dyuhas 12 Posted June 24, 2015 Share Posted June 24, 2015 Howdy Evernoters, Got a little problem that I hope someone can help me with. A search string that I use in the Windows and web versions of Evernote - notebook:"reading list road trip" tag:*blog - works perfectly. The same search string in the IOS version of Evernote does not work. No notes are found. Can it be possible that the IOS version of Evernote has a different search grammar? Link to comment
Level 5* CalS 5,280 Posted June 24, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 24, 2015 It has been reported that searches across platforms don't always produce exactly the same results. Don't think I've heard of no notes, other than someone who didn't press search to start the process. Are you sure you have the same context in all three instances? Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 "Context? We don't need no stinking context!" You need to be of a certain age or a film buff to get the "context" of that quote. Seriously, though, I don't know what "context" means in relation to an EN search. Shouldn't "notebook: "reading list road trip" tag:*blog" (no quotes) work equally well on each version? A search for the word "context" in EN's "Search Grammar: All things Evernote search" turned up no result. Slight ironic, don't you think? And, no, I can't explain the weird capitalization in the title. "Don't think I've heard of no notes" Someone has. In a comment to an EN blog post the following appeared: "Search does not reliably work for me in Evernote on the iPhone. I often search for text which I know exists, get “No Results,” and then browse through my notes until I find it. Please fix this." Note that the blog post was written almost exactly FOUR YEARS AGO. Link to comment
Level 5* CalS 5,280 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Badges, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Didn't even have to look that one up. Context is the group of notes you are searching, so if you use the same notebook in all the searches, same context, should be same results. Perhaps you should PM the author of the above to see iif they ever got resolution, or file a bug report. As to not knowing the post... Well, nobody's perfect. Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 It has been reported that searches across platforms don't always produce exactly the same results. So the whole "don't organize, search" thing fails on the IOS platform. See https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/79225-wrong-search-results-still/. Finally, see http://www.pcworld.com/article/2084260/evernote-promises-to-fix-bugs-after-writers-detailed-critique.html. A promise unkept. Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,664 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 It has been reported that searches across platforms don't always produce exactly the same results. So the whole "don't organize, search" thing fails on the IOS platform. See https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/79225-wrong-search-results-still/. Finally, see http://www.pcworld.com/article/2084260/evernote-promises-to-fix-bugs-after-writers-detailed-critique.html. A promise unkept. Kind've a sweeping indictment based on things not producing exactly the same results? I can't clip web pages in the same way on a mobile as I do on a PC but it's possible to work around the differences... Link to comment
Level 5* JMichaelTX 4,117 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Kind've a sweeping indictment based on things not producing exactly the same results? I can't clip web pages in the same way on a mobile as I do on a PC but it's possible to work around the differences... It is NOT at all a "sweeping indictment", and it is not even close to the same thing as the ability (or lack of) to clip web pages. Evernote Search is essential to the productive use of Evernote. There is no point in storing stuff in our "external brain" if we can't quickly, easily, and reliably retrieve it. IMO, EN Search must, by definition, return exactly the same results across ALL clients/platforms. @Gaz: to quote one of your favorite people: It is a known issue (and has been for quite some time) that the search results vary between clients. It does not seem to be a high priority with Evernote. It's one of the reasons I'm migrating away from Evernote. Around July, I submitted ticket # 627563 on this issue. https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/63195-exact-string-search-trouble/ Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 It has been reported that searches across platforms don't always produce exactly the same results. So the whole "don't organize, search" thing fails on the IOS platform. See https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/79225-wrong-search-results-still/. Finally, see http://www.pcworld.com/article/2084260/evernote-promises-to-fix-bugs-after-writers-detailed-critique.html. A promise unkept. Kind've a sweeping indictment based on things not producing exactly the same results? Call it what you will. If the EN database contains thousands of notes, as mine does, there is no other way to find specific notes or groups of notes without using the search function. I would have thought the fact would have been self-evident to anyone who has used EN for any significant length of time. For all non-trivial uses of EN, search is the heart of EN. Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,664 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 ..and there's no other search that does work in iOS to bring up the same result as [notebook:"reading list road trip" tag:*blog]? Link to comment
Level 5* chirmer 567 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 I submitted this very problem as a bug report on a beta a while back. I was trying to use Evernote as my sole GTD tool by leveraging Reminders as a way to custom sort my tasks. I have a saved search "remindertime:day -remindertime:day+1 -reminderdonetime:20100101" that works perfectly on my desktop and turns up 0 results on mobile. This is still the case. Same with my Due w/in 7 Days saved search "remindertime:week -remindertime:week+1 -reminderdonetime:20100101" Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 ..and there's no other search that does work in iOS to bring up the same result as [notebook:"reading list road trip" tag:*blog]? Not that I'm aware of. It took me quite some time to understand how to search for a word contained in a tag (*blog). Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 Some users might say that by allowing the IOS search bug to exist for years, Evernote is committing fraud on it's customers. I disagree. Evernote bills itself as your external brain, not a better brain. Our brains forget, get memories mixed up, etc. Evernote is just mimicking the human brain. If you think computers aren't supposed to make mistakes, then take it up with the CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin. I'm sure he'd be glad to discuss the issue with you. And while you've got his attention, ask him how many customers were clamoring for Hello. Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,664 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Weird - unless I'm doing this wrong tag:*blog doesn't work in Windows either. My search explanation comes up with - Link to comment
Level 5* JMichaelTX 4,117 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Some users might say that by allowing the IOS search bug to exist for years, Evernote is committing fraud on it's customers. I disagree. Evernote bills itself as your external brain, not a better brain. Our brains forget, get memories mixed up, etc. Evernote is just mimicking the human brain. If you think computers aren't supposed to make mistakes, then take it up with the CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin. I'm sure he'd be glad to discuss the issue with you. And while you've got his attention, ask him how many customers were clamoring for Hello. This is a confusing post from the person who started this thread.Are you really trying to justify Evernote making mistakes/errors in its search algorithms? I have to disagree with " Our brains forget, get memories mixed up, etc. Evernote is just mimicking the human brain."Computers don't make mistakes, humans do, the ones who program the computers. There are many things a computer can't do that the human brain can do, but "forgetting" or "mixing up" data that has been properly stored is one the things that computers *don't* do, unless there is a bug or design flaw in the software. The problem we are seeing here is that different software is being used on each EN client/platform to search our EN Notes. Somehow, through either bug or design flaw, the search software does not work the same on all EN clients. This can definitely be corrected. And, yes, I *do* think that "computers aren't supposed to make mistakes".Otherwise, our lives today would be total chaos, since virtually everything today is computerized, not the least of which is your bank account. Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,664 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Bank computers never make mistakes...? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/23/rbs_it_woes_continue/ Link to comment
Level 5* JMichaelTX 4,117 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Bank computers never make mistakes...? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/23/rbs_it_woes_continue/ I didn't say "never". I said they are "not supposed to" make mistakes.IAC, it was humans who made the mistake, not the computer. Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 Weird - unless I'm doing this wrong tag:*blog doesn't work in Windows either. My search explanation comes up with - clip.png Do you have notes with a multi-word tag with one of the words being "blog?" EN's search explanation is not correct. You're not searching for "words starting with blog tagged with *" You're searching for a tag that contains anything with one of the anythings being the word "blog." To put it another way, you're searching for substring. Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,664 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Yes - tried it with a new "test blog" tag, also with other searches on existing tags like "hash codes". In all cases the tag was not found, just notes containing that word. I wasn't aware that a substring search was possible in Evernote - the current search grammar bible says: tag:[tag name] - will match notes that have a tag with the literal name (word or quoted phrase). This requires an full case-insensitive match on the tag name. The tag name may end with a wildcard to match the beginning of a tag. The pattern will match from the beginning of the full tag name, and punctuation will be included. I.e. the tag and the search string are not tokenized by whitespace and/or punctuation. This can be used multiple times to specify all tags that must match the notes. (My red text) In this context I'm not sure what "not tokenized by whitespace and/or punctuation" actually means! Edit: Sorry that was from https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/search_grammar.php Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 As you can see from the screen shot, the search found notes with the word "blog" in the tag. The screen shot is showing a portion of just one note: the name of the notebook and the tags associated with the note. I tested placing the word "blog" somewhere else in the tag other than at the end. My search worked. I hope that helps, there's nothing more that I can add. Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,664 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 Hmmn. Thanks - I tagged one of my notes with "road trip-blog" and your search turned it up. Taking out the hyphen to make it "road trip blog" then took it out of the search again. Both searches also turned up 280+ other notes that contained the word 'blog'. At which point I have a headache and give up for today. More - maybe - later... Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 25, 2015 Author Share Posted June 25, 2015 Both searches also turned up 280+ other notes that contained the word 'blog'. At which point I have a headache and give up for today. More - maybe - later... I limited my search to a single notebook. If I had searched all notes I probably would have gotten a different result. Link to comment
Level 5* CalS 5,280 Posted June 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 25, 2015 I think the search above yields any notes with any tag that contains blog and any notes that contain the text blog. So not so much a tag wildcard as any text typed in search returns tags that contain the text and notes that contain the text. As a test in Windows, I added the tag Road Trip-Blog to four notes at random and performed a search on all notes of tag:*blog and got 721 notes with the four included (none of the four had the text blog in the note). I then added a space to the search, tag:* blog, and got the same 721 notes. So kind of a back handed wild card search but with a bunch of other notes with blog that don't have any tags containing blog. So my guess would be if you changed the context of the search from the single notebook, you might not get the result you expect. Unless all notes with blog in a tag have blog in the note. FWIW. Anyway, doesn't explain why on IOS I get I no results for tag:*blog but get 765 notes for tag:* blog, and 745 on the web for either search. So I modify the topic to kind of works.... EDIT: Added search explanation screen shot Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,664 Posted June 26, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 26, 2015 The point I was trying (probably badly) to illustrate earlier is that while I agree that in a perfect world the Evernote machine would work consistently across all platforms, I know it doesn't. Same way I know I can't use a hammer to clean windows. (Please don't point out to me that if I wrapped it in rags...) My phone is small and easily carried around, and slow and doesn't have all my notes on board... and I use it more as a data input device than a lookup tool. In the same situation as some of the posters here, I'd find a different way to get at the information I need on the tool I had, or I'd use a different tool. That's the way things currently work. Although I have no inside knowledge or expertise in this area, it seems a pretty good guess that Evernote's motivation here is "what's in it for us?" - what would it cost to investigate/ update/ rewrite/ fix the anomalies that arise? How much business is it costing? What new business would we gain? Given that (subject to all the above provisos about lack of knowledge) I believe the various OS clients were developed by different teams, who at least up to a certain point had the main aim of making their target devices operate as efficiently as possible without regard (except in fairly broad terms) for what their colleague teams were doing, it's perhaps not surprising that there are anomalies. I guess we'll find out in due course whether or not Evernote is motivated to fix them. Link to comment
Level 5* CalS 5,280 Posted June 26, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 26, 2015 @Gaz, I guess I'm in the camp that it should be a prime directive that any search yields the same result on any platform (obviously excluding the impact of local notebooks on a desktop). I don't know what that means in the technology stack that EN uses, but it makes no sense to me that it not be so based upon the product EN is promoting. No sense at all, no matter how hard the fix. But we've had discussions in these forums in the past on lingering errors and a lack of drive by EN to address them. Anyway, enough editorializing. Since I search mostly by tags, I don't believe I've been impacted too much. When I've been looking for something specific I've always found it. The issue is I don't know when I was doing a more general search if I got them all. What really surprised me in my test was that the IOS client had the most results, For some reason I would have thought the web would have, it being the mother ship and all. I could do a little work and determine which notes aren't where, but just not worth it to me. Link to comment
Level 5* JMichaelTX 4,117 Posted June 26, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 26, 2015 I guess I'm in the camp that it should be a prime directive that any search yields the same result on any platform (obviously excluding the impact of local notebooks on a desktop). Exactly. Nothing else is acceptable. Link to comment
dyuhas 12 Posted June 26, 2015 Author Share Posted June 26, 2015 Some users might say that by allowing the IOS search bug to exist for years, Evernote is committing fraud on it's customers. I disagree. Evernote bills itself as your external brain, not a better brain. Our brains forget, get memories mixed up, etc. Evernote is just mimicking the human brain. If you think computers aren't supposed to make mistakes, then take it up with the CEO of Evernote, Phil Libin. I'm sure he'd be glad to discuss the issue with you. And while you've got his attention, ask him how many customers were clamoring for Hello. This is a confusing post from the person who started this thread.Are you really trying to justify Evernote making mistakes/errors in its search algorithms? My post was facetious and sarcastic, perhaps unnecessarily so. Should I do it again I will use the explicit </sarcasm></sarcasm off> codes. Link to comment
Level 5* JMichaelTX 4,117 Posted June 26, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted June 26, 2015 My post was facetious and sarcastic, perhaps unnecessarily so. Should I do it again I will use the explicit </sarcasm></sarcasm off> codes. Sorry, I missed your sarcasm. Thanks for clarifying. It's hard to always pickup on other's humor/sarcasm. A visual cue would be helpful. Link to comment
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