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REQUEST: Find and replace


vitbyst

Idea

I frequently email photos and notes to myself from my iPhone and since each email has my signature including ( sent with iPhone ), this text also gets email obviously.

I realized that I really want to find my signature text through all notes and replace it or delete it.

I could not find this option on Evernote for Mac.

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Wow this thread is 2 years old and there's no search and replace yet? I know Evernote aspires to be somewhat minimalist but seriously? Can someone from Evernote comment on what the rationalle is for this? 

 

I can (sort of) understand why there wouldn't be a search and replace between notes, but within a single note seems absolutely essential. Makes me seriously ask myself if the Premium subscription is still worthwhile or if I need to find a new application. 

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+1

 

A global feature would also be useful as collecting notes over time you come to points where notes fit into obvious categories and a whole bunch need renaming. I know you can use tags, but I prefer to have my keywords in the title in case I want to export. It would make EN much more flexible for long term note storage.

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@CatOne. 

 

The conversation seems to be more about the feature than the platform, but fair enough (I try not to hang out with this crowd anyway ;)).

 

The fact of the matter is that the feature exists for individual notes, and not globally.  As such, it shouldn't be that hard for the dev team to come up with a way to apply it to a stack or selection.

 

There is obvious demand for it.

 

A
 

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+1

New Evernote user here. I just imported 9000+ bookmarks from Firefox to Evernote using this perl script, then adapted this applescript to append the instapapered html of each page. This has given my bookmarks new life and I'm starting to love Evernote. Well done gals & guys and keep up the good work. However, the import process left me with the following at the top of every imported note:

 

 

Instapaper
Save to Instapaper
MOVE

Lyon
Tisa
Helvetica
Georgia


Share Email

 

I'd like to remove this from all 9000+ notes at once. I guess I'll write a script for now when I get round to it (and I should have modified the applescript earlier!), but it would be great to see this simple feature implemented in Evernote. It certainly seems a popular request:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/45110-request-mac-find-and-replace/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/52260-mac-find-and-replace/?p=270062

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/27900-feature-request-find-and-replace/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/48442-find-and-replace-still-not-found-available-in-beta/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/34150-feature-request-batch-find-and-replace-for-titles/

 

Thanks!

reeveton

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I'd like to remove this from all 9000+ notes at once. I guess I'll write a script for now

In case anyone comes across this and is interested to do find & replace, the topping & tailing perl scripts I used were of the form:

#!/usr/bin/perl -0pi#multi-line in place substituteuse strict;use warnings;BEGIN {undef $/;}s/STUFF_TO_FIND/REPLACEMENT/smg;

So for my case the stuff to find was

<div><\/div><div><div>Instapaper.*<\/div><\/div><a><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

for the top and

<div><div>Evernote.*Highlight<\/a><div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

for the tail, and the replacement was blank.

 

EDIT: As I later discovered (see post below), it's the content.enml files that are key.

The files you need to edit are all called content.html and are located in subfolders of

~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application Support/Evernote/accounts/Evernote/ENUSERNAME/content

It's best to do this with evernote closed to avoid conflicts and exercise extreme caution by thoroughly testing the perl script on sample html first and backing up the above content folder.

When you're ready you can execute the scripts across the content folder, e.g.

find . -type f -name 'content.html' -exec perl ...

Something nice that came out of this is that I extended the method here so that I can now use a keyboard shortcut in firefox to instapaper the current page, evernote the result and then top & tail out the extraneous bits straight afterwards resulting in a minimal nicely formatted, fully searchable note even more easily than saving a bookmark within firefox.

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I'd like to remove this from all 9000+ notes at once. I guess I'll write a script for now

In case anyone comes across this and is interested to do find & replace...Something nice that came out of this is that I extended the method here so that I can now use a keyboard shortcut in firefox to instapaper the current page, evernote the result and then top & tail out the extraneous bits straight afterwards resulting in a minimal nicely formatted, fully searchable note even more easily than saving a bookmark within firefox.

 

Hilarious :mellow: ENtrolling aside, you fellows there, I just thought I'd post a quick update to my previous method.

 

Evernote's update to version 6.0 for Mac last November drew my attention to the fact that it's the content.enml files that need to be altered. Evernote treats these as the primary data for each note, as helpfully confirmed for me by Alvin C. at Evernote Support. Since I previously only modified the content.html files, when migrating my notes over to the new format Evernote naturally consulted the old content.enml files and of course when I opened the new version all the text I had removed from my notes had been resurrected! As before, then, I ran the following in the new directory:

find . -type f -name 'content.enml' -exec perl yourFindReplaceScript.pl '{}' \; && find . -type f -name 'note.xhtml' -exec perl yourFindReplaceScript.pl '{}' \;

The new directory is:

~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application Support/com.evernote.Evernote/accounts/www.evernote.com/DIGITS/content

Where DIGITS represents an ID number for your account.

 

Needless to say I tested this out on some sample files and backed up all my data before carrying out the operation.

 

Still very happy with Evernote and with the method I've described for creating instapapered evernote bookmarks.

 

Keep up the good work!

reeveton

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Needless to say I tested this out on some sample files and backed up all my data before carrying out the operation.

 

Still very happy with Evernote and with the method I've described for creating instapapered evernote bookmarks.

 

Keep up the good work!

reeveton

 

 

Needless to say you're the only one who tested this out and thus you're the only one happy with it.

 

We're asking for a simple function to be included in a popular variant note app (because remember, this feature IS ON WINDOWS), so please don't clutter the thread with this incredibly complex technical miracle 

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+1 here.  

 

I use this program to keep route cards for all my sales reps.  We have some text that's in 90% of our notes that I'd like to change/remove.  Given that there are over 200 notes, this can only be done with a global find and replace.

 

We pay for the premium service.  Given that this is available for a single note, I don't see how it can be that hard to implement on a stack.

 

Please consider adding this feature.  There is obviously some demand for it.

 

A

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  • Level 5*

I am going to suggest something that customer service would likely have a heart attack if they heard me say it, but I can imagine a dangerous way of going about this on your own.

Let's say you broke up with your significant other and wanted to replace every instance of their name with a suitable expletive. There are lots of apps out there that will do this for .txt and .html files, so you could point one to your Evernote folder and let it loose to wreak havoc there. Make sure to backup first! The app could certainly change all of the instances in the html files saved in your library as "content.html", but I am not sure about the .enml files. That might take a slightly more advanced app, but I think it is still theoretically possible. The results might make you shout out your own expletives :)

Alternatively, one could export all of their notes as html files, run the same process I just described, and then import them all again. This is probably a little safer.

Of course, these are just workarounds for those who are dead set on doing a batch search and replace. Personally, I think it is unlikely that Evernote will introduce any feature that batch processes every note (besides the obvious tagging, sharing, and moving features).

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Global find and replace for the Mac client is exactly what I want. My scanner inserts useless text in the header of every email that I can't get rid of, and I'd like to periodically purge that phrase from all notes, as there is no way it would ever appear in useful text.

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  • Level 5*

There is no global find and replace.

Ctrl+H gets you there. Or Edit / Find and Replace / Replace Within Note...

The find and replace strings should appear at the bottom of the note.

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  • Level 5*

just erase your signature text on your iphone. if you must keep the signature, but want to get rid of the text in your mailed notes, i suppose you'll have to go through and delete the notes one by one. as much as i can see the global search and replace function being useful, it seems unlikely to me that evernote would incorporate such a potentially destructive feature.

but, who knows? it never hurts to ask :P

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