ukw

Doesn't make much sense to refer to OneNote here, although both applications serve a similar purpose. But as Evernote is based on a database (afaik), OneNote is based on file and folder structures on the storage level (even when the notebooks are stored on OneDrive, where the OneNote files are hidden except for a URL link file). In the original OneNote format notebooks are simple folders in the file system, sections are files (with the .ONE extension) that hold all pages and subpages in an object centered format based on XML. So it's natural for OneNote to use a hierachy, but lacks 1-to-n relations. A note(page) has to be in exact one section. If you want to sort a chocolate pie recipe under "pies" as well as unter "sweets", in OneNote you would have to create two sections and put copies of the recipe note in them. All changes would have to be done to both notes separately. In Evernote you simply add both tags to one note. That's the beauty of relational databases. Yes, OneNote does have sort of tags, too. But those are merely an optical marker of certain objects (like paragraphs or pictures) whith almost no way to use them as a filter or for detailied searches. I am not trying to bash OneNote here (in fact, I have been a OneNote MVP for several years, and still very active OneNote user), I am just trying to point out that the underlying data structure/model of both programs are very different and I suppose it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to just transfer organisational concepts from one to the other.

I am no programmer so I may well be completely wrong here. But I could imagine that the main problem with offering complete encryption on a cloud-based service like Evernote may be the search / indexing function. To my understanding, the search mechanism needs to access ALL notes if you do a global search. So to find a specific word you would have to either download every single note and decrypt it, so the search term and content could be compared for a possible match. Yes, I know, this is simplified because index tables are searched, not the actual notes. But the problem is basically the same. I'm not completely sure where the search in Evernote is done; offline with a search mechanism on your device (I doubt it, think of Smartphones) or online on the servers. If the latter, I don't know how it could possibly work because all notes would have to get decrypted on the server first, which has to be impossible if you want an end-to-end encryption. Simply put, to find a note, the server has to read it. But the purpose of encryption is that the server can not read the content. How to solve this? As far as my limited understanding goes, full encryption would be possible but it would break the search functionality. OneNote btw is facing the same problem. Yes, it can encrypt complete sections (which, in case you don't know, is the middle hierarchy level between notebook and page) but the search function is always excluding encrypted sections. I'd love an expert, maybe even an Evernote engineer, to drop a few words on this and hopefully confound all my theories.