Two Serious Questions about Sharing Notes / Notebooks

[War Eagle 37]

I am an Evernote Business user and I admit I am often confounded by the interface. Frankly, it seems more complex than necessary.

 

For example, today I wanted to experiment with sharing.

 

First question: Sharing a single note

I shared a single note with myself (by sending it to a different email address that is NOT associated with an Evernote account) to see how others who are NOT Evernote users would receive a shared note. To do this, I right-clicked on the note, selected "More Sharing" and then selected "Email." It opened a window where I could input an email address however, there is NO option to select permissions so that person can either view, view and edit, or view, edit and invite. They simply receive a PICTURE of the note. When I went to my gmail account to view the emailed note, I can SEE it, but I can in no way interact with it. It's simply an image of a note. Is this normal? I thought when sharing individual notes, we could specify that the receiver could edit them. 

 

Second question: Sharing an entire notebook

Sharing Notebooks seems to only be possible if you're sharing with another Evernote user. Is this true? When I went to the upper right corner of my screen and clicked the Share drop-down arrow, I selected SHARE NOTEBOOK. A WORK CHAT window pops up asking me for a user name or email address to share with. I entered my gmail address (which is not associated with an Evernote account). At that point, I got a pop-up message that says "Participant is not a business member" but it doesn't tell me whether it's sharing the notebook or not! There is literally no explanation with this message. When I go back to "notebook view" the notebook SHOWS a red icon at the upper right indicating that it has indeed been shared, but I NEVER received the notebook in my gmail.  

 

So I tried it a second time. I did the same process, I entered by gmail address which is not associated with an Evernote account and tried to share the same notebook. THIS time, it said, "You're sharing business notes or notebooks in this chat which includes people outside your business. Click confirm to share with all chat participants."  So I click CONFIRM. And yet I STILL NEVER RECEIVED AN EMAIL OR ANY INDICATION THAT A NOTEBOOK HAS BEEN SHARED WITH ME.

 

YET when I go back to view all my notebooks, that notebook clearly shows a red icon at the top indicating that it's been shared.

 

If I share notes and notebooks with those outside of Evernote, I expect them to receive SOME sort of indicator. What if I share a notebook with a client and they never get it? That's bad business. What if I share a notebook with a vendor and they never get it? What if I share a notebook with a colleague or associate and they never get it? I don't know if this is a bug with the new release, but it pretty much makes EN Business useless to me if I can't share anything with people who don't have Evernote. 

 

What has been your experience with sharing?  Is this a bug or just a really bad design flaw? 

[Mike Vila 10]

Using the FREE version of Evernote is worth it, but I'm currently paying for the the Business version and I STILL do not receive responses to questions like this. With customer support like this, STICK TO THE FREE VERSION! I'm not sure they are going to survive against a competitor like OneNote with service like this.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,320]

I believe there is still a way to share a public link to your notebook, though the feature was dropped last summer for a short while. I used to use them extensively in my classes and with colleagues. It can be a little difficult for folks who are not Evernote users, because they will get a popup asking them if they want to join the service. Some people get confused here or too annoyed to go further.

I don't like it, but it is a relatively minor inconvenience compared to other cloud services. I think Dropbox, for example, now forces others to sign up before they can view publicly leaked information. Personally, I have stopped using publicly shared notebooks.

[consumedsoul 0]

Any traction on this? When we share notes (or notebooks) we never receive email notification - by design or bug?

[mcheng 106]

Hi consumedsoul,

 

Not receiving any notifications is definitely not a designed behavior.  We've fixed many issues with notifications since the time this thread was started.  If you are having issues with sharing notes and notebooks please file a ticket with support.  We will need to get your account information and platform to diagnose the problem further.

 

Thanks.