Note content reverted back 6 months (Iphone App)

[Grant82379 1]

I have a note that is constantly being updated every couple of days on my iphone EN app.

Last Friday night I updated the content, synced it and closed the app.

Saturday afternoon I went to open the app and to my surprise the content had reverted back to a state from mid Nov. 2013.

The date on the note showed it was last updated the night before (Friday) which was accurate but the content was from the previous November.

I closed the app and logged in through a browser and found the same thing.

I restarted the phone and checked for updates on the app to no avail.

I submitted a ticket and included the log but never received a response or a ticket number confirmation.

So just to be clear the note did not disappear, the content just reverted back to last November.

I frustrated that in 4 days no one from support has contacted me nor was I sent a ticket number to refer to.

Can someone advise?

 

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I have a note that is constantly being updated every couple of days on my iphone EN app.

Last Friday night I updated the content, synced it and closed the app.

Saturday afternoon I went to open the app and to my surprise the content had reverted back to a state from mid Nov. 2013.

The date on the note showed it was last updated the night before (Friday) which was accurate but the content was from the previous November.

I closed the app and logged in through a browser and found the same thing.

I restarted the phone and checked for updates on the app to no avail.

I submitted a ticket and included the log but never received a response or a ticket number confirmation.

So just to be clear the note did not disappear, the content just reverted back to last November.

I frustrated that in 4 days no one from support has contacted me nor was I sent a ticket number to refer to.

Can someone advise?

 

If you didn't receive a ticket number, your ticket was not submitted successfully & no one from support will be contacting you.  It's kind of like walking out to the street & expecting a cab to appear & then complaining when one doesn't. (Ok, I guess if you live in NYC, this is a bad example.)  I suggest you resubmit a ticket & make sure you get a ticket number.

[i3maha 2]

I have a note that is constantly being updated every couple of days on my iphone EN app.

Last Friday night I updated the content, synced it and closed the app.

Saturday afternoon I went to open the app and to my surprise the content had reverted back to a state from mid Nov. 2013.

The date on the note showed it was last updated the night before (Friday) which was accurate but the content was from the previous November.

I am sorry to hear that you lost several month of data. When this happened to me, it was "only" a few days which already felt horrible...

You wrote in "my" thread that the "exact same thing" happened to you. But there is a small difference: When my note reverted back to an old state, it even showed the old date, so I knew exactly how much of my work was lost.

This doesn't really help you, I just wanted to point out that Evernote seems to have several different problems here

Good luck with the support! I hope we can get our notes back.

[Grant82379 1]

Thanks i3maha.  I submitted another ticket yesterday ticket # 558439.

The last ticket I submitted last Saturday was through the phone app which asks if you want to send a copy of the log which I did.  As I mentioned I never got a confirmation with a ticket number that time which is why I was frustrated.  

This time I entered the ticket through the browser on evernote.com and got a ticket confirmation at least.

BurgersNfries: I assumed that I would receive an email confirmation but I also don't know how EN support operates which is why I gave them 3 working days then posted in here.

I'm hoping support can restore this one notebook back to it's state on May 30th.

Also when I pull the log now it only shows the activity for the current day which isn't pertinent to this scenario which occurred last Friday and Saturday May 30 and 31.

Is there a way they or I can pull those logs?

I know for a fact this isn't a scenario caused by user error because the last updated date shows correctly as May 30th but the content in the notebook is from last November.

Since last November I have committed 100's of changes and they have synced correctly every time.  

Why this chose to revert back to an arbitrary date last November I don't understand. 

[Grant82379 1]

Any idea how long it usually takes to hear from support, I entered the ticket last Wednesday, does it usually take about a week to hear back from them?

Also does anyone know, when I pull the activity log it only shows the activity for the current day which isn't pertinent to this scenario which occurred Friday and Saturday May 30 and 31.

Is there a way they or I can pull those logs?

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Any idea how long it usually takes to hear from support, I entered the ticket last Wednesday, does it usually take about a week to hear back from them?

Also does anyone know, when I pull the activity log it only shows the activity for the current day which isn't pertinent to this scenario which occurred Friday and Saturday May 30 and 31.

Is there a way they or I can pull those logs?

Normally it shouldn't be that long,but they may be under heavy load, which usually slows down the process, especially if you happen to be a free user.

Looks like another moderator has flagged your post for staff attention earlier today. Someone should be in touch soon.

[i3maha 2]

Also does anyone know, when I pull the activity log it only shows the activity for the current day which isn't pertinent to this scenario which occurred Friday and Saturday May 30 and 31.

Is there a way they or I can pull those logs?

On my Windows 8 system, the logs of about the last 2 weeks are stored in my user directory in the following path:

c:\Users\XXXXUSERNAMEXXXX\AppData\Local\Evernote\Evernote\Logs\

You mentioned only an app on the iPhone, so I don't know if this helps...

[charboyd 272]

Free users do have a lower priority in the support queue, but I have raised the priority on Ticket #558439. You should be contacted via email shortly.

[Grant82379 1]

I was contacted today by support which was great, she pointed me towards an app called iExplorer which allowed me to access cached files and backups saved locally on my iphone device that were specific to Evernote.

However whatever error originally occurred has corrupted the backup files as well.

When I accessed these files they still showed correctly as last updated 5/31, however the content was the same old content from last November.

So I responded to support and asked if they have a backup saved on their server side since it appears that whatever error occurred on the app has now corrupted the device backups associated with the app as well.

So I will wait and see and if there is no server side backup I am probably SOL unless anyone else has any ideas.

 

Thanks I3maha but since this was all on my device I don't have any backups on my computer.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

I was contacted today by support which was great, she pointed me towards an app called iExplorer which allowed me to access cached files and backups saved locally on my iphone device that were specific to Evernote.

However whatever error originally occurred has corrupted the backup files as well.

When I accessed these files they still showed correctly as last updated 5/31, however the content was the same old content from last November.

So I responded to support and asked if they have a backup saved on their server side since it appears that whatever error occurred on the app has now corrupted the device backups associated with the app as well.

So I will wait and see and if there is no server side backup I am probably SOL unless anyone else has any ideas.

 

Thanks I3maha but since this was all on my device I don't have any backups on my computer.

You should definitely consider maintaining a backup of your database on your desktop computer (since your database resides in its entirety on your hard drive, and so is easily backed up). Using Time Machine on a Mac, or whatever is popular on Windows, can be a really big help in situations like this. 

 

Glad support got in touch and hopefully this gets sorted!

[Grant82379 1]

Scott, 

I only use evernote on my mobile phone for tracking expenses and keeping it in the cloud so that if I lost my phone it's still there.  I do use just cloud backup for all of my videos, pictures and documents and everything else I have and I have redundancy backup in place for all of that.  This is just a pain because I have to go through receipts and cc statements to track everything now which will take a while but it's not completely devastating.  I really just need to know from support if they have a server side backup they can restore or not.  I'm wonderning if their lack of responsiveness is just due to volume of workload or because the news is bad for me.  Either way I will probably just use a google calendar invite for tracking my expenses in the future from my phone as I think it's probably a little more reliable.  It's just a bummer because overall I liked using evernote and for my notebooks that I rarely made updates to I haven't had any problems.  If I would have known this support process would take almost 2 weeks I probably would have just ditched evernote and looked up all my expenses but now I have put so much time into this that if there is a chance they have a server side backup they can restore it will be worth it (although the more time the more this becomes a diminishing return).

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Sorry to hear that your experience with Evernote has not been the smoothest. It does seem like your experience with support has been drawn out a bit. Though to be fair, you got a response within four business days of successfully submitting a support ticket (Submit thursday, receive response Tuesday) not 2 weeks. 

 

Personally I would NEVER rely on any cloud provider to backup my data for me and would always have my own backups that I control, because ultimately that data is my responsibility in the end... I don't want a cloud service provider's gaff (if that is what this is) to cause me grief! 

 

I can assure you that data loss is rare with Evernote. They have 100 million users and we see just a very small number of posts about lost data on these forums and in many cases it is user error that contributed to it, in some cases, it was a problem on Evernote's end. Either way, it is not common. While anecdotes are rather useless, I personally have used Evernote on 4 devices every day for the last 4 years and have never experienced lost data. 

That being said, if you think you can use another tool like Google Calendar more effectively, then that's great, it is always best to use what suits your needs the best. 

[Grant82379 1]

Scott, can you answer, do they have a server side backup that they keep?

 

Just to be clear I submitted a ticket through the mobile app on Saturday May 31, however it was not received which could have been user error but given my experience thus far I feel fairly confident it may be an issue with submitting tickets through the mobile app specifically.  Secondly I submitted my ticket 558439 on Wednesday 6/4 and received a reply on Tuesday 6/10 so almost a week.  

 

To your second point about always backing up data and not trusting a cloud provider, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement for evernote and I would like to say I have never heard anyone say they just don't trust google calendar for example so they always back their calendar up locally or to another redundant calendar.

 

I'm glad you haven't had any issues but just to be clear on my experience, I have used EN for one year on one device and had an issue.  Now that I have been talking to people about their experiences I would also venture to say there are probably a lot more issues than what get's opened as support tickets and posted on these boards.  I would also guess that since it has taken 8 days to have just one correspondence from EN, it's probably safe to assume that their support team is overwhelmed to say the least.

 

I get it that I'm not a paying customer and overall I understand these things happen I just want to make sure this situation is clear to anyone in the future that reads this string.  I do not believe this is an isolated incidence, if you plan on using evernote and want to feel confident your data will not be lost it is a necessity that you have a redundant back up plan.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Scott, can you answer, do they have a server side backup that they keep?

 

Just to be clear I submitted a ticket through the mobile app on Saturday May 31, however it was not received which could have been user error but given my experience thus far I feel fairly confident it may be an issue with submitting tickets through the mobile app specifically.  Secondly I submitted my ticket 558439 on Wednesday 6/4 and received a reply on Tuesday 6/10 so almost a week.  

 

To your second point about always backing up data and not trusting a cloud provider, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement for evernote and I would like to say I have never heard anyone say they just don't trust google calendar for example so they always back their calendar up locally or to another redundant calendar.

 

I'm glad you haven't had any issues but just to be clear on my experience, I have used EN for one year on one device and had an issue.  Now that I have been talking to people about their experiences I would also venture to say there are probably a lot more issues than what get's opened as support tickets and posted on these boards.  I would also guess that since it has taken 8 days to have just one correspondence from EN, it's probably safe to assume that their support team is overwhelmed to say the least.

 

I get it that I'm not a paying customer and overall I understand these things happen I just want to make sure this situation is clear to anyone in the future that reads this string.  I do not believe this is an isolated incidence, if you plan on using evernote and want to feel confident your data will not be lost it is a necessity that you have a redundant back up plan.

I'm sure they have backups for their own use in the event their servers go down. But AFAIK, the only "backups" available for customer/user use is the note history (premium feature) & they do not delve into their own backups in order to pluck a user's data from a particular time.  IE, if your latest version of the note is not available in the trash or note history, a specific date/time would need to be pinpointed & their backup from that date/time retrieved & your specific account & note pulled from their backup .  That can be pretty intense stuff & I'm guessing they are not really equipped to provide this as a service to their users.

 

WRT not trusting a cloud provider, it is no reflection upon Evernote.  It's simple, common sense.  I do the same as Scott - maintain my own backups on not only my hard drives but also in my backup cloud of choice (Amazon S3 servers).  Hackers & failed systems are a part of computer life.  So it's best to be proactive & keep a backup that is under your control.  Hopefully, you never need it.  But it's better to have backups & not need them than needing a backup & not having one...as you are finding out.

 

WRT support turnaround time, Evernote was hit with a DDoS attack this week.  (It's discussed on the board.)  They quickly got on it & it appears to be resolved.  But I think it's safe to assume the support team was/is busier than normal b/c of this & turnaround time is longer than normal.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

1) I do not know whether Evernote has user-level server-side backups that they can retrieve. I know their server data is backed up, so if a machine or several machines go down, they can restore those data, but as for an individual user's data, you'll have to wait to hear back from Support. 

2) Ok, within 5 business days. That's one business week, and not two weeks. I already recognized that it "was drawn out a bit", not sure how to express more sympathy than that. 

3) Google has lost user data too. Apple has lost user data. It happens. ​It is inevitable that it will happen. Just like your hard drive failing, it isn't a matter of asking "if", it is a matter of asking "when". Your hard drive will fail, you can count on that. 

 

 

4) Absolutely, my experience is as much an anecdote as yours, and therefore neither can be taken as representative of the broader experience of the 100 million Evernote users. You cannot claim that your experience is any more valid or representative of what is typical than I can.

And you are totally correct, instances of data loss are not necessarily always reported on these forums or through support so the number could be higher, but there is really no way of knowing how much higher, and my gut says it couldn't be that much higher. I think the number of users who neither post here nor submit a support ticket about lost data would be pretty low because data loss sucks and people get pretty stirred up about that. 

 

5) Their support team may well be overwhelmed not the least because they have been dealing with, and are recovering from a DDoS attack, which I imagine generated a heavy support load and also likely diverted some resources to dealing with the technical problem caused by the attack. Now, your experiences goes further back than the attack, but as a free user, you are at the bottom of the queue, and sometimes that queue can be quite long... throw in a weekend and the whole thing seems even longer. It is a drag, but: a) that's one perk of paying for premium; and b ) while Evernote is a large company, they are not infinitely wealthy, and short of off-shoring their customer support, their support resources are sometimes stretched thin.   (and as BNF has noted, your experience with support is also unusually drawn out, but I've already recognized that, haven't I?)

 

6) You are correct, your experience is not isolated. That is clear because there are other users who have shared their data loss experience on these forums. And yes, you SHOULD have a good backup plan because that is just good data sense. That has nothing to do with Evernote and everything to do with being smart about your stuff. 

[Grant82379 1]

Burger thanks for the info, sounds like I'm out of luck.  

I agree with both you and Scott about backing up completely crucial information which again is what I do with my TB of pics, videos, documents, etc. which is on 2 HD's and a cloud backup.

However for the purpose I use EN mobile I don't think I will back up the data and I think there are probably a lot of people out there like me.

Having backups for every single app a person uses regardless of the critical nature of the data is like the 20 year old super healthy person paying $500 a month for the best health insurance plan and carrying 10 million dollars in life insurance.  You are definitely covered but it's probably a bit of an overkill.

If there are a 100 million users on EN and your telling me this is an isolated case that represents a 1 in a million chance of data loss, I better go buy a lottery ticket.

If you are telling me there is a 10% or even a 1% chance of data loss I probably just won't use the service.

There is also a difference with say google, they have support and process in place for helping users recover data in an unfortunate and extremely unlikely event like this.

I know as an EN employee that drives you crazy and I'm not saying google is perfect (I refuse to use their email interface) and I also will say that EN is respected but google is just a much larger company with a much larger user base and a lot more money.

Thanks for you help both of you and escalating my ticket.  It's a great model having evangelists address these boards, it makes the users feel like they are being heard and paid attention to while waiting for support.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

I'm not an Evernote employee. 

[Grant82379 1]

Good Point, I guess missionaries aren't employed by the church but they spread the gospel (evangelism in action) 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Well, to be accurate, unlike with missionaries, it was YOU who came to US

[Grant82379 1]

To stick with the analogy, I came to you like people came to Jonestown looking for answers.  They didn't come to drink the kool aid.  

[Grant82379 1]

Just wanted to follow up on this, I heard back from support and they upgraded me to premium.  With Premium there is an info button and essentially you an go back and look at incremental server side backups that are associated with notebook.  So it took me about 3 minutes to get the information I needed.  Understanding now how easy that is, the only thing that sucks is how much time I spent on this.  However I got the data back and I learned in the future if this happens here is the process I would follow:

 

1. Download and try using iexplorer:

Install this program: http://www.macroplant.com/iphoneexplorer/ to your desktop.

When you connect your device and open up iExplorer. You'll see this:

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s225/sh/8c9fc864-059d-43e3-9dd3-bac0f311bcf7/6a55e4ff99a634d094089ce37552d0c5

Double click on apps to the left: 
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s225/sh/088ac72b-fcd5-4641-a75b-6cc7ec890d5e/e61b976d3d75365aaf8ea56791af84c1

Then go to Evernote > Library > Caches > www.evernote.com > youruserid (numerical) - check all the folders here for your notes.

Also check in Evernote > tmp for any files, as they may be located here, or in Evernote> Library > Private documents >
www.evernote.com > username> content

Note: We do not provide support for iExplorer, and are providing instructions with this non-Evernote program as a courtesy.

 

2. If that didn't work because the data was corrupted on your device, ask support to upgrade you temporarily to premium and see if there is a backup:

To access your Note History on Evernote for Web:

• Sign in to your Evernote account at www.evernote.com
• Open the note that is missing its content
• Click on the INFO icon on the right side of your note toolbar
• Click the blue "View History" link
• Find the version of the note you are looking for, then copy and paste it back into the note or export it as a .enex file so you may import it back into your account.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Glad things got sorted out, even if it took a fair bit of time and energy. Thanks for taking the time to post the solution here!