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How to recover not after deletion & empty trash?


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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

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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)Untitled.jpeg
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,

  1. Turn off syncing
  2. Close Evernote
  3. Save the current database folder
  4. Restore the old database folder from TM
  5. Start Evernote
  6. Find the note and export it to an .enex file
  7. Close Evernote
  8. Restore the database folder to the saved current version
  9. Start evernote
  10. 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

 

 

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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

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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

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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!

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  • 1 year later...

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.

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