benkrall

FWIW I absolutely apologize for being unpleasant about this - but I don't really know what to tell you. If it's unpleasant for you to read the thread, try to imagine what it is like for users who do have data loss constantly out of EN.

I am only in this thread today in the first place because I had to spend my entire morning redoing research from several years ago, which when clipped into EN was not saved reliably and was ruined and unusable to us today once the original source URLs were not available.

Similar issues happen probably 40% of the time I need to refer back to some past research. Normally I don't even contact EN anymore because I know they will not be able to help. Today was so frustrating I went to find out whether there was ANYTHING active going on with this issue.

1 minute ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

I'm sorry you're having this problem, and honestly if it's this big a deal for you, and you are so convinced that Evernote hasn't got this right and never will, I do wonder why you're still paying for a Premium subscription.

Me too.

I apologize to my fellow users who were really upset because they had to read... all caps letters...? I understand my approach here may not have been the most helpful, but no one is forcing you to read this.

The issue is that Evernote support and their presence on this forum is completely disconnected from the engineering quality control of the product. There really is no functioning channel for EN users to communicate how bad this QC issue is. For crying out loud you can't even submit a support ticket if you're not a paying subscriber.

Many of us are heavily invested due to existing workflows or business projects that are set up on the EN platform. 

The constant issue of data loss and overall quality control for software that is supposed to be a reference tool is a top line failure to prioritize the actual functions that are essential to the tool. It's a fundamental fail if the note saving app by design allows parts of notes to become unreadable - full stop.

Additionally, when users spend many hours per day interacting with the EN environment, each of these issues become gigantic obstacles when - for example - I have to spend hours repeating research because images disappear from notes that just happen to be a few years old, and the source media URL no longer exists.

3 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Maybe the clipping works as it does  because there are use cases (obviously these are not your use cases) where a link is better that the object itself.

If you want to create a permanent copy of something in EN there are tools to do so:

1. Use the screenshot tool build into WebClipper
2. The „simplified“ clipping option stores the picture itself
3. Use the „Create pdf“-option of your browser 
4. Use the „Print to pdf“ option of your OS
5. Use the „Copy picture“ In the context menu of your browser

All these will create permanent „still“ copies of what you want to preserve. Which is available depends on the OS and client you are working on. I concede I have a blind spot with Android that I avoid to use, but with Win10, MacOS and iOS there are sufficient possibilities to create a permanent copy - if I choose to do so.

Like I'm saying, I have been using EN for 12 years... it has NEVER been reliable for images.

Yes, I understand the difference between clipping from a web page which would often result in a "referenced" image (which will eventually disappear) and clipping an image file directly.

The issue is that Evernote do not care about the fact that this distinction between REFERENCED and SAVED FILE is not obvious to most users, and results in tons of data loss.

This advice is beside the point because I have lost media in notes saved with each method 1-5 you list above. Evernote still have not solved how to use media in notes, whether it's a linked file on the web, or a file I drag in from my desktop, or a screenshot from the helper tool, etc.

Additionally, there is no way to know - if you're looking at an existing note - whether the media is being pulled down from the web every time the note is opened, or if the media data is actually saved hard in the note. So users have no indication of whether they will lose their media once the source web site puts an extra character in their directory names, or whatever.

On 1/6/2020 at 5:02 PM, Darxy said:

So my question to the forums is:

Is this a thing? Will it happen all the time? Should I cut my losses?

Thanks!!

Evernote is a mess right now and they cannot figure out how to actually save data reliably.

If you are extremely careful and keep redundant records then you will be fine.

If you don't feel like repeating all the work of keeping references for every single thing you clip - I can absolutely guarantee you will continue to lose data from Evernote.

Once users have too many notes to be able to monitor every single note for corruption, items from many years or projects back in the past will start to be missing images, URLs and so on.

7 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

 

@benkrall My Post that crossed over with yours is as valid to your post as the one above.

If you want to store a picture, do it. When you rely on a link instead, it is at your own peril that the object linked to is gone one day without further notice. If you use a hammer instead of a wrench, don’t blame the tool for bad results.

There should be no "link" functionality.

Why would you ever want to save something in Evernote that could disappear if the source web page changes at all? There would be no point.

What if I made a xerox of a newspaper article because I wanted to preserve it? If the physical newspaper got recycled, would my xerox just look blank?

No - it is obvious there should be no "linking" of media. Any user would assume that if they are "clipping" something into their notebook, it would be SAVED and not just referenced to a dumb link out on the web somewhere.

1 minute ago, PinkElephant said:

Personally I admire your ability to suffer through 6 years of talking to support instead of walking away from such a deficient product.

However, one should know the difference between storing a link and storing a picture file.

I can only read between the lines of your quite long posting that actually you did not loose pictures stored in EN, you just find out that at the far end of links you have stored there is no longer a picture the link was pointing to. This may happen, because the existence of a link does not control the object the Link is pointing to. If the picture is taken away, the Link points to nothing.

Up to now I have not lost a single picture I have ever (sic) stored in my EN Data base. Maybe you should start to save the pictures instead of links.

No - there are huge issues with BOTH types of images in EN - referenced and hard saved. I am saying there is no reason EN should EVER be sourcing a referenced image file from the web - there is no excuse for this behavior since there is no reason why ANY USER EVER would want to save media from a web site, but ONLY BE ABLE TO RETRIEVE OR REFERENCE THIS MEDIA IF THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MEDIA ON THE WEB HAS NOT BEEN MOVED.

I personally never clip directly from a web site, because EN obviously does not understand this issue.

Even if I drag an image to my desktop, or use the EN screenshot tool, images will eventually disappear into the garbage bin of Evernote.

On 3/27/2019 at 12:53 PM, Nick L. said:

@sergio.stanislauskas@gmail Just to confirm, when you capture from the website, are you sure the images are saved into Evernote? We normally see these issues when the images are hosted somewhere else, yet they display in Evernote as an embedded object. If the location of the moves or is taken offline, Evernote won't be able to locate it and will display a broken image link. 

This is a total garbage design. The note should be preserved AS CLIPPED permanently. There is no excuse for this strategy of "soft saving" which in reality only leads to data loss.

If I am clipping media into the EN software it should stay clipped period - there is no excuse for this garbage.

EVERNOTE DO NOT CARE ABOUT THIS ISSUE OF DISAPPEARING IMAGES.

I have been trying to explain this to Evernote for at least 6 years.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO POINT IN SAVING MEDIA TO EVERNOTE FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER IF EVERNOTE CANNOT RECALL THE IMAGE IN THE NOTE, OR WILL JUST REPLACE IT WITH A BROKEN IMAGE LINK. THIS IS GARBAGE QC AND MAKES THE ENTIRE PRODUCT ABSOLUTELY USELESS IF WE CANNOT TRUST THAT THE DATA. IS. ACTUALLY. BEING. SAVED. IN. THE. NOTE. PERMANENTLY.

This is something that should fundamentally never, ever, EVER happen with a product that is supposed to be saving data for reference. The fact that this kind of bug has been rampant for the entire 12-year time I have been an EN user shows exactly what drives the company.

IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE A PRODUCT FAILING MORE AT ITS PRIMARY PURPOSE, THAN EVERNOTE FAILING TO SAVE AND PRESERVE PERMANENTLY THE MEDIA THAT IS CLIPPED INTO THE EVERNOTE APP.

Here is a list of my previous support tickets that deal with Evernote deleting or otherwise darn it just can't seem to figure out how to save an image.

857599
821527
771763
754394
753118
624503
624456
573723
321207
288595 

973194

958985

1711817

1718770

1673628

1784075

1644774

1673628

1718770

1995674

1854690

1852494

2593069

2595489

3038620

LITERALLY ALL EVERNOTE HAS TO DO IS SAVE THE IMAGE FILE ON DISK SOMEWHERE, AND MAKE A LITTLE XML FILE THAT DISPLAYS IN THE APP, WHICH IS BASICALLY JUST A CRAPPY WEB BROWSER.

QUALITY CONTROL AT EVERNOTE IS OBVIOUSLY NON-FUNCTIONAL.