Read-Only Option for Notes

[alexferen 27]

Hi... Tried EN many moons ago, then went with OneNote but EN's cloud and accessible anywhere features are bringing me back...Enough kudos...

Is there a way to mark a note as "read-only" so I cannot accidentally erase or modify it? Thanks. Alex

[BurgersNFries 2,406]

 

The usual workaround that I suggest nowadays is to make a separate account for stuff that you are afraid that you might mess up by inadvertently editing them. Share the notebooks in that account as read-only to your main account, and you are saved from yourself.

 

It's an ad-hoc thing.  Fiddling about sharing with myself from an additional account sounds a right PITA.  I just want to click a button "Make Read Only", "Protect from Changes" or whatever.

 

KD

 

 

Since there is not a way to do what you want & there is no way to know if Evernote will add this or not (since they do not discuss their roadmap), Jeff is simply offering you an alternate way to do what you are wanting to do (write protect notes).  Hence the term "workaround".

[KD Johnson 6]

 

Since there is not a way to do what you want & there is no way to know if Evernote will add this or not (since they do not discuss their roadmap), Jeff is simply offering you an alternate way to do what you are wanting to do (write protect notes).  Hence the term "workaround".

 

Yes, I know that.  I appreciate Jeff's suggestion, I was just adding my vote to Daniel's and Tom's above in the vague hope that it might get onto the roadmap.

 

KD

[jefito 5,519]

 

The usual workaround that I suggest nowadays is to make a separate account for stuff that you are afraid that you might mess up by inadvertently editing them. Share the notebooks in that account as read-only to your main account, and you are saved from yourself.

 

It's an ad-hoc thing.  Fiddling about sharing with myself from an additional account sounds a right PITA.  I just want to click a button "Make Read Only", "Protect from Changes" or whatever.

 

Yes, that's what a workaround is. You have to work with the software as it is while you're waiting on the feature you want (if it's it's ever implemented).

 

Anyways, sharing accounts is actually not all that bad, if you have a fairly stable organizational scheme -- I use it myself, though in my case, it's to keep separate personal and work accounts: my personal account has all of my software development reference articles (which I want at work), and sometimes I work at home, so I want my work stuff available to my personal account. I don't have a lot of churn in my notebooks and tags, so it's no big deal.

[Thorz 13]

+1. Desperately wanting this too on Windows, Mac and the iPhone clients.

[Suryashis 0]

A few days ago I wrote copy pasted a web page...

While browsing through the page today I was trying to copy the text from this note to another note on my pc through the  desctop when accidentally instead of pressing the copy button i pressed the paste button. The entire note just vanished. I had to retrieve the whole note from web again.

How such mishaps can be prevented.

[gazumped 7,506]

Evernote can only go so far to protect you - your OS will help too;  Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z should undo a careless keystroke,  if you have a backup for your database you could retrieve that,  or if you're a premium user you'll have Note History.  As here,  if you lost a web page you can - usually- just go back and re-clip it using the URL in the note.  Editing a page though always carries the risk that you'll make unwanted changes by mistake.  If your data is important,  you could always use a copy of the original note...

[JMichaelTX 4,052]

I support having an "EDIT" and "SAVE" button on Notes, just like we have for files.  Autosave to temp location could provide protection in case of crash or the user forgets to save.

 

Today, large monitors are cheap, and many users have two or more monitors.  With so many apps/documents open at once, It is not hard to mistake which app/document is current, and start typing/deleting/pasting when you did not intend to make any changes to Evernote.

[Kriffix 0]

I too would love to see a feature that allows the locking on/off of notes from editing, on all devices. 

[neeklamy 2]

There’s so much to appreciate about Evernote, and the Web Clipper is a great companion to it.

 

Oh but the inability to mark notes as read only is huge negative for me. It’s even more disappointing that a fairly simple addition to the UX (which is available to third-party developers or enterprising hackers) has been known about but put off for over five years. That’s a lifetime!

 

I would have considered a paid account at some point too.

 

I would contact Evernote directly, but I wouldn’t expect anything other than a non-comital brush off.

[myerifad 4]

I'd like to make some of my notes read-only to prevent accidental editing.

[gazumped 7,506]

Hi.  The only way (AFAIK) is to set up another account,  move the notes to that account,  and share a 'read only' notebook back to your original account.

[mpacker 5]

A lock icon on the note, akin to the lock in system preferences, would be good. Click the lock to lock the note (make it read only). Click it again to unlock with a confirmation dialog.

[SCDavid 1]

Once the ability to easily make notes read-only is implemented I will gladly become a paying customer.

Until then EN is just a toy, to be used with non-important things.

[Holmes245 11]

+1 for me on this as well.

 

In fact, in the Android version you do have to go into edit mode to edit your notes. I like this because I don't want to be thumbing through my notes and accidentally editing notes. The desktop version needs this because I too, like so many apparently, do accidentally delete attachments or notes. I don't like the idea at all that if I have any note selected and accidentally brush up against the delete button on my keyboard - BAM! There goes that note and if I don't notice it before I empty my trash, it's too late. It's the same with attachments. If you have an attached document and the cursor is located right after the document, if you accidentally brush up against the backspace key on your keyboard then your attachment has been deleted and it is not sitting in your trash at all! It's just gone.

 

It's design choices like this that puzzle me about the Evernote design team and why they make certain design choices, to be honest. Just too easy to lose work in Evernote. Evernote NEEDS something like this.

[eric99 138]

Instead of solving this problem, evernote just decided to aggraviate it by removing the edit button in the Android Beta !

I'm so disappointed that they still don't listen to their forum members...

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/90487-evernote-for-android-v75-beta/

[brownja 0]

This would be a huge help for me too.

 

Among other things, I use EN for code snippets and long commands. Almost daily, I'm toggling between EN and a command prompt, copy/pasting as I go. Invariably, I'll start typing while the Note still has the focus and mess up it up. 

[WangDaKe 1]

Really needs read-only mode. People do accidentally press something when reading in EN, especially when alt-tab switching back and forth.

Can not understand why such a function is so hard to be added, it is already there for Android for a long time, what is wrong with the desktop version?

EN, your user usually have hundreds or thousands of notes, they do need to make sure their precious content will not be destroyed by a cat walking on a keyboard.

[DTLow 4,739]

>>Really needs read-only mode.

I agree - its and odd omission - I would have expected it as a beginning point in the UI. I've seen other products requiring a click on an edit button to make changes.

I up voted this request - it;s now at 1 (top left corner of the thread)

[Holmes245 11]

But when will they ever actually add it? Who knows.

This is why I'm currently only using Evernote as a glorified EReader for clippings, not actual notes.

[eric99 138]

On 16-11-2015 at 11:00 PM, Holmes245 said:

On 16-11-2015 at 11:00 PM, Holmes245 said:

+1 for me on this as well.

 

In fact, in the Android version you do have to go into edit mode to edit your notes. I like this because I don't want to be thumbing through my notes and accidentally editing notes. The desktop version needs this because I too, like so many apparently, do accidentally delete attachments or notes. I don't like the idea at all that if I have any note selected and accidentally brush up against the delete button on my keyboard - BAM! There goes that note and if I don't notice it before I empty my trash, it's too late. It's the same with attachments. If you have an attached document and the cursor is located right after the document, if you accidentally brush up against the backspace key on your keyboard then your attachment has been deleted and it is not sitting in your trash at all! It's just gone.

 

It's design choices like this that puzzle me about the Evernote design team and why they make certain design choices, to be honest. Just too easy to lose work in Evernote. Evernote NEEDS something like this.

+1 for me on this as well.

 

In fact, in the Android version you do have to go into edit mode to edit your notes. I like this because I don't want to be thumbing through my notes and accidentally editing notes. The desktop version needs this because I too, like so many apparently, do accidentally delete attachments or notes. I don't like the idea at all that if I have any note selected and accidentally brush up against the delete button on my keyboard - BAM! There goes that note and if I don't notice it before I empty my trash, it's too late. It's the same with attachments. If you have an attached document and the cursor is located right after the document, if you accidentally brush up against the backspace key on your keyboard then your attachment has been deleted and it is not sitting in your trash at all! It's just gone.

 

It's design choices like this that puzzle me about the Evernote design team and why they make certain design choices, to be honest. Just too easy to lose work in Evernote. Evernote NEEDS something like this.

I fully agree: when double clicking an attachement, the cursor is always on the attachment, and to make it worse, the attachment icon gets selected as well (another bug, it may not be selected by just opening a file), so there is a very high risk that it may be deleted by accidently clicking the backspace or delete button !

Unfortunately, as far as I followed these discussions, I'm afraid that evernote will remove the edit button on all platforms, even on Android! I have the impression that evernote  is not designed for serious work but more as some kind of toy or scratch block where data loss can be afforded...

 

[goutos19 2]

I also would like to have a lock icon to make a note read-only.

[DTLow 4,739]

I up-voted (top right corner of this discussion)

and the vote is .....1

I encourage anyone supporting this request to vote.

Also - I posted a device agnostic feature request at 

 

[rjparker1 22]

Can we make notes read only?  I accidentally hit information inside notes in trying to copy \ paste on my mobile.  Then I end up saving it only to find out later that I moved something.

Is there a way in Evernote to mark a notebook or note as read only so I don't accidentally change data?

[DTLow 4,739]

51 minutes ago, rjparker1 said:

Can we make notes read only?  I accidentally hit information inside notes in trying to copy \ paste on my mobile.  Then I end up saving it only to find out later that I moved something.

Is there a way in Evernote to mark a notebook or note as read only so I don't accidentally change data?

afaik There is no read-only option

Its been discussed in the forums.

The workaround I use is to convert my note to pdf format.

[rjparker1 22]

On 4/8/2016 at 2:58 PM, DTLow said:

afaik There is no read-only option

Its been discussed in the forums.

The workaround I use is to convert my note to pdf format.

Genius.. that's good enough for me, thanks.

[gunfight 3]

I also want read-only notes, or at least the option to open any note as read-only on a mobile device. I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally edited a note on my iPhone while walking around in a grocery store looking for recipe ingredients! And it's not like "undo" is easy to do on the phone. It's a pain to remember to choose 'present' mode immediately after opening the note. 

[Hwa87 2]

Seconding this request.

I use EN to work with newspaper articles a lot. It is a horrible mess if one of them gets edited by accident. To be able to lock and mark them, just like pdfs, just without having to export, convert to pdf, reimport would be very helpful (maybe as a premium feature?).

[DTLow 4,739]

Requesting the option to flag notes as read only

My workaround is to convert the note to pdf

edited; There’s also a contentClass field that I can update using a script on my Mac

[DTLow 4,739]

On April 8, 2016 at 11:03 AM, rjparker1 said:

Can we make notes read only?  I accidentally hit information inside notes in trying to copy \ paste on my mobile.  Then I end up saving it only to find out later that I moved something.

Is there a way in Evernote to mark a notebook or note as read only so I don't accidentally change data?

Please indicate your support for this request by voting at

 

[Anister 0]

Oh, I need this feature sooo much Both on computer/web and iphone. 

[ChrstnMchl 5]

Is there a way or can there be a way to make a note not editable?  Here is my use case.  I have a note with important log in information that is shared with the team.  Some copies that info and somehow pastes over the info.  This has happened twice in this note.  The info in this note should never change.  I'd like to freeze it as is.  It could have a password or not but it really should be an available feature to lock in content.

[DTLow 4,739]

41 minutes ago, ChrstnMchl said:

Is there a way or can there be a way to make a note not editable?  Here is my use case.  I have a note with important log in information that is shared with the team.  Some copies that info and somehow pastes over the info.  This has happened twice in this note.  The info in this note should never change.  I'd like to freeze it as is.  It could have a password or not but it really should be an available feature to lock in content.

Evernote has not implemented this feature - it's been requested.

fwiw. I usually convert my notes to PDF format - it helps prevent accidental updates

[ChrstnMchl 5]

As I was typing I had that idea.  But then it struck me how this seems like such basic feature that it should be implemented that I continued to post it.  It just seems silly that you can't protect your notes...

[jefito 5,519]

58 minutes ago, ChrstnMchl said:

 

Is there a way or can there be a way to make a note not editable?  Here is my use case.  I have a note with important log in information that is shared with the team.  Some copies that info and somehow pastes over the info.  This has happened twice in this note.  The info in this note should never change.  I'd like to freeze it as is.  It could have a password or not but it really should be an available feature to lock in content.

 

If you're using shared notebooks, then you can put things that you don't want editable into a shared notebook that has view-only rights. Or you can share individual notes as view-only. That's about the best you can do at the moment.

If you're not using shared notebooks, then you probably should be in a team situation.

[ChrstnMchl 5]

It is in shared notebook that is the most relevant place for it.  Can I modify that individual note within the notebook by individually sharing it?  Will it override the notebook sharing options?

[jefito 5,519]

1 hour ago, ChrstnMchl said:

It is in shared notebook that is the most relevant place for it.  Can I modify that individual note within the notebook by individually sharing it?  Will it override the notebook sharing options?

Good question. You should be able try it out yourself (I can't at the moment). But on the surface (and without knowing how your team workflow works), it just seems as though if you have multiple notes you're going to want as viewable only, it would be easier in the long run to set up a notebook explicitly for that purpose, rather than sharing note by note.

[flaviof 0]

+1 please provide this. I cannot imagine it being that hard to implement.

a read-only toggle would make the usage of my notes a lot more useful and safe against fat fingering.

 

[ronjape 0]

It would be great to be able to lock a note so it can only be copied and nothing gets deleted by accident until you turn off the lock and then can make changes. We copy a lot from notes into other apps and sometimes when in full screen mode with multiple monitors you think you're typing in one app and overwriting data in evernote. Seems like an easy implementation.

[OK. 0]

+1... This would be awesome!

Just semantics, but I would prefer the ability to "Lock" notes... Seems more intuitive to me that way.

[Don Dz 144]

Was not aware this was asked before I posted mine (I was going to call mine non edit mode).  The Android version has this by default, though I suspect it maybe a platform feature, since many Android apps have it.

[Don Dz 144]

Odd that my topic was merged with this one without sending me any notification, no wonder I could not find it!!  I understand the need to keeping the forums organized, but really, administrators, notify me at least, I thought my topic was deleted!

Anyways, while the two ideas are closely related, they are not identical.  Setting an optional read only flag on each note is not good enough for me, I need it as a default setting for all notes under options, so that all notes are read only until I click on some predetermined part of the note, be it a flag or whatever.

Thanks for listening.

[evilda 0]

+1

Please. Really apreciate this function.

[Bweb 0]

Yes to this on ios. Has Evernote responded to this suggestion??

[Eduardo Estefano 61]

+1 for a lock feature as a global option: able to start or not a Note in edit mode. But then gives also a shortcut to place the note into editable State. 

[FuzzyDoug 2]

Me as well (note read-only option). I have created a few notes as "Master Templates". I then copy the template and change appropriate values on the copy. I'm tired of inadvertently changing the template.

[Eduardo Estefano 61]

+1 on this one

[onatbas 10]

Hello everyone. 

It's been some tıme I had my eye on this feature. Today I reserved some time into doing this and created a simple web app.

It works like this: you tag your notes with a tag called 'readonly' and every five minutes, the system checks your notes and makes tagged ones read-only. You can subscribe to the service via : https://ro-app.run.aws-usw02-pr.ice.predix.io/

. Plese note that this is a 2-3 hour work and I will not maintain it in terms of look etc. It simply does what it promises to do. If there's a huge interest in the project I might allocate some more time into it, though. 

Cheers,
Onat

[onatbas 10]

Hello everyone. 

It's been some tıme I had my eye on this feature. Today I reserved some time into doing this and created a simple web app.

It works like this: you tag your notes with a tag called 'readonly' and every five minutes, the system checks your notes and makes tagged ones read-only. You can subscribe to the service via : http://onat.me/readonlymaker

Plese note that this is a 2-3 hour work and I will not maintain it in terms of look etc. It simply does what it promises to do. If there's a huge interest in the project I might allocate some more time into it, though. 

Cheers,
Onat

 

EDIT after two years:

Hello everyone. It's been 2 years since I launched this small project. I didn't think it would get that much of an attention. But I guess people indeed needed it. So, I just wanted to say that the project is still active. I updated the link above to the recent page. 

Happy locking!.

----

Please checkout this comment for further details:

 

[CalS 4,491]

Why not pick a topic to post in as opposed to so many?

[onatbas 10]

People who have asked the questions get notified that way. 

[UncleRic 12]

Is Evernote going to get us the option to make a particular doc READ ONLY?

The PDF option is not available for an iPhone.   All Evernote needs to do is to block or filter user-events/page.

Simple.

[DanRM 0]

+1  the option set read only for notes or for all notes in a selected Notebook or Stack.  This option would be perfect when creating templates or archiving data - it should never be updatable - converting to pdf is not a preferable option.  

[Pechkin 0]

+1 looks like nobody reads this and no one is interested to improve the service

 

[omegerard 0]

On 3/31/2017 at 6:29 PM, onatbas said:

Hello everyone. 

It's been some tıme I had my eye on this feature. Today I reserved some time into doing this and created a simple web app.

It works like this: you tag your notes with a tag called 'readonly' and every five minutes, the system checks your notes and makes tagged ones read-only. You can subscribe to the service via : https://ro-app.run.aws-usw02-pr.ice.predix.io/

. Plese note that this is a 2-3 hour work and I will not maintain it in terms of look etc. It simply does what it promises to do. If there's a huge interest in the project I might allocate some more time into it, though. 

Cheers,
Onat

Is there a way to undo that and make notes writeable again?

[Horace_NYC 17]

+1 I share the disappointment of those who believe that we're being ignored, despite this request kicking around for a few years. It really isn't that trivial, after all. There are some notes that are simply too important to tamper with, and the option to lock them seems like a fairly obvious feature. Sure there are workarounds (like the PDF idea), but a built-in solution would be most valuable.

[onatbas 10]

8 hours ago, omegerard said:

Is there a way to undo that and make notes writeable again?

Yes there is. See this page :http://onat.me/readonlymaker

[omegerard 0]

Sorry to say: File not found

[omegerard 0]

Sorry agan, found it: http://onat.me/readonlymaker (must have been the ":")

[onatbas 10]

43 minutes ago, omegerard said:

Sorry agan, found it: http://onat.me/readonlymaker (must have been the ":")

No problem. Have fun

[Gabba 0]

+1

[Manu__ 0]

This feature would be just splendid for me , very useful. +1 .

[MrShlomo 5]

seems to be a duplicate of Feature Request: Read-Only Option for Notes. We may want to close this thread and focus on the linked one as the latter already has more votes.

[DLb2109 0]

I really hope they can provide "Lock note" especially for smartphoner( i.e. iphone),sometimes just read note and do not want edit  ,however sometime I'll touch screen accidentally  and then into Edit mode. I just want read not edit ,just accidentally touch screen. Hope Evernote can provide "Lock Note".

[DTLow 4,739]

46 minutes ago, tavor said:

Seems to me the optimal solution here is not to default to locked state for all notes (which would require an unlock step prior to editing every note - this could become very onerous very quickly for those who edit notes frequently

My vote is for an edit mode toggle; this applies to all platforms. And the default should be read mode

Locked notes is a different request.  It’s currently supported in Evernote but requires third party products.  I can use scripting on my Mac to update the note’s contentClass attribute

[DTLow 4,739]

56 minutes ago, annbelievesinwhales said:

What's happening with it? Is it currently in the works? Has evernote ever addressed why this hasn't been added?

This doesn't seem to be a priority item.  
Anyone wanting to indicate support for this request,  please use the voting buttons in the top left corner.  Vote count is currently  

[geetarplayer 6]

+1   -  particularly on Windows client.

[Surya Halim 1]

Definitely a very nice thing to have.

Nothing is more frustrating than to find out you have mangled an important note due to fumbling when you were in a hurry.

I doubt it is difficult to implement since we already have such thing for Android Evernote, why not for iOS version too? Why not across the board?

[BruceD 0]

I like this thinking as a read only.  I was thinking along the lines as a confirm to save when leaving the note.  So, if you did inadvertently change something, you have the option to back out. Or another idea is to put on an edit button to edit the note.  Like always, this can be an option in preferences.

[eric99 138]

FYI: this is a link to my EditConfimation AHK script (for evernote on windows). For the time being it's a good work-around and we may use it to assess different solutions to prevent accidental deletion/modification.  Hopefully this info may contribute to the final implementation in EN...

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/104215-autohotkey-scripts-for-evernote/?do=findComment&comment=487691

 

Edited December 27, 2017 by eric99
============EditConfirmation script v0.0.15

[mwiecek 0]

+1 for Lock/Edit mode

[eric99 138]

If you need read-only functionality for evernote on windows, have a look at my AHK script:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/104215-autohotkey-scripts-for-evernote/?do=findComment&comment=487691

Now I can finally grant my family full access rights to our "paperless home" without any risk of accidental loss of important data :-)

 

[onatbas 10]

Hello everyone. I just saw this thread and wanted to share my solution to this.

I had this exact same problem, and it looks like that's possible on the programming interface, but not in the application. So I've written an application to mark notes readonly through the API. You can use this to have read-only functionality in Evernote, it's very easy to use..

Here's the link to it. http://onat.me/readonlymaker

 

I've been using it for a while and it's gained some more users in the past year and I must say it completely changed my way of using evernote. Now whenever I have a note that's not readonly, I get restless.

 

In case anyone wants to build on this, here's the code https://github.com/onatbas/readonlytagger

[DTLow 4,739]

2 hours ago, onatbas said:

Hello everyone. I just saw this thread and wanted to share my solution to this.

Thanks for the post on a read-only solution for notes

I like that your solution runs in the cloud. I investigated implementing read-only by updating the contentClass field, but I could only implement on my Mac

Your unlock process is awkward.  I'd prefer a simple unlock of the note instead of: 

• This will create a duplicate of the same note in your default notebook, which you can edit (title and content only). After you're done with it, add "makemigration" tag to this duplicate, without changing prior tags, and sync. After a minute or so, this duplicate will be deleted and your original will be updated with the content you provided in the duplicate.

[CalS 4,491]

Uh, not to do anything at this point?  And they don't discuss futures at all to date.

[CraigZ 21]

Upvoted.  I'd also like a way to automatically read only a block of notes, or notes older than a certain time frame.  I'm quite paranoid that a random keystroke (or other hickup) will result in note contents being deleted and it not being realized (for a long long time).  [Although I suppose this is a reason for versioned notes in premium]

[DTLow 4,739]

Read-only is still not an Evernote feature, but see the post below for a solution by third party Filterize

 

[DTLow 4,739]

Read-only is not an Evernote feature, but see the post below for a solution by third party Filterize

 

[Mehdi H 0]

One year and a half, and nothing !

I stopped using Evernote just because of this, and I was hoping this feature would have been added now, but... no !

It's a shame !

[UncleRic 12]

This has been a popular concern for nearly a half-decade.

Yet, there is apparently no movement from Evernote™ that I'm aware of.

[s2sailor 943]

23 minutes ago, UncleRic said:

This has been a popular concern for nearly a half-decade.

Yet, there is apparently no movement from Evernote™ that I'm aware of.

There have been numerous suggestions expressed over the years that the EN team haven't implemented so I wouldn't feel too singled out over this one.  I can sometimes understand the direction they take, other times I'm baffled.  FWIW, I would like this too and have upvoted the topic.

[ActorTim 1]

On 6/8/2015 at 8:20 AM, gazumped said:

Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z should undo a careless keystroke ...

It should, but it doesn't.  The lack of an 'undo' feature or support for Ctrl-Z has caused me problems on both iPad and in the browser UI when I'm using Chrome on Windows.

[UncleRic 12]

....how to I see the history of my edits?

[DTLow 4,739]

7 minutes ago, UncleRic said:

....how to I see the history of my edits?

Evernote maintains a Note History data backup.  More info at https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313858-How-to-access-and-use-note-history

Access to the data is a paid feature; you can subscribe for a single month.

[UncleRic 12]

I've been a Premium user for years.   I have several THOUSANDS of notes from software development to legal papers.   I hadn't notice the 'i'nfo button before.

There's probably a dozen features that I'm not aware of.

Thanks for the 'i'nfo.

[geetarplayer 6]

2 hours ago, marc_k said:

+1

Just a simple "Lock Notebook" option would suffice. To edit any Note in that Notebook, user can "Unlock Notebook". That's it.

It would help A LOT.

Across all platforms.

Thank you guys. Great product! I love Evernote!

Please start a separate thread. What you're talking about is different. We are talking about Notes, on a per-note basis, as locked/read-only. Not an entire Notebook. Thanks.

[Seraphym 0]

+1 from me! I want to be able to set a note as Read Only or Archived, with an extra step beyond just clicking within the note or on the edit button. Something that says clearly: You are about to edit an Archive copy... or even better: The Archived note CANNOT be edited at all; if you want to add to or edit the information, you have to choose "copy this note" or whatever the menu wording is for making a new note with the same information.

Now for my tirade: I cannot count how many times I've been horrified to realize something got deleted or changed - especially since I often don't have a backup copy somewhere. I think what's happening is that perhaps EN designers/programmers aren't actually heavy EN users and think people are being needlessly careless and should simply try being more careful. That seems about the size of EN's attitude towards their users. (I don't use the word clients because it's so obvious that we're not considered clients.) One of the things I had hoped to be able to rely on when I subscribed was the note history feature, but like another user mentioned, the way the history is saved is somewhat random and almost never catches what it was I accidentally changed. One of the most common, and most annoying times I lose information is when I'm trying to copy and paste from a note. If I accidentally hit any other key, it's of course replaced by that letter and my precious info is gone... for some reason Undo doesn't always work.

This was actually one of the very first features I noticed was lacking when I first began using Evernote in... gosh, it must have been around 2007 or something? I was actually shocked; Evernote seemed to be such a forward-thinking, intuitive program that I just couldn't believe something like that wasn't already in place. I have to say that I am actually kind of disgusted that it's around 10 years (TEN YEARS?!) later, and this is nowhere near close to being implemented.

I've been growing more and more unhappy with EN ever since they began to charge for certain features which had previously been free. I would have been happy to pay for new features for premium users, but I felt quite exasperated with having to shell out just to continue using features I'd become dependent on. Now, on the one hand, it makes financial sense to hook people on something and then charge for it. I mean hey, that's the tactic used in certain other, um... shady deals, shall we say? But it doesn't make sense to me to alienate customers over it. I've been a subscriber to Premium since it was introduced, because like I said, I was dependent on certain features and the idea of changing the way I collect, store and access all my information was too overwhelming to consider.

But after reading about feature after feature that I have wanted and clearly other people have wanted for years just being ignored, I have come to the conclusion that Evernote designs Evernote according to what they think is cool. Not their users. The very first rule of coding and marketing is that if the end user (majority, of course) doesn't like it, it's useless. I have started researching other note-taking, information managing systems as many of them have improved over the years. I'd still be facing a sea change in terms of my entire framework of collecting, storing and accessing an actual metric ton of information (If it was on paper), but I'm starting to wonder if it's a sea change that just needs to happen in order to keep progressing and becoming more efficient. And that makes me really sad.

[EWest 3]

It happened: I let a labmate look at a circuit diagram in one of my notes, and he accidentally deleted the diagram and closed out before the change could be reverted. Please implement this feature, Evernote! The current system makes our data terribly fragile, and it's extremely stressful!

[DTLow 4,739]

7 minutes ago, Elizabeth West said:

The current system makes our data terribly fragile, and it's extremely stressful!

I posted this feature request but I wanted to address the fragile and stressful comment
I'm recover lost data from backups.  I have personal backups and Evernote has a Note History backup feature.

[EWest 3]

8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I posted this feature request but I wanted to address the fragile and stressful comment
I'm recover lost data from backups.  I have personal backups and Evernote has a Note History backup feature.

Fair enough! I also have personal backups, but noticing and correcting these data-loss problems is time-consuming and stressful. Also, Note History is only accessible in Premium or above, and we can only afford Plus. The read-only feature seems like one that should be accessible at any price point.

[UncleRic 12]

If you're a paid subscriber, such as I, then you should have access to your HISTORY.

It's located in the top-right corner with the three (3) dots: ...
Choose 'History' and go from there.

 

[EWest 3]

17 minutes ago, UncleRic said:

If you're a paid subscriber, such as I, then you should have access to your HISTORY.

This is true for Premium subscribers but not for lower-tier paying Plus subscribers like me. I understand that Plus was phased out this year, but those who were already members got grandfathered in. This is the message I get when I select "Note History":

 

Sorry this side-conversation is getting pretty far afield from the purpose of the thread. I just hoped that sharing my data-loss scare might help nudge Evernote in the direction of adding this requested feature.

[onatbas 10]

Hello everyone. I just wanted to let you know that I've provided a solution to this problem a while ago. Instructions are available here: http://onat.me/readonlymaker 

If you want to learn more, I have some more comments in this thread, a little old by now but this solution still works, there actually are a quite a number of users. 

It doesn't need anything to use, you just add "readonly" as a tag to a note, and they're locked in evernote in next sync, simple as that, works in every platform.

Best,
Onat

If you have any feedback, kindly reach out via evernote certified consultants page ( https://evernote.com/certified-consultants ) by searching with my name or via my website .

 

[UncleRic 12]

This has been an issue for YEARS.
Evernote appears to believe that only Premium subscribers have access to history; which is different from having a mutable/immutable toggle switch installed.

I don't see the difficulty (from a software-developer's perspective) to have such a simple locking feature.

They are actually two features for Evernote.  The doc-locking should be standard  for ALL  users; the history could remain a PREMIUM feature... less useful for the general user.

I don't know how to get Evernote's attention to address this.

[DTLow 4,739]

44 minutes ago, UncleRic said:

I don't know how to get Evernote's attention to address this.

The read-only feature request is posted at the top of this discussion.  You can indicate your support using the voting buttons at the top left corner of the discussion.

I'm using a Mac and data backups are easily implemented using Evernote's export feature.

[. . . 2]

read only or even revision history. I understand revision history is a big ask though.

[DTLow 4,739]

1 hour ago, . . . said:

I understand revision history is a big ask though.

Evernote has a revision history feature; more info at https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313858-How-to-use-note-history-to-view-older-versions-of-a-note

I also maintain my own version using incremental backups

 

[CalS 4,491]

13 minutes ago, eric99 said:

What good are these backups if  you don't know which notes have been  altered accidentally?

Good question.  Though, typically I don't know something has happened until I access the note and realize something is wrong, or I can't find the note (one I'm sure I created).  Doesn't happen often, but at that point History does the trick mostly, but the backups support the oops delete.  Local notebooks I have to use my own ENEX backups for both altered and deleted.

[Antonio Puglisi 0]

On 9/4/2018 at 8:03 PM, Shane D. said:

Hi All,

You may have noticed that all threads requesting the ability to lock notes and make them read only have been merged into this thread, regardless of platform specificity. 

This was done in order to better enable us to quantify and qualify user requests, and amplify their voice.

While this does not mean this is a feature that will be coming, we certainly want to relay user feedback/sentiment to our various teams.

Moving forward, please put all commentary and votes for the ability to lock notes and make them read only support here!

+1

[Bestranger 0]

4 years and still nothing ? We need this function for Android !

[gazumped 7,506]

1 hour ago, Bestranger said:

4 years and still nothing ? We need this function !

These forums are for feature requests - Evernote isn't obliged to deliver on any of them,  and may well have other work planned (or other, better supported requests) which have to be completed before a given request is considered.  This particular suggestion has 11 votes - some current requests have over 100.  And the CEO has just gone public with a statement that existing bugs and inconsistencies are being prioritised over new features - which may mean development being shelved for a year.  Although,  this feature already exists on mobile devices so maybe they'll bring desktops in line...