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REQUEST: Evernote Archive


patricksan

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3 minutes ago, cmaryon said:

Just to wake this up a bit, I have an Archive stack with notebooks within it which are not in general use but I need access to them from time to time.  This works well for me.  But I also have other stacks for other purposes, and now I want to archive a stack.  In other words, I want to archive the notebooks within the stack (move them into Archive, right?) but I want to keep their relationship with one another, so keep them in their stack.  But you can't stack within stacks.  Fredhammersmith, at 25k+ notes, I am not in your league, but I feel your pain.

Please, consider to vote.

That's the only way Evernote will listen us.

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1 hour ago, cmaryon said:

Just to wake this up a bit, I have an Archive stack with notebooks within it which are not in general use but I need access to them from time to time.  This works well for me.  But I also have other stacks for other purposes, and now I want to archive a stack.  In other words, I want to archive the notebooks within the stack (move them into Archive, right?) but I want to keep their relationship with one another, so keep them in their stack.  But you can't stack within stacks.  Fredhammersmith, at 25k+ notes, I am not in your league, but I feel your pain.

In the meantime pending any archive functionality, rough workaround would be to add a Stack.Notebook tag to the notes before you moved them to the archive.

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5 hours ago, cmaryon said:

Just to wake this up a bit, I have an Archive stack with notebooks within it which are not in general use but I need access to them from time to time.  This works well for me.  But I also have other stacks for other purposes, and now I want to archive a stack.  In other words, I want to archive the notebooks within the stack (move them into Archive, right?) but I want to keep their relationship with one another, so keep them in their stack.  But you can't stack within stacks.  Fredhammersmith, at 25k+ notes, I am not in your league, but I feel your pain.

I have a little workaround for this same problem I used to have.

Just like you, I have a stack named Archive.

Now, let's say U have this Project Stack, called PROJECT X
with notebooks inside this stack, named "X - BUDGET", "X - CALENDAR", "X - CREW", etc.

When the project is over,
I take all the notes inside "X-BUDGET", and I tagged them "X - Budget"
all the notes inside "X-CALENDAR", and I tagged them "X-Calendar", etc.
Then I move a all the notes (properly tagged) from all the notebooks inside the "PROJECT X" stack in a new Notebook called "PROJECT X (arch)."

And I move this notebook ("PROJECT X (arch).") in the ARCHIVE stack.

 

May looks complicated, but actually, it takes me about 15 minutes to close a project of 2000-3000 notes and archive it this way.
This way it is very easy eventually to "recreate" the old hierarchy of notebooks. Or to access the notes according to their previous notebook .

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20 hours ago, cmaryon said:

Thanks guys for your replies.  Patricksan, sorry, I meant to but forgot.  Have now.  csihilling and fredhammersmith, thanks for your ideas, I'll do some experiments.  

Cheers. 

Let us know how it goes, for future reference of others if nothing else.

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5 minutes ago, nofrills said:

Has this been done yet or are evernote still busy making backpacks and wallets?

Cute, but that's a "no" on both counts. They stopped making wallets and backpacks quite a while ago, which you'd know if you visited the Evernote market. 

#snarkfail

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On 5/11/2017 at 1:53 PM, jefito said:

Cute, but that's a "no" on both counts. They stopped making wallets and backpacks quite a while ago, which you'd know if you visited the Evernote market. 

#snarkfail

There's always the fanboi that gets so defensive about things, they end up inadvertently making you despise the company they're trying to defend.

This is a very basic and legitimate request. I'm genuinely surprised it isn't a core part of the application. It is this kind of glaring omission that took a once promising service, and driven it towards obscurity and irrelevance. As a pro subscriber, that's sad.

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2 hours ago, etc said:

This is a very basic and legitimate request. I'm genuinely surprised it isn't a core part of the application.

Evernote is a filing service and offers various ways to archive  and exclude notes from search results

My solution is to use an “Archive” tag.  I want notes to remain in the database, but to not be included in current lists

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24 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Evernote is a filing service and offers various ways to archive  and exclude notes from search results

My solution is to use an “Archive” tag.  I want notes to remain in the database, but to not be included in current lists

Yes, I'm aware of workarounds that can be used in lieu of this basic functionality, just as a sword can be used instead of a butter knife, but that doesn't mean it's an elegant solution.

Just because the requirements or requests don't fit your specific use case doesn't mean they are illegitimate. It's this kind of denialism that frustrates other users, because you explicitly delegitimize their methods, requests and perspectives. Quite frankly, I couldn't care less about your specific use case, and find these types of posts to be unnecessarily antagonistic.

Evernote doesn't offer various ways to "archive" the notes - it offers features that could be utilized as a half measure to somewhat achieve the same results. They all add friction to what should be a basic function.

For example, by adding all the notes to an archive notebook, we lose the ability to structure notebooks within a logic stack. All of a sudden all my notebooks are placed without a large, monolithic archive stack. I just don't want my view to be cluttered by notes that are no longer of use to me. For example, I have lots of notes from when I was in law school, and I've placed all of those notebooks into a law school stack. If I want to then "hide" this stack, I have to effectively remove them all from the law school stack and place them into an archive one. I don't want a giant "archive" pile. I just want to hide what's there. Why is this an unreasonable request?

Your suggestion to use proscriptive search syntax is well received, but again, adds friction to what should be very basic functionality. Every time I want to avoid searching through archived notes, which amount to just noise, I have to explicitly remember and go through the steps of excluding a certain tag. It adds unnecessary friction to what is supposed to be an efficient and simple task (searching).

Yes, you're right - solutions do exist in some way, shape or form, however this truly is basic functionality that obviously frustrates a number of users. It's enough for me to never rely on Evernote as my primary service, as competent as it is, and given the fact that its often cited as an example of a service that at one point had so much potential, but is in somewhat existential crisis, perhaps there might be some wisdom in stopping, taking a breath, and fully considering what constructive feedback others might have before you reflexively dismiss their suggestions and requests.

If not, by all means - continue to be "right."

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@etc   Why are you turning this into a personal conflict

A feature request has been posted.  
You're welcome to add your support using the voting buttons in the upper left corner of the discussion

You have alternatives to achieve the results you want

And finally, you can switch to a different product that better serves your needs

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59 minutes ago, DTLow said:

@etc   Why are you turning this into a personal conflict

A feature request has been posted.  
You're welcome to add your support using the voting buttons in the upper left corner of the discussion

You have alternatives to achieve the results you want

And finally, you can switch to a different product that better serves your needs

Your reply was personal - there was literally no reason for you to respond except to be dismissive of the request. I clarified the legitimacy of the request and why the proposals weren't genuine solutions, but merely stopgaps.

Of course we can switch. That option is always there. However, people make requests in hopes that the product will become better suited to their needs. For many individuals, myself included, this tarnishes what is otherwise an extremely competent and useful product. What's the point in responding and rationalizing why it does in fact fit within *your* workflow except to be contrarian? This is an attempt to keep the request board constructive with less ancillary noise.

For the reasons stated above, the alternatives don't actually achieve what I want, and insisting they do by fiat doesn't make it so. I'm hopeful that Evernote will eventually add this capability, because as repositories grow, scoping becomes critical to productive usage - and reflective of reality, there is a life cycle of pertinence of data and information.

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1 hour ago, etc said:

What's the point in responding

My point is to share my experience and help users with their issues in using Evernote, in this discussion; Hide or Archive Notes

I’m not seeing value in your posts

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On 7/16/2017 at 7:59 PM, DTLow said:

My point is to share my experience and help users with their issues in using Evernote, in this discussion; Hide or Archive Notes

Given that was your intention, the response was conspicuously devoid of suggestions. Looking back, it seems this thread has devolved primarily to numerous people expressing their frustrations that Evernote is missing this basic functionality (and won't even respond or acknowledge them) and you invalidating their requests. It's just not helpful and it comes across like a personal agenda.

There are reasons why the current crop of alternative solutions just aren't good enough, and I've expressed just a couple from my own perspective.

Regardless, to the end that we're trying to be helpful and constructive, for those that haven't had a chance to read through the entire thread, there is an excellent post by @JMichaelTX (please like the post to thank him for his contribution) detailing some alternative ways to handle notes that might be good enough for some, if not many.

I think we've spent enough time on this. Thank you for your assistance.

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I have now abandoned Evernote. It was for 2-3 reasons, but this was very much one of them. I was a very long term paying Evernote User but I found the the system was getting totally bogged down by years of notes. I really really needed a good archiving system that would enable me to occasionally open up old projects with folder structure easily, but without those notes and structures being there the whole time. I tried saving project endnote libraries but it was too cumbersome for me.

My paid-for subscription runs sometime into 2018 but I've already said a sad farewell to Evernote. We had many good years together, and I got a lot of good value out of Evernote. But for me it just hasn't kept up with my needs, and lack of decent archiving was a major one. 

I'm happily using TagSpaces now. It's lighter than Evernote but does what I need. It doesn't have a dedicated cloud server but I pay for DropBox so I don't need another cloud storage system (tagSpaces works with my files in DropBox). I wouldn't recommend TagSpaces for everyone, but I do think it's worth looking at. And it has the advantage for some of us that it crosses over into Linux. And it's simple in that it leaves notes/files in their native format, which makes it very future compatible. It's also Free, Open Source and, because of the very simple way it works, pretty much totally future-proof.

All the best Evernote - you definitely helped me for many years. In fact you were pretty central to my work for many years. Maybe we'll meet again in the future some time.

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52 minutes ago, Michael Allen said:

I really really needed a good archiving system that would enable me to occasionally open up old projects

Not clear what you consider a “good archiving system”

Evernote is flexible in identifying notes to be archived,

My solution is to flag projects/notes with an Archive tag

>>with folder structure

For sure, you’re using the wrong product.  Evernote’s methododology is organization by Tags, instead of the traditional folder/subfolder methodology.  imho, this is an improved process

 

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

Not clear what you consider a “good archiving system

The main problem I was having with Evernote was the inability to archive on a separate drive. In the past I was enthused that Evernote could be used to store much more than text notes and so I accumulated, over many years, more GB of notes than I wanted to store on, for example, a Microsoft Surface.  I had lots of very large PDFs. Other systems, such as OneNote and TagSpaces are not dependent on everything being held in a single file structure like Evernote required in Windows desktop (but perhaps that has changed recently? I haven't kept up with Evernote recently). 

A secondary problem was quickly searching only non-archived notes.

And then as my problems with archiving grew I realised possibly the biggest problem - so much of what I had was tied up in a proprietary meta-data and storage system. So I've since back-peddled (avoiding OneNote* as well, though I think Microsoft have quietly made that better and better over the years) and have gone for a much simpler tagging system that allows me to keep all notes in native formats that will never be tied to any one storage 'system' (TagSpaces simply adds tags to filenames - it has some nice Open Source software to create, tag and find files but you can also just use any standard file system if you needed to; it's a very very simple idea).

But I also don't agree with you when you say "Evernote’s methododology is organization by Tags, instead of the traditional folder/subfolder methodology". It has both a folder structure and a tag system. I liked (and still like) the combination of having both a tree (folder) and tree-less (tag) system. The advantage of a file structure is that I can very easily move a whole folder (usually a project) over to an archive drive, and I can specifically share folders when I work with other people on a project. So, for example, using DropBox (with files tagged by TagSpaces) when I finish on a project I move it to an archive folder. That keeps it in DropBox but I can choose whether to have it present on each device I use or just rely on a cloud connection. Evernote mobile apps can do that. But Evernote Windows desktop could not (though that might have changed). And also why pay twice for cloud storage?

But I'm happy we each find the solution that works for us. I just get e-mails about this thread (because I answered this thread last year saying I'd really like a solution to this, but none sadly came*), so thought it worth mentioning another system for people who ran into the same problem as the thread author, and me.

Michael

 

*P.S. When I answered last year I said I was thinking of moving to OneNote. I tried it, and it was nice (it's been quietly getting better over the years it seems), but I realised I didn't want to tie myself to another proprietary system, especially as I was starting use use Linux more (OneNote is not supported at all in Linux, whereas Evernote does at least have a community-developed front end, NixNote, which is pretty decent). That's when I went hunting for a simply cross-platform system and found the Free and Open Source TagSpaces.

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26 minutes ago, Michael Allen said:

The main problem I was having with Evernote was the ability to archive on a separate drive

I'm actually wanting a solution with archived notes kept in the cloud, and not taking up space on any devices
I think Evernote's heading in that direction.  They implemented Demand Sync on the Windows platform, and indicated Selective Notebook sync was being worked on

>>A secondary problem was quickly searching only non-archived notes.

My solution was to use the   -tag:xxx   parameter in searches.  It means I have to add it to every search
A different request is to add a button to the search box for this

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1 hour ago, Michael Allen said:

I really really needed a good archiving system that would enable me to occasionally open up old projects with folder structure easily, but without those notes and structures being there the whole time.

Perhaps not a solution for you but for anyone else reading this thread.  Some folks sign up for a Basic account and move their archived notes there.  Then as Premium user easy to switch between accounts to search archived notes in whatever structure you want, desktop anyway.

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45 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Perhaps not a solution for you but for anyone else reading this thread.  Some folks sign up for a Basic account and move their archived notes there.  Then as Premium user easy to switch between accounts to search archived notes in whatever structure you want, desktop anyway.

Yes, now you say that, I remember doing that for a while using one computer with an archive account. It was OK, because the Windows app allowed you to switch between 'users' (both me). I seem to remember finding it just a bit too fiddly - I'd forget to switch back to my Premium account and so my notes weren't synced with my main account when I expected them to be. It's those little frustrations that I'd live with if I weren't paying a decent amount of money for the service (which I still  am, though I am no longer using it).

Bottom line - archiving is so fundamental that Premium customers shouldn't have to be finding fiddly ways around to do it. If you can selectively sync folders on the Mobile Apps, why not on Windows?

But I've moaned enough, and I don't want to any more. And actually I am still fond of Evernote because it served me superbly for many years. It's not like it was something I had to use and always hated. I chose to use it and I chose to use my own money to pay for it (and not just for the Premium features, but because it was so part of my everyday working life I wanted to support it as a 'thank you'). I'm probably just coming across as moaning because I really really liked Evernote, but this was the one thing that I found increasingly problematic as the years wore on (and as my Evernote system got bigger and bigger and bigger). If Evernote wasn't so good at all the other stuff I probably would have never got to the point where I just had too much stuff in Evernote for it to handle it well. 

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11 minutes ago, Michael Allen said:

Yes, now you say that I remember doing that for a while using one computer with an archive account. It was OK, because the Windows app allowed you to switch between 'users' (both me). I seem to remember finding it just a bit too fiddly - I'd forget to switch back to my Premium account and so my notes weren't synced when I expected them to be. It's those little frustrations that I'd live with if I weren't paying a decent amount of money for the service (which I still  am, though I am no longer using it).

Bottom line - archiving is so fundamental that Premium customers shouldn't have to be finding fiddly ways around to do it. If you can selectively sync folders on the Mobile Apps, why not on Windows?

But I've moaned enough, and I don't want to any more. And actually I am still fond of Evernote because it served me superbly for many years. It's not like it was something I had to use and always hated. I chose to use it and I chose to use my own money to pay for it (and not just for the Premium features, but because it was so part of my everyday working life I wanted to support it as a 'thank you'). I'm probably just coming across as moaning because I really really liked Evernote, but this was the one thing that I found increasingly problematic as the years wore on (and as my Evernote system got bigger and bigger and bigger). If Evernote wasn't so good at all the other stuff I probably would have never got to the point where I just had too much stuff in Evernote for it to handle it well. 

Well you gave it a go and time to move on, makes sense.  I can understand your pain, can't share it though since archiving isn't a big deal for me.  Probably a use case thing.  

I am typically in Side List view reverse created or updated order, with the left panel closed.  In searches what I am looking for is in the top of the list the vast majority of the time.  If not I add to the search.  I suppose if performance starts to degrade I may archive to a second account, but until then no need.  Just a different view on archiving, not saying anyone is right nor wrong.

Hope your new solution suits you better.

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P.S. One last positive thought, even though I found Evernote no longer filled my needs (because of the archiving problems some of us have encountered, as discussed in this thread).

I'm sure Evernote are one of the 'good guys'. And for two reasons. Firstly, though Evernote is not totally Open Source, they make such a large amount open to others that it enables other people to work with the Evernote file structure. That has allowed the Linux community to develop its own front-end (as the number of users couldn't justify Evernote spending their own development time on Linux). And, secondly, when it finally came to me sadly finding that I had to find an alternative, they have good export tools which will export to friendly formats. I managed to move the very large majority of my Evernote notes out so that I could pick them up in a simpler system. I have never been able to do that with the few Microsoft OneNote notebooks that I have used.  

So if Evernote continues to work for you, please support them. You don't have to need the Premium features to want to support a company. 

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4 minutes ago, Michael Allen said:

they have good export tools which will export to friendly formats.

Absolutely.  This was top of my list when selecting the product, easy export of my data

I can easily export my notes in html format and attachments will remain in their native format

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+1 for needing Archive functionality. My Evernote has become unwieldy. I’m tempted to just start over from scratch. My Evernote is too large to download the entire account to any device which makes it difficult to use all the features. 

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1 hour ago, socal said:

My Evernote has become unwieldy. I’m tempted to just start over from scratch. My Evernote is too large to download the entire account to any device which makes it difficult to use all the features. 

Have you looked at the Demand Sync feature on the Windows platform; it reduces the disk space used on the device

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On 5/10/2015 at 5:04 PM, jbenson2 said:
Putting archived notes (ones you will need in the future) into the trash is risky.

 

When there is a problem with sync'ing, data cap, or data integrity, Evernote Support often asks that the trash be emptied.

 

 

 

 

 

In my opinion, the best suggestion and most useful is to use the -tag:archive function.

 

 

This isn't bad but it would be a lot more convenient if we could select one or more notebook/notebook stacks and say "Exclude from Searches by Default", that way quick searches / etc wouldn't keep pulling them in. Having to type "-tag:archive1 -tag:archive2", etc is kind of a pain.

For those of us that keep a notebook for each client that we work with, this would be an extremely useful feature, since once we've concluded our business with that client we need to keep the notebook but exclude it from future searches.

 

 

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5 hours ago, cacotigon said:

For those of us that keep a notebook for each client that we work with, this would be an extremely useful feature, since once we've concluded our business with that client we need to keep the notebook but exclude it from future searches.

Watch out when you hit the 250th client.

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On 11/4/2017 at 5:52 PM, CalS said:

Watch out when you hit the 250th client.

Translation - "Evernote has a maximum of 250 notebooks per personal account"

On 11/4/2017 at 12:17 PM, cacotigon said:

For those of us that keep a notebook for each client that we work with, this would be an extremely useful feature, since once we've concluded our business with that client we need to keep the notebook but exclude it from future searches.

If it were me, I'd just use a separate account for archiving. You could probably get away with a free one, though you might need to populate it over time due to reduced upload limits in a free account. Depending on your number of clients, one notebook per client might not be enough, in which case a tag based approach should work. Once populated, if you needed to get access to a particular client, you could share the notebook that your client exists in back to your working account, if you needed searching to work, or just work on the old account in your archive account.

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I am using Evernote since 2008 for research purposes and I can no longer keep syncing everything (20K+ notes) on all mobile devices. That's why I started to use Pocket instead of Evernote for saving text-only web content. It is much lighter than Evernote. Pocket allows me to keep the latest content I need to work with on my mobile and limit sync storage on the device to any size I need. I suggest anyone who is in need of archiving to try Pocket. IFTTT allows two way integration between Evernote and Pocket. When I use a specific tag on Evernote / Pocket it is synced to the other platform almost immediately.

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1 hour ago, faruk.kutlu said:

I can no longer keep syncing everything (20K+ notes) on all mobile devices.

Evernote is a cloud service; data is retrieved from the servers via the internet

What issues were you having.  I'm counting on going to at least 40k

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1 hour ago, faruk.kutlu said:

I am using Evernote since 2008 for research purposes and I can no longer keep syncing everything (20K+ notes) on all mobile devices. That's why I started to use Pocket instead of Evernote for saving text-only web content. It is much lighter than Evernote. Pocket allows me to keep the latest content I need to work with on my mobile and limit sync storage on the device to any size I need. I suggest anyone who is in need of archiving to try Pocket. IFTTT allows two way integration between Evernote and Pocket. When I use a specific tag on Evernote / Pocket it is synced to the other platform almost immediately.

Do you download all of your notes to your mobile devices using off line notebooks?  I have about 28k synced notes but only have about 10 fully downloaded at any given time in the one  notebook flagged as offline, where I put notes for forced currency.  Doesn't require much space or syncing.  YMMV

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9 hours ago, DTLow said:

Evernote is a cloud service; data is retrieved from the servers via the internet

What issues were you having.  I'm counting on going to at least 40k

Everyone here is aware that Evernote is a cloud service.

The thing is that Evernote doesn't selectively sync on mobile.

So in my case Evernote syncs around 500MB of outdated notes that I no longer need to see on every device and in every searches.

No matter if I have space or not. This is just a preference of keeping workplace lean.

Nobody keeps 10 years of papers on their desk.

They just keep those papers that they are actively working on.

As a paying Evernote user I should have the right to decide how many recent files to keep within immediate reach at my workplace.

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3 hours ago, faruk.kutlu said:

Everyone here is aware that Evernote is a cloud service.
The thing is that Evernote doesn't selectively sync on mobile
...
As a paying Evernote user I should have the right to decide how many recent files to keep within immediate reach at my workplace.

Selective sync is a feature on the mobile platforms (IOS/Android)
                         How-to-set-up-offline-notebooks-on-mobile-devices
For the Win platform, there is a Demand Sync option
The web platform is internet access; there is no downloaded data

On my iPad, the default is "Do not download notes"
I can select "all" or specific notebooks to download

255B2C65-AF26-4AB6-B61C-40BF6803745B.thumb.jpeg.a74f04d274c65942c53eb7d4dff54729.jpeg

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5 hours ago, faruk.kutlu said:

So in my case Evernote syncs around 500MB of outdated notes that I no longer need to see on every device and in every searches

Unless you have offline notebooks set EN only syncs the note header information to your phone.  Creating a second account to archive your notes would solve your search problem.  A Basic account would work if you manage the transfer of notes.  

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6 hours ago, DTLow said:

Selective sync is a feature on the mobile platforms (IOS/Android)
                         How-to-set-up-offline-notebooks-on-mobile-devices
For the Win platform, there is a Demand Sync option
The web platform is internet access; there is no downloaded data

On my iPad, the default is "Do not download notes"
I can select "all" or specific notebooks to download

255B2C65-AF26-4AB6-B61C-40BF6803745B.thumb.jpeg.a74f04d274c65942c53eb7d4dff54729.jpeg

 

4 hours ago, CalS said:

Unless you have offline notebooks set EN only syncs the note header information to your phone.  Creating a second account to archive your notes would solve your search problem.  A Basic account would work if you manage the transfer of notes.  

Offline notebooks doesn't allow us to keep the workplace lean. Also I don't need to deal with multiple Evernote accounts and transferring notes just to have a basic archive feature. I found a much more convenient solution already with Pocket + Evernote integration. I am using Pocket most of the time since it is much lighter and reading is much more comfortable in it. Pocket has archiving feature and searching only in archive or everywhere is your choice.

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13 minutes ago, faruk.kutlu said:

I found a much more convenient solution...

Whatever works for you is fine

My preference is to stick with the Evernote service and archive my notes using the solutions presented in this discussion.  I'm not prepared to give up the features of this service

 

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3 hours ago, faruk.kutlu said:

Offline notebooks doesn't allow us to keep the workplace lean.

My point was that if you don't have offline notebooks checked your notes aren't consuming the full amount of space.  I use about 130 MB on my phone for a 15 GB data base.  Sounds like your lean need has more to do with archiving in any case.  Glad pocket provides that lean solution for you.

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I absolutely need this feature.  When I'm teaching, I have a notebook for each class.  I have a notebook stack for each school where I've taught.  As I've exited academia, I would like to archive these notebooks while preserving their structure.  Going through and tagging everything isn't a solution, and doesn't solve the problem of the notebooks and stacks popping up when I'm trying to move notes or use the web clipper.

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1 minute ago, elusis said:

and doesn't solve the problem of the notebooks and stacks popping up when I'm trying to move notes or use the web clipper.

I also have this problem with obsolete tags

My solution is to prefix the name (aaaaaa) with x (xaaaaaa).

The names are still on the list, but they're sorted to the bottom

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On 5/12/2015 at 9:03 PM, CalS said:

Perhaps a listing of the things you cannot do without the feature that really limits the value to you would help the EN developers understand the use case.

The most critically value from Evernote or similar tools is finding your data easily. With no archive feature, you may have to find your file among hundreds of useless search results.

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3 hours ago, faruk.kutlu said:

The most critically value from Evernote or similar tools is finding your data easily. With no archive feature, you may have to find your file among hundreds of useless search results.

That seems to be the typical response.  I can’t speak to why EN doesn’t add an archive value to each note and create a with/without archive search.  The concept, priority, cost, performance - don’t know.

Personally, I find it easy on the rare occasion I get too large a search result to refine searches to get what I need using only the existing search capabilities without any artifices like an archive tag.  In any case, for whatever reason I get few search results where the note is not on the first page.  Could be my use case or how I use tags, I suppose.

No issue if EN adds this option assuming performance doesn’t suffer, but I probably wouldn’t use it.  

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1 hour ago, tacobravo said:

An archive tag will not work (effectively) in those situations. 

Please explain why this will not work (effectively)
It's working for me, effectively; but not efficiently - I have to add the filter to each of my views

>>we don't need to see the information again except in rare circumstances.

I agree.  When viewing my data, I exclude archived data by appying a filter (-tag:!Archive)
It seems to me that you don't understand how to apply filters when viewing your data

As noted in this discussion; Evernote has not provided any specific archiving feature, or filter.  
However the tools are there for applying this function

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57 minutes ago, tacobravo said:

It seems to me that most of the people who have responded to this lenghty thread proposing workarounds do not understand the use case.

I'm pretty sure the use case is understood.  The workarounds are just presented as alternatives pending EN implementing archiving or not.  

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1 hour ago, tacobravo said:

And if one is a consultant or does project work, chances are high that you have notes that are very similar, but which are unique to specific clients. An archive tag will not work (effectively) in those situations. 

This use case here seems to be independent from the archive issue, at least the way you describe it. There are any number of ways to identify notes specific to specific clients; tags and note titles being pretty popular. Having done that, you could then use an archive tag to further weed out old, irrelevant notes.

I will say this about the archive tag workaround, though: I'd guess that most folks who want some kind of archiving scheme want to be able to search current notes by default as their most common use case, but  only rarely want to search outdated notes. The archive tag makes the user turn things around, requiring them to explicitly exclude old irrelevant notes in their most common use case. That's not very efficient.

My usual approach it to keep a notebook of current projects and tasks, and search that first (could be a stack, I suppose). Once a task is completed, it gets retired to a Journal notebook, and I won't see it unless I really need to. I realize that this may not scale to other folks' organization or work flow. I can sympathize, though this isn't really much of a problem for me.

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1 hour ago, LilMarauder said:

I do not need to see the dozens of notebooks of old notes and projects from my old job, unless I go looking for them specifically (as a favor to a former coworker).

Until/if EN ever adds archiving you could create a second account, particularly if you only want to view the old company notes as a favor.  Might also find out how the old company feels about ex employees keeping company data.

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Tagging broadly helps you find stuff, not lose stuff.  The point of archiving is that the archived material by default does not appear in the search.  You want it excluded unless you specifically include it.  My workaround (and I'm sure others have probably mentioned it) is to move archived notes into an archived notebook.  It's not great, but it works for now.

To LiMaurader, you can set a default notebook in Web Clipper, or tell it to choose the last book you used, that should help you avoid clipping to notebooks you consider archived?

C

 

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1 hour ago, LilMarauder said:

I do not need to see the dozens of notebooks of old notes and projects from my old job, unless I go looking for them specifically

My work around is to prefix my archived notebooks and tags with an x.  They still get listed, but at least they get sorted to the bottom

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19 minutes ago, LilMarauder said:

has not received any response from an EN representative, even to say "this is not a feature request we can foresee adding based on a fundamental piece of code/fundamental part of our mission"

Sometimes deafening silence is a statement...  ;)

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9 minutes ago, cmaryon said:

....you can set a default notebook in Web Clipper, or tell it to choose the last book you used, that should help you avoid clipping to notebooks you consider archived?

C

 

I had turned on smart filing so long ago that I did forget that there were other options - my apologies :huh:

@DTLow Adding to the front of notebook names is certainly going to help a bit, thank you for adding that to the rote response about tagging (I know that I won't remember to exclude a tag in searches - congrats that it works for you -  I just know myself enough to not even invest the time in it)

@CalS - yes, sometimes deafening silence is the answer, but deafening silence does go two ways...this is why tech companies are feeling the need for good PR people (insert vague reference to most of Silicon Valley)

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+1 vote for an archive feature or at minimum a "do not search this folder" option.

I've been using EN since 2010 and have 15k+ notes (in my work acct - no idea about my personal one). I currently use a "ZZZ Archive" notebook stack and tag. Boy do I not need to search all notes every time.

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8 minutes ago, 10gallonhat said:

or at minimum a "do not search this folder" option.

I've been using EN since 2010 and have 15k+ notes (in my work acct - no idea about my personal one). I currently use a "ZZZ Archive" notebook stack and tag. Boy do I not need to search all notes every time.

No "do not search this notebook" option, but there is a "do not search this tag" option (-tag:"ZZZ Archive")

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58 minutes ago, LilMarauder said:

@CalS - yes, sometimes deafening silence is the answer, but deafening silence does go two ways...this is why tech companies are feeling the need for good PR people (insert vague reference to most of Silicon Valley)

Wasn't commenting on the appropriateness of the lack of response, just that it is a response.   <shrug>

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3 minutes ago, CalS said:

Wasn't commenting on the appropriateness of the lack of response, just that it is a response.   <shrug>

Agreed. We're all just users here...

@cmaryon -  is there a real "Archive" ish feature in Evernote? I've been looking and can't find anything that actually uses the word...do you have to create a new notebook? 

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3 minutes ago, LilMarauder said:

@cmaryon -  is there a real "Archive" ish feature in Evernote? I've been looking and can't find anything that actually uses the word...do you have to create a new notebook? 

No, there is no archiving :) that's why we're all still here! Dissatisfied with the absence of archiving and with having negative searching for tags repeatedly offered as a solution.

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

Missing in Evernote is the "by default".  The default is all material appears in the search.  You have to specifically exclude archived material

>>My workaround (and I'm sure others have probably mentioned it) is to move archived notes into an archived notebook.  It's not great, but it works for now.

Warning: you can't exclude archived notebooks from a search.  Exclusion works for tags (-tag:aaaa) but not for notebooks

Ahhhh ... the exclusion filtering for tags is great! Thanks!

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thanks for clarifying - in this post (at least how I read it) it seemed like there was a second flavor of "archive" that Evernote actually did use. Glad I wasn't missing a half-feature!

"repeatedly offered as a solution" is right <_< - I get it, it may work for some, but I pay the same as every other premium user so I want a solution that works for me too!

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16 hours ago, YSLOO said:

When the archive function will be available? It is already more than 3 years since the request raised

Evernote has given no indication they're interested in implementing an archive function.

You could look into the solutions presented in this discussion.  I use an archive tag to exclude archived notes from searches

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On 2018-02-12 at 1:16 PM, Sal Internicola said:

I think this is a great idea. I have many documents that I want to keep but aren't relevant to my search.

To indicate your support for this request, use the voting buttons in the upper left corner of the discussion

>>It doesn't sound like a complicate change. Exclude anything in the "No Search 01 - No Search 10" notebooks.

I don't want to move my notes to a different notebook; my notebook setup is fine
I just want to

  1. flag notes as archived
  2. exclude from searches

Evernote has not indicated an interest in implementing specific archive features,
also the search feature doesn't allow exclusion by notebook

Working with the existing features, my solution is

  1. flag notes as archived, using tag !Archive
  2. exclude from searches, using    -tag:!Archive
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I would also much appreciate an archive function.

Specifically the archive should reside within each notebook for any notes of that notebook that is archived.

 

Moving notes or tagging notes doesn't resolve the clutter problem and risks losing the primary benefit of the notebooks  (centralized organization, and 'seamless' approach to organize). The suggestions here are workarounds but they don't solve the primary issue.

 

I easily make hundreds of notes in a given notebook. As I know some notes are no longer relevant at a point in time I'd like to remove these so my notes are relevant for the tasks at hand. Consolidating notes into an archived note for a notebook resolves the clutter problem but i lose the visibility of the notes being viewable form a high-level since now multiple notes are buried in one card.

 

Feature function design: right click note> archive

Creates an archive sub notebook that contains the note.

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2 hours ago, Justin Webber said:

Feature function design: right click note> archive

Creates an archive sub notebook that contains the note.

OK, sounds easy. Oh wait, there are no subnotebooks in Evernote. Guess they'll need to create those, across all platforms and update the Evernote API to be able to deal with them. OK, then how is search handled? Are you saying you never want results returned from archived notes? Or sometimes you do? And if so, how is that handled? Is there an option to include archived notes in search? That's awkward. Is there a new search syntax for specifying that you want to search archived notes? The search language is not changed often, and affects all clients and the servers.

OK, maybe not quite so easy... :) 

Edit: I'm not saying it's a bad idea, mind. But it's more complicated than it may appear...

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1 hour ago, Justin Webber said:

Feature function design: right click note> archive

Agreed, we need a method to identify archived notes

Since this isn't an Evernote feature, my solution is to manually apply tag:!Archive
This is scriptable on my Mac

>>Creates an archive sub notebook that contains the note.

I'm not sure the benefit of this; what does it achieve?
My intent with archiviving is that notes are hidden from search results

As @jefito pointed out, there is no sub notebook facility in Evernote

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5 hours ago, jozefbaar said:

this is so pity that there is no Archive option in Evernote.

If you need an archiving solution you should review the posts in this discussion.  
The features in Evernote offer various archive options.

I use an Archive tag

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Yep! This feature would really come in handy as I have my old notes from my school days that I don't want to lose, among other things. I imagine that, by default, notes in Archive and Trash wouldn't be saved for offline viewing and editing, but the rest would be.

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On 6/23/2018 at 10:54 AM, kbhasi said:

I imagine that, by default, notes in Archive and Trash wouldn't be saved for offline viewing and editing, but the rest would be.

That's an interesting idea; Archive being similar to the Trash

There is currently a Trash feature; notes are available for offline viewing, the note must be restored before editing.  The original Notebook information is retained.

Notes in the Trash are excluded from searches; I'd want the option to include notes in the Archive

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@DTLowNo doubt you are trying to be helpful, but you risk coming across like a shill for Evernote. To be clear, all the solutions presented here to date, including your !Archive tag are workarounds: they are NOT functionally equivalent to a true archiving feature. Cheers, D

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13 hours ago, dloebs said:

@DTLowNo doubt you are trying to be helpful, but you risk coming across like a shill for Evernote. To be clear, all the solutions presented here to date, including your !Archive tag are workarounds: they are NOT functionally equivalent to a true archiving feature. Cheers, D

afaik  There are no Evernote shills.
I admit to being an Evernote fan.  I use the service to file all my digital documentation;  12K notes with a 75% archive

I do try to be helpful.  
I'm not into "Boohoo, Evernote's so bad" posts
I'm more interested in posts on how to make this product work; specifically how to archive my notes.
So, if you have any archiving solutions please let us know.

This is a Feature Request discussion.
To indicate your support for this request, use the voting buttons in the top left corner of the discussion.

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I'm a big fan of this request. Developer IDEs have the concept of a "Closed" Project which removes its reference from search and other places. Projects (in the case of Evernote, Notebooks or Stacks) can be easily closed or reopened.

My specific use case is that I have notes and materials from past projects and companies that I want to ignore in my current working context. I have similar notebook naming patterns for different areas of my work and responsibilities and it slows me down to have to select "the right" notebook from the new project.

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15 hours ago, joconnell said:

removes its reference from search

.I assign tag:!Archive to notes
To "remove its reference from search", use   -tag:!Archive

I also use a x prefix on notebooks, tags, titles, ...
They are not removed from lists but sort alphabetically to the bottom and can be more easily ignored.

edit:  As pointed out, this is a work-around to achieve archiving.  Evernote  hasn't implemented an archiving solution; hense the above request.  
To indicate your support for the request use the voting buttons in the top left corner of the discussion
To archive your data try the work-arounds presented in this discussion

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2 minutes ago, CalS said:

My preferred method has been to move the notes to a second EN account, which is a Basic account with about 6000 notes in it to date.

How difficult is the process of migrating these notes to another account though? I have close to that many notes - many of which with images (as I was an avid user of the evernote moleskein for several years)...with the data quota of a basic account it could take months to actually put that solution in to action...

I do agree that there is merit to this as a workaround - especially since multi-account support is a feature across all platforms now (I use all flavors of devices)...

Thank you for sharing that info CalS! I assume at this point that my account has been reported...so I will take your suggestion and continue to look for ways to make Evernote work for me...I've paid a lot for what I use...so I'd really like to stick with it.

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15 minutes ago, LilMarauder said:

How difficult is the process of migrating these notes to another account though? I have close to that many notes - many of which with images (as I was an avid user of the evernote moleskein for several years)...with the data quota of a basic account it could take months to actually put that solution in to action...

I bought Premium for a month when I did the first archive (pretty much search by project tags, export to ENEX, import from ENEX). 

Subsequently I have been able to manage archiving within the upload limit by importing into a local notebook when the volume exceeds the limit.  I then move them to a synced notebook as need be.  Doesn't bother me too much since I rarely access the notes anyway, hence the archive, and all notes are searchable from my PC anyway.  Fly in the ointment is if you have any notes greater than the individual note limit.

15 minutes ago, LilMarauder said:

Thank you for sharing that info CalS! I assume at this point that my account has been reported...

You are welcome.  Account has been reported???

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6 hours ago, CalS said:

My preferred method has been to move the notes to a second EN account, which is a Basic account with about 6000 notes in it to date.  Keeps these notes out of my searches for sure. 

I prefer to leave archived notes in place, just removed from non-archive view.   

 

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I'm a contractor, and don't wan't old customers information residing on current customers network, in fact - that would be illegal.

By being able to include "archives" a'la outlook does it, I could access archives as needed. 

While tagging may work for some, the point is missed by the Evernote team. Since an integral part and selling point of Evernote is to integrate PDF, and pictures with notes and highlights, the DATABASE IS GROWING OUT OF HAND. I would rather loose one out of 10 databases of 1 gigabyte than one database of 10 gigabytes. 

 

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1 hour ago, stigskov said:

 old customers information residing on current customers network, in fact - that would be illegal.

In that case I would export the data to a backup; I use html format so I still access my notes.

>>I would rather loose one out of 10 databases of 1 gigabyte than one database of 10 gigabytes. 

My database is over 10GB and I don't plan to loose any data.  I've not needed them but I have backups.

 

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On 9/21/2018 at 12:13 PM, stigskov said:

I'm a contractor, and don't wan't old customers information residing on current customers network, in fact - that would be illegal.

By being able to include "archives" a'la outlook does it, I could access archives as needed. 

While tagging may work for some, the point is missed by the Evernote team. Since an integral part and selling point of Evernote is to integrate PDF, and pictures with notes and highlights, the DATABASE IS GROWING OUT OF HAND. I would rather loose one out of 10 databases of 1 gigabyte than one database of 10 gigabytes. 

 

Pending EN doing anything about archives, you could always create a second account and move the completed projects there.  Then you could access archives as needed.  Since you are a premium subscriber you can easily log into both accounts (even if the second is Basic) from the desktop app.  FWIW I do it this way without much if any pain.

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I've just been looking into this and have seen Synology Note Station, which is apparently quite a competent Evernote clone has an 'archive' feature. I haven't tested this yet as my own Synology NAS is currently in storage whilst I move house but as soon as it's back up and running I'm going to be looking into this. Also has an Evernote migration feature.

Please note, I have no connection to Synology and am not receiving any kind of incentive for this post, I am just a very avid Synology NAS user.

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I agree with an archive function it would be phenomenal. EN provides an option to delete a note or notebook, if I deleted that note by accident, I can go to EN trash and restore the note or deleted forever. So, having an archive function similar to the delete is not much to ask. I mean you already have the function to delete adding an archive will make a lot of users happy and allow us to have a clean slate. 

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10 hours ago, amcolonjr said:

I agree with an archive function it would be phenomenal. EN provides an option to delete a note or notebook, if I deleted that note by accident, I can go to EN trash and restore the note or deleted forever. So, having an archive function similar to the delete is not much to ask. I mean you already have the function to delete adding an archive will make a lot of users happy and allow us to have a clean slate. 

Did not think about it! Yes, it seems to share a lot with the EN trash.

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10 hours ago, amcolonjr said:

So, having an archive function similar to the delete is not much to ask.

Deleted notes are flagged (tagged) and no longer appear in with non-deleted notes.
Yes, there is a Trash section, but notes can no longer be searched, or listed by notebook/tag.

I'd like the option to exclude/include archived notes with my regular note processing.

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26 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Deleted notes are flagged (tagged) and no longer appear in with non-deleted notes.
Yes, there is a Trash section, but notes can no longer be searched, or listed by notebook/tag.

I'd like the option to exclude/include archived notes with my regular note processing.

This is exactly why it is interesting, from my point-of-view.

And they can be restored to be fully featured again.

Do they lose their tags and other meta-data?

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11 minutes ago, fredhammersmith said:

And they can be restored to be fully featured again.
Do they lose their tags and other meta-data?

afaik  Restoring a note from Trash is a complete restore with tags and other metadata; it just turns off the "Trash" flag.
I'd prefer to have full features in Archive without restoring the notes.

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1 hour ago, DTLow said:

afaik  Restoring a note from Trash is a complete restore with tags and other metadata; it just turns off the "Trash" flag.
I'd prefer to have full features in Archive without restoring the notes.

So... if you replace the Trash tag by Archive, at least mentally, you get the Archive solution a lot of people are hoping for?

Seems too good to be true.

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19 hours ago, #pacman said:

right now it's actually counterproductive to use Evernote over time.

I agree that Evernote has indicated no interest in implementing a specific archive function.
afaik  This has been the position since the product was initially released; nothing new here

For myself, Evernote continues to be a productive tool for the storage and access of my data.

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31 minutes ago, tacobravo said:

I completely switched to OneNote. While that may not be the right approach for everyone (OneNote has its pros and cons), for this scenario OneNote is great. You can get stuff out of Evernote, but it's still accessible...and one thing OneNote does very well is search (better IMHO then searching within Windows). Just my two cents. 

I agree! It got to the point that I was beginning to worry about accessing my data so I wanted to get it off the platform. 

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47 minutes ago, tacobravo said:

It got to the point that I was beginning to worry about accessing my data so I wanted to get it off the platform

Why is that, and does it relate to the archive funtion?

I have over 12,000 notes and no problems  accessing my data.

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10 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Why is that, and does it relate to the archive funtion?

I have over 12,000 notes and no problems  accessing my data.

I don't want to start a riot or say anything unwarranted, but the company has had a lot of management turnover and is not profitable. That plus their complete lack of concern about this issue and I wanted my data somewhere where I knew I could control it. I wanted to get it off their platform before I had no choice. To be fair, a lot of startups go through this, and I understand the dynamic, but I wanted to make sure my data didn't get orphaned in an app that was no longer supported. 

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