About Notes and Notebooks

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

Hi, I'm using the Evernote for Windows (the FREE version, but will move to premium soon for large space) and I have the following queries:

1) I want to completely turn OFF cloud sync. I want to keep my notes and notebooks on my pc only. I know it won't sync to mobile but that's all right. So, how do I do it and will I still need to log into my Evernote account?

2) How do I backup those local notes and notebooks so that if I format my PC, I can import the notes and notebooks?

Please help me with those.

Thanks in advance.

Regards.
 

[CalS 5,280]

5 minutes ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Hi, I'm using the Evernote for Windows (the FREE version, but will move to premium soon for large space) and I have the following queries:

1) I want to completely turn OFF cloud sync. I want to keep my notes and notebooks on my pc only. I know it won't sync to mobile but that's all right. So, how do I do it and will I still need to log into my Evernote account?

2) How do I backup those local notes and notebooks so that if I format my PC, I can import the notes and notebooks?

Please help me with those.

Thanks in advance.

Regards.
 

1)  Put all your notes in Local notebooks.  You have to have at least one synced notebook, but you don't have to have any notes in it.

2)  Use the Export function in EN to backup your notes.  Do it by notebook.  An ENEX file is created.  Be sure and go to options in the Export dialog and check all the boxes.

One caveat for an import is that note links are lost.  To remediate this keep the link the same as the title in the linked note.  That way if you have to restore a note that is linked somewhere, you can search by the title to find the note and re-establish the link.  Good luck.

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

1 minute ago, CalS said:

1)  Put all your notes in Local notebooks.  You have to have at least one synced notebook, but you don't have to have any notes in it.

2)  Use the Export function in EN to backup your notes.  Do it by notebook.  An ENEX file is created.  Be sure and go to options in the Export dialog and check all the boxes.

One caveat for an import is that note links are lost.  To remediate this keep the link the same as the title in the linked note.  That way if you have to restore a note that is linked somewhere, you can search by the title to find the note and re-establish the link.  Good luck.

Thanks for the reply. In regards to no.1 - Would I have turn any option off or on?

[DTLow 5,736]

41 minutes ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

2) How do I backup those local notes and notebooks so that if I format my PC, I can import the notes and notebooks?

As @CalS mentioned, Evernote has an export/import feature.  This can be automated with third party product Backupery

You can also back up the Evernote database file/folder.  This preserves the notebooks and inter-note links on a restore.

[CalS 5,280]

1 minute ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Thanks for the reply. In regards to no.1 - Would I have turn any option off or on?

Tun them all on assuming you want to save that data with the notes.  I do.

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

Thanks a lot to the both of you

And would I need to keep being logged in to my account while I only save locally?

[CalS 5,280]

You are welcome.  Yes, you have to be logged in to run the software.  That's one of the issues if someone logs out and then tries to start EN without an Internet connection.  You can turn off syncing to once a day or something if you like.

[DTLow 5,736]

6 hours ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

And would I need to keep being logged in to my account while I only save locally?

Yes, you log in to your account to access your notes; in this regards, there's no difference between sync"d or Local Notebooks.

btw  I'm glad to see you considering the backup implications for Local Notebooks.
They are a valuable tool for use, but many users end up posting "I lost my notes".  You will not have a problem if you maintain proper backups.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

2 hours ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Thanks for the reply. In regards to no.1 - Would I have turn any option off or on?

If this is in regard to using local notebooks only (apart from the required one synced notebook, even if it's empty), you'll just have to create your notebooks using the File menu: File > New Local Notebook.

Just out of curiosity, why do you plan to use Evernote this way? Most people (even us who like it overall) regard its editor as sub-par. Is it for the tagging and searching capabilities?

[DTLow 5,736]

5 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Just out of curiosity, why do you plan to use Evernote this way? Most people (even us who like it overall) regard its editor as sub-par. Is it for the tagging and searching capabilities?

This was also discussed in the topic linked below

Regarding the "editor as sub-par" assessment
- the editor is sub-par if your use is creating Word Processing documents 
- the editor is useless if your use is creating Spreadsheet documents
My use is creating note containers for text and/or files (word processing, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, ...)

 

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

15 hours ago, DTLow said:

btw  I'm glad to see you considering the backup implications for Local Notebooks.
They are a valuable tool for use, but many users end up posting "I lost my notes".  You will not have a problem if you maintain proper backups.

 

Yes mate, like I said in most of my threads and post, I like Evernote more than OneNote but I have not got that peace of mind in terms of privacy, hence this is the only way to use for private purposes. And I do plan to backup every day to a dedicated cloud storage by password protecting the evernote files using 7-zip. That way I will get peace of mind. It will easily do the job, right?

12 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Just out of curiosity, why do you plan to use Evernote this way? Most people (even us who like it overall) regard its editor as sub-par. Is it for the tagging and searching capabilities?

1

Because of the peace of mind that I don't have as Evernote employees can take a look at our notes despite Evernote changing privacy policy after they openly said employees can look at the notes which led people getting furious.

I even plan to get premium but I will still use this way.  

Peace of mind is the MAIN thing, right?

15 hours ago, CalS said:

Tun them all on assuming you want to save that data with the notes.  I do.

 

Hey mate, I unchecked the following options as you can see in the screenshot. Do I need to do anything else to completely prevent cloud sync?

[CalS 5,280]

4 hours ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Hey mate, I unchecked the following options as you can see in the screenshot. Do I need to do anything else to completely prevent cloud sync?

Nope, other than don’t put any notes in a synced notebook.  If you have nothing to sync the settings really don’t matter.  ?

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

16 minutes ago, CalS said:

Nope, other than don’t put any notes in a synced notebook.  If you have nothing to sync the settings really don’t matter.  ?

Thanks mate

[CalS 5,280]

You are welcome.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

10 hours ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Because of the peace of mind that I don't have as Evernote employees can take a look at our notes despite Evernote changing privacy policy after they openly said employees can look at the notes which led people getting furious.

I even plan to get premium but I will still use this way.  

Peace of mind is the MAIN thing, right?

OK, I can understand that. Guess I just am not that worried that Evernote employees will go snooping in my data. And I don't keep anything in EN that would really compromise myself or anyone else. (I know that's not true for everyone.) Though there is that note with forum passwords....

Meh. My mind is at peace, and I'm with you on that.

[CalS 5,280]

On 9/2/2018 at 2:52 AM, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Because of the peace of mind that I don't have as Evernote employees can take a look at our notes despite Evernote changing privacy policy after they openly said employees can look at the notes which led people getting furious.

I guess I'm with @Dave-in-Decatur on this one.  I have a combo of synced and local notebooks, 80% synced notes more or less.  I'm not that concerned should anyone see any of the 80%, plus not particularly concerned that EN employees are snooping.  Anything I don't want anyone to see is in the 20%.  More fearful of what Google does with my search history.  ?

I like having my workout records synced so I can use my phone at the gym is a simple example of one use case.  Also, nice to have the bulk of my to-do's accessible on the phone.  But as always, we all have different tolerances and use cases.

[DTLow 5,736]

11 hours ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Because of the peace of mind that I don't have as Evernote employees can take a look at our notes

Personally, I use encryption to protect my sensitive data.  
There's also the NSA, Russian and Chinese agents, vengeful wife/girlfriends, ...

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

19 hours ago, DTLow said:

Personally, I use encryption to protect my sensitive data.  
There's also the NSA, Russian and Chinese agents, vengeful wife/girlfriends, ...

Do you always with the PDF encryption and then uploading to Evernote?

[DTLow 5,736]

59 minutes ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Do you always with the PDF encryption and then uploading to Evernote?

Evernote has a text encryption feature, and I encrypt pdfs on my Mac before uploading to Evernote.
Office/iWork documents can also be encrypted in the apps before saving and uploadting to Evernote.

Just the sensitive data; the majority of my data is not encrypted.

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

54 minutes ago, DTLow said:

Evernote has a text encryption feature, and I encrypt pdfs on my Mac before uploading to Evernote.
Office/iWork documents can also be encrypted in the apps before saving and uploadting to Evernote.

Just the sensitive data; the majority of data is not encrypted.

Correct. So if you ever want to add anything to the PDF, you just open the PDF after putting pass and then add and then close? I have no problem in doing that but it can be a bit tough when I am on the move. Like I have to copy the PDF pass to clipboard and then put it and add the content that I want and then close.

And Evernote's text encryption is not that good. If you put automatic numbers like 1, 2, 3 for writing step by step of anything OR even bullet points, it won't let you encrypt. 

[DTLow 5,736]

1 minute ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

So if you ever want to add anything to the PDF, you just open the PDF after putting pass and then add and then close?

My PDFs are static documents.  I rarely update them.

I do modify my office/iwork documents as you indicated; enter password then update.

[CalS 5,280]

For sensitive spreadsheets - I put a link into an EN note to the password protected models which reside in a 2GB VeraCrypt container which is backed up to DropBox. Kind of overkill I suppose with encryption wrapping around encryption.  ?

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

1 hour ago, CalS said:

For sensitive spreadsheets - I put a link into an EN note to the password protected models which reside in a 2GB VeraCrypt container which is backed up to DropBox. Kind of overkill I suppose with encryption wrapping around encryption.  ?

I got confused on that haha

But let me see if I got this correctly:

You have a spreadsheet with passwords which is inside the VeraCrypt and the VeraCrypt is backed into Dropbox? If yes, then how do you manage anything while you are on the move?
And if I got this wrong, please explain step by step as I would like to do that way too coz I feel strong security with that way.

[DTLow 5,736]

18 minutes ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

I got confused on that haha   ... how do you manage anything while you are on the move?
(re: password protected models which residein a 2GB VeraCrypt container which is backed up to DropBox)

I'm supposing the spreadsheet can still be accessed via Dropbox.
I only have a single encryption option, but I prefer embedding spreadsheet files in my notes as attachments
- no concerns about where the spreadsheet is filed
- no concerns about backup

[CalS 5,280]

3 hours ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

I got confused on that haha

But let me see if I got this correctly:

You have a spreadsheet with passwords which is inside the VeraCrypt and the VeraCrypt is backed into Dropbox? If yes, then how do you manage anything while you are on the move?
And if I got this wrong, please explain step by step as I would like to do that way too coz I feel strong security with that way.

Since the VeraCrypt container is on my C-Drive there isn't any issue accessing the spreadsheet while on the move.  If you are familiar with VeraCrypt or like software, all you have to do is be sure the container is "mounted" and then it acts as a normal drive.  The container backs up to DropBox when it is dismounted.  So if I use the spreadsheet while moving, the next time I am connected to the internet and the container is not mounted, it will backup to DropBox.  

Steps are with VeraCrypt:

1. Create a container of whatever size is best for you, leave some room for growth.
2. Mount the container whenever you want access or just leave it mounted.  It will appear as a disk drive in file explorer on Windows.
3. Save your spreadsheets (with or without password protection) to the container drive, using whatever folder structure you want.
4. Put a link to the file in a note in EN, same way you would put any file link in EN.
5. Be sure and dismount the container at whatever frequency works for you to force the DropBox backup.

Hope this helps.

[CalS 5,280]

3 hours ago, DTLow said:

m supposing the spreadsheet can still be accessed via Dropbox.
I only have a single encryption option, but I prefer embedding spreadsheet files in my notes as attachments
- no concerns about where the spreadsheet is filed
- no concerns about backup

Spreadsheet is accessible from EN, Excel or File Explorer from any device that is syncing with DropBox and has VeraCrypt installed, but not DropBox by itself.  The containers are large files in a folder within my DropBox folder.  You need VeraCrypt to decrypt for access.  Decryption is on the fly with no performance issues as far as I can tell   Not an issue for me since to not have remote access since I only use these spreadsheets from home base.  DropBox is more of a backup strategy.

- No concern where the file is stored since it is a link in an EN note, on the M-Drive.

- Because of backup concerns, I have my most used important spreadsheets in DropBox, either in a VeraCrypt container or in standard folders in my DropBox folder.  That way I know I have a backup of every iteration of the spreadsheet, for a recent period anyway.  Not so with EN, no guarantee a history copy will be taken every time you modify the spreadsheet.  Also, early on EN would hose spreadsheets that contained pivot tables, recoverable, but none the less, broken.  May not now, don't know since I adjusted method.

Probably creating more work for myself, but I think the juice is worth the squeeze relative to security and backup.

[Mesoman 20]

Unfortunately, Backupery is windows only. Does anyone know a way I can do a local backup of my entire Evernote database, maintaining its structure, on a Mac?

[DTLow 5,736]

21 minutes ago, Mesoman said:

Unfortunately, Backupery is windows only. Does anyone know a way I can do a local backup of my entire Evernote database, maintaining its structure, on a Mac?

Backupery is available for both the Mac and Windows platform.
The app uses Evernote's export feature.

Users do separate exports for each notebook since the notebook information is dropped in the export/import.

On my Mac, I use a script for my daily and weekly backups.  Details at 

 

[Mr Jumbo Guy 5]

On 9/4/2018 at 3:57 AM, CalS said:

Since the VeraCrypt container is on my C-Drive there isn't any issue accessing the spreadsheet while on the move.  If you are familiar with VeraCrypt or like software, all you have to do is be sure the container is "mounted" and then it acts as a normal drive.  The container backs up to DropBox when it is dismounted.  So if I use the spreadsheet while moving, the next time I am connected to the internet and the container is not mounted, it will backup to DropBox.  

Steps are with VeraCrypt:

1. Create a container of whatever size is best for you, leave some room for growth.
2. Mount the container whenever you want access or just leave it mounted.  It will appear as a disk drive in file explorer on Windows.
3. Save your spreadsheets (with or without password protection) to the container drive, using whatever folder structure you want.
4. Put a link to the file in a note in EN, same way you would put any file link in EN.
5. Be sure and dismount the container at whatever frequency works for you to force the DropBox backup.

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot. That is a good way to keep things private and secure. :)

[CalS 5,280]

9 hours ago, Mr Jumbo Guy said:

Thanks a lot. That is a good way to keep things private and secure.

You are welcome.