iOS search

[psionmark 73]

I'm revisiting Evernote as I assumed a lot has changed since I last took a look and I really do want to like it!

However, I am immediately hit by the problem that led to me looking for alternatives - finding stuff.

I'm sure I'm missing something really obvious, but I've checked the FAQ etc and can't find any help.

I select All Notes, then I type "Astra mot 2012" (without the quotes) into the search box. What I'm expecting to find is (as per the FAQ) only notes with all three words in them. But no, I get all notes with ANY of those three words, which renders the search useless for me, as I get over 100 results instead of the two or threw I'm expecting.

Please do let me know what obvious trick I'm missing here

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I'm revisiting Evernote as I assumed a lot has changed since I last took a look and I really do want to like it!

However, I am immediately hit by the problem that led to me looking for alternatives - finding stuff.

I'm sure I'm missing something really obvious, but I've checked the FAQ etc and can't find any help.

I select All Notes, then I type "Astra mot 2012" (without the quotes) into the search box. What I'm expecting to find is (as per the FAQ) only notes with all three words in them. But no, I get all notes with ANY of those three words, which renders the search useless for me, as I get over 100 results instead of the two or threw I'm expecting.

Please do let me know what obvious trick I'm missing here

Update: This is from the Evernote blog:

any: - Enter multiple search terms and pull up notes that include any one of the words you typed in (ie: any:”New York” will pull notes that include either word, but just typing “New York” into the search box will pull notes that contain both of these words.) The word any: needs to come at the beginning of your search, so you can’t type Cooking any:”Mexican.“

But this isn't working for me on the iPad. My search above finds every note with Astra, mot OR 2012 in it.

The FAQ quote you posted is for the "any" search option, which matches the results you're getting...notes containing ANY of those words, so it's working as expected. If you want the notes that only contain all three words, you need to use the "all" option, which IME is the default on the clients I use (web, Windows, iOS). Are you specifying the "any" option in your searches?

 

EDIT: I think the FAQ may have the incorrect syntax.  I think it should read:

 

(ie: any: New York will pull notes that include either word

 

IOW, if you're searching on

 

any: astra mot 2012

 

then the results you are getting are accurate.  If you want only those notes containing all three words, search on

 

astra mot 2012

 

which uses the default option of "all".

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I'm revisiting Evernote as I assumed a lot has changed since I last took a look and I really do want to like it!

However, I am immediately hit by the problem that led to me looking for alternatives - finding stuff.

I'm sure I'm missing something really obvious, but I've checked the FAQ etc and can't find any help.

I select All Notes, then I type "Astra mot 2012" (without the quotes) into the search box. What I'm expecting to find is (as per the FAQ) only notes with all three words in them. But no, I get all notes with ANY of those three words, which renders the search useless for me, as I get over 100 results instead of the two or threw I'm expecting.

Please do let me know what obvious trick I'm missing here

[psionmark 73]

Sorry, I probably didn't explain that too well. I was using the posted example from the blog because, as you say, leaving off the ANY should return only notes containing all three words and I am leaving off the ANY, so I should get only notes with all three words, but I'm getting all notes with any of them, so leaving off the ANY, the search works as if I had indeed used the ANY modifier.

To clarify, I'm putting "Astra mot 2012" in the search box, without quotes and without any modifiers, just those three words and I'm expecting to get notes back containing the words Astra AND mot AND 2012 anywhere in the note.

If I search using quotes it doesn't return any results because those three words are not all together in any of my notes.

Hope this makes sense!

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Sorry, I probably didn't explain that too well. I was using the posted example from the blog because, as you say, leaving off the ANY should return only notes containing all three words and I am leaving off the ANY, so I should get only notes with all three words, but I'm getting all notes with any of them, so leaving off the ANY, the search works as if I had indeed used the ANY modifier.

To clarify, I'm putting "Astra mot 2012" in the search box, without quotes and without any modifiers, just those three words and I'm expecting to get notes back containing the words Astra AND mot AND 2012 anywhere in the note.

If I search using quotes it doesn't return any results because those three words are not all together in any of my notes.

Hope this makes sense!

The "all" search works as expected for me & has in all the six years I've been using EN on various platforms. You could try going to a desktop client & exporting one of the notes that is showing up on iOS incorrectly to HTML and/or ENEX & search for all three words in those files to make sure there are no underlying words that cause the note to be a match. IE, when images are OCR'd, they can be a false positive, if EN thinks a particular word may exist in that image. Beyond that, you would need to submit a support ticket & specify what search terms you're using & at least one note that is a false positive.

Good luck.

[psionmark 73]

Sorry, I probably didn't explain that too well. I was using the posted example from the blog because, as you say, leaving off the ANY should return only notes containing all three words and I am leaving off the ANY, so I should get only notes with all three words, but I'm getting all notes with any of them, so leaving off the ANY, the search works as if I had indeed used the ANY modifier.

To clarify, I'm putting "Astra mot 2012" in the search box, without quotes and without any modifiers, just those three words and I'm expecting to get notes back containing the words Astra AND mot AND 2012 anywhere in the note.

If I search using quotes it doesn't return any results because those three words are not all together in any of my notes.

Hope this makes sense!

The "all" search works as expected for me & has in all the six years I've been using EN on various platforms. You could try going to a desktop client & exporting one of the notes that is showing up on iOS incorrectly to HTML and/or ENEX & search for all three words in those files to make sure there are no underlying words that cause the note to be a match. IE, when images are OCR'd, they can be a false positive, if EN thinks a particular word may exist in that image. Beyond that, you would need to submit a support ticket & specify what search terms you're using & at least one note that is a false positive.

Good luck.

I think I must be missing something here.

All I'm trying to do is search for any notes that have all three words in them. I believe all I have to do is to enter those three words into the search box on the iPad version of Evernote with no quotes, no modifiers, nothing but the three words I'm looking for. Is that correct?

When I do so, I get notes that contain not just all three of the words, but also all notes that contain any of the words. So I'm getting everything back that has, for example, 2011 in the note.

In other words, entering just the three words behaves exactly as the blog post describes the behaviour should be when using the ANY modifier, but I'm not using it.

[psionmark 73]

Some extra info:

I just repeated the search exactly as before, i.e. just the three words. I then did a search within the first returned note for all three words individually, and it couldn't find any of them! So why return it as a hit?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I think I must be missing something here.

All I'm trying to do is search for any notes that have all three words in them. I believe all I have to do is to enter those three words into the search box on the iPad version of Evernote with no quotes, no modifiers, nothing but the three words I'm looking for. Is that correct?

When I do so, I get notes that contain not just all three of the words, but also all notes that contain any of the words. So I'm getting everything back that has, for example, 2011 in the note.

In other words, entering just the three words behaves exactly as the blog post describes the behaviour should be when using the ANY modifier, but I'm not using it.

This is correct. I suspect there is something funky going on b/c it's clear this works for pretty much everyone else. But from your descriptions (thank you!), I'm not zeroing in on what it could be. Sometimes, you just have to see something in order to figure out what's going wrong. IE, the image thing, while a stretch, could be a factor. IE, if I have an image with the word "house" in it, the EN OCR (that makes a tree of possibilities) may think that word may be 'horse', even though the word 'horse' does not appear in the image. So when I search on 'horse', that image may show up as a false positive.  That kind of false positive should be able to be discovered by exporting to enex b/c IIRC, it includes the OCR'd results that are in the underlying code of the note & not necessarily the note as displayed on your screen..  Jefito is more knowledgeable on this topic, so hopefully, he can chime in here.

 

Plus, EN support may have a better answer than what I'm providing, if they can see the specific case.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

To clarify, when EN OCRs my image & thinks it may contain the word 'house' and/or the word 'horse', those terms are put into the underlying code of the note.  But when I see the note on the screen, I do not see those words added to the note as it's displayed on the screen.  That's where the export may shed some light on the false positives.

 

(Hope this makes sense.)

[psionmark 73]

Okay, I just tried this on the iPhone.

Here are the steps I took:

From the Evernote home screen, I select All Notes.

From there, I tap the magnifying glass, then enter Fred Smith (pretty sure I have no notes with Fred Smith in)

Evernote returns 6 matches

I select the first match, tap the search, look for Fred - no match

Tap search again, look for Smith - no match

So why was this record returned as a match?

This is the main reason I moved away from Evernote - I'd love to use it, but I simply can't find stuff!

Am I the only person with this problem?

[psionmark 73]

To clarify, when EN OCRs my image & thinks it may contain the word 'house' and/or the word 'horse', those terms are put into the underlying code of the note.  But when I see the note on the screen, I do not see those words added to the note as it's displayed on the screen.  That's where the export may shed some light on the false positives.

 

(Hope this makes sense.)

Ah yes, that makes sense. But wouldn't it then show "horse" as a search within the note?

I know it's me, lol - this is such a fundamental part of Evernote, if it didn't work, everyone would be shouting

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Okay, I just tried this on the iPhone.

Here are the steps I took:

From the Evernote home screen, I select All Notes.

From there, I tap the magnifying glass, then enter Fred Smith (pretty sure I have no notes with Fred Smith in)

Evernote returns 6 matches

I select the first match, tap the search, look for Fred - no match

Tap search again, look for Smith - no match

So why was this record returned as a match?

This is the main reason I moved away from Evernote - I'd love to use it, but I simply can't find stuff!

Am I the only person with this problem?

 

If none of the false positives are 100% absolute straight text, then it could be the underlying code.  However, I don't know why you seem to be getting so many false positives & it may be best to submit a support ticket with a specific search & a link to a specific false positive.

[psionmark 73]

Okay, I just tried this on the iPhone.

Here are the steps I took:

From the Evernote home screen, I select All Notes.

From there, I tap the magnifying glass, then enter Fred Smith (pretty sure I have no notes with Fred Smith in)

Evernote returns 6 matches

I select the first match, tap the search, look for Fred - no match

Tap search again, look for Smith - no match

So why was this record returned as a match?

This is the main reason I moved away from Evernote - I'd love to use it, but I simply can't find stuff!

Am I the only person with this problem?

 

If none of the false positives are 100% absolute straight text, then it could be the underlying code.  However, I don't know why you seem to be getting so many false positives & it may be best to submit a support ticket with a specific search & a link to a specific false positive.

Will do.

Thanks for the help and suggestions

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Ah yes, that makes sense. But wouldn't it then show "horse" as a search within the note?

I know it's me, lol - this is such a fundamental part of Evernote, if it didn't work, everyone would be shouting

You would think, but I'm not sure & I need to get to work on something else (sorry!) so don't have time to play with it here.  But I'm not sure that the general EN search (across all the notes) functions the same as the "in note" search.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

No problem & good luck!

[psionmark 73]

Hi all,

 

I've heard back from support.

 

What you have to do to achieve what I want is to enter the search exactly like this:

 

"astra" "mot" "2012"

 

With the quotes, spaces etc.

 

I can confirm this works.

 

Intuitive, eh? Don't know why I didn't guess that

 

I've politely suggested they update the FAQ, but at least I now have search returning what I want.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Hi all,

 

I've heard back from support.

 

What you have to do to achieve what I want is to enter the search exactly like this:

 

"astra" "mot" "2012"

 

With the quotes, spaces etc.

 

I can confirm this works.

 

Intuitive, eh? Don't know why I didn't guess that

 

I've politely suggested they update the FAQ, but at least I now have search returning what I want.

 

Well, I'm glad you have a solution for your Search.

 

I agree, the FAQ, KB, and the formal Search grammar page need to be updated to reflect this.

 

For decades in the computing/database world, when you searched for TEXT the system would find ONLY an EXACT match unless you added a suffix of "*".  For some unknown reason, Evernote decided to break with well-known standards and make Evernote searches work exactly opposite.  This makes it counterintuitive to many, many of us who have been using computers for years.