(Archived) FEATURE REQUEST: Image/PDF Processing Status

[premiumuser 0]

Despite my premium account, there is often a significant delay between the time I add new image/PDF files into Evernote and when they are successfully indexed for search. It seems intuitive that there should be an easy way to tell if a particular note is still pending processing/indexing. Perhaps a colored outline on the note? Or an icon?

If this feature currently exists, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to see this feature added ASAP.

Thanks,

Zach

[TheGurkha 1]

The process requires at least two synchronisation actions. One to send the files and images to the server, and the other to retrieve the indexing and OCR information to your desktop client so that your client can search using that data. Of course, the EN servers have to have performed their OCR and indexing functions between those two synchs taking place.

You can reduce the overall time taken by manually synching once you have added the files. then waiting a period of time and re-synching manually once more. by default I think the desktop synchs one per hour, so left to its own devices you might have to wait almost two hours before the two synchs have taken place.

[jefito 5,589]

Despite my premium account, there is often a significant delay between the time I add new image/PDF files into Evernote and when they are successfully indexed for search.

Please quantify "significant delay". Minutes? Hours? Days?

As TheGurkha says, the indexing and OCR are done by the Evernote servers, not on your local client.

~Jeff

[premiumuser 0]

Thanks for the friendly advice. This is an issue of user-interface design more than a problem with the delay.

The Gurkha: The required mechanics (multiple synchronization) aren't lost on me. I have, and will continue, to manually sync in an effort to speed up the process of fetching the results. That said, indexing larger documents or blurry images may take some time, so I am prepared to wait.

Jeff: My use of the word "significant" is meant to describe a delay of more than a few seconds. In terms of user interface design, Evernote currently fails to provide feedback to the user. This may result in the user thinking the search functionality isn't working, when in fact, the indexing has not yet been performed. For non-technical users, this would not be obvious. In my case, I have had to wait hours for the indexing to complete. I am more than happy to wait for the servers to grind away (as local processing would probably kill my client) however, I would expect some form of status indicator so I knew which documents were searchable and which were pending.

I could imagine this fairly easy to implement as the notes are marked first upon entry/submission to the "cloud" and then unmarked upon return of the data.

Thanks,

Zach

[thinkingman 0]

I'm also wondering about this. I've been doing several searches to find data, only to return no results because the images have (seemingly) not bee indexed yet. Of course, I uploaded quite a few documents, so I do expect to wait. However, I'd like to know the progress, so I know what to expect when doing searches, etc. Now that I have a base library of notes uploaded, future uploads will be much more incremental and smaller, so I'd expect (?) a shorter delay…

[engberg 89]

We added 50% more capacity last month, so the wait times for images are fairly short. PDFs can take up to an hour just because PDFs themselves can be gigantic and slow, but images seem to be working within a few minutes now.

[pacergh 0]

I am with PremiumUser on this. I would be much more inclined to become a PremiumUser if I knew when my handwritten notes are OCRed.

This isn't about not wanting to wait. This isn't about now knowing how to manually sync. This is about knowing when OCR has been attempted on an image file so I will know when it can be searched.

Otherwise I sit there trying to search and keep coming back with results I know are incorrect. Why? Because the OCR has not happened. Or maybe it has and it just didn't work. But you know what, I don't know! Why? Because there is no clear status of "Indexed" or "Not Indexed."

I can't trouble shoot my own end if I don't have information from your end. It is more than a little frustrating.

Sincerely,

John

[SaraS 5]

Hmm, interesting - there actually IS an icon that indicates indexed or not indexed -- you have to expand the note info area to see it, but it is there.

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for, or am I misunderstanding the thread?

The weird thing is -- on the Mac client I just noticed that it doesn't seem to update to indicate that PDFs are searchable - it continues to show the "not all resources in this note are indexed" tooltip even after the PDF has become searchable.

On the Windows client, it does appear to work for PDFs.

For both, it seems to work fine for images (jpgs at least).

One other tip - once a PDF has been indexed, you can right click it in the note and choose to save a searchable version. If it hasn't yet been indexed, that option is not available. So that is another way to tell if it has been done (only applies to PDFs though -- not images).

Hope this helps

Sara

(no connection to Evernote other than as a user).

[engberg 89]

On the Mac client, the "searchable images" status message is a bit literal ... it's only referring to "image" files, not to PDFs.

[ev4jacksons 0]

I've uploaded a single page .jpg 8 hours ago, and it still hasn't been indexed. I hate to have another progress bar in my life, but some sort of feedback that lets us know "Your image is important too us, it will be indexed in the order received"

I'm trying to show the value of Evernote to my wife, but when the 1st page we upload to our premium account doesn't index, I'm having a hard time.

[C.Noize 2]

There seem to be a problem with the image recognition at the moment. I uploaded an image 29 hours ago and it's still not indexed.

But i have to agree with you, that some feedback would be nice. For example the current position in the queue. I'd like to see how many documents are in the queue and how many documents are in front of me, even if the queue isn't strictly FIFO based.

[engberg 89]

Premium images are being processed within a few minutes, but we're a bit behind on Free images. We ordered four new servers (with 8 processing cores each) last week.