Conflicting Changes / Compare Documents

[rdeco 0]

For my Shopping List note, I am the only user and I sync regularly. Still, sometimes the note does not sync between my computer and phone, and I get Conflicting Changes document(s). While I have found info the Help section that says I can manually check and clean up the documents, then delete the Conflicting Changes (and this is what I have been doing), it is unreasonably tedious. I cannot find any way to compare documents to make this a reasonable cleanup task. As far as I can tell, there is no way in Evernote to compare documents.

1) I request that Evernote create a way to compare documents. (or let me know if there is a way to do this)

2) In trying to research this and contact Evernote regarding this, the best Contact option I could find resulted in instructions to "submit a ticket". Then, I could not find a way to submit a ticket. As far as I can tell, this forum is my only option to attempt to contact anyone regarding this issue.

[gazumped 11,643]

Hi.  You're right that there's no way to compare note contents in Evernote,  though conflicts shouldn't arise that often if you're the only contributor.  Can you avoid them by being more careful about syncing both before and after you edit your note?  If you check out the product feedback forum for your main (phone?) OS you might like to raise this again to see how many others would agree with you...

[TM_everN 2]

I have this problem often.  I am the only contributor.  The problem occurs when I make changes 'off-network'.  This makes me leery of writing notes when 'off-network' because it might generate a "conflicting changes" notification, that I must then evaluate, with no tools.  There is no "comparision" helper (to select the valid version).  So these "conflicting changes" pile up, and then they get stale and I can't recall which was valid.

I very much appreciate that Evernote informs me of a conflict, but NOT providing a way for me to evaluate conflicts is a PROBLEM.

If I have to make a change to a note "off network" I find myself doing only ONE change, then trying to remember NOT to make any more changes, because the system may generate a 3rd Conflict, of which I won't be able to tell which of the three is valid.  If Sync then edits version one, then there could be valid changes in BOTH conflicts, right?  I need to see them.

I find myself going back to paper reminders because of the difficulty in evaluating 'conflicts'. The reason I GOT Evernote was to get away from paper notes.  This is causing me to NOT USE my Evernote as often as I could.

Other than this problem, Evernote has been FANTASTIC.  Really a great app!  This could be the ONLY problem but its bumming me out. :-)

Sorry I hope this makes sense.    Is there a method to evaluate/validate/delete conflicts from my phone that I'm unaware of?  Can it be managed on the desktop?

[gazumped 11,643]

5 hours ago, TM_everN said:

Is there a method to evaluate/validate/delete conflicts from my phone that I'm unaware of?

Hi.  Short answer 'no' - but evaluating why you get the conflicts might help to avoid them - in the scenario that you make some changes on your phone 'off network',  what do you do with Evernote and the phone before finding conflicts?  Do you just edit the note,  close the app,  then connect and sync when you're back on the network?  Are you seeing these changes on your phone,  or on the desktop when you open Evernote there?

In that latter situation you'd need to edit the note / close the app.  Wait until you're on network again.  Open the app on the phone and sync it first.  Then close it down again and start the app on your desktop.

On comparing notes marked 'conflicting changes' (which I very rarely get) the easy way to compare longer notes is to open both into their own separate windows (on a desktop) and scroll them side by side. 

[TM_everN 2]

Thanks gazumped.  Sounds like you don't open your Evernote many many times off-network?  I do, that's why I need it so I have all my notes when I get back to network.

Thanks for the "new window" tip.  I looked for "new window" function under the "WINDOW" menu - it's not there.   I found "New Evernote WIndow"under the "FILE" menu after your suggestion, THANKS, that helps a LOT.

A TIP!  -- RENAME your note before deleting it, because it's pretty easy to get confused and delete the WRONG one.  I ended up deleting the "conflicting changes" notebook, which had my GOOD file in it but the DELETE file was outside in the regular notebooks.  Easy mixup because Evernote doesn't change the names, or append "older".

For example when you decide which note will be deleted, append "-old" to it (rename it to"projects-old"  And rename the conflicts file too with "projects-old" in the name

Anyway---- so can't do this comparison on the phone.  And you won't know if your phone got on network for long enough to log a discrepancy, unless you LOOK for it.  I dislike managing files for a computer,,,,computer should be doing this FOR YOU.  But I'll try to learn it.  Got part of it solved by the 'new evernote window' thing and for that I'm happy.

[short 2]

"it is unreasonably tedious"  it is absurd that in 2020 I am being asked to MANUALLY find the differences in my notes.  "conflicting modifications" occur frequently enough and often in long notes that Evernote must invest the relatively small amount of money to provide a "compare notes" feature.

More about me.  I have not only been an Evernote user for many years.  I have been a fan.  I frequently told friends and family how Evernote has changed my life.  I've overlooked minor shortcomings in the product.  However, this is not minor.  This is major.  I hate to say it but I will have to look into the competition, Onenote and so on.

[gazumped 11,643]

7 hours ago, short said:

"it is unreasonably tedious"  it is absurd that in 2020 I am being asked to MANUALLY find the differences in my notes.  "conflicting modifications" occur frequently enough and often in long notes that Evernote must invest the relatively small amount of money to provide a "compare notes" feature.

More about me.  I have not only been an Evernote user for many years.  I have been a fan.  I frequently told friends and family how Evernote has changed my life.  I've overlooked minor shortcomings in the product.  However, this is not minor.  This is major.  I hate to say it but I will have to look into the competition, Onenote and so on.

Hi.  You're responding to a four-year old thread and Evernote have revamped several things about how they store and sync data over that time.  My previous answer though is still applicable: I very very rarely see a 'conflicting' note.  I use two laptops (Windows and Linux) plus a Samsung Note and a tablet.  All run Evernote (on Linux, that's the web version) and I input and edit data on all of them.  Perhaps my secret is that I don't switch between devices - the ones I'm not using don't have an Evernote window open on them while I add comments from elsewhere.  I finish entering data on my device, save/ sync the result and (usually) close Evernote down - unless I'm working from base, in which case Evernote is open on my desktop.

However: conflicts don't seem to be a current issue for most users,  but you could raise this in a Feature Request forum and see whether others agree with you that a note comparison option needs to exist.  

[dcorrin 0]

I was hoping in 4 years there would be a different answer. All the lectures about how to not do it again don't help with the problem. If you have conflicting notes, you need to be able to compare them. Surely someone out there has figured out a workaround.

 

[gazumped 11,643]

15 hours ago, dcorrin said:

Surely someone out there has figured out a workaround.

To avoid them, yes. To compare notes? - save the notes to separate document files and use a file compare utility.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,935]

21 hours ago, dcorrin said:

I was hoping in 4 years there would be a different answer. All the lectures about how to not do it again don't help with the problem. If you have conflicting notes, you need to be able to compare them. Surely someone out there has figured out a workaround.

 

Hi, and welcome to the forums. One possible explanation for the lack of a compare-notes feature is that it might be seen as a violation of Evernote's pledge not to read our note content. (Believe me, the first time notes were compared and differences highlighted, there would be a flood of complaints here about Evernote violating privacy.)

Another issue is the wide variability of operating platforms and of contents in notes. We would (I suppose) want Evernote to implement an automatic scan of the conflicting notes and highlighting of differences. That's not hard in a plain-text note in a single operating system. But of course we would want that to work also in Android and iOS and in the Web client. What about content in tables? That would have to be compared also. What about attachments? Suppose someone attached an Excel file to a note, edited the file on one device and also edited it in a different way on another device. Would we want Evernote to examine the spreadsheets and highlight those differences as well?

All of which is to say that for a system like Evernote, "document comparison" is not as simple as may seem. I don't get note conflicts too often, and my notes are mostly pretty short and easy for me to compare. But yes, this would be nice to have; I'm just not sure what other improvements to the system I'd like to see delayed in order to get this.

[wahlink 3]

Long time user (10+ years) here as well. I've had "conflicting changes" problems for many years now despite the fact that this is a 4 year old thread so the problem hasn't gone away. Most of the problems I see are in files within shared folders. I share folders and files in a mixed Mac / PC environment and when when different users (mostly PC users) edit or change attachments within the document the file creates a conflicts that then have to be manually fixed. It doesn't always happen but is frequent enough that it has been a problem. A second, possibly related issue is that newer files are frequently overwritten by older files. Again, this appears not to be an issue with folders shared with mac users but only Windows users. Whatever the reason for these incompatibilities in shared files and conflicts, this has been a long standing issue that hasn't been resolved by software updates. Manual syncing partially fixes some of the issues. 

[renato_ch 3]

2,5 years later, and still this issue... 😢

Happens frequently with me, and th workflow for fixing it is cumbersome. Remembering to always sync and close app, while on the go, sometimes without internet, is putting the burden on the user instead of helping me work with notes and syncing. 

Hopefully someday this gets improved

[gazumped 11,643]

29 minutes ago, renato_ch said:

2,5 years later, and still this issue... 

Well,  you're posting 2 years after the last comment here,  so it may be that things are generally working for most people.  If that's not the case for you,  then maybe you need to look into your connection or processes.  Full disclosure - I had a conflicting note earlier to day (my first for some time) - seems I synced several pictures from one recent unboxing into one note via my Android,  then added another two a little later.  Meantime I opened the first version of the note (minus the extra images) and resized and sorted the images there.  By the time the Android caught up with the syncing,  I had another copy of the original note (without my edits) but with the extra two images.  So I copied the new images to the original note and deleted the conflicting note.  Took me all of 2 minutes to resolve the issue,  and it was entirely down to Android taking a little while to sync it's changes.  Don't see how Evernote could help with any of that...

[renato_ch 3]

I can understand syncing issues, and even that if I try to investigate and work on my workflow they might decrease. That's not the issue.

Majority of times it happens on large notes, like a journal that I write to a couple of times a day. I'm not asking for "not having syncing issues", just a better way to deal with them when they happen - like a simple embedded comparison "here are the differences", both on mobile or computer, would help a lot.

I'm a user since 2013. It started happening more frequently lately in last versions, since Evernote started changing directions.

Not striving for perfection... Just a little bit of empathy and moving the line a little bit in the direction of a solution would be incredible.

As for no more people writing, absence of evidence != evidence of absence. Maybe people just gave up and got hopeless (either adapting or moving to another app), maybe they were praying for a solution (as I was and still hadn't written), maybe there are other topics with same issue, ... Many options other than "it generally works". It may even be that "it generally works for most people"

 

[gazumped 11,643]

All fair points - Evernote doesn't handle large notes well - I tend to keep my 'large' content split between a table of content note and lots of smaller notes.  If you're a subscriber,  have you reported this to Support for their comment?

[renato_ch 3]

Liked both ideas:
- Split the large note in smaller one (Like a "past journal" and "current journal")

- Report to support

 

Thanks, will do.

 

[renato_ch 3]

Reporting feedback from support:

TL;DR;

• Still no compare changes interface - need to do it manually
  • Maybe if enough people complain about it at support this gets higher priority
• Recommended way to prevent conflicts - exit notes after editing (burden on user to remind to do that, and also to remember to sync before changing devices)

 

Complete answer:

The best way to avoid note conflicts in the future, is to make sure to exit the note on one device before making edits to it on a second device. 
In the event that you have not been editing a note using more than one device, please know that we are working on improvements to reduce conflicting notes occurrences.
 
Regarding your concern on having a way to check the changes or difference on notes when the issue happens, I’ve gone ahead and made note of this for our development team. While we can’t commit to getting all feature requests into the product, we do rely on our community to tell us what they’d like to see in the future. Thank you for this suggestion.