Pat @ChildWatch

Sure - I'm living and working in the EU with all the implications of GDPR and data management - and I'm quite happy about that. Companies bringing data from the US legal environment often find the real implementation of GDPR to be expensive and challenging. I really hope that EN makes it.

EN has never fully figured out which audience that it is catering for. Being all things to all people in app's that are available across all platforms is difficult if not completely impossible though EN does a descent job with the latter so long as sync issues are looked after. EN is not MS 365 or other similar multi collaborative app offerings and shouldn't try to be one. I use MS 365 and it is like a collection of apps that are held together with relational sticky tape. Just look at what they have been doing with OneNote since 2016 - it is a mess on Windows and worse on OSX/iOS. For me, I scan doc's onto MS OneDrive and that directory is a linked folder to EN. If EN are looking to implement an appointment and task management system that is linked to objectives along with notes then they could do worse that look at how Daylite presents its data. So could Microsoft. A real annoyance with EN for is the lack of a HANDWRITING capability within EN notes. Gosh, how long does it take a company to get a message - we were complaining about this 10 years ago. The real challenge for the new company IMO is EU laws and GDPR. I work in a community where ENCRYPTION is a way of life and it's hard using EN because certain types of data need to be looked after within GDPR rules and EN is not very good in that regard. Enabling encryption is a difficulty in an app with live sync but if they don't achieve it then individual users could get into legal trouble - and likely EN itself. I've renewed at the new price and I will give them a year and see where they are going with EN. They have a lot to straighten out an it's unlikely that they will sort it in a single year - but they could show us that they have a solid direction and are in it for the long haul - and will get us there. Their financial commitment thus far is impressive - purchase of EN and cost of layoffs and moving to Europe. Let's give them a chance.

IT depends on what you are doing. For me - handwritten notes are essential - and handwritten notation of documents. The point about Steve Jobs is vision and seeing where the EN product can go - should go - and to survive, will have to go sooner rather than later.

I commented on this over four years ago in frustration at not being able to use Evernote effectively with my iPad handwriting features without resorting to using a separate app such as Notability or Noteshelf. I understood then and now that Evernote has many issues to deal with and a lot of scenarios to develop solutions for. But I ask the question: if Steve Jobs had a hand in running EN, would we be still having this discussion 4 YEARS LATER? Maybe, possibly, but I doubt it. That's not a dig at Ian Small because I took the time to read his synopsis of EN's position - https://evernote.com/blog/2020-update-progress-road-ahead/ - and one clearly sees the really big issues that EN are struggling with, and the progress that they are making. The consistent message that has been recurring for 4 YEARS on forums is that EN is losing its consumer base to other solutions primarily because it is NOT SOLVING the issues that its consumers are telling them about in forums like this. At the end of the day, you cannot continue run an app that looks and feels like a 2010 interface - large and clunky with little attempt at 2020 UI finesse - and not addressing the core issue that it is a note taking app that is not great at traditional note taking and PDF annotation. Synching - a strength and weakness for them in equal measure. When I capture a document or web page and it syncs to my desktop, I DON'T WANT EN GOING BACK TO THE WEB PAGE SOURCE TO GET ANYTHING AT ALL FROM IT - I just want the copy that I captured in EN desktop, just as I captured it at the time. My firewall warns me when app's make runs to web sites or call home to EN's servers to get content meaning that if I'm using EN with networking switched off then EN desktop has its problems - namely the desktop app keeps returning to both EN and the web page source to update content - and if you are sensitive to privacy in what you are working on at any given time - that really is a problem!!! EN is now a file store for receipts and documents with my Scansnap and that's it really. It is hanging on by a thread because it got the OCR and document indexing facilities working early on and people with lots of documents that benefit from that indexing facility are happy to stay with them, largely for that reason. And in there is the absolute core of their problem. People are happy to dump their documents into EN and let them do the processing, but in that, the company must be managing humungous data storage with Google which I have to say is unsettling. How much access to data does Google have? I really have no idea - they may have none :) Anyway - getting back to the central issue - I use Notability because Noteshelf doesn't have continuous scrolling/writing which I need for the note taking that I do - and that requires that I have to export content from one app to the other like 2010. Notability isn't Evernote in terms of storage and data processing - but the UI and page scrolling are good. I'm guessing that other note companies are not jumping on the EN model because using OCR is par for the course is document app's - but the storage, syncing and indexing issues are far bigger headaches to solve. EN's UI and PDF notation and handwriting needs to be less 2010 and more 2020. Otherwise they will remain a data storage monolith with a difficult business model to solve. For me - EN was magical when I began using it so many years ago. It kinda still is - there is little out there that replaces it. Load up huge data into Apple Notes or OneNote and you will get the idea of what I'm referring to - but the syncing and 'call home' to EN and source servers is a problem that they need to solve. Come on Ian - put a modern UI on EN and we'll happily drive the new model car while you and your team fix the underlying issues. That's what I used to say to programming students in a former life - software is about abstracting complexity from its users!

Thx for the reply. I'm installing EN on a Windows server atm to see if the problem applies on that also.

Hi I'm trying to find a way to import some older backup files that are several gb in size. I don't want to move to Bear although on desperately needing access to one particular backup exceeding 1gb, I used Bear to open the file and retrieve the data. Bear is NOT a solution to my problem as its handling of clipped pages for example is problematic. Also Bear has issues with enex files that exceed 2Gb. I do not want to go near other notes solutions because their privacy policies are an issue and I handle sensitive material. So Evernote on Google servers and Bear on Apple servers are the only two options for me. So what am I left with? The ideal solution would be to construct a pgrm to breakdown the large enex files into sub 200mb segments and import them. Does such a script exist? I created a local notebook and tried to drag and drop the enex file into it but with no luck. I do hope that I'm missing some simple solution here that I just have not encountered yet. I can understand the need to manage data block sizes and volumes of sync traffic etc for such a large platform etc, but what would be the point of facilitating backups of notes/notebooks exceeding the new data limits meaning that they can never be reimported? Kind regards, Pat

yes - i cannot retrieve some notes unless i have an internet connection I have done a sync reset cmd-shift-sync --> the issues is still occurring --> maybe related - Evernote 7.6 seems unstable on Mojave - I'm having persistent app startup problems

yes - i cannot retrieve some note unless i have an internet connection I have done a sync reset cmd-shift-sync and will check later today if the issue remains

I am concerned since I travel to areas that have poor connectivity and my expectation is that all notes are synced. This is clearly not the case and my problem is that I cannot predict which notes I have on the desktop and other notes that I dont have.

I am having the same issue. And likewise I am very frustrated. I am doing a full resync now and if that does not force all notes onto the desktop then one would have to evaluate EN because the basic premise of the application is broken.

I had been using Noteshelf to get integration with EN but am not really wild about it. I think that Notability is about the right app for handwriting but its search ability is not up to EN standard. I have been using EN recently for handwriting but it is a heavy app when used extensively on desktop and laptop as I do, and it is trying to sync while you're trying to write - iPad Pro or not. I'm not sure at how well EN background refresh performs because ideally, it should be syncing often enough in the office in the background to avoid big downloads when on the road. EN on my phone (iPhone 5s) is virtually unusable on the road for that reason, and I hasten to add that I limit the notebooks available for continuous sync. Waiting for it to sync means that i cannot just open EN and start using it, particularly where I need to reference recently updated information that hasn't reached the phone through the sync process. I really like EN as a desktop product and clearly EN have some thinking to do around these issues. I would not dump EN at all but would say to them that I find myself increasingly using Notability and linking the exported PDF of my notes to Daylite which happens to be the biz db that we use. SO - a BIG shout to EN - I need a Notability-esque interface with continuous scrolling notes that syncs into EN. Penultimate is akin to Fisher Price clunky toys so please don't suggest it as an alternative. right, there's my moan for this morning!

I have relied on EN for many years now and I can see that the company has several platforms to take account of, of which iPad Pro is just one. However, it is a very big one. There is no doubt that post Steve, Apple is moving more seriously into the digital pen and paper space and iPad Pro introduces the potential for the Apple community to adopt the tablet for all things. I loaded up OneNote and was very impressed with it. However, I really just want to use EN for note taking and the pen and annotation shortcomings are actually holding back my own productivity at this point. This will have just one consequence and I believe that if EN does not rapidly move towards the functionality offered by iPad Pro pretty fast then they will suffer just as a host of IOS app makers have been caught out by the Apple Pen. And so I echo previous contributors and urge Evernote to get to grips with this pretty fast please.