Offline Availability

[CaptainTime 94]

I am a premium user of Evernote and I use it on my Windows desktop computer and laptop and on my Android tablet and smart phone.

 

Assuming all devices were connected to the Internet yesterday, would ALL my notes available on all devices? So if I take my smart phone to the woods, do I see all my note content? Or do I have to choose which notebooks are also available offline?

 

Thanks,

 

[gazumped 12,073]

Tablets and smartphones don't have permanent storage in the same way that desk and laptops do - the missing factor is the hard drive to hold the multi-GB data files.  So Evernote sensibly decided that the full database would reside on the server and your hard drives,  but not on mobile units.  They rely on calling down copies of notes when required,  which reside in 'temporary' caches while they are viewed and edited,  and stay there while being synced back to the mothership(s) via the server.  There's quite a bit of persistence in this cache - though it depends on how much storage your device has (NB different versions of Android deal with SD cards in different ways,  so we're talking built in storage here,  not the extra 32GB you added by card).  You can 'probably' find regularly used notes on your device even when disconnected from the network.  But that's not guaranteed,  and whether the version you see is the latest one is also unknown.  In normal cases your device uses the index that gets downloaded to it to allow you to search for and download the full content of a note on request.

 

However.  If you are a premium user,  you can set your notebooks to "offline searchable" which means not only the index,  but also the note content for that notebook gets downloaded to the device.  NB again that your device onboard storage needs to be large enough to take the full content - you can move some apps to an SD card,  but that messes with widget performance and also updates in some Android versions.  They do seem to limit external storage to music and video files.

 

I have a 12GB main data file so my phone has its own notebook with a subset of information that I need on the move,  including my current activity list.

 

So short answer - yes you do have to choose notebooks - individually - to be set as offline searchable.

[CaptainTime 94]

Thanks Gazumped. I will have to give some thought to which notebooks I really need offline then. I was wondering if I might overload my smart phone's memory if everything was being downloaded.