Lost data/note on save with iPad

[vududeman 0]

OK, this is the third time I have lost data in Evernote and I'm starting to wonder how stable the program is. I'm using version 3.4.0 on the iPad (free account). I have wifi+3G. The problem occurs most after editing an existing note, then going to save. After save, either the note disappears or a blank untitled note appears in it's place. I'm guessing it's some conflict upon sync, that syncs back a blank note. This last time the 'preview' window for the document shows text, but when you open it, there is nothing. Would the paid version be better? I don't want to pay more and still lose data. Thanks!

[vududeman 0]

Also, this last one occured after editing and switching to another "notebook". After reopening later in the new notebook, the data was lost on save.

[oparrott 1]

I totally agree. There has to be some mechanism to protect data from being lost so we can focus on the work of writing not on using the tool. I have looked on the forum and seen no explanation for why this can't happen. I lose data just by my iPad going to standby if it sits idle for a minute during a meeting. I didn't save because I was still writing and then perhaps 20 minutes of notes disappear!!

[jmpsfs 23]

This is totally unvetted by EN but appears to have worked for me today (although I didn't have data loss this time, I have had in the past, with earlier versions).

I believe Wifi and 3G are fighting each other somehow and interfering with sync. Try stopping 3G where you have a good Wifi connection and see if it helps.

[cmalamute 2]

I am coming straigth into this topic. I am using Evernot Premium on different platforms and especially at my customers site on Ipad (3G+Wifi) to take my visit notes. Typical for this situation is a decent 3G connect and a missing Wifi connect (so jmpsfs workaround wouldnt help here). When I take or edit notes and after a while try to save the new/changed note I do not get the complete content, but an earlier saved version of the note. This does not happen each time but sometimes and often enough to be on my watch list. I cannot predict 100% the condition, when the save failure appears, but it appearantly this seems to be related to an instable3G connect.

My - surely annoying - workaround is to save as often as I can, but that is not what I expect from my mobile note editor.

[earcilla 1]

I'm using the paid version and have the same problem. I've lost three very important notes now and I've only been using the app for a few months now. I haven't been bringing paper to meetings anymore because I was relying on EN and taking notes on my iPad. Now I might have to go back to using paper....EN please fix!!!

[mrtunes 0]

i had this problem with the iphone version this weekend. i too am a premium member. it is really annoying to lose a note.

i edited a pre-existing note that was first created on the iphone

i wanted to append text to it, but at some point it went blank

i added my text hoping that on the desktop version it would append.

instead, only the new text is there.

simplenote has a revision history which would've prevented the data loss.

[afurley 0]

So glad to have found this thread. Just downloaded Evernote yesterday and used it to record (or so I thought) parts of a seminar on my iPhone, but discovered everything I had written and recorded had disappeared when I got back. Assumed that this was because I didn't hit Save before I turned it off, but sounds like this is a bug? Frankly though, it's daft to have to Save notes. You certainly don't have to on the Apple Notes App which seem to automatically save as you make changes. If Evernote did this it would solve all the problems listed above, wouldn't it?

[Tuluum 0]

Am crushed to say the exact thing happened to me this Saturday (19th) after attendance at a 12 hour business conference. I was actively writing in (and saving) my note until 5 pm over the hotel's wifi. My iphone's app is set to only sync over wi-fi as well. This morning, it is only showing my additions up until 10:21 a.m. of that morning. I am a Premium member and am hoping against hope that something can be done to recover the integral data which was taken down. This is the most important event that I have relied on Evernote for re: documentation as in the past I've had no problems. I don't know if this was related to the recent iphone App upgrade but color me extremely angry and disappointed at this point.

[brendanorourke 0]

Add one. This seems to happen to me most often when I am switch apps. It seems that evernote is not compatible with the multi tasking implementation on iOS 4. Often when I come back to the note it is blank and asking me to save changes. Sometimes if I save I lose the whole note - sometimes it's just the recent edits. Frequent saving is the answer but as this closes the note the workflow is painful.

Love to know what is happening on this.

[sterlingz 7]

Evernote support - any comment on this issue? This is a very serious bug, that leads to total lack of trust in using your platform to capture information on iOS. I've been burned by this bug several times, and will never trust Evernote for iOS to take notes again until there is some sort official comment about resolution of this issue.

Simplenote, as previously mentioned, handles this the right way, saving/syncing your notes as you type every few seconds. Not only that, they give you access to your version history right within the app. This is much more confidence inspiring. Nearly every iOS writing app handles data management with autosave, and Evernote needs to look at these implementations, and improve Evernote for iOS. It seems to me that until your data syncs with Evernote's servers (which only happens when you save the note, which takes you back to the list, inconvenient while writing), you are totally vulnerable.

Would love to hear an acknowledgement of this issue, and any potential solutions under consideration. I'd rather not use two tools (Evernote and Simplenote), but will continue to do so until this is resolved.

[Phil Dean 150]

Yes we are aware of this issue and have been working on a fix. The good news is we submitted the new iOS 4.0.2 to Apple for approval and it was pushed out to the Apple App store this morning with the fix to note data loss. Please install the latest version as we have fixed this issue and other bug related issues too.

[sterlingz 7]

Yes we are aware of this issue and have been working on a fix. The good news is we submitted the new iOS 4.0.2 to Apple for approval and it was pushed out to the Apple App store this morning with the fix to note data loss. Please install the latest version as we have fixed this issue and other bug related issues too.

Thanks so much for the response, Phil. I saw that update early this morning and installed it. The version notes just said "bug fixes" so I wasn't sure what issues were addressed. I'll test this new version.

[engberg 89]

The two most important fixes were for a large class of crashes and for data loss when editing a note on iOS when you switch from one app to another and then back to Evernote while editing.

[EvernoteConnoisseur 18]

Even when using the latest Evernote version 4.02 on iPhone 4 tonight, I've lost 3 hours of detailed and amazing notes for a class that I've paid $250 for!!!! :*(

I have a premium account and I hit SAVE button diligently MULTIPLE times, almost every 20 minutes throughout the evening. But right at around 9PM, when I clicked on "save" the last time, only a completely BLANK note was saved.

Hoping the note history function on Evernote Premium to salvage this mess, but it was pretty much USELESS as it only had one history (9PM) despite me saving MULTIPLE times throughout the night.

How could this tragedy happen? This is complete b*.

Evernote, I want my money back!!!! :*(

[t.e.moore@nasa.gov 0]

I have had the same problem multiple times, occasionally with significant loss, though rarely bad enough to motivate me for an hours long encounter with the support process. I dont' want support. I want an app that "just works"!

I just had the same problem with my Mac client version of the Evernote v.2.0.5.

I use the latest versions on both platforms at all times. So the fixes are NOT working.

A very simple fix would be to separate the "Save" function from the "Close" function, and then put in an automatic process that saves periodically, as for example in Google Mail. It is very annoying to have to close the window to save, in any case.

C'mon guys; you are going to blow your lead in this niche if you don't get on top of this problem!

NB:

Thinking on this a bit, it appears that hitting the sync button while editing, syncs the server to the last *saved* version of the note being edited, rather than to the current version. This is a vile trap to set for the user, particularly when you don't give the user control of the "save" function!!!

[Metrodon 2,184]

Have any of you opened a support ticket?

http://www.evernote.com/about/contact/support/#inquiry

You may be able to help them fix the problem.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Even when using the latest Evernote version 4.02 on iPhone 4 tonight, I've lost 3 hours of detailed and amazing notes for a class that I've paid $250 for!!!! :*((

FWIW, if I knew I would be taking very important notes for a case like this, I certainly would not have relied 100% on a (fairly) untested system (to me.) Not dogging EN but technology & new tools in general & speaking from past experience. If it's something very important, I use a setup that is tried & true & that I thoroughly understand how it works. And I certainly would not have used my phone for this task.

Hoping the note history function on Evernote Premium to salvage this mess, but it was pretty much USELESS as it only had one history (9PM) despite me saving MULTIPLE times throughout the night.

Per Heather's post here, note history is taken only about every 8 hours.

Evernote, I want my money back!!!! :*(

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=24209&p=104036&hilit=refund#p104036

[dlp1234 0]

Hello,

Unfortunately, I do not believe 4.0.2 fixes the anomaly with deleting notes.

I have 4.0.2 and was using Evernote on an iPad 1 during a staff meeting. I would type a few lines, press "Save," type a few more lines, press "Save"... until an hour later when I pressed "Save" and the note went blank. I was prompted to "Save" or "Discard." I thought the screen was in error and the content was still being stored. This was not true. When I hit "Save" my note was blank and all content was lost. I have no idea if "Discard" would have recovered my note.

I sent in a trouble ticket to see if my message can be recovered.

Going forward, if I continue with Evernote on the iPad, I'll type the note in email then send it to Evernote directly.

David

[EvernoteConnoisseur 18]

Hello,

Unfortunately, I do not believe 4.0.2 fixes the anomaly with deleting notes.

I have been using Evernote for a couple of years, and this is the first time I have lost notes due to 4.0.1 and 4.0.2. Coincidence or just bad luck?

[tony8028 1]

This has just happened to me after a very crucial meeting with a client - iPad 1. latest OS

Spent the meeting taking notes as usual then at the end i pressed SAVE and the note vanished.

I cant risk this happening again so I am going to try an alternate application.

[sterlingz 7]

Sorry to hear about all of these horror stories. Looks like Evernote for iOS continues its dubious track record of unreliability for note taking, and I too will forgo using it in production. I recommend Simplenote, which syncs to the cloud every few seconds, and offers true note history with the last 10 (or 30 with a premium subscription) versions backed up - based on when changes are actually made. Backing up every eight hours is of limited utility when working on writing.

Simplenote premium also offers the ability to sync a text file version to Dropbox for additional redundancy. My current workflow is to use Simplenote for note-taking and writing, and then e-mail finished versions to Evernote for archiving. I wish I didn't have to use two products, but until these critical flaws are addressed, that's the way it will have to be.

Evernote - it would really behoove you to come up with a better scheme for saving users' text notes on iOS. As you can see from this thread, valuable data is being lost, and it is not positive for your reputation. Every time a user loses notes they have written, that is trust that is lost in your platform. I speak from experience, having had these issues with an earlier version for iPad and I've never relied on using Evernote for iOS to take notes since.

[maxerua 0]

Same thing has happened to me already 3 times on Android 2.2 phone. When editing existing it happens that text is lost.

Did not yet find a thread for this issue.

Also cannot post a ticket. Either have a 404 error "Who goes there?" or timeout error...

If anyone has a link to android thread please share.

Max

[jasephase 0]

It seems this problem is not yet resolved. I saved, closed, and returned to the same note multiple times all day today. Then, all of a sudden, poof, it was gone without even a goodbye.

How about balancing on-device memory with on-the-cloud? If Evernote servers and such crash, will I lose all my data from the beginning?!

[svendah 0]

Happened to me today too. I was at a store, took some images and wrote text. In total I would say 5 notes with 1, 2 or 3 images and some text in each note. I have turned off 3G sync, and relied on wifi sync when I got home.

I noticed the Evernote iPhone app crashed a couple of times at the store, but the data seemed to be there.

When at home, Evernote synced on my Mac some remaining items it had not yet synced from a shared bookmark notebook from a friend. When this was finished, I trusted "now it should be safe to open the Evernote app on the iPhone and let it sync the notes I took (and images) from the store".

But no. Every note from the store has dissapeared from my iPhone, and was not synced. I don´t know why, but this should not happen to a serious brain like Evernote. Brain malfunction :-) I would really like some information on whether I just had really bad luck, or if this is a problem you (Evernote team) are still working on.

[chipcinnati 0]

This has happened to me twice, once early this year, and once today. I was in a multi-hour meeting, taking notes every moment, syncing (via 3G) every 30 minutes ago. There's a huge chunk of my notes that disappeared during one of the syncs. I'm an occasional Evernote user, and not a premium user.

Am I completely sunk?

[Laurenzaccaria 0]

Here on a holiday of a lifetime keeping a journal with EN only go loose two days worth of details. I keep receiving a message that sync process cannot work. I am now storing my journal in Notes. Truly disappointed as a dear friend could not come last minute due to a death in her family & I promised to send the journal with pics each day.

new to Ipad2 use and apps and thinking I need a better app. Was going to upgrade but when I started loosing info and could no longer e-mail I'm glad I waited.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Here on a holiday of a lifetime keeping a journal with EN only go loose two days worth of details. I keep receiving a message that sync process cannot work. I am now storing my journal in Notes. Truly disappointed as a dear friend could not come last minute due to a death in her family & I promised to send the journal with pics each day.

new to Ipad2 use and apps and thinking I need a better app. Was going to upgrade but when I started loosing info and could no longer e-mail I'm glad I waited.

Sorry about your data loss. But speaking from experience, I would say it's never a good idea to document the "holiday of a lifetime" with a new device & new apps. Heck, even for something as basic as a digital camera, I bought a new one several months before a scheduled vaca to NYC so I would be familiar with it.

[herrbello 0]

I have just had a horrible experience with EN whereby important notes, I had been typing for 2 days, went lost on saving. I am running EN (free version) on my Ipad 2 iOS 4.3.2. I had been saving the document all along when all of a sudden (I clicked saved) the program retrieved an older version of the document and new changes were lost.

I also see that you want me to upgrade to premium in order to see historical changes to the document. Perhaps this is part of your new customer acquisition strategy.

I do not want to bash the program since I've only been using it for 2 weeks but you gotta be reliable. I think you've got a good idea but reliability counts that's the only way you will win customer trust. This bad experience has made me think twice and start testing a competitor - Simplenote.

[Metrodon 2,184]

I'd suggest you open a support case, this has nothing to do with any 'strategy'.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I also see that you want me to upgrade to premium in order to see historical changes to the document. Perhaps this is part of your new customer acquisition strategy.

Actually, it's part of the "being able to pay the bills" strategy. If you pay close attention, you will notice users can use EN every day for years without paying a single penny. But yes, like many "free" apps, if you want some/all of the more advanced feature set, you will need to pay them some money for their hard work.

viewtopic.php?f=51&t=19427&p=80583&hilit=engineer#p80583

[Hali 0]

Just happened to me as well. Very frustrating.

I'm running the latest Evernote app version 4.14.200290,with iOS5 on an iPad1.

I am a huge Evernote desktop user and am very surprised that the iPad app is so limited in its functionalities and has such an important bug that's not yet fixed. When I looked it up and realized this issue has been around for more than a year, I must say my customer satisfaction took a massive hit. To me it reads like Evernote is not really interested in their users on the iPad have a good experience with their app. If I can't even rely on this app to save simple text changes I make to a note, what good is it?

[meny 6]

Happened to me, too. I inserted several tiny (100px wide images) to illustrate my point in the text. Then I opened the text in iPad and gone they were. Since I'm not a premium user, the image parts of the whole document have been erased. Is this OK?

[Myrulv 0]

During our holiday in Turkey I made a note with contact information for all the people we travelled with.

• This morning I opened En on my iPad to sync it,
  
• I could still see the list.
  
• I opened the share button, because at first I thought about share the list on Facebook, but decided not to this.
  
• When i touched the screen outside the share menu every thing disappered.
  

It is gone. It seems that this has been going on for more than 18 months. I have told a lot of people about EN. I will now stop using it, and start warning people about the danger of loosing data.

If EN needs money to support the prgram they should ask for it instead of tricking us in to using it when there is a good chance of loosing data like I just did.

[Evernote or Ephemernote? 0]

I have just had a horrible experience with EN whereby important notes, I had been typing for 2 days, went lost on saving. I am running EN (free version) on my Ipad 2 iOS 4.3.2. I had been saving the document all along when all of a sudden (I clicked saved) the program retrieved an older version of the document and new changes were lost.

I also see that you want me to upgrade to premium in order to see historical changes to the document. Perhaps this is part of your new customer acquisition strategy.

I do not want to bash the program since I've only been using it for 2 weeks but you gotta be reliable. I think you've got a good idea but reliability counts that's the only way you will win customer trust. This bad experience has made me think twice and start testing a competitor - Simplenote.

 

 

I completely agree -- I too lost data inexplicably from an important note stored in Evernote and after reporting twice to EN Support still haven't received any support on how to get it back or avoid the problem in the future. Every attempt to resolve on my own ultimately leads to a suggestion to upgrade to Premium or Business. Why on Earth would I pay for a more advanced version of a product that has already failed miserably in its most basic version? And why would anyone trust their business information to such a flukey platform? Disappointed, EN.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I completely agree -- I too lost data inexplicably from an important note stored in Evernote and after reporting twice to EN Support still haven't received any support on how to get it back or avoid the problem in the future. Every attempt to resolve on my own ultimately leads to a suggestion to upgrade to Premium or Business. Why on Earth would I pay for a more advanced version of a product that has already failed miserably in its most basic version? And why would anyone trust their business information to such a flukey platform? Disappointed, EN.

First, did you receive a support ticket number?  That is the only way to get support directly from EN.  If you did get a support ticket, what number is it?  And when?  Support responds within one business day, California time for premium users.  Free users as time permits.

 

Second, the only reason attempts to "resolve on my own" would lead to a suggestion to upgrade to premium is if you are trying access note history, which is taken only once about every eight hours.  Yes, that is a premium feature.  It costs $5 for a month.  That's pretty reasonable, IMO. 

 

Good luck with finding an app that better suits your needs. 

[scanandshred 0]

This appears to be a continuously unresolved issue. Working on the iPad evernote app. Just rolled back to data from a note I was writing an hour ago. History only has the original note and the additional comments from 30seconds ago. just not the hour of work in between.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

This appears to be a continuously unresolved issue. Working on the iPad evernote app. Just rolled back to data from a note I was writing an hour ago. History only has the original note and the additional comments from 30seconds ago. just not the hour of work in between.

Note history is only taken once about every eight hours.

Additionally, I would never work for an hour without saving/syncing. I rarely work more than 10 minutes without saving/syncing.

You may find this thread informative.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/55527-evernote-not-saving-changes-on-ipad-mini/

[eltigerferoz 0]

I just lost all the notes and notebooks I created this afternoon after logging out of my iPad version of EN in order to log on to the web version and begin work there. Everything is gone now. And to think I sat smuggly taking notes in EN in my meetings today, telling anyone who asked what a great app this was. Joke was one me. We just bought a slew of new iPads for my department and I was planning on having EN Premium be our official department. But reading all these others message boards about lost data means there is no way I can trust this program. On that note--does anyone have any good alternatives?