Problems with bulleted lists

[Notaker 5]

I think in bulleted lists. That's just the way my head works. So I love the ability to use them in Evernote. And HATE the fact that they are so buggy.

One thing is that you can't edit them on the iPhone. This has been commented in here many times, and I see that the iPhone doesn't allow editing styled text – but why can't EN just allow me to add some plain text at the bottom? When I have e.g. a meeting agenda, and another important point pops into my head, it's a ***** to have to write it on a scrap of paper. Adding some plain text at the bottom is not a perfect solution, but it would be good enough.

But the most important thing is that reordering a bulleted list in any way is a buggish hell. When I copy and paste within one of my lists, I almost always get some strange result. Bullets disappear, or appear where they aren't supposed to be, etc. etc. I usually have to more or less write the list from scratch if I want to move a point further up. This severely limits the usefulness of bulleted lists. Their strength is their ability to organize thoughts; organization is of little use, though, if you can't reorganize.

Does anybody have an explanation for why all these bugs appear. Is it due to some inherent limitation in the format, or has EN just made a hash of it? Any chance it will be fixed any time soon?

(Accidentally posted this in the iPhone forum yesterday. Moved it here.)

[Notaker 5]

After having avoided using bulleted lists for quite some time, I just tried them again -- and was pleasantly surprised. Is it just me, or has bulleted lists generally, and cutting and pasting within them especially, gotten better?

I also discovered a keyboard shortcut to toggle them on and off that I had not seen before: cmd-shift-U. (That might just have be me who was not looking in the right place earlier, though.)

[Steff 0]

I agree five years to fix something so fundamental is ... unthinkable

I offer this URL for consideration

EN: Android Wear 2015-03-27

URL: https://www.evernote.com/l/AQi_7khlbTNFzaJIWJJi5c_TEzHNYd6To_8

 

Aside: I use the EN to indicate an internal Evernote Link (and if followed from the Evernote Web, downloads the file.
The URL is for non-Evernote users to read the file. By giving the two links, Evernote support has a file to work with.

 

First I indented ( Mac: Cnd+Shift+] ). The indent action is successful.

I pasted from the clipboard several lines of information ( Mac: Cmnd+Shift+V ) to strip of any formatting and inherited the current formatting.

Next I select the line and make a bullet list (Mac: Cmnd+Shift+U ), and conversion of the text lines to Bullet list is completed but the current indent level is completely ignored. The Bullet List starts at the left margin edge, not at the indent level I selected

 

My beef is that earlier version of the Evernote for Mac got this right.

When I view the note on Evernote Android it is rendered differently.

When I view the note on Evernote iPad0Mini iOS, it is rendered still differently

 

Proper Alignment of bullets

And Indent should not impact the level of the bullets (Level 1 stays Level 1)

The earlier comments using HTML to examine the issue is a good concept, but I have been making a case that the flaw also lies in the different data structure underlying the export to HTML

 

I created a much simpler illustration and compressed the .enex and html file and folder into the attached file Archive.zip

 

I would welcome reopening this topic. 
With glee I installed the most recent update to Evernote Mac Version 6.0.8, only to find this issue was not addressed  

 

Thanks

Archive.zip

[fanta 1]

I'm also experiencing this bug, EN on MAC = bullet lists impossible to handle!

The fist post in this topic was created 5 years ago! And it still ahsn't been fixed? Come on!

[gresmi 1]

I'll add my voice to the frustration here. While editing and cutting and pasting bullets within a note is often buggy, the WORST is when you then try and past that list into another applications, such as outlook (Mac or Windows)

It's INCREDIBLY unpredictable - you get different fonts per bullet, different font sizes, extra bullets after each bullet indentation. Really it's crazy.

I end up spending 5 minutes cleaning up formatting on lists every time I have to past them into another application.

Please fix on both the Mac and Windows sides...

[Mazzle 1]

Yes, this is a serious, deal-breaking bug for a piece of note-taking software. Outlines are very fundamental for organizing thoughts. And the most unnerving thing about this bug is that it's been talked about on this forums for over 2 years! One post even included a reply from a dev saying that he entered it in as a new bug report.

This is such basic functionality that it seems almost amateurish that it hasn't been fixed yet. Can any devs tell us if this is still an active bug that is being worked on?

[bspaulding 1]

+1

I have been surprised at how long they've persisted on the Mac. On the Mac side, there is basic copy/paste within the very same note that doesn't work at all. If bulleted lists aren't a core feature of a note-taking app, I don't know what is. I would expect an ability to mouse-over bullets, grab them, and drag them up/down in the same list, then drop them where you want them, and have them stay at the same level, etc. How about the ability to expand/collapse various levels of the bulleted hierarchy? As it stands, trying to copy/paste from within an existing hierarchical list results in all sorts of funkiness -- including multiple bullets on the same line which are a pita to get rid of.

Based on the other features Evernote has and is implementing, this has got to be a slam dunk, and it is really frustrating to have something so foundational get neglected. Particularly when it could be turned into such an asset. I've been reading about the complaints around this for literally years on these forums. What's it take to get it prioritized?

[sparky432 1]

Another +1 from me. The main issue I encounter is copy/pasting bulleted lists from Evernote into other programs. For instance one of my key uses for Evernote is meeting notes, agendas, actions etc. which I'm sure is probably a fairly common use-case. These notes will often need to be shared with other attendees or colleagues, and the prime method for that is email. Copying and pasting bulletted lists into Outlook results in some horrible formatting.

I'm not going to share an Evernote note directly as:

1. my colleagues won't be registered users and I'm not making it available (potentially) publicly

2. it's a little unprofessional and not encouraged to use services that aren't corporately supported

Hope this can be remedied, as it's a great tool but really irritating when your workflow is hampered by what seems such a trivial issue.

[hongkongphooey 1]

One of the things I'm using EN for is for listing my agendas for phone calls. Then I want to take notes on that call to have a record of what was said.

Trouble is, I'm finding that after the bullet points, there's no way to enter plain text again without bullet points. I haven't yet encountered all the problems posted above.

Anyone heard back from the EB development team about this?

[vincedog 1]

I am re-starting this thread.

For years, I have been using Microsoft OneNote - a fantastic note-taking program. The list-making is intuitive and effective - far better than EverNote. To create a bullet in OneNote, you simply press Tab, put a dash (-) or asterisk (*), then hit space ... voila. It's a new bullet. And you can Tab and Shift-Tab to change the indentation. Copying and Pasting bulleted lists is no problem in OneNote. One of the few Microsoft products that's actually great.

Now that I have an iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air (ditching my old HP Laptop), I am trying to switch to Evernote.

The bugs in the bulleted lists are a DEAL-BREAKER for me, as my most frequent use of these note-taking programs is to take notes during business meetings. I'm forced to run OneNote in Parallels (since Microsoft doesn't make the program for Mac). UGH.

Evernote Team -- PLEASE PLEASE fix this bug! People have been complaining about it for years - I am sure the program would be far more useful for Students and Business if this were fixed!!!

[brokentoken 1]

I wholeheartedly agree with all posts on this topic. I'm primarily using Evernote on the Mac, but I have used it on Windows to see whether the outlining and bulleted-lists issues exist and they do not, so this is definitely a coding issue that they should address ASAP... it's very frustrating to see such basic features not work as they should.

[xmasmoneky 72]

I agree - Evernote is for note-taking, yet outlining is horribly unpredictable across clients.

One of my main issues is how nested lists render in the web client - for example:

I took a look at the HTML Evernote produced for nested lists, and identified the issue:

In the example below (which is how the Evernote Web Client renders nested lists), the indented list is placed in its own "li" element, and renders with an extra space:

[list]

[*]test

        [list]

[*]another bullet

[/list]

[/list]


In the example below, the indented list is placed inside the previous "li" element, and is rendered correctly:

[list]

[*]test
        [list]

[*]another bullet

[/list]

[/list]

I would love to get this fixed, as well as have the Evernote team take a good look at all the other list-related issues as soon as possible.

[ymatto 14]

Any thoughts from the devs on if this is "on the radar" in terms of things to fix? One thing I love about you guys is that even if you don't fix stuff as quickly as some people would like, you do seem to fix them right when you do it (like with local note storage). I'm hoping that the bulleted stuff is something you're seeing and plan to get to.

[Mjulson 2]

I agree. Robust outlining is needed and it should be universal in all UI's.

[wrongdog 1]

yes, I agree, lists very buggy...will be a deal breaker for me if not fixed. Trying to use for class/business notes, but bugs make too tedious/inefficient.

please fix this.

[ymatto 14]

Yup, I also find myself using Evernote heavily for creating outlines in nested bullets and am disappointed by how odd they behave. A couple of particular bugs that I find very frustrating:

As mentioned, copy/pasting bullets within a note almost never works properly. I always end up with odd double-bulleted items that I can never seem to "fix", requiring me to just manual re-enter things where I want them. Even pasting a bulleted item into a blank part of the note (ie. not between two other bullets) results in this odd behavior.

Copying bulleted items from Evernote and pasting them anywhere else is a bit of an unpredictable nightmare. If I copy a note in Evernote and paste it into word, the bullets are lost. Same if I paste into TextEdit. Oddly if I paste into Mail, they come through just fine. If I then copy from Mail, they paste into TextEdit correctly (but not into Word oddly, where the text is indented, but the bullets themselves are all aligned on the left).

Please help! This is one of my primary uses for Evernote!

[Notaker 5]

I agree completely that EN should be better for outlining than it is currently. I think a solid implementation of bulleted lists would be good enough for that though, especially if it allowed for moving the bullet points around within the lists. I am a big fan of OmniOutliner, which is a quite powerful app; but I have also used the freeware Deep Notes earlier, which is very simple and basically does everything I would need EN to do.

What kind of outlining beyond bulleted lists did you envision, cdbeckman?

[cdbeckman 1]

I have also seen significant bugs with bulletted lists. Sometimes, I am in the middle of working on a bulleted list, and I hit enter and there's no bullet. I then have to delete the space before it and try again once or twice before it "catches" and makes the next bullet point.

I'd still really like to see basic outlining implemented beyond bulleted lists, but since I use this thing for notetaking at least one of these systems has to be solid.