tavor

The surveys were interesting, but the insights these guys are offering are mediocre at best. This was written in 2019 and one of the authors had this gem: They were so proud of this insight, they set it apart from the rest of the text and bolded it. Longtime users will remember that EN did this color refresh a few years ago. For the power users, which I assume has high correlation with what the surveys refer to as "daily users" (and whom the authors say EN should focus on - which I agree with), this went over like a lead balloon. Of the many dozens of highly requested features that we've been waiting years for, a different green and grey color scheme was nowhere to be found. Other similar "insights" in this article. These guys must churn pieces like this out b/c they really didn't put much thought into it. But surveys are interesting and do highlight the challenge EN faces. For a daily user like me, it's easy to forget that daily users are actually a small minority. Makes me think that either the other 80% of users needs a different product, or the 20% of daily users need a different product. Because there's no way both camps are optimized by the same product.

Just checked this in Windows, and you are correct. Thanks for posting this! That certainly makes life a lot easier when trying to recreate note links after importing enex files into EN (or another note app). The GUIDs should still be in enex, but having this alternative linked path to the target note is better than nothing.

Completely agreed on that. You remember when Libin was talking about competing with MS Office? What a joke. EN's QA process is not in the same universe as Microsoft. Business customers could simply not abide by consistently buggy general release products. Just look at all the hours EN cost its users with v10. Do that to businesses and they are gone. Thanks for the link, I'll give it a read.

To clarify, the ENEX files do not include GUIDs (unique note identifers), so nobody - not Joplin, not OneNote, not even Evernote itself - can recreate the note links during import. Yes, that's right - if you rely on enex backups, in the event your database has a problem and you import those enex files into Evernote, all your note links go bye-bye. This is a failure on the part of Evernote. Would have been so easy to include GUIDs in the enex spec. Tiny open source project Joplin includes unique identifiers in their export format, so their note links are preserved. But somehow EN with its army of devs couldn't manage to do this.

Fanboyism? Me? Nah, I've been very critical of EN as my post history would make evident. We'll have to agree to disagree on where EN Basic Legacy stands among the competition. I've looked around and to my mind, EN Basic is right up there with the best note taking apps. Who said anything about 30 days? It can be 6 months or even 1yr, which is more generous than most of the competition. Given that many competitors are offering shorter trials and apparently still drawing users, a 6mo or 1yr trial shouldn't be much of a deterrent to people trying Evernote. And then ~$25/year. Again, what is your alternative? To keep Basic unchanged feature-wise and keep it free forever? How will they grow paid subs with most users content to stay on free Basic?

Not joking. In fact, eliminating free forever comports with your view on Evernote's growth trajectory. If the note taking space is well past its hype phase and is "as mundane as scan apps", then what is the point of keeping the current Basic level free forever? Free forever made sense in the rapid growth phase, especially if the view was the market potential is massive. But if it's a niche market, as you believe, how does offering a very feature-rich product for free with no time limit make any sense at all? EN Basic is arguably the second best note taking app in the entire space, right after EN Premium. At the very least, EN Basic is right up there with the best of the competition, nearly all of which are paid subscription services (exceptions that I'm aware of being OneNote if you are buying Office 365 regardless of whether ON is included, and Joplin; I don't consider Google Keep in the same category, that's just digital sticky notes). Having such a feature-rich product free forever does little to induce upgrading to Premium - most of the additional features in Premium are quite niche. EN realized this, which is why they started a few years ago to reduce Basic's feature set, and they went right for a broadly used feature - multiple devices, which they curtailed to 2 + web. And recently they pushed on the same lever, and limited multiple devices to 2 including web. Can't tighten down any more on this particular feature because syncing is a huge part of the appeal of a seamless note taking app, so you have to let users try this for free. If you agree with me that Premium's features, apart from multiple devices, are quite niche, which I suspect you do given that you view the whole note app category as niche, then adding more power user features into Premium isn't going to radically drive Basic users to upgrade. The other option is to reduce Basic's features. What else can they take away from Basic while still giving users a compelling experience that would drive a good portion to pay? To me, the answer is obvious. Keep Basic's existing features and time limit it. With that, I throw it back to you. What is EN's path forward in what you view as a relatively slow growth market, if they keep Basic free forever?

The post right above yours has a link to a post containing the apk.

That position says a lot about how they view their users. I posted a link to latest version prior to v10 here:

Did you uninstall EN v10 first? Did you download the correct version for your phone (the site has a link that helps you figure out which build you need for your phone)?

If I were on v10 and wanted to roll back, I'd get the prior version apk from this site (have used them multiple times in the past, never had any malware): https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/evernote-corporation/evernote/evernote-8-13-3-release/

I don't understand why EN is forcing their unhappy android users to go to third party sites when EN *obviously* has the older version. I had tagged one of the employees in another thread on this and got crickets. This is obviously nonsense. Of course they have a way for users to install a prior version - just put the prior version apk up on a server and give us a link, just like they did for legacy versions for Windows and Mac. Even though this doesn't affect me since I never updated to v10 for android, I am more than a little annoyed by EN's response. It's one thing to completely ***** up the release, but it's another to ***** your users when you could obviously remedy the situation.

Not to mention they were preoccupied with distractions like selling bags, socks and mugs.

So amazing that Evernote hasn't been able to deliver this for over a decade, while tiny open source competitors started within the last few years allow you to easily navigate long notes.

1-4 is a great idea, provided your attachments are named the same as the note title you want. So for at least the subset of local notes for which this is true, I think this sequence would be very efficient. While I like the idea of offloading large files out of Evernote (even apart from the privacy issue), the one thing I worry about is whether the folder structure will be preserved. Meaning, I have to remember not to touch those folders. And on any new pc, I have to set those folders up so they have the same paths as they did on old pc. Can it be done? Yes. Over time, is this potentially fragile? Yes. But I suppose this will always be the case when you have a collection of pointers to files somewhere else. What were you thinking in terms of making step 5 efficient? I'm not familiar with html, so there might be an easier way, but if you export those notes as enex, then import the enex file into Joplin as markdown, then export the notes as markdown files. You'd end up with a folder full of markdown files - easy to search, easy to navigate with a markdown editor like Typora. Should work well if the notes don't go crazy with html formatting (fonts, colors, text size) and use simple formatting like bold, underline, bullets, etc. as that translates well into markdown.

No, Joplin does not have local notebooks in the sense in which Evernote Legacy does. The difference between local notebooks and offline notes seems to be a common point of confusion on this forum. Maybe I can clear things up. Evernote's Local Notebooks refers to local-only notebooks. Many of you may not be familiar with this feature as EN has downplayed it for years, even hiding it a bit. So you either knew about it from back when they did talk about it or you found it from hunting through the menus. None of the notes in these local notebooks gets synced to the cloud, so they also cannot be synced to your other devices. These notes reside *only* on the device on which they were created (in EN, this means a desktop/laptop as only the Windows and Mac apps allow you to create local notebooks). The obvious user benefit is privacy - since these notes are never synced to the cloud, you don't have to worry about the app provider, cloud storage provider or cloud hackers ever accessing these notes. The obvious drawback is they aren't synced, so you don't have access to the notes from other devices. They also cannot be used for enhanced search and sharing functions since EN cannot access these notes. Local notebooks are gone in v10 and this feature is not coming back. Those of us for whom local notebooks is an important feature for some portion of our notes (i.e., the notes we don't want to risk others accessing) have either already left or are using EN Legacy and will have to figure out what to do when Legacy is no longer supported. Separately, you have offline notes. This refers to local storage of synced notes, as opposed to cloud-only storage. With offline notes, if your broadband provider, or EN or the cloud storage provider experience an outage, you still have access to your notes. Another benefit of offline notes is that there is zero lag. When your searches have to be sent to the cloud, executed on your cloud stored notes, then results sent back to you, you might experience some lag. Getting back to Joplin, it does NOT have local notebooks. What it does have is offline storage, i.e., all your notes are stored on your synced devices, in addition to the cloud.

The bolded part cannot be emphasized enough for those who prioritize privacy and security. To be fair to EN, they are not alone in this approach. Many note apps are not offering either: (1) local-only notes that are not uploaded to app provider's cloud, OR (2) E2E encryption that does not leave the encryption key in the app provider's hands And with a full cloud model, good luck accessing your notes if there is an outage (at EN, at their cloud provider, or at your broadband provider) or if you lose power at your home and cannot power your broadband equipment. I hope they reconsider, as they are best in class in the note space, but after listening to the CEO in a few different conversations, it's clear to me they are full steam ahead (though if enough users opt out, well, the business doesn't exist without the users, so it remains to be seen what proportion of users draws the line vs goes along). I've been looking at alternatives, and like @NorcalScottI'm testing out Joplin.

Joplin allows use of outside editors. Typora seems to be a popular choice among Joplin users. I'm using it, and I love it, particularly the outline view (something I've wished EN had for years, and which made long notes in EN painful to deal with). Not sure that's the only advantage of markdown, but markdown files can be read in a plain text editor like Notepad (Windows). Joplin stores data in a database file, like Evernote. With both apps and I would guess most note apps, the individual notes aren't stored as individual files. You can view notes using the app, or export them in whatever formats the app provides. In the case of Joplin, options include JEX (Joplin export format, analogous to ENEX), markdown, html, pdf. And if you choose markdown, you get individual markdown files that can be read in any plain text editor (or markdown editor of course). In the conversation between CEO and their design guy, it sounded like tags will remain on the bottom and out of the way of people who don't use tags (the allegedly 98%), but that there's more room at the bottom so they'll be able to take advantage of that to expand on tag functionality (I guess, though I can't imagine tags are going to get anymore emphasis under Ian Small than prior CEOs, given his claim about how only a sliver of users use tags).

Not gonna happen. That was a deliberate decision. CEO and design guy put a conversation on youtube where this was discussed. According to CEO, you are in 2% (or might be 5%, figure seems to change) of users who use tags.

I haven't heard/seen EN officially say it's permanent, but I'm pretty sure it is. As per @PinkElephant's post, there are very few options for local-only notebooks. The good news is there are note app options with E2E encryption that encrypt your notes and your note app provider/web host does NOT have access to your encryption key (unlike Evernote), meaning you are the only person who can decrypt the notes. So that might be an option that will satisfy your company's security requirements.

Would be nice if Evernote staff could clarify their position on this. We have had numerous people asking for the old Android app. Since it is possible to install the older version on Android, and since Legacy versions are provided for Windows and Mac, seems to me EN should provide the old Android app. I may have missed it, but I have yet to see EN provide a link to this. Which means unhappy users either put up with v10 Android app and disrupted workflows, or they take a risk and download the apk from a third party site. @Shane D.can you please clarify EN position on this? Does EN provide a link to the prior Android app? If so, please share it. I'll make a copy of the link as well and post it whenever I see people asking to revert.

@eric99 - I need to correct myself. Typora does have a WYSIWYG view. It's a fantastic editor that lets you do things that EN editor cannot. Some implementation of an outline mode has been requested for years by EN userbase, and we still don't have it. Typora has it and you can use that as your preferred editor in Joplin. Also, Joplin editor has WYSIWYG in beta.

I can believe that no one in senior management uses Evernote on a daily basis. In fact, I'd bet money on it. Of course they disabled comments on the video.

This cuts both ways. For certain when you are a small competitor, you better have data portability, otherwise users with thousands of notes at larger players like Evernote will be reluctant to try your app. But what happens when you are the giant in the space? Do you really want to have excellent data portability, when it means you could lose more users than you could gain? Most of your new users are new to digital note taking or only have a small number of notes, so data portability isn't critical for them to try your app.

Roam and Obsidian have changed the game with respect to note linking. Evernote is a laggard here, so I expect they will enhance functionality. This thread is more concerned with recreating note links. For whatever reason, EN does not include each note's unique identifier in the enex file. This is a problem for users who are making backups of their notes in enex format, expecting that if there's a problem with their database, they can restore by importing the enex files. They can restore, but all their note links will be lost. In the context of this thread, this creates a portability problem for users who use note links. No app (including EN itself) can recreate those links, so users making extensive use of note links may feel somewhat trapped because their data isn't as portable as EN has led them to believe. So in this thread we are discussing ways of getting around that.

Would you mind posting the script? Maybe I can do something similar using ENscript for Windows. If I can access note properties using ENscript, that would probably be easier than doing this via AutoHotKey.