Jump to content

Latest update deleted all my tags


Recommended Posts

Hello everyone,

Just updated to the latest version today or yesterday. I'm on Windows 7. I have EN 5.7.2.573. I'd like to revert to the older version because I've been dealing with this change and its consequences all day. First I was consolidating my notebooks and I guess I was clicking too quickly and accidentally deleted my notebook with all my notes in it. I'm fairly certain that I had selected the correct notebook (empty) and it somehow jumped to the wrong one - but as I was working quickly and can't be sure, I can't blame EN 100%. However, I'm not sure how I would have clicked on a different notebook other than the one I was working on at the time unless my screen moved or something. Anyway, I was able to go into my online account and move all the notes into a new notebook and save them. I also went into my Windows client before syncing and moved all the notes that had been deleted into another notebook but when I synced, those notes disappeared and only the ones I had moved in my online account were still there.

 

So everything was fine (I guess - I sure hope I didn't lose anything). Then I was editing my numerous tags. I had over 100 tags and was in the process of simplifying them. I was doing so, working along, deleting unused ones, renaming, removing tags from certain notes... And then I right-clicked on one tag that had no notes associated with it, clicked delete, and *poof*! All my tags disappeared. ALL of them.

 

I went to EN online and they were still there. Thank goodness. I renamed every single one of them. I added a 2 to the end of the names. A very cumbersome process. So that when I would sync with my desktop client, they would be changed online and would transfer to my local machine. So I went to my local machine and synced - and it seemed to take forever - and sort of hung - and then I closed it out because something was wrong. It should not take that long. Lo and behold, I went to EN online and my tags were all gone. All the ones I had spent an hour or so renaming.

 

My last hope is my Mac EN. Earlier today after the notebook fiasco I exported all my notes from my Mac to export files. I'm going to try to rename my tags somehow on the Mac and see if they'll sync to the web EN. Otherwise I'll try to import the enex files to the Windows client. This is way too buggy for me. There is no way that right clicking on one tag and selecting delete should delete ALL my tags, and then a failed sync should push the changes to the web version (which was NEWER). Something is seriously wrong with this Windows client.

 

And, no, I didn't start a support ticket. I'm a free user (and at this rate no plans to become a premium user because I can't trust the system) and last time I used their support system to report a bug I got the standard non-response.

 

UPDATE 5 pm:

 

I tried importing my exported enex files and the notes imported but not the tags. So I went to my Mac, made sure wi-fi was off, and renamed all my tags. I duplcated all of my notebooks, calling the duplicates "New XXX". Then I created a new note in my New Inbox, and applied ALL the tags to this new note. I then exported all my notes to a new enex file called "All my notes". Now I'm syncing and watching as my tags disappear. ALL my tags are gone. Now they have been wiped out of my Mac EN. I do not understand this. In fact, I don't even have a Tag section on the side anymore. Now I have to go and recreate all my tags again. I was wanting to use tags instead of notebooks but deleting one tag on one platform has totally oblitreated ALL my tags on ALL my platforms. That's unacceptable to me. I had come to rely on EN so much.

 

I'm highly disappointed because I set aside this day to organize EN and all I have done is try to recover my data. Tags is broken, broken, broken.

 

UPDATE 5:10 pm:

 

Just tried importing my recent export of all my notes. Tags information was not saved. Although I did get a friendly reminder that all this syncing has eaten up my available bandwidth for this month and would I like to upgrade to Premium? Um, no thanks.

 

Tags are completely gone for me. Have to start over from scratch. Good thing I only have 500 notes to go through.

Link to comment

Hi @Callistabr,

Whatever you do on one client will be reflected in all others upon sync. According to Evernote, the files you moved from your trash (on your desktop client) to another notebook are the same notes that you moved from the original notebook on the web to a newly created notebook. They are all indexed no matter where you put them on any client. I.E. if you have created a note link, it doesn't matter where you move a note, Evernote knows where it is... and if you follow that note link, you will find that note.

 

Anyways... in the future, if that were to happen again (i.e. deleting the wrong notebook), your notes can easily be restored from the trash (on any client). They will stay there in the trash until you manually delete them. That's a relief! So no matter what you did in your particular situation, it would have been difficult to accidentally delete anything from the trash as well. That's a nice "safety catch" that Evernote has. In your case, there was no need to do anything in the web client itself to salvage anything.

 

As to the tag situation: The one you right-clicked on and deleted (which had no notes associated with it) was most likely a parent tag. By that I mean that you had probably "nested" some tags under it in whatever hierarchy you set up. So even though it is an "empty" tag, it still served as a place-holder. By deleting it, you would have deleted any tags contained within/ under that parent tag. I just tried that with a parent tag that would not cause me too much trouble to set up again... and just as you said... "Poof", the children tags thereunder disappeared too. This is just an explanation, which would give the same results to all other users - it's not a justification. In other words, it shouldn't behave this way (I have the latest Windows update). It should really confirm with you whether you'd like to go ahead... and also what the consequences would be, even if one has nested tags thereunder. It is frustrating.  

 

As you have discovered with 2 separate processes: trying to reshuffle notes and rename tags on the web client to not help. Evernote still knows what those tags are, no matter where you change them. So once the desktop client is synced, it matters little what renaming you have done on the web client (to sort of trick the system).The only advice I can give you (one possible solution) would be to duplicate whatever you can (and keep track of that... it seems you are organized enough!)... and when you duplicate a set of notes ("Copy to notebook"), you should make sure that the option that says, "preserve tags" is checked. Also, you might want to check the "preserve created and updated dates" option. That way, the copies are for all intents and purposes, exactly that. The other option would be to export your notes via ENEX files, just as you have done... and then import those to the Windows client, just as you have suggested.

 

Phew! I do not envy you... and I must say, that even though most of what you have attempted up to this point did not work out, your thinking was really logical and you did what you can. It's a good think you had a plan "C" with your Mac. The tag thing should just not happen. There is unfortunately no way to restore those if all of your clients have subsequently been synced. Let's see what you can salvage via your Mac. Holding thumbs...

Link to comment

Just read your update @Callistabr. Sorry to hear that. Even my suggestion to copy notes en masse would have brought you quickly to your upload limit. As it sits, you're pretty much stuck for space. I know how frustrating this must be. But as to space - and a temporary solution - you could sign up for premium just for one month, so at least you have a little "elbow room" for the time being.

 

I think the fact that you have been setting up a tag-based system in Evernote as opposed to a notebook-centric one... I really think what probably happened is that you deleted a "parent" tag, and everything thereunder was obliterated, as you said. 

 

The only way I see this having worked, is if you had copied all of your notes to a notebook and included tags, the works... but only once having updated to Premium so that you would actually have had the space to do so. Even so, I must say that this would be a little shaky, because in order to have your account upgraded to premium, there would have to have been a sync first for that to take effect... and with that, your Mac client would have lost the tags before you had a chance to copy all your notes. 

 

Unless someone else could provide an alternative means as to how one could have gone about this, it really seems that there would be no reasonable way to resolve this. At least not for a "free" user. No fault of yours. I think Evernote needs to provide some sort of way out of this for whoever accidentally deletes a parent tag. 

 

I'm thinking in terms of resolving this sort of thing in the future for anyone else. But in your case, I know the damage is done. Sorry to hear that. Perhaps a more tech-savvy user on the forums could present an option to salvage these tagged notes, perhaps from the systems files??

Link to comment

Hi @Callistabr,

Whatever you do on one client will be reflected in all others upon sync. According to Evernote, the files you moved from your trash (on your desktop client) to another notebook are the same notes that you moved from the original notebook on the web to a newly created notebook. They are all indexed no matter where you put them on any client. I.E. if you have created a note link, it doesn't matter where you move a note, Evernote knows where it is... and if you follow that note link, you will find that note.

 

Anyways... in the future, if that were to happen again (i.e. deleting the wrong notebook), your notes can easily be restored from the trash (on any client). They will stay there in the trash until you manually delete them. That's a relief! So no matter what you did in your particular situation, it would have been difficult to accidentally delete anything from the trash as well. That's a nice "safety catch" that Evernote has. In your case, there was no need to do anything in the web client itself to salvage anything.

 

As to the tag situation: The one you right-clicked on and deleted (which had no notes associated with it) was most likely a parent tag. By that I mean that you had probably "nested" some tags under it in whatever hierarchy you set up. So even though it is an "empty" tag, it still served as a place-holder. By deleting it, you would have deleted any tags contained within/ under that parent tag. I just tried that with a parent tag that would not cause me too much trouble to set up again... and just as you said... "Poof", the children tags thereunder disappeared too. This is just an explanation, which would give the same results to all other users - it's not a justification. In other words, it shouldn't behave this way (I have the latest Windows update). It should really confirm with you whether you'd like to go ahead... and also what the consequences would be, even if one has nested tags thereunder. It is frustrating.  

 

As you have discovered with 2 separate processes: trying to reshuffle notes and rename tags on the web client to not help. Evernote still knows what those tags are, no matter where you change them. So once the desktop client is synced, it matters little what renaming you have done on the web client (to sort of trick the system).The only advice I can give you (one possible solution) would be to duplicate whatever you can (and keep track of that... it seems you are organized enough!)... and when you duplicate a set of notes ("Copy to notebook"), you should make sure that the option that says, "preserve tags" is checked. Also, you might want to check the "preserve created and updated dates" option. That way, the copies are for all intents and purposes, exactly that. The other option would be to export your notes via ENEX files, just as you have done... and then import those to the Windows client, just as you have suggested.

 

Phew! I do not envy you... and I must say, that even though most of what you have attempted up to this point did not work out, your thinking was really logical and you did what you can. It's a good think you had a plan "C" with your Mac. The tag thing should just not happen. There is unfortunately no way to restore those if all of your clients have subsequently been synced. Let's see what you can salvage via your Mac. Holding thumbs...

Hi Frank,

Thanks for your post. I must correct you though. The tag in question was NOT a parent tag. I had over 100 tags. This one was 2 levels in and had no subtags. After I deleted it, ALL of my other tags and sub-tags disappeared. There was a highly organized structure, and trust me, I know this was not a parent tag. I've been using tags for at least 6 months now.

 

The other explanation does not make sense to me. What you're saying is that whenever I change something, the latest changes do not take effect? I don't understand what you mean by "Evernote still knows what those tags are no matter where you change them"? So, the latest changes are not applied? What changes ARE applied?

 

This is what I did:

 

Windows:

Lost tags (did not sync)

 

Went to Web. Changed tags. (Should be the newest information)

Synced to Windows version.

Lost tags on Web (server version) - replaced with older information from Windows client

 

Went to Mac (still has tags in place)

Made sure wi-fi is off

Changed tags

Added ALL tags to NEW NOTE in NEW NOTEBOOK

Should have the latest information of everything

 

Synced - lost tags.

 

I'm at a loss as to why a change on my Windows machine would overwrite newer information on the web/server, and why a changes on my Mac client were overwritten by older information from the web client. I must have a massive misunderstanding of how syncing works with EN.

 

And thanks for the tip on preserving tags option. I didn't even know there was an option like that and that it was off. Seems like it should be on by default. I will have to go find it now.

Link to comment

I followed your entire process to a "T" from your first post and also the update. So I understand precisely the measures you took.

 

Any changes you make to the content of a note - those changes will take effect everywhere. If there are conflicting changes, because changes were made simultaneously on 2 different clients, Evernote creates a conflicting changes Notebook... and here you can see one of the versions of your note. You can then choose which one you see is the most up to date... or at least salvage any information. Unfortunately, this does not work on the tags and notebooks level. In other words, Evernote recognizes a renamed notebook or tag to be one and the same, no matter what platform you've changed it on. It will consolidate the renamed tags/ notebooks - but will not offer any options as to any conflicting changes, if that makes any sense.

 

OK... now I understand you clearly as to the disappearance of your tags: they were not nested under the one you deleted. That is a serious bug then. Did it come after a recent update to your Windows client? 

 

You are now starting over from scratch with your tags. I would recommend that you create a few arbitrary ones and tag a few notes... then delete a tag or two, just to see what happens... because if you cannot delete a tag at any point from here on out, without the fear of the same thing repeating and going back to square one yet again, then it would be a waste of time to embark on a re-tagging mission right now. 

Link to comment

I followed your entire process to a "T" from your first post and also the update. So I understand precisely the measures you took.

 

Any changes you make to the content of a note - those changes will take effect everywhere. If there are conflicting changes, because changes were made simultaneously on 2 different clients, Evernote creates a conflicting changes Notebook... and here you can see one of the versions of your note. You can then choose which one you see is the most up to date... or at least salvage any information. Unfortunately, this does not work on the tags and notebooks level. In other words, Evernote recognizes a renamed notebook or tag to be one and the same, no matter what platform you've changed it on. It will consolidate the renamed tags/ notebooks - but will not offer any options as to any conflicting changes, if that makes any sense.

 

OK... now I understand you clearly as to the disappearance of your tags: they were not nested under the one you deleted. That is a serious bug then. Did it come after a recent update to your Windows client? 

 

You are now starting over from scratch with your tags. I would recommend that you create a few arbitrary ones and tag a few notes... then delete a tag or two, just to see what happens... because if you cannot delete a tag at any point from here on out, without the fear of the same thing repeating and going back to square one yet again, then it would be a waste of time to embark on a re-tagging mission right now. 

 

Thank you again Frank. Yes, I had just updated the Windows client either today or yesterday. I thought I was doing the responsible thing by keeping the software up to date. It is indeed a serious bug. Please note I had been deleting tags and renaming tags prior to this after the update. Then, just randomly, I deleted one tag and all the rest of them disappeared and I had a white window where all the tags had been moments before.

 

It's unfortunate that once EN deleted my tags that it was impossible for me to recover them despite all these measures I took on the other clients. I'm still unclear as to how EN decides what changes to tags get synced. I don't believe I made changes simultaneously, except in the first case. I don't understand why there would be a conflict at all. To me it seems that the newer information would replace the older information. But in the case that something is deleted I guess that trumps simply renaming a file because EN thinks it's already gone. I suppose I should have recreated my entire tagging struture with NEW tags that were not there already.

 

Ah well - I guess a higher power is letting me know I don't need all those tags. I'll certainly take your advice and do a little at a time to make sure tags are working properly. And I'm going to try to find an older, more stable version of EN.

 

I truly appreciate you taking the time to look at my case and explain to me the intricacies of EN syncing and logic!! Thank you!!

Link to comment

 

 To me it seems that the newer information would replace the older information. But in the case that something is deleted I guess that trumps simply renaming a file because EN thinks it's already gone. 

 

 

I think you pretty much figured out the part that I failed to explain. Except in this case we're talking about renaming a tag that has been deleted. The key word being "trumps". You explained it well. 

 

Of course I could be wrong - because those are simply my observations. I'm sure a more tech-savvy forum member could explain it in more technical terms.

 

I think this case could be really helpful to many people who come to the forums for recourse... so please do follow up here with anything you may discover... or any more problems encountered. Thanks for going into detail about this frustrating ordeal.

Link to comment

 

 

 To me it seems that the newer information would replace the older information. But in the case that something is deleted I guess that trumps simply renaming a file because EN thinks it's already gone. 

 

 

I think you pretty much figured out the part that I failed to explain. Except in this case we're talking about renaming a tag that has been deleted. The key word being "trumps". You explained it well. 

 

Of course I could be wrong - because those are simply my observations. I'm sure a more tech-savvy forum member could explain it in more technical terms.

 

I think this case could be really helpful to many people who come to the forums for recourse... so please do follow up here with anything you may discover... or any more problems encountered. Thanks for going into detail about this frustrating ordeal.

 

 

YES! I think that's it. Once EN thinks it's deleted, or it IS deleted from one client, renaming it on another client is pointless because you can't rename something that doesn't exist. That's unfortunate. I thought by renaming the tags, EN would see that as new information but it doesn't. It just disregards it because as far as EN is concerned, it's gone, it doesn't exist.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

Not sure what happens if you have mass changes on multiple machines w/o synching, but this may be it. Should anything similar happen again, I would recommend not allowing the sync on the offending machine and going to the other machine and do ENEX backups of your notebooks preserving tags. I would also get some screenshots or something of your tag structure, just in case.

Not sure about the tags disappearing though.

Link to comment

Not sure what happens if you have mass changes on multiple machines w/o synching, but this may be it. Should anything similar happen again, I would recommend not allowing the sync on the offending machine and going to the other machine and do ENEX backups of your notebooks preserving tags. I would also get some screenshots or something of your tag structure, just in case.

Not sure about the tags disappearing though.

Thanks @csihilling! That was what I was *trying* to do. I did do the ENEX backups but didn't realize I had to select the "perserve tags" option. Fortunately, I DO have screnshots of the tags from earlier today, as I was doing some major re-structuring of my notebooks and tags and wanted to have a paper copy to work from to figure out the structure I was going to use. So I have the tag list but I have to remember what notes they belong to.

 

I hope this doesn't happen to anyone else!!

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...