Danilux 3 Posted October 21, 2015 Share Posted October 21, 2015 Hi I was running WinDirStat and found that evernote database file 'username.exb' was 546MB, evernote has been not very responsive lately, I only have 50 text only notes, when I export a backup in .enex format the file is just 2.5MB, is there something wrong, something I can do like deleting this file and restore it from the .enex file or reinstall evernote, any help is appreciated, thanks. Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,656 Posted October 21, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted October 21, 2015 Hi. That's an impressive file size for just 50 notes. If you have no local (unsynced) notebooks and no unsynced recent notes, I'd suggest you look for and empty your Trash notebook and check the size of your database again. If that didn't help -Evernote > Tools > Options > General to locate the Databases folder Click the link in that window to open the folder in Explorer and find its parent folder. Evernote > File > Exit to close Evernote Use Explorer to rename the Databases folder to Databases.old Restart Evernote. Evernote will rebuild your database and its associated files from the server. This can take a little time. Check the size of your .EXB file again. If you're happy that all your notes are available, delete the renamed folder to save space but do copy the new folder somewhere as a backup, and (I suggest) continue to do that on a regular basis. Link to comment
Danilux 3 Posted October 22, 2015 Author Share Posted October 22, 2015 The new generated database file is now just 9.2MB, you sir deserve only good things in life, thank you very much for your kind help. Link to comment
Level 5* FactMan 196 Posted October 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted October 25, 2015 Good guide to file size reduction. However, if you have mostly (but not all) notes are local, is there a way to do something similar? I have done an export to an enex file of my largest notebook, then reimported it, but I don't see much of a change in the .exb file size. Optimize database? Link to comment
Level 5* gazumped 11,656 Posted October 25, 2015 Level 5* Share Posted October 25, 2015 Hi. Interesting question! Any attachments you have in your notes are stored in the database, so the size of the database is pretty much dependent on the size of the attachments. I don't know that the database can be compressed by any sort of data defrag.. and your experience with export and reimport suggests that optimising won't help especially. (You could do a trial by copying your database folder elsewhere and using the Optimise option - if there's no benefit, delete the optimised version and replace the old one.) You should certainly check and delete any contents of Conflicting Changes and Trash notebooks, and you could prioritise compressing note attachments by Select All and Save Attachments to a new temporary folder. Sort the attachments by size and have a look at compressing the files by optimising pictures and PDFs, maybe exporting the content of PDFs to text, zipping where you can and leaving keywords behind to help searches...and (obviously) deleting or archiving anything you don't need to be immediately available. Having said all of which, do you really need to? My database file is somewhere around 14GB and growing slowly, but things still seem to work OK... Link to comment
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