IncrediMetaBeta

Is there more than one way to respond to someone's reply to my discussion forum question?

That is, AFTER CREATING A TOPIC/QUESTION and RECEIVING REPLIES:

How [by what method(s)] can I reply specifically to another member's particular reply to a question topic I've created?

1. Is the only method clicking on the link whose title for the entire page is something like "reply to question"?
2. Or is there some means to click specifically on a particular member's response to my question?

#1 would mean my reply to someone's reply is among all of the replies to the original question.

#2 would (presumably) mean that my response to someone's reply is visually associated specifically with their reply.

Is there a place where I can seen messages I have sent directly to other members?

What must I do to customize my Home page in Evernote for Web? 

It's my understanding that I should click the Customize button in the "upper right corner" of my browser to customize Evernote for Web's "Home." That's the advice given by the following help page: Customize Home – Evernote Help & Learning 

A.K.A. -- {https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360058119773-Customize-Home#:~:text=save your changes.-,Web,Click the "Change" button.}

But when I log in to Evernote for web in my Edge browser window, I find that in the upper right corner I see this: 

Is this the "Customize button" ?  It does not appear to be. This is baffling or, as Samuel L. Clemens might say, It is a dark and bloody mystery.

Pray tell, what must a customer do to customize their Home page in Evernote for Web?

Solution for Edge until the ostensibly working v30 is available for it.  Open evernote on web, create note, perform a "select all" on wikipedia page, drag and drop it onto newly created note.  Keep calm and carry on, until such time as v30 is available for Edge. Then clip every single Wikipedia page. That'll show 'em.

How can I  stop my Galaxy S9+ from syncing?   

I'm concerned it may "BRICK" my phone it fully syncs all my notes.

I think my notes total about 75+ GB.  It's partially synced (about 12%).  

Eventually, I can increase the memory on the phone, but I'd like to find an immediate "fix before brix."

Please advise, thanks. 

What alternatives are there to creating notes after the 100,000 limit is reached? I tried searching on ths in the support area but saw no results (per image below).

Obviously deleting existing notes is among the choices to stay within the 100,000 limit. I presume, too, that you can have your cake and eat it too, ie., that deleting existing notes can be combined with "archiving" / downloading the notes to be deleted. 

I also suppose that merging existing notes may be another option for skirting around the 100,000 note limit. I'd be interested in hearing any step-wise method for choosing which notes to merge say by tag or other means.

What about upgrading to a team membership, where the note limit is 500,000?  This is more costly of course. What is the minimum number of team members required to qualify for team membership?

All ideas appreciated.

Even from those who may say, "why do you need so many notes?"  Such responses would be even more greatly appreciated if the response includes thoughts about why it should be unnecessary to have so many notes and how one can still capture information but organize it better (?more betterly?) with being a profligate note creator.

Please do not hesistate to risk soundiung condescending or dismissive. I value your knowledge, insight and opinion, however you are inclined to express it. 

Thanks and kind regards,

Incredimetabeta

For some, this may be "TL;DR"   I hope I've organized this usefully for easier reading.

Desire:  I would like to resume using tags again in a "more better" way.

Maybe we can all learn if you will share your candid thoughts about my Personal Shackleton Tagging Expedition.

"Men wanted
for challenging journey.

Low, close, intimate contact, long hours of complete darkness.
Stamina critical. Safe return doubtful.
Honor and recognition in event of success."

Current Tag Status:  I abandoned organized tagging years ago. I am still hiding in my safe space after my failed voyage
Evernote Database:  Large collection of about 50,000 notes. Estimated 3,000 tags. (NOTE: Evernote allows up to 10,000 tags.)

Tagging Purpose:  To support research, writing, collating information. 
Vision:  Support my writing process by using Evernote to roughly approximate the Zettlekasten concept by which notes may be tagged and/or linked.
NOTE: I am not trying to recreate the full Zettlekasten system, merely copy some of its functionality using tagging and note linking.
I've not researched recent Discussion threads about tagging yet am generally aware of the various "schools of thought."

Brief history:  I originally started with individual tags.
                     They grew too numerous to assign quickly.
                      Figuring that hierarchical tags might help, I spent much time creating a tag hierarchy. 

I abandoned creating a tag hierarchy because of the cumulative effects of the following:

1. I had to locate about 2,000 tags hierarchically and later edit and simplify them.
    
2. I decided NOT to discard existing tags until all were relocated, else it might defeat the purpose by destroying potentially useful metadata. 
    
3. I discovered that dragging tags was very slow. 
    
4. I discovered that I continually need an overview of the entire hierarchy, but at that time the app wasn't conducive for toggling between fine details and the big picture and back.
    
5. As the hierarchy grew, scrolling to reposition tags got even slower.
    
6. I tried creating tag "metacategories" using punctuation marks at the start of some tag headings, but this had unexpected effects on alphabetical ranking and I could not figure out the alphabetization order for punctuation.
    
7. I realized I couldn't rationalize and simplify the hierarchy, because I could not see the entire tag list on screen or in a print out.
    
8. Unable to see the entire tag list, I concluded hierarchical tagging was unmanageable at least at this scale.
    
9. I checked a few third party apps but concluded they were immature and of no use.
    
10. I immediately knew that New Zealand evenote visual mapping company would be "a-goner" when they hired a documentation person whose material was useless.

Good old "Al Bell" --- Remember him?  Alexander Graham Bell.
He invented the telephone a while back.
At some point in the process, he apparently said,
"What hath God wrought?" Maybe that was Horace Greeley?

Thus I SAY UNTO YOU... 

VERILY, WHAT HATH EVERNOTE WROUGHT AND WHY DOESN'T IT COME WITH WARNING LABELS?
ADVICE AND CRITICISM WELCOME AND GLADLY ACCEPTED,
even comments which suggest I should have known beforehand that such a Voyage of Discovery would lead to disaster.

Is there any fix or workaround for this?

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

Hi.  If you select a note and hit 'export',  Evernote will do that one note. If you select a notebook,  you'll get the whole notebook.  If you select 'All Notes' you'll get everything but ENEX does not store notebook information.  If you restore your notes from that file,  you get 75,000 notes in one notebook.  Best to save to ENEX one notebook at a time.  Make sure you check the options too - you need to have the 'save tags' option switched on.

Thanks to you and DTLow for your speedy replies.  I had no idea that ENEX does not capture Notebook membership for individual notes.

What about stacks? Would exporting a stack also lose Notebook membership?

The File Export function is not exporting.  I'm using 6.22.3.8816 (308816) Public (CE Build ce-62.6.10954).

From within EN for Windows, I tried to backup my notes as an ENEX file. The notes were already fully synced. I have about 75,000 notes. 

Within a millisecond of clicking "SAVE," I got a dialog box saying, "Export Succeeded." 

Sure enough there is an ENEX file it created, but what I got seems to be an XML file of about 333 KB containing just one of my notes.

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong. I'd appreciate any help, please. 

Can Evernote see, edit, download, and permanently delete my Google contacts?  I don't recall seeing such a 'scary' warning before from Googoo, the company that (as we all know) "does no evil."  I was shocked to see a message onscreen saying this. It happened while trying to explore Google's "Backup and Sync," which seems to be their favored way of accessing Google Drive these days.

Before I could even view Google Drive, "Backup and Sync" wanted me to first go over some Google "Account stuff" including reviewing and either deleting or approving third party companies to whom I've given various Google Account access permissions. These include Evernote and Linkedin. 

Why such a draconian message?  Does anyone have insight into what's going on here? 

• Would Evernote really do this?  And, if so, why?
• Or is Google using just an abundance of caution? 
• Or is Googoo engaging in a bit of scare-mongering for ulterior reasons?

21 hours ago, Aaron Force said:

I started having problems yesterday with not responding. I could type about a sentence then it would crash every time. I logged out, restarted, didn't matter. I just reinstalled the desktop app this afternoon and it did it again. Only now after several times doing this it won't even load notebooks or notes. It is completely non-functional now. This is absolutely ridiculous—there must be a solution. What do people do to fix it?

Optimizing the database has not worked for me.  Aaron, I do not say this lightly.  Neither do I wish to be sarcastic. Rather, I say it sadly since I commiserate with you:  "Welcome to Hell."  Evernote is the most horrible of the greatest products on which I strongly depend.  It has such promise, were it to really work, and were the company to be responsive to customer concerns.  Alas, Evernote (the company), whether intentionally or not, is simply "busting pans, across the peasants' hands."   You are now on the frontier.  Welcome to the Wild West.  The company seems to have neither effective help, nor candor, nor product map, nor shame.  There are some very kind and good people on these forums. Be patient. There may be some answer to the problem, but continue breathing, since there is no assurance it will happen anytime soon.

On 9/19/2017 at 2:16 PM, rwl said:

There needs to be the ability to select multiple notes in the web version (new version).

Evernote eliminated that from the new web client I gather.  Probably to protect the innocent.  

2 hours ago, csihilling said:

Well, you certainly would seem to have enough horsepower.  I have a 4 year old lap top, a 256 GB SSD, 32,600 notes, a 17GB data base, and no response time issues, so it can be done.  A few suggestions:

1. Hold the Ctrl key and press help in the EN menu.  Then press optimize data base.
2. If you have Context turned on, turn it off, Tools - Options - Note - show Context.is at the bottom
3. Some say Instant sync causes issues (it doesn't seem to for me), so if you like turn it off, Tools - Options - Sync.  If you leave instant sync on, set the synhcronize automatically window to every 30 minutes.  But do remember to force a sync if you make a change on a mobile device and you return to your PC.

Advise if any of the above helps or not.

 

 

Hi, per your suggestions, I have started with step 1.  (I meant to ask you first, should I back it up before optimizing?)  I proceeded anyway, and the optimization pop-up progress bar completed.  However, after that and placing my cursor in the application, I now get the "not responding"  error message.  Of course, I can just "kill" the app and relaunch, though I have not yet done this.  I wonder, is there a possibility that the Enex database on my PC has become corrupted in some way?  

Hi csihilling, thanks for your response.  I'm using a new (8 month old) ASUS laptop PC that has an i7 Intel CPU and 16 GB of RAM.  It has a 512 GB solid state "HD" and no disk drive.  (Please note that I am not a particularly fast typist.  )

Also, please be aware: I have virtually no other speed issues with any other apps besides EN for Windows. This behavior in EN for Windows can occur EVEN when the only apps open are EN for PC and a few chrome browser tabs.  In other words, it seems to happen even when system resources should be amply capable of handling text entry.  

The "not responding" problem occurs in much the way I have seen it described in the forum:  You start to type a note in EN for PC, and by the time you get to about the 5th word, you get the message, which lasts for about 10 to 20 seconds.  Once the message clears, it will come up again soon though intermittently.  This seems to occur particularly when first entering text in a blank or existing note.  In other words, it seems to occur with a bit less frequency with a note that has already had these "hicckups," these interruptions during the same editing session.  

I have wondered whether the "not responding" errror results from some background activity, such as EN for PC trying to contact the EN server to begin to sync the note, despite the fact that hardly anything has been entered and there should be no urgency for this to be performed right when an EN user has some fertile idea on their mind that they want to immediately capture.  

Could something background activity like this be the explanation?  

It is beyond merely "annoying".  It renders EN for Windows useless for anything but data capture.  That is, the much vaunted ability of Evernote to serve as your writing app is completely undercut by these interruptions.  (Remember Phil's interview with some guy who said he had written a book entirely within Evernote?)  The problem has been very discouraging and made me wonder whether I should stick with the product.  I've been a user for about 3 years.

There is a broader point I want to make here.  Considering that this problem has been pointed out in the forum for quite a long time, yet there appears not to be a resolution, I strongly suspect that the company is not aware of its huge significance.  

Why?  If one is a software engineer, your professional performance rests on having solid neurocognitive abilities of being able to acquire and retain a lot in your short term memory. My impression is that software engineers excel at this "metaskill."  In other words, it's easy for them to deal with "interruptions."  

As they and management and support and web page folks engage with each other to consider the company's top priorities, I can see this problem slipping down to a lower priority.  As though someone asked, "So, what's the big deal?  What's the problem?  It's just a few interruptions~!"

Well, perhaps it has escaped their attention (which would be only human) that not everyone has the cognitive strengths of software engineers. IMO, many so-called "creative" people may not possess such cognitive strengths to nearly the same degree.

Thanks for your quick response.  I look forward to you insight and suggestions.

On 5/8/2016 at 7:29 AM, ClutterBGone said:

The only way that I was able to solve this issue was to instal a solid state drive. WOW, what fast start-ups and since the SSD was installed not one time have I seen the dreaded (Not Responding)
Regards,
David in Wichita

 

I have an SSD drive and I get the problem all the time.  Why?

7 minutes ago, Carr1e said:

Yes - this.  I'm an involuntary user of the new version now, I guess, given that I'm having a problem in the old version that I'm told will not be fixed.  One of my bigger challenges in the new version is the layout.  It's so big and bubbly - there is SO MUCH white space, meanwhile, I'm seeing so little of the information I'd want to see - like a longer list of notes, or the list of notebooks and tags alongside my notes.  It takes more clicks to get to everything.  I'm not loving it.  I am hoping for a 'compact view' option or 'smaller font, less white space' option or something to make the view more functional.   

 

 

 

I believe they don't know design from their elbow.  I do not care how many "professional GUI" technical people they have.

Involuntary is a good way to put it.  We have all been carried along, whether or not we want to be, at least to the extent we have come to rely on Evernote, and most of the people you see on the forums are very dependent on it.  

I mean my critique to be constructive, though I think more often than not, the "squeaky wheel gets greased."  The development group's M.O. seems to be simply to tally votes, not to engage in critical, original thinking.  

The interface (which you describe perhaps more aptly than anyone, btw) could be either an imitation of some style they have seen or it is someone's 'wet dream' of how to bring Jony Ives' non-skeuomorphic graphic ideas for iOS to Evernote.  

Part of the stupidity of the new version, as you rather politely point out, is all the wasted screen space and the way needed functions have been removed or obscured.  It is "clean and fresh" but markedly less useful.  Non-skeuomorphic graphic ideas may be appropriate for the iPhone's iOS.  But to adopt and apply so blindly such minimalistic supposed "design principles" is folly.  

I would argue that, if you put EN's developers to the test, that they could not name a single design principle.  They would be able to identify various requirements but not a single design principle. I would bet money on it.  (What they don't realize is that they already are betting money on it, ie., the company's future.)  

My point is that the new interface (so-called) "design" is merely a mannered style, an imitation of something and that it ignores many functional requirements that were fulfilled in the old version.  They seem to have arbitrarily abandoned many of those older functional capabilities that the old version possessed.

Does the new design follow "principles"?  It follows "style principles," which are not only different from "design principles" but are of a different logical type (Whitehead and Russell, 1910 - 1913).  When "style principles" (which are really just policy guidelines at best, actually) solve a design problem, it is purely by chance.  

Many people like what Ives did for the iPhone. But many of them imagine that it is simply an aesthetic change.  But Ives did not do it mainly for aesthetic reasons.  Nor was it solely from an intent to simplify appearance or to reduce supposed "clutter."  His thinking was far more dynamic.  Whereas most style imitation is the outcome of a tendency to reflect on the design problem's requirements statically, coupled with an inability to embrace the dynamics among requirements.

The sorry truth is that most of what passes for design, including EN's GUI design of the new version, is mostly the mannered imitation of a STYLE.  A design that "evidences" a "style" may solve a problem, but mainly by happenstance.  It is almost never the result of a simultaneous solution to a complex set of functional needs.   One can see in such supposed "designs" some attempt to embrace a false sense of unselfconscious innocence about the actual complexity of the problem.  "It'll work, mostly, if we just do THIS."

There is a rumor, perhaps as plausible as any, that EN made the new interface to appeal to their Japanese users.  (So much for "localization"!)  So now they've got not one but two lousy interfaces: the old and the new.  The old may be better, but it has its shortcomings.  

Why have they created two faulty interfaces?  Because they not been willing to dialog with their users about what they are trying to do.  They are fearful of being whipsawed between differing opinions.  They are fearful that there are no quick methods for solving problems in their full complexity.  The unfortunate truth for those of us who are being involuntarily carried along is that EN shows not just a lack of design capability but of courage.  

Whether such lack of courage is conscious on their part is not clear, but what underlies such lack of courage is unfortunately interpreted adversely by customers, whether the company's motives are well-intentioned or not.  I am reminded of William Henry Vanderbilt's remark to a reporter, "the public be damned."  Doubtless, there are many dedicated employees there.  Management may even be of high caliber.  But so far they have not turned the situation around.  They should leave behind any idea of becoming a unicorn.  They need to learn how to toggle between being a hedgehog and a fox, if they hope to survive.

44 minutes ago, Glennie said:

When they find a postage stamp with a small mistake in the design it normally becomes very very valuable. They are sold in auctions for ridiculous prices.

The same thing is true for positive comments about the web interface. There are thousands of people on the forum looking for one in the hope that it will make them rich. They search and search...

 

Hmmm...  maybe a futures market on GUI features?  Or just auction off the code?

On 6/24/2016 at 9:04 AM, scruggles said:

You should be able to switch to the Classic Evernote for Web in Settings by going to:
Settings>Account Summary>Evernote Web>Go back to old version

 

Alright but, do be honest and candid, is it not true that though some can do this now, that the ability to make the switch back is only temporary, and that soon everyone will have no alternative for using EN on the web but to use the new, "improved" version?  A timid response or no response will not be regarded with equanimity by the aggrieved.

On 1/22/2016 at 10:01 AM, Glennie said:

And the changes that do come down the tube now and again may or may not coincide with the desires of users. It's a lottery. We should be used to it by now and will just have to be content when the occasional update hits the spot.

 

 

Not that you are entirely incorrect but, if your quote above were wholly accurate, it would imply that there is no hope that good design can achieve both: serving customers and increasing profitability.  So long as the nature of the end-product seems to be even a little more than the result of a random crud-shoot (ie., that it reflects some degree of well-meaning, conscious intent), you will continue to have users persisting in the idea that their opinions matter and will make some difference.  However, what I sense you are saying is that such a perception is a snare and a delusion.

On 8/22/2016 at 0:43 PM, scruggles said:

@jim232777 If you have an older account, you should be able to try the new version without worry. You should be able to switch back in settings if you have an account that was created before August of last year. @JuanAraya Any newer accounts will only have access to the new web client. 

 

Yes, but it is not true that someday soon ALL USERS WILL BE FORCED TO USE the new version?

Kindly inform your user-base of the truth.

On 8/22/2016 at 11:41 AM, ClutterBGone said:

Why do you make changes to something that has worked well for some time? Is it just for the fact that "you" must justify your position as a change agent? Please respond with three justifications as to why these changes that have been made to the web client are a good thing for your Evernote customers.

 

And, while you are at it, raise your right hand and swear an oath of truthfulness before you respond...

On 1/27/2017 at 9:03 AM, Mike Kuplevatsky said:

... I have switched to Consol.io. It offers what Evernote does, plus more (tagging, encryption, mobile support, bookmarking systems, Notes and Files organization). 

 

Keep the forum posted with how it is working for you.  You will help many people and Evernote (the company), too, because only the threat of defection will get them to take action.

On 10/22/2016 at 11:39 AM, IncrediMetaBeta said:

The new web interface is a beautiful, beautiful fashion statement.  Ease of use?  Who cares.  The main thing is that it is sleek and modern, users be damned.

Somewhere I heard that it was intended to respond to feedback from Japanese customers of EN, who have a different GUI aesthetic.

At this point, I do not need an aesthetic.  I need an anaesthetic...  Full-body, preferably.

On 1/24/2017 at 8:44 AM, Tara53 said:

The inability of Evernote to receive feedback via tickets (as opposed to a forum post) is hilariously amateur.

 

Oh, really?  I have not observed much laughter.  Though I have seen much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.