Syncing in two computers: What if I don't want to download all my notebooks?

[Vitruvia 5]

I know this has been a recurrent subject: many people ask about syncing in two different computers. My issue with this matter—which I think hasn't been talked about yet—is why can't we select which notebooks to sync on each computer. For example: I have a home pc with more space than I can use, and I have a notebook which I use at college. I'd like to have access to certain notes in this particular notebook, but I don't want to download everything in there (it hasn't got that much space, and is also shared by many members of the family). Moreover, I'd there are many notes which I need for a particular lesson or group discussion or for a particular class, and once that's over, I wouldn't have any immediate need for such notes; i'd still like to keep it on my main computer at home, for further reference and so on, but I wouldn't need it on my day to day at college.

Is there a particular reason why we can't get a feature like that? or am I the only one who thinks this is something useful?

[CalS 5,280]

Selective sync has been requested many times but hasn't made it into EN's product as yet.  And since they don't publish a road map, we don't even know if it is in their plans at all. 

A workaround would be to create another account, move your "certain" notes to the new account (probably use export/import to an ENEX file), and then share that notebook with your current account.  Then at home you can access all your notes via the share and only your "certain" notes at college.

[DTLow 5,736]

14 hours ago, Vitruvia said:

Is there a particular reason why we can't get a feature like that? or am I the only one who thinks this is something useful?

It's something we have on IOS - you can specify notebooks to be offline

>>is also shared by many members of the family

That's another issue to address and I agree with @csihilling
If you want separate notebooks available, use separate accounts and the shared notebook feature; its complex, but the only solution for now.

There have been discussions for locked notebooks.  That seems a more workable solution.

[CalS 5,280]

3 minutes ago, Frank.dg said:

Also, I'm not sure whether they would welcome the flood tidal wave of uploads were selective sync to become a reality. 

Confused. 

With selective sync doesn't the mother ship (server) stay at the same in size you just aren't pushing it everything down to all your devices?  So less bandwidth consumed?

[Frank.dg 1,385]

You're right Cal... that was confusing. I didn't connect the thoughts properly. Almost midnight for me, ha! 

Selective sync would indeed help with the overloading of our desktop clients (to alleviate it, that is).

I just somehow don't think that they'll give us selective sync because people would rush to make good on their upload limits and perhaps tax Evernote servers beyond what they are likely wanting to handle. 

[CalS 5,280]

Ah, so pent-up demand in local notebooks makes its way to the web.  Thanks. 

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Maybe local notebooks... but just more uploads in general. People's accounts would grow dramatically in size monthly if they knew they were not hampered by storage space issues on their local machines and also how multiple gigabytes of data affect the performance of their desktop clients. I for one would significantly expand my geeky databases. 

[gazumped 11,666]

I agree that mirroring local storage rather than offering a pure external alternative is probably a useful limiter for uploads.  There's a gap though between the sensible default of online-only storage (with options for offline if you got it) for mobiles,  and the sometimes very limited storage of some other popular solutions.  Maybe if an account has at least one fully-synced connected desktop,  other (non-shared) users of the same account could have the option to be online-only too?  No clue how you'd test for the 'one desktop' qualification,  but maybe...

[CalS 5,280]

4 hours ago, Frank.dg said:

Maybe local notebooks... but just more uploads in general. People's accounts would grow dramatically in size monthly if they knew they were not hampered by storage space issues on their local machines and also how multiple gigabytes of data affect the performance of their desktop clients. I for one would significantly expand my geeky databases. 

Ah at long last through my thick skull, I think?  So adding notes to notebooks on the local machine that sync and then "evaporate".  Counter; intuitive when one only thinks in terms of only wanting certain notebooks on certain machines.  My bad.  

[Frank.dg 1,385]

I'm not sure how selective sync would be implemented in Evernote. In Dropbox, from desktop, you can uncheck any folders from a selective sync menu and they disappear from your local machine but remain on Dropbox web. In order to drop further files into a folder which is  no longer synced to desktop, one has to re-sync it from the same menu... or else use the web client.

So... as you say, it would be counter intuitive to have those "ghost" notebooks show up on a machine you don't want an Evernote notebook on... but perhaps selective sync notebooks could have their own section in the Left Panel. And the way that might work could be similar to Evernote Import Folders (Windows). An option with the Import Folders is to either keep or delete the "source" (the files you've dropped into Evernote Import Folders on your desktop). If you set "source" to delete, the folder acts like a wormhole... your file enters one end and appears on the other end in Evernote (while deleting the file on your desktop). Likewise, if you were dropping a file into an un-synced/ ghost notebook in the desktop client, it would sync to the web and "poof", as you put it.

Just thinking along your line of thought here... not passionate about it either way :-)

 

[DTLow 5,736]

4 minutes ago, Frank.dg said:

I'm not sure how selective sync would be implemented in Evernote.

They somehow implemented something similar in IOS for offline notebooks - you can specify the notebooks
My preference would be for locked notebooks.

[CalS 5,280]

1 hour ago, Frank.dg said:

Just thinking along your line of thought here... not passionate about it either way :-)

I appreciate the exposure to other use cases, helps one better understand.  Search should be considered as well I suppose because one would want to search the selective notebooks and where does that index live?  Not passionate myself either, I don't think I would use the capability, don't have a use case for it.  Sitting at 18GB with plenty of disk left on all machines.

Anyhoo, we may be tilting at windmills as long as this request been active. 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Requests for Selective Sync are very popular, made by many for many years.  Requests go back at least 5 years to this thread in 2011:
How do I NOT sync certain notebooks 

Here is a good thread, that also lists related threads:
Please please PLEASE support selectively sync notebooks! 

IMO, it is inevitable that Evernote with provide Selective Sync for desktop apps for these reasons:
(the only question is when?)

1. Active Evernote users will at some point in their life accumulate more Notes than will comfortably fit on their local drive
   1. Evernote has long promoted itself as a tool to "remember everything", to record your life's memories (documents, photos, etc)
   2. While storage devices become larger and larger all the while becoming cheaper per GB, not everyone can afford new drives, or will want to allocated their budget for same
2. Need to access same Evernote account on devices with limited storage
   1. For example, small, lightweight, modest storage, laptops (like MacBook Air)
   2. Many individuals now have multiple devices as do most families
   3. I have plenty of room for now on my MacBook Pro with a 512GB SSD, but not so much on my MacBook Air with only 128GB.
3. Since user could choose to use only the EN Web client, with near zero local storage, and yet have very large Evernote database in the EN Cloud, I don't see Selective Sync as a significant factor in Evernote's decision of whether or not provide Selective Storage.

[Orbilis 0]

There are rumors that Apple will likely let IOS apps to lauch on OSX later this year.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

On 3/14/2018 at 4:34 PM, Orbilis said:

There are rumors that Apple will likely let IOS apps to lauch on OSX later this year.

I highly doubt that.  IAC it would not really be a solution, since the EN iOS app is so crippled and hard to use compared with the EN Mac app.  Evernote has already introduced a form of selective sync for EN Win, so I think that is more likely to happen.