Jump to content
  • 0

Prevent copied Word documents with the same name from creating issues


Pandaar

Idea

I have an issue where I get weird things happening when I copy a Word document from one note to another and make edits.

If I don't rename the new copy, then when I edit the document and save it, the document just disappears, and the changes are actually applied to the original file in the original note.

I see now that I should just rename a file when copying it between notes, but could Evernote have something in place so that this issue doesn't happen? For example, attachments could be automatically renamed with a suffix in the new note.

To me one of the benefits of Evernote is that when you drag in an attachment it creates a "clone" of that attachment specifically for that note. So to me it makes sense that attachments copied within Evernote would also follow this process.

Link to comment

5 replies to this idea

Recommended Posts

  • Level 5*

Hi.  I believe I noticed a while ago that two files with exactly the same name are actually the same file.  It makes sense (saves space) for Evernote not to store duplicate copies of the same file in the Windows database - and in fact Windows makes it impossible for you to edit them independently.  Before Word can make any changes it needs an individual DOC(X) file to work on.  So Evernote extracts the attachment into a separate file and saves it in the Attachments folder to let Word get started.  For reasons to do with WIndows,  that file will stay there after you finish editing file #1 so when you want to edit edit file #2 the attachment will be extracted on top of the other file of the same name... causing an error window and subsequent confusion.

Better to apply your own version numbers to files if you want to do that -

  • open the original attachment <filename>.DOCX
  • rename it <filename.1>DOCX and save it to your desktop
  • edit as required
  • attach it to a new note - or add it to the original

I don't believe Evernote would want the responsibility of changing filenames or adding title-based suffixes - and what would happen if the note name changed?

Link to comment

Hi Gazumped,

Thank you for your reply - while I don't doubt that there are ways around this issue, I still think it is an issue that might cause distress but that can be easily prevented with a feature implementation.

I don't understand what responsibility Evernote would have to take in changing the filenames. Windows does it whenever it finds copies of the same attachment - I don't see a simple suffix just like Windows uses adding much confusion. And I also don't understand what the issue is with the note name changing - the two notes would now have completely separate attachments, which is much more in alignment with the principle of each Evernote note having its own attachments (rather than a weird attachment that is now shared between notes and causing errors).

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

You've suggested the idea - let's see if there's support for it from other users.  It's kinda basic version management to assign sequential numbers to various generations of a filename,  but I don't know of any other software that will do that for you.  Evernote might decide that's a good idea - we'll have to see...

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
15 hours ago, gazumped said:

Hi.  I believe I noticed a while ago that two files with exactly the same name are actually the same file.  It makes sense (saves space) for Evernote not to store duplicate copies of the same file in the Windows database

Not sure this is the case.  If you drag a Word doc to a new note you can modify the document independently in both notes, but there is a way to get some very strange results if you modify right after the creation of the second note.

  1. Create a simple Word doc.
  2. Add it to a note 1.
  3. Create a new note 2 in its own window.
  4. Drag the Word doc from note 1 to note 2
  5. Edit and save the Word doc in note 2.
  6. The doc in note 2 is unchanged, but the doc in note 1 has the changes.

Makes NO SENSE.  :wacko:  I reported this some time back....

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...