Deleted tags of group of notes ... any way of restoring that?

[arjanbroere 6]

Hi,

I selected a bunch of notes and wanted to add a tag. In adding the mix of autocorrection and my typing led me to delete the tag of this specific note selection. I quickly went off line but saw that the notes were untagged. 

Is there any way of finding these notes again? I have over 10.000 notes and the chances are not too high that I will find all the notes that had that specific tag very easily.

By the way, typing in the tags-field when multiple tags are selected is a mess :-(

Thanks in advance,

Arjan

[DTLow 5,736]

26 minutes ago, arjanbroere said:

Is there any way of finding these notes again? I have over 10.000 notes and the chances are not too high that I will find all the notes that had that specific tag very easily.

Any chance you have backups? Is Time Machine running?

[arjanbroere 6]

21 hours ago, DTLow said:

Any chance you have backups? Is Time Machine running?

Yes, I have backups but no so recent that they would have all the right tags. It is something I was working on. Wise lesson to manually back up.

[gazumped 11,652]

57 minutes ago, arjanbroere said:

Wise lesson to manually back up.

I'll second that - in addition (because I'm a belt,  braces and gaffer tape kinda guy) I tend to backup my database separately if I plan on doing any major changes - dates back to my old spreadsheet days when occasionally selecting the wrong range when sorting could really ruin your whole day...

[jbenson2 2,147]

8 minutes ago, gazumped said:

I tend to backup my database separately

Gazumped, do you back up each individual notebook in Evernote as a separate backup? I was under the impression that is what has to be done (Evernote Windows) in order to restore and avoid all the notes ending up in a huge generic notebook.

[gazumped 11,652]

I tend to be lazy about backups - in Windows we're lucky the everything is (mainly) in one EXB file,  so a 'quick' backup is just to copy that file elsewhere.  In the event of an issue,  there would be a small matter of...

• Stop network connection
• replace faulty database with backup
• export replacement notebook / notes
• reconnect faulty notebook
• import replacement notes to offline folder
• replace faulty original(s),  reconnect to network - check that the server accepts the new versions...

For any new readers,  that's all because the backup I took before I started working is now older than all the notes I altered - wrongly - and now wish to replace.  If I just imported the replacements in their original location,  they'd be 'updated' to the new,  and incorrect versions at the next sync.

It's a lot of potential fiddling around,  but since nothing has (so far) gone wrong when I update things,  I'd rather minimise the up front workload and get on with my changes.

A 'proper' backup on the other hand is yes,  an export to ENEX files which is amazingly quick to run,  but if you have a lot of notebooks the sheer admin can take a while.  I did have a batch file/ script to run that but lately I've made some extensive changes to notebooks so it's out of date. 

I'm hoping that either 1) Evernote will come up with an extra auto backup feature,  since it's good user practice and would save them some unhappy "I lost my content" complaints,  or 2) That a utility like Backupery will come along to save me some hassle.  Trialling that as we speak. 

(Sorry for long and not-thread-relevant post - if there are more comments on backups,  let's take this elsewhere... )

 

 

[DTLow 5,736]

15 hours ago, gazumped said:

I tend to be lazy about backups

If it depended on me, my backups wouldn’t get done

We’re fortunate on Macs in that we have scripting to automate the backup process; in addition to Time Machine a  process that completely automates the backup process (no user action required)

Your post also illustrates that users need to know how to use the backups to recover their data.  I can work with the full database backup, but it’s not an easy process.  My preference would be different backup methods

My backups include full database (TM), each notebook [weekly), changed notes (daily).  In addition I have access to the Evernote Note History backup.  There’s also the question of how many backup copies to keep, and for how long

[gazumped 11,652]

5 hours ago, DTLow said:

Your post also illustrates that users need to know how to use the backups to recover their data.

Copying the EXB file isn't the 'approved' route - Evernote champions the standard 'export to ENEX' process which is simple,  provided you don't have a lot of notebooks.

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

I'm just lazy. 

[skorenjak 2]

In hope someone will find this information useful … this is my case:

Accidentally deleted a tag "quotes" from 223 notes.
After a few moments of panic and an attempt to google the solution (no, I don't keep backups apart form the TimeMachine) I've rushed back to my second computer, disconnected it from wi-fi and lan and tried three (better safe than sorry) solutions:
I've selected all notes with the infamous tag and
1. Exported the notes to an .enex file (incl. tags).
2. Created Table of Contents Note.
3. Applied a new tag "quotes_new" to the selection.

Reconnected to the internet and synced the notes. It turns out everything is fine – the original tag "quotes" was removed, the new one "quotes_new" is applied.

[Mike the human 1]

I, too just made this fat-fingered mistake, removed a tag from a ton of research notes, and because I had searched on the tag which was just deleted they immediately disappeared from view, so I could not re-tag them with it, or even find them all again.

I don't have a second computer with Evernote on it, and, it synced immediately to the web, destroying any hope of disconnecting and salvaging years of work via the website. 

I have, however, found a 100% effective solution going forward, which doesn't require me to interrupt my work to remember to make frequent manual backups:

Switch to an online-synced note taking app that takes users' work needs seriously and doesn't leave inexcusable, work-destroying bugs like this in its product unfixed even as users complain over and over about this same issue for over 7 years. Presto! Problem solved. Goodbye, Evernote, you've finally lost me for good.

This is inexcusable. There should be NO for way a single wrong keyclick to permanently destroy years of organizational work, without any 'undo' feature, especially the better part of a decade after users first complained about it. At least, not in a professional note-taking app. 

[gazumped 11,652]

6 hours ago, Mike the human said:

This is inexcusable. There should be NO for way a single wrong keyclick to permanently destroy years of organizational work

I'd have a different word: "unavoidable" - there's no way that any software can comletely isolate a user from the vagaries of computers / internet connections and the occasional unlucky keypress. 

Each individual situation like this has many potential cures,  depending on what exactly just happened.  The only guaranteed solution though us the magic backup - which, whatever service you use,  you should make sure you have. 

My system gets a regular backup anyway - which (currently) includes the Evernote database.  I also back that up independently through Backupery on a daily basis so that any occasional foo-bars would be covered.

I'm sorry for your data loss,  but switching note-takers won't change the risk that sooner or later something else will go wrong.