SanDiegoGary 1 Posted December 13, 2016 Share Posted December 13, 2016 Hello, I can't find a note today. This note has over six months of home projects, to do lists, etc., so I know what keywords to search for to find it. It is gone. I recently emptied the trash, and because I was in a hurray (and feeling particularly stupid) I did NOT review the titles of the notes in the trash prior to deletion, like I usually do. Lazy and stupid. I am using the free version of Evernote on a Mac. Is there anything I can do to recover the note? If I upgrade to premium, can the Evernote team help me recover the note via email support? I did some searches that mentioned hexedit'ing the database. I am an engineer, so I know what hexed is (on Unix) Where is the database file? Do I need to go into Time Machine to get a prior version of the database before I deleted the note? I would appreciate any help! Gary Link to comment
Level 5* DTLow 5,735 Posted December 13, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 13, 2016 47 minutes ago, SanDiegoGary said: I can't find a note today. This note has over six months of home projects, to do lists, etc., so I know what keywords to search for to find it. It is gone. I recently emptied the trash, and because I was in a hurray (and feeling particularly stupid) I did NOT review the titles of the notes in the trash prior to deletion, like I usually do. Lazy and stupid. I am using the free version of Evernote on a Mac. Is there anything I can do to recover the note? If I upgrade to premium, can the Evernote team help me recover the note via email support? I did some searches that mentioned hexedit'ing the database. I am an engineer, so I know what hexed is (on Unix) Where is the database file? Do I need to go into Time Machine to get a prior version of the database before I deleted the note? One quick solution is to look in a folder called Purgatory (really) Deleted notes go there before they're truly gone This is raw note data; no metadata, only note content Purgatory is in your database folder To locate the database folder On My Mac, I click on About Evernote, and press the option key A link to the database folder appears This also tells you the folder to restore from TM Make sure you disable syncing so you don't trigger a mass sync To recover your note, Turn off syncing Close Evernote Save the current database folder Restore the old database folder from TM Start Evernote Find the note and export it to an .enex file Close Evernote Restore the database folder to the saved current version Start evernote Import the enex file This is not a procedure I use. I have a backup process running on my Mac (documented here) that allows me to easily recover lost data Link to comment
SanDiegoGary 1 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 Awesome! I spent some time in Purgatory (which I deserve), and found my note fairly quickly with some Unix grep commands. The "note.xhtml" file contains the whole note text, so with a little vi time, I can get back the note without formatting or HTML links, etc. -- a small price to pay for deleting the note in the first place. I am reluctant to use Time Machine to restore the original note, given the possibility of mistakes on my end, but glad that is an option if I needed it. Looks like the purgatory directory does not contain the .enex file needed to fully restore the note... I also like the Applescript you developed as well -- I really like the idea of being able to access my Evernote content outside of Evernote, as a backup measure. I put so much content into this tool! Thank you SO MUCH for the quick help! Gary Link to comment
Level 5* DTLow 5,735 Posted December 13, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 13, 2016 9 minutes ago, SanDiegoGary said: I am reluctant to use Time Machine to restore the original note, given the possibility of mistakes on my end, but glad that is an option if I needed it. Looks like the purgatory directory does not contain the .enex file needed to fully restore the note... Glad it worked out I also am reluctant to mess with my database and TM restores. But if/when I corrupt the database, I can rebuild it from the Evernote servers. No, there's no .enex file in the raw note data, but you should have seen a content.enml file. This is basically an HTML file that will open in a browser and for the most part be your note contents Link to comment
SanDiegoGary 1 Posted December 13, 2016 Author Share Posted December 13, 2016 You are right -- the content.enml is a MUCH better starting point for restoration. I had to copy this file to a new file with an .html suffix to get Safari to recognize it. All the HTML links are there, and all the indent/etc formatting as well. Thanks again! Link to comment
Kawhi Lau 0 Posted November 1, 2018 Share Posted November 1, 2018 The files deleted from the Mac are not actually deleted, just directory information is removed, which means the OS does not know the location of the file. This makes the file to appear deleted. A data recovery software can help to recover the inaccessible files. Link to comment
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