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Evernote searches are broken: not searching well in general, not searching images for text


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Quite often when i search for a word in notes, i will get "no results" or a few notes, but not all the notes with that word in it.  The note i am looking for will _absolutely_ have the word in the note.  LIke, i will have a note called "bacon recipes" and the text of the note will say "something something bacon", but if i search for "bacon" i get "no results".  I can try searching the particular folder or "all notes" with the same results.  Putting the word in quotes doesnt help.  I have to manually scroll through the folder(s) looking for the note i want (which will be there).  It is obviously very obnoxious that one of the whole reasons to use evernote is broken.

 

I am also having another problem searching that i might post separately.  A while ago my evernote stopped searching through text in images.  It doesnt do it at all anymore.  Most of my images with text are clearly pictured documents with printed text, so there is no excuse of bad handwriting or bad lighting making them illegible.  How do i get it to search images again?

 

Also, Evernote doesnt seem to want to search through titles anymore.  Or sometimes it does, sometimes it doesnt.

 

Does anyone have any ideas of what to do?  This is really unacceptable. 

 

 

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Edit:  Working with windows desktop version.  Did update, did delete and reinstall more than once.  Was using Windows 8 at the time, now using Windows 10.  Was and am a premium subscriber.   

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Edit:  I think i replied to myself somewhere in this thread to tell people the problem was solved, but wanted to add that here too.  I ended up having to spend a lot of hours working with Evernote support (thanks guys!) and they had to reindex all my notes on their end. That worked out super well for like 8 months, although now i am encountering the same problems again :(.  

 

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I've had the same experience. The search feature is an inconsistent mess. You can do a normal search and it will pull up notes containing that term, but then doing a command + F search inside the note to find the specific location of that term will yield nothing. 

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5 minutes ago, dfgyz said:

I've had the same experience. The search feature is an inconsistent mess. You can do a normal search and it will pull up notes containing that term, but then doing a command + F search inside the note to find the specific location of that term will yield nothing. 

Is there an attachment in the note?

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On 1/15/2017 at 3:44 PM, csihilling said:

You don't mention which platform you are using, that would help.  That and a screenshot of the search that is failing would help in determining what is going on. 

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying.   I am working on a Sony PC Windows 10, desktop version of Evernote.

Here is an example of searching for something and it not showing up:

Screenshot  136 - Copy.png

Here is the note i was looking for:

Screenshot (140).png

I was hoping to show the whole screenshot so you could see the list of notes and see how the criteria met up, etc, but i couldnt include the whole pictures.  At any rate, in this case i was searching "all notes", but the same thing happens when i search for notes within folders (ie when it has a more limited range of notes to work with)

This problem happens frequently.  I dont remember all the specific searches i have done that it has failed at, this is just the first one that i remembered to take screenshots of after posting my post yesterday.

 

 

* Sorry for the super cropped nature of the pictures.  I had to make them this small in order to meet the upload limit.  I had to severely cut the last one down because the first picture was "too big" and i couldnt un-upload it

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Hi.

I'm not having problems (that I'm aware of) in Evernote Windows Desktop...

On 15/01/2017 at 7:00 PM, dino-myte said:

not all the notes with that word in it

Is the word surrounded by any other characters?  Evernote searches for the first part of a string,  so 'bacon' would be found,  but 'eggsandbacon' wouldn't. 

On 15/01/2017 at 7:00 PM, dino-myte said:

Evernote stopped searching through text in images

How big/ what definition are the images?  There are limits to what OCR can do with small images.

On 15/01/2017 at 7:00 PM, dino-myte said:

doesnt seem to want to search through titles anymore

Even if you specify 'intitle:'?  As in 'intitle:bacon'?

Are you having the same problems in any other client?  On Evernote Web?

It is possible to Ctrl-click the Help menu to get the enhanced list of options and choose "rebuild text search index" but backup your databases folder first.  It may take a while to rebuild a large database index,  so don't do this when you have deadlines to meet.  Be careful of other options in that list - they are only supposed to be used on the instructions of Support,  which we're not;  use at your own risk - and with a backup...

If you're still having issues,  the next steps would be to

  • uninstall / restart / reinstall the app on your computer.  That won't affect your database,  but hang on to the backup just in case;  and/ or
  • to backup your database folder (Tools > Options > General for the link) and then exit Evernote / delete the original folder.  Restart Evernote to rebuild it,  and the search index,  from the server.  NB:  You must export any local notebooks to ENEX files* and re-import them after the rebuild.

How to uninstall and reinstall Evernote

What is a local notebook?

How to back up (export) and restore (import) notes and notebooks

* choose 'options' during the export and make sure that tags are included.  Any note links and history for that notebook will be lost.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've had the same experience too.

Win 7 x64, i5-2500, 8 GB, ... I think this is not a problem of my hardwares. Evernote 6.4.2.3788 for Windows. This version (and older versions maybe too) might have a bug I think.

I didn't check the 'search notes' function but I definitely have a problem searching words and lttrs on the notes having attached pdf files. When finding that in the note by doing a ctrl+F key, I cannot find the lettters and sometimes no counting of lttrs also. I already did uninstall and reinstall.

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thanks for these reports.

On 1/17/2017 at 6:44 AM, gazumped said:

Are you having the same problems in any other client?  On Evernote Web?

^ This is important. To help isolate the issue, start by logging in to to Evernote Web, and try the same search.

If the search works on Evernote Web, @gazumped's suggestions are a good start. If the search not working on the Web, the help menu options, deleting the .exb file, reinstalling, etc. will not help. 
 

@mi0 @dfgyzAny commonalities amongst the notes that are not appearing in the search? E.G. Are these all words within an image/PDF, notes captured by the web clipper, scanned, etc? 

@dino-myte The images in the post appear to now be broken. As a work-around, can you add your screenshots to a note and paste the note's public link (URL) here? 

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Anecdotal here, but for whatever reason not all of my screen clips captures get OCRd.  There have been instances when I know a certain note should appear in a search and it doesn't.  I then have to use other methods to find the note, sometimes a PITA.  When I find the note I do a Ctrl-Help - Fix Current Note.  Then the image is OCRd and can be found.  Problem is, I don't know which images don't get OCRd.  

I just took a screen capture (client shortcut key) of Austin's post above and will come back in an hour or so relative as to whether it OCRd.

UPDATE:  02/13/2017 05:22 PM

The screen capture is searchable on the web but not on my PC, after multiple syncs.

UPDATE:  02/13/2017 05:55 PM

Still wasn't OCRd, so I moved the note to a local notebook, synced, moved it back, synced and now it is searchable.

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1 hour ago, Austin G said:

@csihilling Thanks for this report. We're looking into this now. 

Thanks Austin.  I wish I could be more specific but it seems to occur at "random".  I did another clip later in the day and it was searchable within minutes.  Same hot key to get it.  Anyway, if you need anything feel free to PM me.

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2 hours ago, Eduardo Estefano said:

Hi @Austin G. Were you able to figure out what is happening with the OCR in Windows? Is there a workaround?

thanks

Workaround for me has been to do Ctrl-Help and select Fix current note.  That seems to force OCR.  

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I just have this problem now on web and mobile versions. Search indices are gone? I do not find any note with a simple word in them (no attachments or with attachments), just getting all notes. This makes Evernote (which I pay) rather useless by now....

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11 minutes ago, ckping said:

I just have this problem now on web and mobile versions. Search indices are gone? I do not find any note with a simple word in them (no attachments or with attachments), just getting all notes. This makes Evernote (which I pay) rather useless by now....

Can you post a screenshot of a search that's failing for you.  I've found some isssues but generally search words for me

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1 hour ago, ckping said:

Thanks for replying. I don't know if that really helps, but here you go :-) showing a hilarious search for "lamp" (any other word also results in the same) which pops up random notes. 

It might help if you displayed search information (Ctrl -F10), or View - Search Information.  The above says that you have 25 notes with lamp in them.  Is 25 a subset of all your notes?  You can open the PDF and see if lamp is contained therein.

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2 hours ago, ckping said:

Thanks for replying. I don't know if that really helps, but here you go :-) showing a hilarious search for "lamp" (any other word also results in the same) which pops up random notes. 

Searching my notes for "lamp", I got 75 hits out of 10k notes

I'm increasingly finding complete searches not that useful, and use intitle searches

At least, my default sequence is Update Date so even though there was 75 hits, my most current notes were at the top

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My issue is with the apple watch. The search feature for Evernote on the apple watch still is not resolved. When I search, nothing is returned and the terms I am searching should return many results. This is horrible. The point is to be able to access information on the fly. If this isn't resolved soon, I'm off to bear or some other note taking app that can actually get this part right. I'm a paying customer and I didn't sign up for this. 

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On 2017-07-01 at 오후 6시 31분, jonessarahjane said:

On multiple occasions, I've searched my notes for the title of a note that I know I've saved and it doesn't find it.

Can you give an example of a failed search.  

My experience ha been that I can count on intitle: searches; it's the ocr'd content that's iffy

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On 7/1/2017 at 8:31 PM, jonessarahjane said:

I'm having the same issue. On multiple occasions, I've searched my notes for the title of a note that I know I've saved and it doesn't find it. Then when I scroll through my notes manually, I'm able to find it. 

A screen shot of that would be helpful.  Not saying you don't have an issue, but not something I've seen.  Would help to the see the search and then the title of the note that isn't being found by the search.

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Interesting thread, but frustrating too.  

I am not heavy user or power user, but I did go paperless 3 years ago, got scansnap and everything.  

Now I'm having issues too as described above.  I was using the app on my android phone to find what an account number referred to, and nothing came up.  Back home on my Windows 10 laptop I did the same search again in the search box. Nothing. Did the Ctrl+q thing nothing.  Went into the note I know it was in and a ctrl+F found it instantly, before I even finished typing it.

I pay for a premium account for mainly this feature and to search inside my scanned images, but this has become a nightmare.  I thought it was me for a long time and tried harder to use search tools, but for simple un complicated things like this, it should work.

I NEED a reliable search if I am going to do this whole paperless thing.  I am based in England and if our tax people want to audit me, how can I comply when I cannot gain meaningful access to my documents?

I do not want some complex sequence to fix this, I just want a remote patch that makes it all work again as I seem to remember it did when I first got into it.

Martin

UK

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5 minutes ago, Fowleronline said:

I was using the app on my android phone to find what an account number referred to, and nothing came up.  Back home on my Windows 10 laptop I did the same search again in the search box. Nothing.

Again, screenshots would be helpful in following up on this issue

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4 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Again, screenshots would be helpful in following up on this issue

Again, suffice it to say this number I searched exists as typed text in a note, but since it contains a lot of personal details I can't screen print more without revealing too much. 

2017-07-07 18.29.33.png

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10 minutes ago, Fowleronline said:

gain, suffice it to say this number I searched exists as typed text in a note, but since it contains a lot of personal details I can't screen print more without revealing too much.

That seems a simple search and I'm seeing no issues.  
I tried it on my database and got a few hits

There shouldn't be issues with locating text in a note; and you had the same problem with Android and Windows.  It would be interesting if you could also verify this on the servers (web platform at www.evernote.com)

I'd suggest escalating this to the Support people
All Accounts      Twitter @evernotehelps
Paid Accounts   Contact Evernote Support

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No, no special characters. Typed in by hand by myself in a note on the windows client.  

It did it first on my phone when I needed to know what the number referred to.  Did the same on my Windows client on Chrome 6.5.4.4720 (304720) Public.  Then looked in the note that I knew had the info, and a Control F (find) found it straight away.  It is not uncommon for this to happen, and I thought it was me for a long time, makes evernote on my phone an absolute pain for searching.  I cannot rely on it even when I know the info is there. (And I did have mobile data or wifi available - but it said no note, not no internet so it can't be that).

 

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And it is repeatable, just done exactly the same search on my phone, same result, same search on the Win client, same result as shown.  Yet again a search in the same note finds it.  And searched as a web page gives no result either.  Strangely other similar numbers searched for in the same way, in the same document will give results.  I tried a phone number and it came up in this same note as a result, and also showed receipts I had taken a picture of, with the phone number in the image.

Screenshot 2017-07-09 08.32.18.png

Screenshot 2017-07-09 08.45.12.png

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OK - I tend to take a pragmatic view to software;  I know how it should work,  but accept the fact that sometimes,  against all reason,  it doesn't do what it's supposed to.  In which case it's time to apply belt and braces (suspenders?) principles.

beltandbracesbig.png.458754ad82d5862a81c9be86f92905eb.png

(any likeness to any person,  living or dead...)

If you know that one or more notes aren't turning up in search results when they should,  you obviously need to figure out the problem if possible.  Meantime however under B&B principles,  I'd just apply a new tag to the affected note(s) with that number,  or some suitable index word,  to make sure it does come up when needed.

I'd also copy the content of my note into a new one and delete the original,  to see whether it was corrupted in some minor way;  and if necessary Simplify or Remove formatting,  or copy the content into a text-only editor and back to eliminate any codes.  If none of that works,  it becomes a trade-off:  how essential is it for me to fix the issue vs spending an open-ended time on the process.  Might it not be more efficient to accept the anomaly and just work around it?

DIBTP (Done is better than perfect ;))

I know there's an argument of "I can't be certain my searches are returning accurate results" - but if you have a phone number,  you probably have a name to go with it;  or a location;  or a date or a product you bought/ sold.  If you're looking for a phone number and don't find the number,  look for other keywords instead/ as well.  You'll find the record,  and if you trace down another anomaly it's worth informing Evernote of that too.  The more data they have,  the more likely that anomaly will get fixed.  But,  end of day,  it's not stopping you working,  or finding stuff - unless you let it!

FWIW I searched a number in Windows and Android and got the same results in both from PDF and JPG documents.

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Thank you Gazumped, I am also a pragmatist but I think you are missing the point of my issue.  From time to time I need to search for something from partial info.  In this case it was a line on a bank statement with a truncated account number, as statements tend to do.  The search did not bring up the documents I wanted and it would seem because the number was not complete (I did not know this nor did I know the rest of the number)  

When I had the whole number, evernote found the relevant notes.  Until then there was a nil return.  When I searched inside the relevant note, a partial search was enough to find the bit I needed.  SO a partial search found number inside a note, but the same search outside the single note failed to find it,

I appreciate your helpful intent, but I do not think I am asking too much of software that boasts of it's searchable structure.  There is nothing wrong with the note I was looking for, indeed when I had the whole number it, and several others came back.  I did not know I only had a partial number, I had nothing else to go on and this was just one of a number of similar failures of the search facility, I have experienced.

This whole thread about people with search issues, and is one of many, many threads.  How much info do Evernote need?  I only joined in because they clearly need prompting.  I thought at first it was because I was a Windows/Android used.  We are usually bottom of the heap when anything Apple is in favour.  But there are far too many examples on the net now and none have an answer.  At least Google returns meaningful results on partial information!

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15 minutes ago, Fowleronline said:

The search did not bring up the documents I wanted and it would seem because the number was not complete

I missed that point in your posts.  That’s why we were looking for actual screen shots

Its a limitation of the search indexing.  You can get away with searching the beginning of a text string, but not the middle or end

Full search documentation at  Evernote Search Grammar

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Ok, but my point remains, how do I know it is partial, and in this case the bank statement only had the last 6 digits of an 8 digit string - banks often use the last few digits for security.  But the issue is the same, it failed to find a 6 digit string, unique in all my notes, it should have found it.

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@Fowleronline

hard as you may try you will allways stumble on problems because of the Evernote search idiosyncrancies.

You can either tag notes to the nth degree or rename - or both - or use an alternative service which supports your needs just by fast OCR scanning. Application of the latter method is state-of-the-art and not the esoteric method Evernote is clinging onto. 

What Dropbox, Google Drive and others offer should be child's play to Evernote, respectively easily  surpassed. The services I mentioned all work by the tried and proven - folder - subfolders  - documents systems. 

Unless tax laws in the UK are very different from the Continent (Germany) you are obliged to give access to your electronic record-keeping system on demand if you run a business.  

Evernote, in my assessment, is not the ideal tool for the storage of bookkeeping data. If you are generally geared to the Windows Office world, stick by it. No tax auditor will care to look at a fancy 'cover sheet' with xlsx, or pdf docs attached. 

Good luck

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2 hours ago, Fowleronline said:

Ok, but my point remains, how do I know it is partial, and in this case the bank statement only had the last 6 digits of an 8 digit string - banks often use the last few digits for security.  But the issue is the same, it failed to find a 6 digit string, unique in all my notes, it should have found it.

Just spit-balling here, but does it make any difference if you add an asterisk to the search?   234019*  I know it shouldn't, but....

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While I appreciate every software has idiosyncrasies, this is a storage and retrieval package many years in the making and I pay for the ability to search inside attachments etc.  This is not an idiosyncrasy, this is an abject failure!  And I will seriously consider a move now to Google Drive after this as it clearly is not me or exclusive to me.

For our UK Tax system, I just want to be able to retrieve a scanned or photographed receipt on demand based on simple criteria ie a name and a value.  I only have 4460 notes after 3 years so I am not a major user of have a major database to wade through.

For the * search suggestion... I have tried it before, after and at both ends - same negative result.  Interestingly as I type in the number, it offers me notes "starting with" upto 4 digits.  In the Win client if offers me 2 notes, and on the web based search it offers me 3 notes as does my phone!  But still no results for the partial 6 digit number.  And since I mostly use the Win client - my trust is now almost completely eroded.  

 

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Aside from its other uses I have my receipt collection for those lovely folks at the UK tax authority (HMRC) should they be required.  I have several years' worth of history in there,  indexed in accordance with my own system,  which uses titles rather than tags.  So after an exciting day in June last year I had this actual heading for one note -

20160624 receipt - trade price tyres - front tyres after blowout - bolt sheared

(All my entries have <document date> <document type> <source> <keywords> as a heading)

If I ever need to find that receipt,  I've got it by date (intitle:20160624) or payee or (probably) amount - it depends on the legibility of the original and the scan. 

For all other commercial receipts I have a customer number - that's how virtually all commercial accounting software works in the UK.  If I needed all my receipts from one source,  I can search my customer number;  or the name without a date qualifier;  or their address (virtually everyone sensibly puts their contact details on accounts and receipts).

I haven't searched by amount that often,  but it does depend on the legibility of the receipt.  Some outlets have very faint print,  others use old heat sensitive paper which only just shows the numbers;  it's easier to find the receipt by other means.

You seem to be running into Evernote's designed inability to search for trailing strings - in "1234567" it will easily find "1234*" but cannot find "567".  That's not a 'failure' - it's like a hammer not being great for eating soup.  Part of Evernote's published standard documentation says "we don't do this" end of story.

End of the day,  it's entirely up to you which software you choose and use.  If you do go elsewhere,  then good luck with your new package.  As a long-time user of databases though I have to say - nothing works perfectly for an individual use case straight out of the box.  You will always need to work 'around' issues that don't quite fit your situation.

 

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@gazumped

of course, no filing system works without some thoughts put into it.

It certainly helps to include date of original receipt and  source  (e.g. barclaycard) in the title of a document.

However, there are actually acknowledged standards for date and none goes by 20160624 but in machine data processing one of them would be 2016-06-24.

However if you have no clue other than the abridged iban code as provided in the statement you have to rely on the machine finding this string of numbers.  It goes without saying that scans need to be of good quality.  

But please do not try and imply that Evernote follows internationally accepted methods of documentation and retrieval because Evernote's system is 'home-baked' and not based on professional advice. 

Evernote is fine enough for notetaking and - to some degree - webclipping. 

For bank statement  and other receipt or general file storage there are better means available. One of the options that certainly works is upload to Dropbox & suchlike. I have opted for their 1 TB plan and same as with OneDrive have not experienced files missing or not synchronising.  Why is this so? Because without exception all files stay in the original format. jpg stays jpg, pdf stays pdf and so on. 

And that's what makes it  dead easy to synchronize 100,000 files and more from one Web drive to another Web drive plus of course local storage. Local storage as per choice. 

Evernote could be superb but right now the on-going struggle to sort out the editor and with no timeline of expected stages of development the situation remains open. 'App' of Hope and Glory :-)

 

 

 

 

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3 hours ago, JohnLongney said:

For bank statement  and other receipt or general file storage there are better means available. One of the options that certainly works is upload to Dropbox & suchlike.

For me, Evernote is my digital file and I like the advantages of having all my data in one place.  

I know the limitations of the product, including the search feature.  I don’t find them overwhelming.

As backup, I also keep a copy of my notes on a cloud drive (Apple iCloud).  
I don’t refer to it much but it also has search features with it's own limitations

 

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2 hours ago, JohnLongney said:

It goes without saying that scans need to be of good quality. 

Also goes without saying that the scans need to be OCRd.  Doesn't seem like that's your issue if the notes are found on on one platform but not others.  Since the Win client has the shortfall you might consider holding the Ctrl key while pressing Help and then select Fix All Notes in case something did completed update.  Or do a Fix Selected Not on the note that is not appearing on the PC search.

As a test I did a search using my old phone account number which is 12 digits long, search results after each character below.  This includes the number in PDFs as well as text within notes.

  1. 30210 results
  2. 7334
  3. 718
  4. 120
  5. 50
  6. 48 from here on out

So it seems to be working for me, same number of notes on the phone and PC.  I did the same thing for a 5 digit account number and got matching results as well.  Not to say you don't have an issue, just I don't seem to have it.

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16 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Also goes without saying that the scans need to be OCRd.

I find OCR hit and miss and don't rely on it; I'm only using Evernote's OCR search feature, no external ocr
My preference is to rely on note titles and tags.  I make sure the title is an accurate summary of the contents
I also transcribe all my handwritten notes (probably a reflection of my handwriting quality)

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3 hours ago, JohnLongney said:

But please do not try and imply that Evernote follows internationally accepted methods of documentation and retrieval

Don't believe I said any such thing - certainly didn't mean to imply it:  Evernote in this context does exactly what Dropbox does - it stores an OCR'd picture of the receipt in a note. OK in DB that would be a PDF file,  but one has no advantage over the other - it's still the same picture of a note.  Evernote has no pretensions at being a 'professional' document store,  neither does DB - both are what you make of them.

And "the on-going struggle to sort out the editor" has a wonderfully negative spin.  They just installed a new editor in every Evernote client,  and they're adding new features.  And that has nothing to do with finding information in notes!

I use Evernote to hold data exactly as I would a wooden set of pigeon-holes.  For my benefit I need to apply some labels so I remember where I put stuff...

5963a0891f3cb_ScreenClip1.png.3fdd43162883a0ed614c2bf9c4a85ee7.png

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1 minute ago, DTLow said:

I find OCR hit and miss and don't rely on it
My preference is to rely on note titles and tags.  I make sure the title is an accurate summary of the contents
At present, I'm only using Evernote's OCR search feature; no external ocr
I also transcribe all my handwritten notes (probably a reflection of my handwriting quality)

Search on OCR works just fine for me, no way I could tag/title whatever I might want to search for at some point, simple example would be store x in receipts and statements.  Not going to take a credit card bill and tag it with every store in the thing.  

I use a ScanSnap and let it do the OCR work.  Most things downloaded are already OCRd, those that aren't I run through Abobe, or EN catches them.  Works well for me.

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5 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Not going to take a credit card bill and tag it with every store in the thing

Different strokes...
I actually download my bank/cc activity records, parsing the transactions into individual notes tagged with the vendor

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OK, you guys are clearly a lot more into all this than I am.  

Put simply, I bought into a system of storage that allowed my to go paperless (with a Scansnap ix500) and everything is OCR'ed as it is scanned.  All the blurb told me I could find what I was storing, so to relax.  The truth is not the same, and I do not want to become a guru in the subject just to make a simple search.

I do give my notes meaningful titles, and dates, but what I searched for was not in the title.  If I knew where to find it I wouldn't be searching for it!!

Using the phone number test, does that include when the number is broken up into pieces - I think not.  It is common for numbers to be written 01234 567 890 or 01234 567890 or even +44(0)1234 567 890.  The first part in the UK is an area code.  If all your contacts are local that will be the same for all of them! That will not help and the same goes for account number and lots of other numbers.  Then in names there are spelling variations... BUT a string of letters or numbers should be searchable no matter where they are in the notes.  I don't think that is too much to ask.

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2 minutes ago, Fowleronline said:

Using the phone number test, does that include when the number is broken up into pieces - I think not.  It is common for numbers to be written 01234 567 890 or 01234 567890 or even +44(0)1234 567 890.  The first part in the UK is an area code.  If all your contacts are local that will be the same for all of them! That will not help and the same goes for account number and lots of other numbers.  Then in names there are spelling variations... BUT a string of letters or numbers should be searchable no matter where they are in the notes.  I don't think that is too much to ask.

I was referring to the account number, not the phone number, so 12 consecutive characters. worked fine.

Relative to phone numbers, EN searches explicitly for what you enter.  So "01234 567 890" or "+44(0)1234 567 890" should work.  The quotes force the characters to be together as opposed to separate search terms.  in the second example EN will put spaces in place of the plus sign and parentheses since special characters aren't searchable other than the underscore.  So the second search becomes " 44 0 1234 567 890".  US example is "123-456-7890" which will return all notes with that phone number.  Different formats require a different search term, "(123) 456-7890" for example.  Works for me anyway.

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Thanks again, but I am aware of boolean searching (I think that is the right term) and again, great if you have the whole number or the start of it.  But not great in my example when did not know what the number referred to and did not know it as truncated.  If I only have 6 digits of an 8 digit account number and they are the last 6 digits, how do I find the number in a note when it will always appear full in the note?  In many respects 6 digits is pretty unique!

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3 hours ago, Fowleronline said:

Thanks again, but I am aware of boolean searching (I think that is the right term) and again, great if you have the whole number or the start of it.  But not great in my example when did not know what the number referred to and did not know it as truncated.  If I only have 6 digits of an 8 digit account number and they are the last 6 digits, how do I find the number in a note when it will always appear full in the note?  In many respects 6 digits is pretty unique!

Do you ever only have a partial number though?  Is there no name,  address,  date or amount associated with it? I agree that if all you have is a trailing series of characters,  then you're stuck;  but if there's any other information at all,  you should be able to generate at least a short list of possible candidates from which a quick eyeball search will spot the right note.  In my personal opinion (and experience) that's a win!

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6 hours ago, Fowleronline said:

Thanks again, but I am aware of boolean searching (I think that is the right term) and again, great if you have the whole number or the start of it.  But not great in my example when did not know what the number referred to and did not know it as truncated.  If I only have 6 digits of an 8 digit account number and they are the last 6 digits, how do I find the number in a note when it will always appear full in the note?  In many respects 6 digits is pretty unique!

Ahh.  EN only searches from the beginning of a “word”, an account number being a word in this context.  You cannot search for characters in the middle or end of words.  You can use the wildcard * but only on the end of a search word, 123* will find all notes which contain words beginning with 123.  

The example from before isn’t Boolean, it is an example of searching for these exact words in sequence.  Boolean ssearch is more a combination of AND and OR.  EN does not have a Boolean capability either.   

Hope this helps.  

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I had not realised how limited the search capability was, that is pretty pathetic on the scale of searching these days.  Obviously at first I was all about storing, and the occasional thing I couldn't find I put down to me, as I learned more about EN.  I can often find what I want because I do have whole words or numbers, but this explains why on so many occasions I have failed to find something - and it was not my fault, it was a limitation of the software I was not aware of and is not shouted about, as is the ability to search inside notes. 

And before someone jumps up to defend EN again, If I had wanted labeled wooden pigeon holes, I would have invested in them instead of this software.  I pay premium to search inside notes, not to have to have to label and tag to the n'th degree in the hope I can find something one day, as if may have what I want inside it.

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2 hours ago, Fowleronline said:

And before someone jumps up to defend EN again

I see the Help Forum more as a place for users to get help in using Evernote

There are forums set up for feedback

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2 hours ago, Fowleronline said:

I had not realised how limited the search capability was, that is pretty pathetic on the scale of searching these days.  Obviously at first I was all about storing, and the occasional thing I couldn't find I put down to me, as I learned more about EN.  I can often find what I want because I do have whole words or numbers, but this explains why on so many occasions I have failed to find something - and it was not my fault, it was a limitation of the software I was not aware of and is not shouted about, as is the ability to search inside notes. 

And before someone jumps up to defend EN again, If I had wanted labeled wooden pigeon holes, I would have invested in them instead of this software.  I pay premium to search inside notes, not to have to have to label and tag to the n'th degree in the hope I can find something one day, as if may have what I want inside it.

Depends upon use case I suppose.  I have about 400 tags and 5 notebooks of merit for 33.5k notes, really don't do anything special with titles, and don't have any trouble finding things with the current search capability.  Though I did set things up based upon the capabilities as I knew them. Sure sub-string searching and Boolean search would be great, but their lack does not prevent me from leveraging EN.  FYI, other than searching inside office docs,you get the same search capability whether you are Premium are Basic,

My use case includes being paperless re statements and the like, task management, manuals/documentation, and storage for things I find interesting.  Horses for courses as always, if it doesn't fit one can always try something else.

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Perhaps my suggestion that defending EN was wrong, or was in some way offensive - it was not intended.  I had no idea there were forum set up for feedback, for goodness sake I want to use the system not be made to feel it is my fault that I am not a Guru level user!

When others search Google with the same issue they will no doubt come across this thread and associate themselves either with those that have made it work for them or those that are struggling with a basic function.  

As has been said, I can usually find what I want, but when it lets me down it is a frustrating pain in the proverbial.  

I appreciate the support offered, but unless EN is going to change it's limited search to suite me (and other reasonable users represented in similar threads), there is no point in me paying for a service I have no confidence in.  

One thing I do note in myself, is that I represent a significant proportion of the population.  My opinions, beliefs and actions are mirrored across the population in general and because I am a bit older now, I can see how companies have risen and fallen in line with my opinion of them.

Good luck Evernote - you are Betamax!

 

 

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3 minutes ago, Fowleronline said:

Perhaps my suggestion that defending EN was wrong, or was in some way offensive - it was not intended.

No offense taken, just pointing out for some use cases EN is just fine, better even than pigeon holes.

Fault really isn't in play here,  The software has a set of capabilities and what you would like to see isn't there.  Not your fault.  Your choice to do with that as you will.  No drama, for that one needs a tape they can put in the Betamax!   ;)

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Hi everyone,

I am sorry it has taken me so long to update.  I worked with someone at Evernote and after we attempted many fixes and spent a few hours at it, they ended up having to re-index everything on their end.  It ended up being a much bigger problem than anyone here could have helped me with, but i appreciate all the input and attempts to help me.  I also apologize for not replying to people who have tried to help; I do appreciate the attempts but i was pretty overwhelmed by stuff at the time and then time just passed..  Thank you again.

Sincerely,

C

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm having a similar problem after updating to Version 6.12 for Mac. I know screenshots help, here are a few. I'm in a notebook of photos, but this isn't OCR-dependent: the phrase I'm searching for ("blue textures" in this example) is in the title of several notes. The first photo is me having searched the notebook manually (tedious) to prove the notes are there.  The remaining three show different searches for the phrase (no quotes, in quotes, in an "intitle" search), none of which yield positive hits.

Searching on this phrase works fine on my phone and in the Web version, so I'm guessing that it must be this build of the database in the desktop version.  Could it be possible that a "background indexing" is still going on?

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 11.59.15 AM.png

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 11.53.56 AM.png

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 11.54.03 AM.png

Screen Shot 2017-07-26 at 11.54.12 AM.png

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5 hours ago, jbushnell1 said:

so I'm guessing that it must be this build of the database in the desktop version.  Could it be possible that a "background indexing" is still going on?

I don't see any problem with your search parameters

You could try rebuilding the search index5978e6e53dcdb_ScreenShot2017-07-26at11_58_37.png.47d181f0d3f88cbff46a06180286db43.png

On a Mac:
Hold down the option key and click on Help.  This gives you access to the Troubleshooting menu

Sorry, I don’t know how long it takes

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2 hours ago, jbushnell1 said:

I'm having a similar problem after updating to Version 6.12 for Mac

Please post Mac-specific questions in the Mac forum. Thanks.

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  • 3 months later...

I have version 6.13 and the search notes is not working at all, finds nothing. For example I search for jessica which I have several notes with tha name and nothing. It works in my web version and on my phone but not in my mac computer. 

screenshot_1680.jpg

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10 hours ago, Alexagui said:

I have version 6.13 and the search notes is not working at all, finds nothing. For example I search for jessica which I have several notes with tha name and nothing. It works in my web version and on my phone but not in my mac computer. 

If you're having trouble with the Mac client, then you should post in the Mac Help forum: https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/219-mac-help/ The current topic is a Windows-specific topic, in a Windows-specific forum.

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On 2017-11-09 at 10:18 AM, Alexagui said:

I have version 6.13 and the search notes is not working at all, finds nothing. For example I search for jessica which I have several notes with tha name and nothing. It works in my web version and on my phone but not in my mac computer. 

@Alexagui @Eduardo Estefano  Please follow the link below so we can discuss this issue in the Mac forum

 

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6 horas atrás, jefito disse:

If you're having trouble with the Mac client, then you should post in the Mac Help forum: https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/219-mac-help/ The current topic is a Windows-specific topic, in a Windows-specific forum.

This issue is common after the upgrade to 6.12 and 6.13. You need to rebuild your search index as @DTLow mentioned. Immediatelly after you start the rebuild you will see some results coming back again, but the entire process could take a while, depending on the size of your database. Important to have in mind that Evernote will not display a message when it completes rebuilding the database. The only way to know if it finishes is to use the activity monitor and see when the evernote process returns to normal CPU usage.

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15 hours ago, Eduardo Estefano said:

This issue is common after the upgrade to 6.12 and 6.13.

Then go discuss it in a Mac-specific subforum. This is a Windows-specific subforum. Did you even read what I wrote (and which you quoted)?

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Quote

It is possible to Ctrl-click the Help menu to get the enhanced list of options and choose "rebuild text search index" but backup your databases folder first.  It may take a while to rebuild a large database index,  so don't do this when you have deadlines to meet.  Be careful of other options in that list - they are only supposed to be used on the instructions of Support,  which we're not;  use at your own risk - and with a backup...

If you are on a Mac, press and hold the option key when clicking on the Help menu. Navigate to Troubleshooting > Recreate Full Text Search Index. This fixed the issue for me. Evernote Mac (Version 6.13.3 (455969 Direct)) was pulling 3 notes in the client, and 25 for the web-based version on my query. After recreating the index it matched exactly. As the author noted, it takes a bit of time depending on how many notes you have (I took a few minutes with 400 notes). 

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20 hours ago, Joe Baz said:

It may take a while to rebuild a large database index

(Actually he quoted,  but hey..)

I can endorse the time thing.  My database has swelled to 41,700 notes and seems to get the jitters from time to time.  It took 12.Mortal. Hours. to finish reindexing that (I did take a special backup before I started.)

I was using the laptop part of the time (but not Evernote) and it was a bit slow.  Searching is now great however... :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't know if this helps.

I have found that the OCR often doesn't read my handwriting well. I wrote the word "Deem." Here's a screenshot from the document.

5a60ceb5a6b9c_ScreenShot2018-01-18at11_38_21AM.png.0ac98bf4717aa2dcd20564250187652a.png

A series of cmd-F searches revealed that the OCR thought the "De" was the letter "K" and that the letter "m" was the letter "n". 

For fun, I cmd-F searched the word, "Ken," and the OCR found the screenshot above.

And I thought my handwriting was great. :-)

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5 hours ago, CoachJosh said:

have found that the OCR often doesn't read my handwriting well. I wrote the word "Deem." Here's a screenshot from the document.

5a60ceb5a6b9c_ScreenShot2018-01-18at11_38_21AM.png.0ac98bf4717aa2dcd20564250187652a.png

A series of cmd-F searches revealed that the OCR thought the "De" was the letter "K" and that the letter "m" was the letter "n". 

For fun, I cmd-F searched the word, "Ken," and the OCR found the screenshot above.

And I thought my handwriting was great. :-)

I took a screenshot of your script and processed it through Evernote on my Mac5a610bc9db082_ScreenShot2018-01-18at12_58_50.png.70c5a8b53ace8c6269eb6fbf45deb0d3.png

Here's what Evernote OCR'd for searching

<item x="7" y="12" w="49" h="18">
        <t w="20">seem</t>
        <t w="20">deem</t>
        <t w="10">be ? ?</t>
    </item></recoIndex>

There's documentation on the process at https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/01/23/search-handwriting-evernote/

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Thank you for your reply.

I figured (like the documentation explains) that an army of unicorns was behind the whole thing.

I'll see if I can figure out what you shared that Evernote OCR'd. I need a little learning to make heads or tails of it.

BTW, I'm on a Mac with Evernote for Mac, too.

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1 hour ago, CoachJosh said:

I'll see if I can figure out what you shared that Evernote OCR'd. I need a little learning to make heads or tails of it.

Export your note to Evernote format, and open the exported note in a text editor. Look for "<item" to find the guesses that Evernote is making at your text. For more information, see http://blog.evernote.com/tech/2013/07/18/how-evernotes-image-recognition-works/

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Evernote provides partial search results. Evernote search does not work correctly. I checked the issue in Evernote Web and Android. Why on earth should I use such a kind of crapware software like Evernote paying my annual fees? Need to look at available alternatives one more time.

Imho, there is no discussion or excuse here. It's too much. As one user in this thread said, Evernote search is 'insane mess'.

Below are screenshots from Evernote Web. UPDATE: 'klapwijk' is the note title (the first pic). The note is not found (the second pic).

PS: apologies for emotions and blaming Evernote.

PPS: for those reading between the lines, it is not about OCR. It is about ordinary text search.

 

Selection_048.png

Selection_047.png

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23 minutes ago, sergey_mipt said:

Evernote provides partial search results.

I'm not sure what that means.

The handwriting search is an estimate.  Text search is more exact.
The search indexing is restricted; excludes special characters and stop words
There are extended search features; documentation at Evernote Search Grammar

For my use, I rely on assigned tags more than test search

I don't know what's going on with your installation.  
Possibly a rebuild of your search index is required edit: not possible on the web platform

Can you share the note from your post?
I'd like to test it in my account

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15 minutes ago, sergey_mipt said:

Evernote provides partial search results. Evernote search does not work correctly. I checked the issue in Evernote Web and Android. Why on earth should I use such a kind of crapware software like Evernote paying my annual fees? Need to look at available alternatives one more time.

Imho, there is no discussion or excuse here. It's too much. As one user in this thread said, Evernote search is 'insane mess'.

Below are screenshots from Evernote Web.

PS: apologies for emotions and blaming Evernote.

PPS: for those reading between the lines, it is not about OCR. It is about ordinary text search.

I have no idea what you're trying to show us in your screen shots. What exactly are you searching for? Your screen shots don't show any active text search. What do you expect to find?

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I get that there's a note featuring the name Klapwijk,  and that a search for that specific string won't apparently find it.  I set up a test note with the same name and my search jumps to it instantly,  so whatever is going on seems to be related to your account somehow...

Where are you seeing your note - web / desktop / mobile?  If you're checking other devices for that content,  has it been synced to the local device from the server,  or from one device to the server and back to another?

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On 1/18/2018 at 4:06 PM, DTLow said:

I took a screenshot of your script and processed it through Evernote on my Mac5a610bc9db082_ScreenShot2018-01-18at12_58_50.png.70c5a8b53ace8c6269eb6fbf45deb0d3.png

Here's what Evernote OCR'd for searching

<item x="7" y="12" w="49" h="18">
        <t w="20">seem</t>
        <t w="20">deem</t>
        <t w="10">be ? ?</t>
    </item></recoIndex>

There's documentation on the process at https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/01/23/search-handwriting-evernote/

I read the articles you listed that explained the recoindex. Thank you.

When I search for the word "deem" in all my documents, this document comes up. So far so good. What's weird is that it does not highlight or identify the word inside the document. And when I do a cmd-f search inside the document, it does not find the word anywhere. I'm not going to lose any sleep over this, but it is weird.

Thanks, again.

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3 hours ago, CoachJosh said:

What's weird is that it does not highlight or identify the word inside the document.

That's curious, because the recoindex stuff is expressly intended to show the pixel location and dimensions of the recognized text in the image.

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On 2018/1/26 at 5:55 AM, sergey_mipt said:

Evernote provides partial search results. Evernote search does not work correctly. I checked the issue in Evernote Web and Android. Why on earth should I use such a kind of crapware software like Evernote paying my annual fees? Need to look at available alternatives one more time.

Imho, there is no discussion or excuse here. It's too much. As one user in this thread said, Evernote search is 'insane mess'.

Below are screenshots from Evernote Web. UPDATE: 'klapwijk' is the note title (the first pic). The note is not found (the second pic).

PS: apologies for emotions and blaming Evernote.

PPS: for those reading between the lines, it is not about OCR. It is about ordinary text search.

 

I have the same problem in Evernote Web . Most of my notes are not displayed in search results. However, text searches are working properly for recently edited notes.

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On 1/25/2018 at 6:55 PM, sergey_mipt said:

Evernote provides partial search results. Evernote search does not work correctly. I checked the issue in Evernote Web and Android. Why on earth should I use such a kind of crapware software like Evernote paying my annual fees? Need to look at available alternatives one more time.

Imho, there is no discussion or excuse here. It's too much. As one user in this thread said, Evernote search is 'insane mess'.

Below are screenshots from Evernote Web. UPDATE: 'klapwijk' is the note title (the first pic). The note is not found (the second pic).

PS: apologies for emotions and blaming Evernote.

PPS: for those reading between the lines, it is not about OCR. It is about ordinary text search.

 

Selection_048.png

Selection_047.png

 

I am having exact the same problem.

On Evernote Web, the search simple does not work. It works only for notes added recently.

For example, when I search in Evernote Web for "2017 IPTU", it shows me nothing.

But when I search in Evernote for iPhone for "2017 IPTU" (same terms), it shows me correctly.

I uploaded the attachments with the photos of each search.

 

Screen Shot 2018-02-06 at 1.01.15 PM.jpg

iphone.jpg

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5 hours ago, Austin G said:

@linhares @t.kanematsu @stevebe @sergey_mipt Thanks for these reports. This issue should now be fixed. You may need to sign out and sign back in to reset the search. Please let us know if the issue is still happening. Thanks! 

My problem has finally been fixed. I love evernote :wub:

If developers find the clue what it caused, please let us know. It would be nice to know what causes this if it happens again. Was frustrating indeed.

For those, still affected, I contacted Evernote support and they did a database reindex, which worked. Though, for me it started to work in about one day after the reindex (don't know why this delay, maybe i needed to relogin).

It seems the way to check whether your search index is correct or corrupted is to run the search "*". You should see the total number of notes found.

PS: apologies for blaming.

 

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I have had this issue since updating my Evernote from the App Store this week. I am not able to find notes through search older than 1 week.  I have followed the instruction to log out and log in again, I've also restarted the application and my Mac. I've synced and re-synced. Nothing works. Any other ways to fix this?

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On 2018-02-09 at 4:03 AM, Waldidt said:

Any other ways to fix this?

edited: Sorry Windows user. this is the Mac key sequence,  See below for the Windows version (thanks @dconnet)

Full sync in case your local database is incomplete:  Hold the Shift and Option keys on your keyboard and click the sync wheel

Rebuild search index: Evernote > Option Key Help > Troubleshooting > Recreate5a7e043e6ae9f_ScreenShot2018-02-09at12_27_25.png.d8dc7e2f19c85670e323c128ccb65793.png

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On 2/9/2018 at 12:28 PM, DTLow said:

Hold the Shift and Option keys on your keyboard and click the sync wheel

On Windows, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the 'Help' menu. Rebuilding the indices will be on that menu.

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2 horas atrás, gazumped disse:

Hi.  Was this PDF created in Android or in a desktop browser?  There are ongoing issues with Clipper which Evernote are aware of,  and say they're working on them.  There's no firm fix date yet.

It was created with chrome's evernote web clipper extension. But other scanned PDF does not show either, is it supposed to be this way? Only text PDFs shows up on the search, not scanned (or created with evernote web clipper) ones.

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43 minutes ago, fabio.nitto@gmail.com said:

It was created with chrome's evernote web clipper extension. But other scanned PDF does not show either, is it supposed to be this way? Only text PDFs shows up on the search, not scanned (or created with evernote web clipper) ones.

AFAIK all PDFs should show up,  however created.  There are current issues with Chrome and the Clipper generally though - I'd suggest you reach out to Support on https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action if you're a paying customer,  Twitter - https://twitter.com/evernotehelps if not. 

If you have an ad-bocker,  try disabling it on Evernote's pages,  or whitelisting Evernote.com as a possible contributing factor.

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I can not get results properly from Evernote web either.  On the Evernote for Mac the results are what I expect.  When searching on the Web Gui the same results are not present.  These are for PDFs. The PDFs are not pictures they were all converted in Adobe and are searchable text before I placed them in Evernote. Isn't this suppose to work? This is really making me regret my Premium upgrade. 

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Can someone comment on if this is expected behavior?  The Web interface does not find search terms like the Mac Interface.  Is this the way it is suppose to work? 

As I said in a previous post, the PDFs are all converted in Adobe to be text based.  When I enter a search term within a notebook using the Web interface the term is not located or is found in a non-PDF but not within the PDF.  When I do the same in Mac interface the term is found in PDFs and other formats.  I just want confirmation either way so I can start looking for alternatives to Evernote if the Web interface can not find terms by design. 

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2 minutes ago, credog said:

Can someone comment on if this is expected behavior?

Hi.  I don't believe this is expected behaviour - I don't see differences between search results between Evernote Web or Desktop,  but I don't see that you're doing anything wrong either.  If you're saving searchable PDFs which are showing up in results on desktop but not on the web,  there has to be a reason for that.  Could you create a test file out of some random paragraphs and assuming that shows the same results,  show us the file content and your search string so we can comment more?

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Random text file with the search terms works fine in both Desktop and Web interface.  It appears to be just the PDFs that the Web interface has issues with. One difference is that in the desktop application the PDFs automatically render as does simple text documents.  In the Web application the text documents render and the PDFs do not. Just a clickable icon. Even though they don't render I would still think that Evernote should be able to search them on their servers or whatever mechanism they use. 

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On 2/24/2018 at 6:09 PM, credog said:

Random text file with the search terms works fine in both Desktop and Web interface.  It appears to be just the PDFs that the Web interface has issues with. One difference is that in the desktop application the PDFs automatically render as does simple text documents.  In the Web application the text documents render and the PDFs do not. Just a clickable icon. Even though they don't render I would still think that Evernote should be able to search them on their servers or whatever mechanism they use. 

This is a forum dedicated to the Evernote Windos client. You should be posting questions / issues about the Evernote web client in a forum specific to that client:

Technical issues, how-tos, etc: https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/235-web-client/

or 

Feature suggestions: https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/234-evernote-web-client/

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