Finding and deleting duplicate notes

[Krunoslav 197]

Hi, everyone

 

How can I find and delete duplicate notes?

 

Been using Evernote for a while now, and I'm currently using mainly old school folder structure. Having over 5000 notes. Probably about half of them are from clearly and web clipper, just capture websites. Having folder structure and partly tagged notes helps but still there are some duplicates I am sure. How would I find and delete them.

 

Using Evernote 5.6.4.4632 on Windows 8.1 64x - premium user.

 

Thank you.

[jbenson2 2,149]

Sort by the "Title" and view the notes as you scroll downwards.

If that is too many, then narrow the results by searching for a key word you think might be a duplicate.

 

I have over 30,000 notes with very few duplicates. I doubt that Evernote would add a deduplication feature. A duplicate note is not much of a problem for most users. When they come across a duplicate, they just delete it. 

[Krunoslav 197]

Sort by the "Title" and view the notes as you scroll downwards.

If that is too many, then narrow the results by searching for a key word you think might be a duplicate.

 

I have over 30,000 notes with very few duplicates. I doubt that Evernote would add a deduplication feature. A duplicate note is not much of a problem for most users. When they come across a duplicate, they just delete it. 

Thanks. That seems to be the best solution so far. Having some automated feature or warning would be nice, but I guess for now it will have to do.

Would you like to see such a feature?

 

[JMichaelTX 4,118]

I think jbenson2's suggestion is the best, but you can also review the "Related Notes" list at the bottom of each Note.

Of course, this would be very time consuming.

 

I don't look for dups.  I follow JB's suggestion of delete dups when I find them (which is rare)

[Krunoslav 197]

I think jbenson2's suggestion is the best, but you can also review the "Related Notes" list at the bottom of each Note.

Of course, this would be very time consuming.

 

I don't look for dups.  I follow JB's suggestion of delete dups when I find them (which is rare)

Yeah, it seems most of the duplicates come from the same website. So its easier to find them and delete them.

[CalS 5,308]

If you want to automate it a bit, and you have some Excel skills:

1. Go to all notes in list view, select a note and then hit CTRL-A to select all the notes
2. Hit CTRL-C to copy all the note information in the columns
3. Open Excel
4. Paste, match destination formatting
5. Sort by title
6. You now have all of the note list information in Excel and you can write a title compare calculation to quickly find the dups.
7. Copy/paste the title from Excel to EN search bar if you want to fix

Fairly quick and painless process if you feel compelled to remove the dups, FWIW.

[Krunoslav 197]

If you want to automate it a bit, and you have some Excel skills:

1. Go to all notes in list view, select a note and then hit CTRL-A to select all the notes
2. Hit CTRL-C to copy all the note information in the columns
3. Open Excel
4. Paste, match destination formatting
5. Sort by title
6. You now have all of the note list information in Excel and you can write a title compare calculation to quickly find the dups.
7. Copy/paste the title from Excel to EN search bar if you want to fix

Fairly quick and painless process if you feel compelled to remove the dups, FWIW.

I tried that but seem so far that jbenson2 suggestion of deleting them manually after sorting them by title seems to work the best. Luckily as I record them with web cliper usually there are some images that show up when viewing notes as snipets. So its easier to spot the duplicates based on the thumbnails. Thanks for the suggestion though.  

 

[Krunoslav 197]

132 duplicates found and trashed. Thanks guys.

[CalS 5,308]

Good job!  To be sure I didn't mislead anyone, I tested the above before I posted and it took me less than 5 minutes to find 8 duplicates in 26,000 notes.

[lindseycholmes 32]

I prefer this method. Going through 75,000 notes manually becomes cumbersome. I would add one thing however - it might be better to select "My Notes' first (available in the view menu). I found that a lot of my duplicates were from someone else's notebook, a shared notebook. I saved a lot of time but just selecting my notes, the notes that I could actually delete.

 

Great suggestion @csihilling

 

If you want to automate it a bit, and you have some Excel skills:

1. Go to all notes in list view, select a note and then hit CTRL-A to select all the notes
2. Hit CTRL-C to copy all the note information in the columns
3. Open Excel
4. Paste, match destination formatting
5. Sort by title
6. You now have all of the note list information in Excel and you can write a title compare calculation to quickly find the dups.
7. Copy/paste the title from Excel to EN search bar if you want to fix

Fairly quick and painless process if you feel compelled to remove the dups, FWIW.

[CalS 5,308]

I don't have any shared notebooks so not a part of my thinking.  Sounds like a good enhancement if you have shared for sure.

[dfpoon 4]

Thanks csihilling for the Excel tips. I would like to add that we can use Excel's "conditional formatting" to highlight duplicates easily. Here is a tutorial:

 

Find Duplicates in Excel:

http://www.excel-easy.com/examples/find-duplicates.html

 

 

If you want to automate it a bit, and you have some Excel skills:

1. Go to all notes in list view, select a note and then hit CTRL-A to select all the notes
2. Hit CTRL-C to copy all the note information in the columns
3. Open Excel
4. Paste, match destination formatting
5. Sort by title
6. You now have all of the note list information in Excel and you can write a title compare calculation to quickly find the dups.
7. Copy/paste the title from Excel to EN search bar if you want to fix

Fairly quick and painless process if you feel compelled to remove the dups, FWIW.

 

[CalS 5,308]

 

Thanks csihilling for the Excel tips. I would like to add that we can use Excel's "conditional formatting" to highlight duplicates easily. Here is a tutorial:

 

Find Duplicates in Excel:

http://www.excel-easy.com/examples/find-duplicates.html

I was aware of this, but with a bundle of notes I prefer to not visual check (or I don't know how to use this function otherwise).  

 

My process is to create a compare column with a calculation that puts in a 1 if the title matches the title in the row above.  Then I filter on that column for 1s.  That takes 27,000+ notes down to a few in very quick order.  FWIW.

[TheGooch 25]

I'm on a Mac with Numbers instead of Excel, but I'll try the Excel solution. I discovered that I had a Hazel rule importing files from my scanned documents folder into Evernote, but I was using "scan to evernote" feature which together caused a lot of duplicates. I just turned the scanner folder rule off, so with the tips from this thread, I should be able to catch the duplicates and remove them.

[JMichaelTX 4,118]

I'm on a Mac with Numbers instead of Excel, but I'll try the Excel solution.

 

Unfortunately @csihilling's method won't work in EN Mac because EN Mac does not support the copy of multiple selected Notes.

You could write a simple AppleScript to export a note list to CSV.

[kamila rodrigo 0]

you can try "duplicatefilesdeleter"

[gazumped 12,066]

...and have a look at Evernote Batch - finding duplicate notes is one of its many features... https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/97218-consolidating-multiple-accounts/#comment-412594

 

[spersephone 3]

I tend to clip a lot of recipes and also a lot of teaching strategies. Often, I clip them because I know I want to come back to them later. After I've clipped them, they will provide some report on similar items, and I will often realise that I've already clipped the same post in the past. I wish, if nothing else, that it analysed existing notes and warned that this exact item has already been clipped previously, before going ahead and doing it!

[gazumped 12,066]

Seems to me your clips would be stunningly slow to complete if the app has to check the full text of each page with your existing database before it actually started the process.  Time how long it takes from starting the initial clip to messages about any 'similar notes' popping up.  Then double it.  That's (at least) how long the new version would take to clip the page or pop up a message that you already have that version.  I'd rather have possible duplicates and delete them if they come up in searches.

[spersephone 3]

So make it an option that you can choose to enable or disable. 

Just yesterday I realised that I clipped about four different notes that I had already previously clipped months ago. Clearly, I need this option to be enabled. 

[gazumped 12,066]

I currently have around 2,000 duplicate notes (that I know of - long story) but they're not a problem - I get a small number in some searches.  They're easy to spot in a small list of search hits,  so I can do a brief check,  delete the spares,  and go on to do other things.  And none of them are related to clipping - avoiding a duplicate clip is not necessarily a life-changer.

You're entitled to your druthers,  or course.  Just sayin'