Conflicting Modifications

[zexpe 5]

Previously when there were conflicting modifications in Evernote notes a duplicate note was created in separate "Conflicting changes" notebook. I've just noticed that this behaviour seems to have changed in newer versions and the conflicting content now occurs at the bottom of the note. So far I've found two notes in my library with conflicting modifications from back in January and February. I never received any notifications of these conflicts and the notes have since been edited so it's impossible to see what the original conflict was! Please, please, if there conflicting changes please give me a notification when it occurs so I can fix it without losing data. It's impossible to do months later. And just putting the conflicting changes at the end of a long note does *not* help! I won't notice it and it isn't easy to fix... I preferred the old system. At least creating a duplicate note made it obvious that a conflict has occurred!

[sailnc 0]

+1

This bites me fairly frequently. 

One reason I chose to use EN is the seamless sync between all my devices... If only it worked better! So many times, I've had to spend a great deal of time comparing a half dozen conflicting modifications in a long document, a task made even more difficult by having those half dozen copies concatenated to the end of the note. I end up having to cut them all up into individual notes and scroll them side by side to see where the conflicts were. Perhaps my own use case is uncommon... I frequently have VERY lengthy notes, and trying to find differences across many conflicting versions, without a side by side view, is impossible.  

 

Not only that, but, why the heck can't the software highlight the conflicts?? For that matter, I really don't see a reason for most of the conflicts I've experienced..

 

Anyway, at the very least, please go back to storing multiple copies of the doc, when conflicts occur, and please provide some kind of notification so that the problem isn't compounded!

[zexpe 5]

Split it up into separate text files for each conflicted version (use Cmd-F to find each conflicted version in the same note) and then use a tool to do the comparison between the text files. You can use "diff" on the command line (e.g. "diff a.txt b.txt") or use a text editor with a comparison function such as TextWrangler or a dedicated compare tool such as Meld.

 

It's somewhat absurd we have to do this...

[zexpe 5]

Well, at least it's nice to know that others use Evernote in the same way as me and so experience the same problems... I wish we'd get some developer feedback on this issue.

[Derek Clark 0]

Hey there Sailny and others,

Has anyone found a better solution to sorting throught conflicting notes? I am pretty much doing the same thing as Sailny at this time but I have one unusually long note in particular that has literally dozens of additional "conflicting notes." This is a huge problem since it will take me hours or days to cross reference everything...

Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Likewise, I'll let you know if I come up with something,

Derek

[Paul B. 2]

I too have exactly the same problem as described in this (already 2 year-old) discussion!

Possible improvements in Evernote functionality that I can see:

1) Please make it blindingly obvious that a note now contains 2 versions of the conflicted text by pre-pending CONTAINS CONFLICTED TEXT  to the note Title.

In other words, please do not only bury this information half way down the note but additionally shove it right in my face so that I cannot miss it! Bright Red. Bold. Capitals. The point is that I want to be very much aware whenever this happens.

 

2) Please provide a “text compare” function so that I can compare 2 distinct notes and highlight the differences. If your software were really clever, maybe it could even have a function to identify the text BEFORE the conflicted modifications message and identify the text AFTER the conflicted modifications message and go so far as to prepare two separate notes ready for me to compare?

 

3) Provide an intelligent selective merge tool to help me (manually) input notes A and B and output a new note C the way I want it. (NB I am not just referring to the existing simple merge (append) functionality but to a manual selective merge please!)

 

 

Evernote developers: We're waiting for your reply!

 

Thanks,

 

Paul

[tomrichards 0]

Evernote Staff:  Just take a look at the various tools for resolving conflicts when doing a Git "merge" (you probably use these tools yourselves) and give us something like that to resolve conflicts between note versions!

Thank you

Tom

 

[JMichaelTX 4,065]

On 10/2/2017 at 8:43 AM, tomrichards said:

Just take a look at the various tools for resolving conflicts when doing a Git "merge"

Sounds interesting.  Do you have a link to these tools?