Lesicaire

On 10/14/2020 at 4:47 PM, bigtelco said:

Update— I Give Up!

Evernote is now basically unusable for my daily work.  

• Apple Pencil support is fundamentally flawed.
• Search is no longer reliable.
• System is extremely slow, and freezes constantly.
• Features are gone
• No documentation

 

Despite the lack of feature development over the past years, Evernote has always been three things: fast, reliable and familiar.   Despite a new paint job, it is now none of these.

As a result, I have had to shift my daily work to a combination of Noteability and Apple Notes (I also use OneNote occasionally for specific projects).  There has been no communication from the Company other than “we are working on it.” I have not had this type of experience with an update from another long-term software provider.  This is incredibly bad.  This isn’t just inconvenient, this is unusable mission-critical software.   

The good news:  The latest versions of Apple Notes and OneNote are very usable. In fact, I have been quite pleased with Apple Notes of late.  Pencil support is great, documents are editable on desktop, iPad and iPhone. OCR is now quite functional. The app is super-fast on all platforms.  Linking to notes, although a bit wonky, has become extremely stable and reliable.  Tables are available on all devices. Document annotation works.  PDFs are viewable in-line.   You can password protect a note. You can move items in an outline using keyboard shortcuts.  There are keyboard shortcuts to create different types of headings.    You can scan documents directly from your iPhone into a note.  You can add material to an existing note using the “share sheet.”   Checklists are nicer than in Evernote.     It may not have all of the features that Evernote had, but all of the features actually work and were designed with care.   Notes isn’t going to disappear tomorrow. BTW, the annual price is $0.00.   

I have waited for literally years for Evernote to improve, and I have paid for the privilege. I stayed despite not getting any new features, I stayed when the only improvement was redesigning “Mads” the elephant logo. I stayed when the user policy indicated that Evernote personnel might be reading my notes.   I participated actively as Mac beta user and attempted to give constructive feedback. This was their one last chance.  

To say that they have blown it is an understatement.  I don’t think I have seen a release of mission-critical paid software so poorly communicated and so poorly tested in recent memory. Indeed, I fear that this may be the death knell for the Company— I cannot imagine premium users continuing to pay for non-functional software when free versions are certainly superior to a non-functional Evernote.   I certainly won’t. 

“Just wait a couple weeks while we fix this” is not a viable option when you run your business using this software.  Just imagine Microsoft telling all of the law firms and government offices in the nation, “Sorry our latest release of MS Word doesn’t quite work, we aren’t going to tell you what’s wrong, but rest assured we are working on it and we’ll get back to you in a week or two. Sorry you won’t be able to type anything, or if you do it might disappear, but in the mean time, just look at the shiny new screen.....”

Instead, I, and thousands of other users will now waste countless hours migrating our notes elsewhere.   This is sad ending, I love the support I’ve gotten from the other faithful users out there, but how can anyone trust their daily work to a train wreck like this.   At least I haven’t removed the old version from my desktop yet, this should make migrating easier. 

Could not agree more on what has been wrote here. My thought and feeling at the moment.

I have past the stage of being frustrated to be just well... can't even name it properly. Something between pure sadness and disbelief. The way I see it Evernote is a great idea, a great product just poorly executed. Like most of us I love the damn Green Elephant for more than 10 years.  Ten years of my thoughts, ideas, work, memories are in these notes. My day to day workflow (unfortunately) depended on it. I am exhausted to battle with EN Support to find out why this and that doesn't work. My bad I shouldn't update the to v10. It's done now. But After more than 10 years I have decided to leave EN and move to Nimbus which I have been tested for the past 10 days or so. It is not EN for sure. But It will do the job I need for now.

I would have gladly pay triple the price EN is asking now if ONLY they could guaranty after all these years a stable robust rock solid reliable software. But now frankly I do not trust this EN anymore. Not with my data and more importantly for me: my time. My time has value. And when EN messed up the way they have done now they basically taking away what is the most precious from me: time. Because God knows I have wasted time find workaround the past weeks just to get simple receipts get scan send over to my EN desktop, or webcliping a simple webpage or pulling up a simple note when being at the bank to retrieve simple info or recording a meeting I had with a client for 45mn to find out that EN IOS v10 at the end of the recording well did not save it and deleted the recording. You report it to EN support team with a ticket number, they ask the log, reply to you with "we understand your frustration... The dev team has prioritise your issue bla bla bla..." then silence for weeks. You are left to dry with an app that you paid which doesn't work, EN is M.I.A. and you can't work and do nothing.

Enough...

I'm out. 

Not sure what's going on at EN HQ but I have been downgraded to basic account just now when I do have a valid Annual Premium account that is valid until the 28/02/2021. That's exactly 5 months and 2 days from now! And all because of IOS v10 mess! Sorry for the rant again but this has been epic disaster days on my workflow and on my nerves for days now. I can't count the number of ticket I raised with pin point details info I did provide in order to help them troubleshoot the various issues I have been facing.

One of which was related for some reason to have a EN Business account that I have canceled more than a year ago popping back in and getting mixed with my personal Premium IOS account. Notebooks of this EN Business account which I clearly requested to be canceled and haven't paid the subscription since got mixed up with my Personal account. Not sure why happened there. Courtesy of IOS v10. I did what I was trained now to do: raised Ticket# 3158962 and report the issue along others at the same time. 

First email I will get will come from EN Frontliner support keep my EN IOS open for 2h making sure that it doesn't locked and eventually it will sync correctly and thus resolved the issue with the EN Business notebooks. You all guessed what happened. Didn't work.

A few days later got an email from Escalation team a girl named Ana P. telling me that she can't find any record that I did request EN Business account to be deleted. The account was "deactivate" apparently. I replied at the time there were no option offer on site to "delete" EN Business account anyway. Maybe this has changed now not sure. Anyway she will be glad to delete the account and make sure it doesn't get mixed up with my Personal Premium account.

A day goes by. I started to have some syncing issue on my EN Windows yesterday. Couldn't sync for some reasons. Then I noticed this morning the syncing went through just found and checked the log event and could see EN Business account notebooks deletion entries. So I guess something has been done.

Then just about 30 minutes ago I was just browsing the net reading a simple article about whatever and decided to webclip it as I do often on my laptop. Then a pop up comes up saying :

I open EN and I realise I just been downgraded to Basic account.

So now I have been asked to pay again for something that I have already paid for a year in which still valid.

So this message is really for @Shane D. to ask him to have someone to correct this asap please.

When asking for help because EN release IOS v10 not ready for the public, we the users shouldn't be going through to such difficulties.

It's really not funny now.

It never was.

My support: Ticket# 3158962

What is striking me is that it has been more than 5 days now since the release and there is nothing in the App store showing up so far. No version 10.0.1 or 10.0.2 or 10.0.3 etc to address the multiple issues that million of PAID users are facing now. 

Communication is disastrous and inexistant after  CEO Ian Small being present during his “Behind the Scenes Series” spreading us with future of “Stability” and “good foundation”.

Where is all that today? And more important: where is he when the ship is sinking!?! Is he not the Captain of the boat last time I checked? Or will he swiftly as most CEO do shift the blame on a poor coder in EN building who knew better IOS v10 wasn’t ready for prime but was push by management anyway because hey! that’s what management do: push from high up down to bottom because they can regardless.

They stick they finger up in the wind and hope for the best. And when things go sideways as most of the time they surely do someone or some people down on the line will take the blame. And the management above will be quick to shift their anger towards the poor guy (or gal). 

Well Mr Ian Small sorry to say but you are indeed a very SMALL ceo.

I rest my case.

And another bug... (sad... very sad... What a mess Evernote...):

Just attempted to insert a picture into a note. Well didn't work for me.  Keeps looping for ages... then nothing. Just nothing. The picture doesn't show up inside the note.

See below (after 37mn waiting):

But it doesn't end there unfortunately. You would think I could get rid of the note that has been created right? Well hell no... The bugs demise needs to carry on a little further by not letting me deleting the newly created note as shown below:

I did several attempt without success. The note is still there. But for some mysterious reasons it doesn't sync to the cloud server and stays locally.

Not sure if anyone can replicate this.

But this is definitely another bug.

I can't believe this kinda things has not been tested... 

@Chris W @DTLow Nothing comes up on my side guys. Clipped two pages in Safari an hour ago. Just checked now, synced (IOS, web, Win and Mac) nothing. Could be a sync issue related. But it's definitely a bug.

One  more bug to add to the list: clipping on IOS doesn't work. Just tested it now and it doesn't send the the note to EN IOS or the the Cloud server.

I had the same kinda problem as mentioned by @Jason Goldsmith but in my case EN loaded an old EN Business account I had more than 2 years ago which has been closed down. On top of that I have 22238 notes in my EN Windows client when in IOS it only shows 14630 notes. I did attempts a few things:

> Sync EN Windows clients first which seems started syncing the IOS clients up to 500 notes more then stopped.
> For the EN Business folder I couldn't deleted them directly but going to the notebook menu and selecting them seem to make them disappear (I had 300 of them so I had to do this for each one of them).

The problem is it all came back anyway....

So I deleted the app. Force shutdown my iPhone /Restart the phone > download the app and for some reason my data are still cashed in the phone (despite deleting the app).

So I am stuck...

And yes @Shane D. I did open a ticket about all this...  

 

I really appreciate the suggestion.  Does every laptop have a slot for that card?  I'm looking on mine and don't see one.  

 

Would an adapter like this one work? http://www.amazon.com/Sandisk-MicroMate-Memory-Reader-SDDR-113/dp/B000YBH4YU/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1401916980&sr=1-1&keywords=sandisk+adapter+usb

 

Do you think using a USB hub would be a problem for the adapter?  I'm running out of USB slots.

 

Many thanks for your suggestions. 

 

Yes the adapter you mentioned Etonreve will work just fine.

PS: If you can't afford an SSD Hard drive just go buy one of the SanDisk Micro Flash Memory Card (see link below) or something similar to this. On most laptop you can use these Memory stick card and if you have a desktop you can find cheap adapter that can fit on your desktop PC. The Memory size of these card go from 16Gb to 64Gb and you can find some at 128Gb (Depending on the size of you .exb file). The important point here is to select one that speed up at least 45MB/s read/write or more with no Frustration. Then follow the same process I mentioned on my previous post by moving your .exb on the Memory Flash Card. I have tested it on my 2 laptops and Evernote works like a charm

It is a cheaper solution than an SSD Hard Drive but it will do the job as well

....

 

Here is the punchline: Evernote has been working perfectly.  It hasn't frozen once!  I can do other things while it is syncing and sync doesn't sometimes take 5 minutes for no reason.  Every morning it takes Evernote minutes to open after I boot up my PC, but this morning it opened immediately without freezing.

 

I hope it lasts, but I am optimistic because I've done all kinds of troubleshooting before and it never worked this well even for a short period of time.

 

Thanks Lesicaire!

 

 

*to run Evernote in debug mode, type: evernote.exe/debugmenu in the Run Dialog in Windows

 

Happy to help Marc

Evernote should advertise SSD Drive hardware to fully enjoy Evernote features and such but most important to just being able to use it rather spending time waiting for it to work

For example I'll be pounding away taking notes during a lecture and look down to see I'm sentences behind. 

 

I know exactly what you mean in this. I have been myself in the same situation during a meeting recently. EN was open and sync was disable. Just hovering EN to select a note and "not responding" started for a minute or so. 

Thanks for the response.  I've been an Evernote User since the beginning and have an Evernote Premium I have many thousands of notes.  Most aren't long, but many are web clips with photos.  As I've said before EN has become incredibly frustrating to use over the last year.  I can't save or retrieve notes to it if time matters.

 

EN has mastered the input of the information. Webclipping, sending content by email to EN, etc..

The point they are not good at all is the exploitation of the information once is in Evernote the user: search, indexing, data modificationm etc. It is often there that the frustration start with EN. People hear about all the fuss about EN, sign up then feed the beast with contents and info. Then when it comes to recall or modify your info -> "not responding" ; "EN has stopped working would you like to send the error to EN support".

The day EN will make more robust their client on any platforms (the output part of EN and not the Input) they will jump from 100 millions to 500 millions users in a matter of a year.

I think this current problem has nothing to do with hardware. I've been using EN since 2010 (on an older laptop) and have slowly accumulated over 1000 sometimes large notes including ALL my notes while working on a graduate degree, but never had this Not Responding problem before. It only started when with the latest upgrade, which (perhaps not coincidentally) corresponded with my upgrade to Pro. I'm using a Dell M4700 workstation with 32GB or RAM, and an SSD, so if it takes even more power to run EN smoothly, then this is a very flawed program. 

 

Can anyone post a link to an older, working version of EN? I don't know what functionality was supposed to have been improved in the latest upgrade, but I'm sure I can do without it.

 

Evernote developers, owners, or anyone who cares about your reputation: are you watching this? Can we cut through the upgrade > reinstall run-around and fix this? Microsoft OneNote is starting to look really appealing.

 

I agree with you on this problem has nothing to do with hardware. But the point I was trying to make is the way EN access the .exb file on any given system: by I/O disk reading. More you have a large .exb file more that reading access could take time. That said even with the most fast SSD drive out there you will still have the "not responding" message. The difference I have when I test it on 2 of my different machine (one with SSD and the other one with HDD) is that the SSD one lag time is considerably less longer. I have a laptop with a "Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB" SSD drive on it and I still have the "not respond" message from time to time but it can only last a couple of sec and not more.

The whole problem is just the way EN index the data. Just look the way Outlook can index emails and how fast you can retrieve them (I am not a big fan of Outlook but I have to say that having more than 5000 emails and be able to find one in particular in a matter of few sec impressed me). Why EN can't just do the same Indexing system? I don't get it.

Performance issue has been a problem since EN exist to be honest. This "not responding" problem has never being addressed by EN dispute Mr Libin promises to dedicate this year to improve EN performances.

I agree downgraded to 4.x helps. I personally also changed my hard drive to HDD to SSD and this radically changed EN performance. You know to keep in mind that EN require a lot of Hard drive reading specially for those of us (like me) who has a large Evernote.exb file.

Downgraded to 4.x couple with SSD Hard drive (make sure to have your .exb on the SSD) will make you love again EN.