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Evernote Windows Client Search Hang/Lag 1st Time Every Time


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Hi, I know this topic has been beaten to death, but no one has SOLVED it.  I've spent weeks looking for the answer, but have now confirmed (by installing it on other windows machines) that this is a bug that exists in the latest Windows (and some previous) versions.  I'm currently using the latest: 5.7.2.5753 (273753) Public.  It's driving me crazy (every single day), so I'm going to put it out there again.  I'll bullet point it to make it easy to understand and perfectly clear.

 

- After opening evenote--and letting it finish its sync, I attempt to do a search.

- I type the first few letters of my search and the program hangs, the window freezes and the window goes into (not responding mode)

- After sometimes as long as a minute (longest time was 1:20), the window comes back to life, the final letters I typed fill in and the search completes.

- It's not my memory.  I have an i5 with 16gb and 1 on the video card which should be enough for a text based program.

 

On my Mac, I haven't had this problem.  I have the newly-released Mac version 6.03 and it flies.  First search upon opening the app is instant.

Is there a real answer to this? 

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Ken LiveFromStPete

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 9 months later...

oh my!  I was about to do some research before asking the exact same question, and realize this post is dated from 2014!!

 

@pirate727 have you opened an official ticket since?  Anyone did?

 

I am a long time user, faced this problem since a long time too but thought that it was related to my memory/swapping/etc but realized that when I do a search in outlook, where I have years of email, I don't experience the same lag/hanging problem.  So I figured out that the problem should be on the Evernote side.

 

Anyone would have some suggestions to prevent such hang situation on Windows?

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  • 8 months later...

I don't believe for one second that business customers would put up with this for one day.  That is, Evernote has solved for business customers, but not for Premium or regular users.  I have had Evernote Premium for several years, but long ago gave up doing anything with it other than web clipping (which is also prone to regular minutes-long hangups if you are using the client program on the PC for Premium customers).  This has been THE leading complaint about Evernote for five years.  Solutions: Bupkus.  If MicroSoft put out a product like this it would have been so thoroughly trashed online that it would no longer have any takers.

The two work arounds for this, both pains in the ass, but quicker than staring at your locked up computer for 5 minutes at a time, are:

1.  Type your search into a simple text word processor like Notepad (keep a blank document open for this purpose).  Make it EXACTLY correct include quotation marks for phrases and any connectors you are comfortable using, such as + to mark words as additional, not alternative (like Evernote +"hanging up").  You will save lots of time perfecting the search before you COPY and PASTE it into the search box in the Evernote client on your PC.  The problem here is the client program begins to search the database stored on your program as soon as you type in the first; when you type in the second character, it starts searching for that character too.  It is rare to get past one or two characters before it hangs up.  The search box should be designed to let you enter your search into the search box without starting the search until you hit enter.  Preventing the search box from doing so has never been a problem in any search function I have used since the mid-1980s - only in Evernote.  Don't tell me that Evernlote couldn't have fixed this massive defect in the earliest beta stages of its development.

2.  If you don't Premium, or if you do but still can't tolerate the constant hangups using the client program on your PC, the other option is to use the Web version of Evernote and enter searches from there.  The web version does not begin to search until you click on it to do so.  The downside of this is (a) I bought a desktop version via Premium because I don't like to do everything online (silly me, I assumed the desktop program would run much faster than the web page), and (b) the rest of the web page's functionality is more limited than what is available on the desktop program).  This is what I have gravitated to, simply because it doesn't impose as much hang time as the desktop punishes you with for virtually everything you do, such as adding a tag or changing a font.

Evernote's support for premium users, who are paying for SOMETHING extra besides confidentiality of data, is junk. The books I've (regrettably) purchased on Evernote are also junk.  You can't find instructions on the simplest things in any of it.  I am not a programmer by any means, but I have obtained much greater utility from many other programs by being able to use their relatively straightforward search syntaxes; the seach syntax provided by Evernote online is strictly for developers and cannot be used within the program itself.  There are programs out there, like Info Select (a simple, blazingly fast search program) and x1 (a simple, blazingly fast file search program) who do things that would make Evernote choke on its own dust; these programs have been around for two decades and one decade, reespectively.  What the hell is Evernote's problem.  Why won't it provide the same functionality that its business users UNDOUBTEDLY demand and get?

If I had tried to type this note into Evernote to copy and paste into this message, it would have taken me two hours instead of fifteen minutes, and I would need psychiatric treatment afterwards.

So why am I still using Evernote at all?  GOOD QUESTION.  The shrink referred to above would say that I must be trying to sabotage myself for deeply rooted reasons which I am not conscious of, and that we would need to spend a spend a year or two in weekly sessions to find out why.

 

 

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  • Ex Employees

@Quod Erat As you noted, hangs usually occur when the client has issues accessing the database. If File>Sign out, or reinstalling does not fix this, I recommend performing a database rebuild.

 

To rebuild your Evernote for Windows database, follow these steps:

If you don't have any unsynchronized notes, and you do not have Local notebooks, please skip to "Move your existing Evernote database." If you do have unsynchronized notes or local notebooks, follow these steps to export that content:

  1. Select all unsynced notes, or each local notebook, then right-click and select Export Notes…
  2. Choose 'Export as a file in ENEX format (.enex)', then click Export
    • Detailed instructions here

Move your existing Evernote database:

  1. Open Evernote for Windows
  2. Select File > Sign out… from the menu bar
  3. Select Evernote > Options > General > Open Database folder
  4. Move the [username].exb file to your desktop
  5. Open Evernote and log in to your Evernote account

Evernote will download all of your synced notes from the servers and create a new database on your computer. You can then import any exported notes by selecting File > Import from the menu bar.

Let us know if rebuilding the database does not resolve this. 

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I went through this laborious process.  Bupkus.  All I did was lose was my local folder (I inadvetently exported a single note rather than the entire folder, which I didn't realize until I imported it back into Evernote). 
 
The search hang-ups remain as before -- unacceptable.  Your response did not address the main point of my e-mail, which was fixing the way Evernote client begins searching as soon as you type one character, then starts again when you enter the second character, and so on.  This does not happen if you copy/paste the search from a word processor directly into the search box - it searches the entire text of the search, one time, instead of 20 times in rapid succession.  No wonder it hangs up.
 
What is difficult about this?  Since this issue is the No. 1 complaint about Evernote, perhaps Evernote should offer some kind of incentive to the first person to write the code to fix this inane problem? 
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  • Level 5*
1 hour ago, Quod Erat said:

The search hang-ups remain as before -- unacceptable.  Your response did not address the main point of my e-mail, which was fixing the way Evernote client begins searching as soon as you type one character, then starts again when you enter the second character, and so on.  This does not happen if you copy/paste the search from a word processor directly into the search box - it searches the entire text of the search, one time, instead of 20 times in rapid succession.  No wonder it hangs up.

Not sure if it is in the last general release, but in the current beta you can set a delay in search as you type using Tools - Options - Search.  The example below requires a 1 second delay after your stop typing for the search to begin.

ScreenClip.png

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  • Level 5*

You are welcome.  Give it a shot when this version goes Public.  The beta is working fine for me and my use case (some small issues but no show stoppers), one voice in the wilderness.  :)

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