timmycomedy

Thanks for the tips.  Sadly today I went into airplane mode and the moment my app connected, 3 versions of the note I was editing appeared.  Also lost some text this morning before even leaving the apartment.  The good news is that Development has finally got enough information from me and are working on the issue.  It seems to be some kind of glitch in the way Evernote keeps information prior to syncing - this is my explaination and understanding so my terms or description may not be accurate.

Some of the Info From Support:

“Thanks for keeping in touch.

I really appreciate your effort in providing additional information of your concern. I've looked into this further based on all the information I've gathered from you, I can confirm that our development team is now aware of the performance issues you are encountering. Our Development Team is working diligently to fix these issues as soon as possible, and we do hope to see the improvements on our future releases as well.”

=

It took me countless hours to learn the right terms, find others with the issue, prove it’s not just stupidity, and get them to duplicate it in any way, but finally they can see the missing text issue themselves.  

Then I was also able to do the same with the duplicating notes issues that myself and others are experiencing.  I should note that even when I have been astronomically careful, that duplicate notes still happen, so even when I walk on egg shells, it’s an issue.
Their reply to that one:

”However, if the note was not open anywhere else, and you are still having duplicate copies of the note, it appears that this is already now a known issue that our product team is currently working on. Evernote is already working on improvements to sync to help reduce conflicts.

Our development team is currently working on improvements to reduce conflicting notes occurrences. I've gone ahead and gathered all the helpful information you provided and added to the report that is open with the development team. Although I can't give you a specific time frame of when this issue will be fixed please do know that our product team is now hard at work in addressing this issue.”

So it’s my hope that I’ve finally documented and proven the issue.  Please share with others who have been as frustrated as me, it may give them hope to know there is an active fight to get this fixed.

Best,

Timmy

5 hours ago, Aman Pichunia said:

Only Evernote Web. 

Data loss is as follows:

 

I added the Human Elephant Conflict and Unified Count section to this note and upon next visit to this note - Magic - Railway Collision Section is replaced by a "checkbox".

Conclusion - Data loss occurs near the edits I make. 

Interesting.  So this is a different problem than I have Development addressing at the moment.  I have been combing through all examples of missing text for their team because I keep experiencing data loss and saving issues myself.  However I don’t use the web version, only the apps.

I’ve noticed that documenting the issue and trying to show that it happens to other people while also emailing support regularly has really raised the profile of my own issue, so that’s my advice.  I know it’s time consuming and frustrating - I feel as if I had to take a week off of work to address my own issues, but if the end result is a fix so we can move forward with a product we get mad it, but at the same time root for and need, I suppose it’s worth it.  Best of luck.  I know they are now working on similar issues so perhaps that will fix your own as well.  

I’ve been pushing hard for a fix and pouring tons of my own time into it.  Hell, I feel like I’m working for them at the moment.  They should offer a free year to someone who discovers, documents, and pursues a fix until it’s resolved.

20 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

Evernote is my first and top suggestion. I'm mostly joking, because I know the question was about alternatives to Evernote v10, but for me v10 is way better than legacy Evernote. I rarely have conflict/duplicate issues and I run Evernote on 5 different devices and have two of them open all the time -- sometimes working on the same note (which is not recommended). I don't have performance issues or other big issues mentioned in this thread. (I have tiny gripes like the thumbnail image being random, no backlinks or linking to anchors / TOC, collapsible sections, etc. -- but no app is gonna be perfect.)

Alternatives to Evernote are: Upnote (best fit and pretty awesome IMO), then Notesnook, then Nimbus Notes, then Ample Note. If you are Apple ecosystem only then Craft then Bear. Also check out https://www.noteapps.info/ (if you haven't seen it already) for a good sight with good comparisons. Funnily enough, noteapps.info doesn't have info on Upnote last time I looked.

That’s so interesting.  I wonder what it is that I’m doing so differently.  I use Evernote all day off and on and have some 20,000 notes - maybe that’s the issue.  I regularly use an iPhone 11P, iPhone 12M, iPad Pro, and iMac Pro, newest v.  I also switch from apps.  I’ll read an article in Safari, then go back to Evernote to write my joke.  Then go to the calculator app for something, then back to Evernote.  Maybe that’s unusual.

One thing I could be doing different is that I travel and use Evernote - on the NYC subway from Office to home.  Also at home my wifi is a service of the building and it fluctuates.  I wish I could learn which factors are different for me.

i also start every day using a self-created Evernote template.  Maybe it’s my use of templates that’s different.  I also always add images.  Maybe too many images in a note bogs down the local version?

In my own experience it feels like local version VS cloud version are in this never ending war of attrition.  The end result are some 4-6 duplicate versions (“a copy of this note has been saved” warning), missing text, and screen lockups.  I would love to discover what things I’m doing are different or the same.

On 6/3/2022 at 7:22 PM, PinkElephant said:

Interesting …

Not my experience on a number of iOS devices.

Just to mention it: The green swash does not sync anything, at least not directly. It just stops editing mode and commits the changes / additions to local memory. Plus it flags the note to need a sync.

After hitting the swash you still are in the note, but editing mode has stopped, the soft keyboard is removed. You can go back to editing, or leave the note. The swash symbol is replaced by a back arrow, which takes you to the notes list.

 When you go to the notes list these notes carry a green triangle. It does not show a syncing activity, it just says “content not yet synced”. When syncing takes place by itself, you usually see nothing. Just the green triangle disappears after a while.

To the video: As I see it, you have a problem whenever it saves locally. When you go from title to the notes body, I think it makes a saving (in the background). The same happens when you hit the swash - it should save your changes to the note locally, on the device.

From what I see it does that in your vIdeo at about 2:10. It turns the edit mode off (keyboard goes away). The only difference to my experience is that the swash is not immediately replaced by the back arrow. This points to something going on locally, not to a syncing problem. It seems not to be able to write that little chunk of data in an instant to the local memory.

This is different when I try - the swash is replaced by the back arrow in a blink.

This is IMHO no case for a forum discussion - I don’t think that peer support can solve this issue. This is something for EN support, probably for the tech department (2nd level) there. 

It seems that whatever the green icon does, the local save issue, is the problem.  Local (Edit) Version Vs Cloud Version.   I think this also is why endless duplicate notes get created for myself and others.  In normal use, there is always one version on the device and one version on the cloud but it never seems to merge in a user friendly way on any iOS devices throughout the entire day.  During what would feel like normal usage, local version Vs Cloud version seems to be constantly in a war of attrition rather than constantly working in user-friendly tandem.  The end result is screen locks, missing text, and duplicate notes with ongoing consistency.

i guess that, yes, the best I can do is keep trying to get support to understand the issue until it’s resolved, rather than having them keep sending me to the forum.  They are likely working in ideal environments, so I wonder how they can ever duplicate it.  Let’s hope they can and I’ll keep nagging them on this one, because it’s become so time consuming & I see what feels like similar complaints all throughout this forum.

On 11/25/2020 at 9:47 AM, bonster713 said:

What's even worse is that when it does sync in "real time" it sometimes creates two copies - the one just saved and the one you are adding to. So you get a notification "we found more that one version..."

So now as I add to my gazillion notes, each new note gets one, two, three or more copies. ARG!

AND if it syncs in the middle of you typing, sometimes it just doesn't keep the last 10-50 characters you typed!

This.  One thousand times this.

This issue of “more than one version” has become a plague for me.  Do you notice that this can happen many times with the same file on the same day?  Even though there doesn’t seem to be any reason outside of “normal usage?”

On 6/10/2022 at 5:26 PM, DavePageGA said:

agreed. I am so tired of note conflicts and not knowing what to do with them. AND it keeps adding bullets to my checklists.  AND I have never liked the oh-so-wonderful search that doesn't even take you to the "found" search item. AND why does it take 3 steps to find a sync button in the phone app.  AND what is so hard to understand about having shortcuts that have to be found on the android app instead of being on top. I used to love evernote, but now I hate it and am considering other options, up to and including a stack of post-it notes!

I have spent countless hours on those note conflicts.  Then I have to side-by-side compare them to see which one warehouses any kind of important missing data.  most days I get up to 6 versions of the same note, are you seeing this issue as well?

On 6/10/2022 at 5:39 PM, Boot17 said:

Man, life is too short to use software that you hate. I'd do more than just consider if I were you. There are so many other note taking, document tracking, and productivity apps out there -- so many.

Do you have any suggestions for someone who likes adding images, & using self-created templates daily?  I have yet to find an app that lives up to old Evernote.  I like saving voice as well.

On 2/16/2021 at 7:42 AM, kongulu said:

I am very sad to say - I think Evernote has lost it's way.

What is needed is a leader with a clear vision and the VC's to back them up.

I do not fault the current management team, I am sure they are responding to financial/market pressures and user feedback to craft the Everneote they think the market wants.

I would love to buy Evernote and return to the roots which was a personal database product that makes it easy for users to create, collect and retrieve information.

Maybe what is needed is a new company that starts from scratch - but that takes soooo long to get going.

Today everyone is trying to create Enterprise/Business products, what I want is a personal product that I know will be around 50 years from now. I want a product that will be around in the future, so all my efforts will not be wasted. There are so many ways Evernote can be developed to improve the management and analysis of private or shared databases. There is a huge potential, a blind spot actually, that all the products I am aware of are missing.

I wonder how many other people want the same thing - a personal database that will be around 50 years from now?

omotxx@gmail.com

 

 

 

Amen.  I use Evernote as a very important job and life tool.  It’s like an ADHD cure when used and setup just right.  I keep all of my written jokes in a complex array of folders which make things so easy.  I can come up with an idea on my iPhone Evernote and then complete it back on my iMac.  I save images, use it for a personal knowledge base and Evernote had become my memory.  But recent versions have made performance so bad.  I think the last updates I cared about were being able to add images, colored text, private links to other notes, better search, image text search and voice notes.  Outside that it’s just gone downhill.  I would pay double the money monthly for just a clean, high-performance personal version that doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that have caused personal grief like wasted waiting time and constantly lost text.

When I last tried OneNote I couldn’t find a way to save images or email notes.  It just doesn’t have the features that the high watermark of Evernote had.  And it was harder to organize notes.  For me Evernote peaked in 2018 or 2019.  Which makes me sad.  Even a broken Evernote still is far better than a lot of similar apps.  But that’s starting to change.  I would never have jumped ship in 2018.  Now I’m constantly looking for something that can just do what Evernote could do by 2019.  I wish I could buy the 2019 version and build a fork that’s just for personal knowledge-bases.

OP - do you use other versions of Evernote?  Is the text that you are losing random or is it the most recently edited text?

On 6/11/2022 at 9:19 AM, ivodre said:

When editing existing notes or creating new ones, it regularly happens that when I press the check on the top left in order to finish editing and go back to the other notes, instead of a "back" arrow appearing, the check symbol stays there but stops working. The only way to get back to other notes is to restart the app, which causes the modifications in the note I was working with to be lost. 

Extremely annoying and if not fixed a deal-breaker.  

This is what seems to been happening to me as well, or is very similar in experience.  When you tap on the check mark it just freezes, and you’re stuck.  You can’t click on search or anything?  Same here.

This happens on any iPhone or iPad of mine and I have a number of them, all modern.

Do you also notice that some of the most recent text will disappear, only to return… sometimes?

On 5/15/2022 at 6:12 AM, ARW999 said:

When I come to the end of taking notes I have returned back 6 times to re-edit my additions only to find it has not updated the last saved contents. This is possibly due to the tick on top left not functioning properly or could be something else. If the green tick doesn’t click does that mean it is not saved?

This has been exactly my experience.  It’s always the last few words I added.  And I agree - the tick on the top left doesn’t seem to work properly.  I kinda got grief for calling it a “sync,” because I don’t know the technical terms.  I guess it’s a local save trigger?  Either way it certainly seems to have issues.  And the end result is that it doesn’t update recent text - or in my case it may vanish or reappear, luck of the draw.

On 6/5/2022 at 8:19 AM, Fred97816 said:

The same thing happens on my 9.7 inch iPad Pro. I opened a ticket and the suggested work around was to make sure I am logged of if EN on my iPhone and MacBook when using my iPad. Not practical.

I agree.  I haven’t gotten much practical advice yet, and nothing has worked.  I feel like I’m always getting the *same* advice too: check battery, reinstall again, is Device old?  Which sadly doesn’t help - from my end, I press a button on an app, and then it doesn’t work - that’s all I know.  

From there there’s not much difference to me if someone calls something a local-save issue or a sync issue.  It’s just a “something that doesn’t work” issue for me.  

And whether the app is programmed to save locally or sync isn’t something I can control as far as I know?  From my perspective it’s just: “I press button, button doesn’t work, text vanishes, screen freezes.” 
 

I’m determined to champion this issue and have been getting into detailed work with support for some time now, so I’ll keep you posted, as I feel your pain, trust me.

On 6/5/2022 at 12:00 PM, Fred97816 said:

IPad Pro is second generation.

battery is in good shape. I use extensively while traveling.

all other apps are snappy.

i did a complete reset yesterday and did not restore from a backup. This is an Evernote issue.

i have another theory. I have Lockdown on this iPad. When Evernote is saving, my iPad is constantly trying to connect to the google owned app-measurement.com. If I allow access to this tracking app, Evernote saves and syncs quicker. 

I’m willing to try anything to fix this as it’s so annoying. What’s “Lockdown?”

for me, Important notes are almost always clipped where I lose a phone number or some important final thing I wrote.  All devices, all good batteries, all in great working order and updated.

I wonder if there is some setting I turned off like “don’t send feedback to Evernote” that if I reinstall and turn on “send regular app feedback” it will make things better.

Thanks!  So… Lots of memory, I keep a handheld charger so I never run low as I’m a continuous user.  I’m going to test long term and continue sending examples to support.  Hopefully they are helpful.  I was truly worried that others were universally having this issue but if not, then I’m baffled as it used to work on all devices just fine.  Honestly I was less careful in the past as well, because I’m not really a technical guy.  It was more robust before.  Whatever changed seems to have happened on both my iPads and my 3 iPhones.  Maybe Evernote saves to my iCloud now!?  That would explain the consistency.

Ah, sorry I’m not a technical guy or forum poster typically so I thought similar meant helpful.  I’ll make sure to just post on this issue in my own specific forum post moving forum.  Just to close, here’s how that file looks now, which is bizarre to me - it’s neither the over written version nor the original.  It’s an example of missing text and how it appears later after I haven’t touched the file:

:

I will test using a new iPhone soon.  The very difficult part is that a video that duplicates the longer time frame issue - I where text vanishes when returning to the app is less practical.  I will try to find a way to show the more serious issue.

I was retapping for effect - It will do the same thing even if I tap once - which is what I typically do when not trying to highlight that I’m tapping.  But thanks for the tips.  

You do not make it better by chastising anyone who adds their stories or data. Let’s keep the dialog friendly, we’re all in the same community here.

I’m here because support referred me directly here.  There is a ticket in, that’s how I got here.

I’m trying to *connect* similar issues (sync and vanishing text) with *specific* videos and information to show the *variety* of ways it happens, adding a new example each time, to add to the dialog and encourage others to also express specifics.  Discouraging others I feel is less helpful than sharing examples.

This is one quick video and one example of one method that text can vanish.  Thanks for the overwrite tip.

I can feel everyone’s total frustration here with the sync and vanishing text issue. I have the same issue and so do many users that I speak with and there’s even multiple people on this forum with the issue.  From what I have gathered today it’s on old iPhones and New iPhones, it’s on iPhone 7, iPhone 6, iPhone 12M, iPhone 11P, multiple iPads… older and newer OS versions.  And it’s been described by multiple people in multiple locations in multiple ways.  But in short: OS devices: iPhone and iPad and even the iMac Pro… all have sync and vanishing text issues.  There are many posts on the subject where I have elaborated technically.  So now…

I’ll tell you my story of how awful this ongoing issue was for me just recently:

I’m a comedian.  A comedic writer.  What I write and edit is my bread and butter.  Jokes are not simple to edit and it’s not easy to come up with new topics.  The way Evernote was helping me was that I could use the mobile app to jot down a joke the moment something happened or the moment an inspired joke came to me.  These moments are rare in short term timeframes.  The best ones may happen in beautiful streams of 10 great ideas or they may happen once a month.  The habit of the comedian is to MAKE SURE you write down the joke, the idea, or the odd moment IMMEDIATELY.  Once you have captured the joke, you can go home and edit on your Evernote and make it so much better.  Evernote using this habit had been my secret weapon.  That and watching tourists. 😂 

Just last week I had a rare moment.  I was out with friends and our dialog was some of the funniest back and forth I’ve had since before the pandemic.  As we were talking I started writing and couldn’t write fast enough.  It was a moment of pure inspiration!  I was so excited that I finally had a long burst of post-pandemic material that was so thick and detailed and real!  I couldn’t wait to get back home and edit the jokes.

I walked and left 23rd Street and got on the train back to Wall Street where I have my unusually small office.  Instead of heading home I just wanted to go to my office and finish this golden material.

By the time I switched trains at Union Square, I excitedly looked and even though Evernote was still open, it displayed the elephant logo and then the spinning icon (which happens all too often).  In the past this was no big deal.  It was just syncing on its own I guess.  But when the note reopened - most of it was gone.  My heart sank.  I felt like I had just lost a wallet or fell off a ledge onto the tracks.  I fearfully checked my other notes, opened and closed the app, checked my other phone - and it suddenly occurred to me: “Oh no… this is the sync issue - why did I write those in Evernote; on no - now it’s happened on something even more important!”  
 

I went back to my office and tried to access the history of the note, I closed my apps, I tried the “shake-the-iPhone” history technique - I must have tried 20 things one after another in panic.  Then I tried to write what I could remember into a new note on the Notes App, in a panic-rush of fear.  In this panic, it made it even harder to remember the jokes.  Or even the themes.  I called my friends who only were able to give some fractured ideas of what was discussed and most of those weren’t the ones I thought were fantastic.  Only a fraction of it remained.  It looks far less inspired.  My excitement was completely drained.
 

I also had that feeling in the emotion of the moment that I had “lost a ton of notes (meaning “text” - notes taken, not entire files, so I know what you mean).  And even though I may have salvaged one or two good bits partially, it hurt.  I feel every word of your pain.  I feel this disappointment. This is often felt so deeply by someone who writes VERY important notes (text) when it can never be fully recovered - those who understand how truly great Evernote was… and how badly this makes us feel right now: let down, crushed.  Friends who write lyrics, jokes, meeting logs, show ideas, innovations on OS versions are all hurting right now.  This is not my technical post, I’ve already posted plenty of those, trying to tie this same issue together through their multiple posts .:.but I echo the emotion of yours.

Losing text is very painful to anyone who is extremely reliant on every specific word.  So I understand because I too have “lost a ton of notes.”  Is it precisely a metric ton?  It is not.  Does it convey that I have lost at least 2,000 words of text so far, many extremely valuable phrases and sentences in the past month or more?  I hope it does.  And I feel your agony.

Yes.  This also happens with newer iPhones.  As I go through the forum here I’m seeing evidence this is widespread and on newer and older OS devices.  It’s also happening on newer and older iPads.  If you can, comment on my Vanishing Text post.  Lets try to get them to fix this!

A broken OS device sync is causing multiple symptoms: vanishing text, locking up of Evernote, and more.

This is any iPad or iPhone.  Multiple people have reported variants of this issue and because it has caused multiple different symptoms, it’s been described differently each time.  It’s this: Sync doesn’t work properly on OS devices: iPad or iPhone locks up for a good amount of time and text vanishes only to sometimes reappear.

When you tap the sync check mark icon, it seems to freeze for 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  During that time you cannot tap on Search or go back to Notes using the icon.  Tapping sync again does nothing.  Reinstalling doesn’t help (and constantly reinstalling this app when I rarely if ever have done that with other apps doesn’t instill confidence).  It’s always.  It’s easy to duplicate.  It’s multiple OS devices.  It happens even with all other apps closed.  
 

I’ve taken hours on hours today to document this issue because it’s got me at my wits end with Evernote and I’m fighting to finally get it resolved so there isn’t a mass exodus.

i just duplicated the vanishing text and sync button not working here:

So many people are having this issue on OS devices.  It seems to be anyone who writes a lot and often.  People who take meeting notes often and journal.

I have a ticket in with multiple back and forth moments and a video and for some reason they still don’t understand the issue.  It’s this: sync doesn’t work.

When I tap sync on a note, all Evernote buttons freeze, and sometimes the text will just vanish.  Sometimes it returns, sometimes it doesn’t return at all.  Here is a video where  I just duplicated the VANISHING problem.  Pretty easy to duplicate.  Just use an iPhone.

On 5/18/2022 at 2:36 PM, PinkElephant said:

My experience is completely different - it is working snappy, reliable and it is fun to use.

You can take two ways to solve the problems:

1) Completely uninstall, when asked dump all data, switch the device off, on again (Apple logo must show), and now get a fresh install from the AppStore.

Install, login and wait with using it while it downloads the initial set of data. If necessary turn autolockscreen off, make the app active and put the device to a charger.

It is much faster than the offline download, but still this will prevent the download to be cut off by iOS closing the app.

2) Contact support (who will probably prescribe a similar medicine).

I can confirm having taken all of those steps and the problem remains.  And by the way, this is the generic advice I get from Support when I first submit any issue and now the amount of times I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app (which is a time-suck nightmare when you have 10k - 20K notes) is beyond frustrating.

I agree with the original poster.  I can no longer use the app on my iPhone.  On any iPhone.  iPhone 12M, iPhone X, iPhone 11P.   I’m exploring other note taking options but that makes me sad and I hope it’s only temporary.

Just to chime in, this is still a problem and has been happening on my iPhone 12 and 11.  I think it’s been a problem for a couple of years now.  Not the most urgent with all of the recent sync issues but still it’s out there.

If you are someone who takes notes throughout a meeting or the day, and often saves the current Note, the little checkbox can take from 10-90 seconds to actually work.  And then… when it “works” or saves - the last paragraph or so often vanishes… and then takes up to a minute to slowly reappear!  If it reappears.  This even happens to titles.

this process seems to happen over and over which makes it feel like I’m using a 1992 word processor and makes Evernote on an iPhone essentially useless to me, because if I don’t “wait for each 2 minute per paragraph update” the file will duplicate or my last text will vanish.  If I do wait, it’s so slow that I would miss half a meeting or large chunks of time just waiting.

since this happens on both of my iPhones 12 & 11 - it can’t just be me.

i have attached a video showing it happening live.  It’s beyond easy to duplicate.

11 hours ago, davidtderrick said:

Don’t the developers read these columns? If they don’t, that tells you something about the problems at Evernot

On 9/19/2020 at 8:53 AM, gazumped said:

Hi both - I'd suggest you raise your issues with Support (which we're not - mainly just us users here...).  Evernote may not yet know about these issues but they will want to fix them...

I feel like it's probably safe to say that people have submitted multiple bugs and support requests prior to getting to this forum.  That's how it happened in my case anyway.  I understand your suggestion, but I imagine everyone has submitted so many bugs by now that this is the only place that seems left as an avenue of some kind of hope.  At the very least a place to commiserate.

I have submitted 8 of the some 20+ Showstopping bugs that I have found.  Unless they are going to pay users to work as Quality Assurance Staff, it's excessive to expect that they can launch a complete disaster of a half-product and expect the Paying Users to locate, specify, and line-by-line notate the process of duplicating every bug, so that Developers at Evernote can create a useable product.  If they have a QA staff, what... exactly..... do they do?