced whenever a connection is established. 

 

Unfortunately there is no way to make a local notebook on a mobile device. 

[Castille 0]

That's too bad... The apps I found that can work local on my iPad aren't as full-featured as Evernote.

 

Do you know if Evernote is working on making it possible to have local notebooks on mobile devices? Why would you have it on the desktop, but not on mobile devices?

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Nobody but Evernote knows what they are working on, so I have no insight in that regard unfortunately. 

 

I can only speculate why they don't have local notebooks... so here it goes.

 

1) No easy backup of local content on mobile devices which means the odds of losing data are very high. Desktop devices are much easier to create archives or backups of the Evernote database so local-only content here isn't too bad. 

2) Limited storage - local only notebooks require the entire contents of the notes to always be present, unlike synced notebooks which only pre-load the headers and fetch the entire contents when the note is opened (exception being "offline notebooks", which, if you are short on space and have a big offline notebook, can cause some grief).  

3) Aside from manually inputting information or using the "open in..." feature from another application, it can be hard to get content into Evernote. You need to get the file onto your iPad somehow (dropbox? email? iCloud? local wireless transfer?) THEN use some additional application to "open in...." into Evernote, without hitting Evernote's servers. If you end up using Dropbox or Email or iCloud, then you've already defeated the purpose of having a local notebook since you've already passed that content to a third-party. 

4) How do you get your local-only content OUT of Evernote when you need to for some reason? Email it? Well, again, you've defeated the purpose of a local-only notebook by passing that data to your email provider. 

 

I think addressing 3 and 4 might be fairly big challenges from a development standpoint and a very big deal for users. As a user you need to be able to very quickly move your local-only data and currently there is no easy way to do that and iOS makes it relatively hard to do that. You'd either need to build into Evernote some type of LAN transfer, or set it up with iTunes file transfer, while the latter is not monumentally difficult (the former would be a rather big task), I imagine they would require more resources to implement than Evernote is willing to devote. Without addressing 3 and 4, your data would be extremely vulnerable. 

 

Just some speculation. Certainly they COULD do it, all my speculation above is not world-ending. I can see the utility in local-only notebook. I just think perhaps, given that resources are always finite, that they are choosing not to direct energy towards this feature, or perhaps they are but have placed it in a low priority position and so aren't directing much energy to it. I don't know....