BUG: Note content deleted during sync!

[marxowski 1]

A couple of times now I've witness disturbing behaviour during syncing on my iPad.

While taking notes during a class (switching between two languages so data input was tortuous) I saved two or three times over the course of an hour. At the conclusion of the class I synced a final time, then saw 90% of my note disappear! I thought it was maybe taking time to refresh, but no, it was gone, irredeemably so. I checked on my laptop when I got home just in case, but the note was the same as on my iPad (ie. mostly deleted). I'm a premium member so I hoped the "note history" feature would come to my rescue, but that's only updated several times a day.

This morning I started the app on my iPad again and noted that it was syncing a note I had open. The thumbnail actually showed more content in this note than the body did, until it finished syncing of course when the thumbnail updated to show that most of the note had been deleted.

As well as it works 95% of the time, I'm considering moving back to paper as I can't risk this sort of data loss. Obviously help with preventing this in future is the #1 priority, but in addition to this it'd be really useful if the note history feature followed more along Apple's Time Machine model, eg. every sync over the last hour is saved, every hour for the last day, every day for the last week etc.

So: help!

Another minor irritant was that I would selectively highlight the second of two words on a line, copy, but then when I pasted both the first and second words were somehow pasted. This happened repeatedly... but then I lost the whole thing anyway, so you know, whatever. :|

[AndyDent 97]

Time Machine is great and one of the things that makes me such an Evernote fan is knowing I have an offline copy of my data (actually on about 5 machines).

Another tip is to cycle through a couple of different disks with your Time Machine, and keep one offsite. I have had Time Machine die on my Mac twice in the last 3 years (OK, over several OS/X versions) and thus lost access to those backups.

Remember if someone breaks in and steals your computer they will likely grab any nearby disks that are connected so your backups could go at the same time.

Back in the 80's I was a Vax systems manager. I haven't felt very safe since I stopped having multi generational tape backups of my Mac but I can't afford the kind of gear necessary to backup that quantity so I just use multiple hard disks and feel a little nervous.

[DiegoCampos 0]

Em 2012-4-9 at 21:43, marxowski disse:

A couple of times now I've witness disturbing behaviour during syncing on my iPad.

While taking notes during a class (switching between two languages so data input was tortuous) I saved two or three times over the course of an hour. At the conclusion of the class I synced a final time, then saw 90% of my note disappear! I thought it was maybe taking time to refresh, but no, it was gone, irredeemably so. I checked on my laptop when I got home just in case, but the note was the same as on my iPad (ie. mostly deleted). I'm a premium member so I hoped the "note history" feature would come to my rescue, but that's only updated several times a day.

This morning I started the app on my iPad again and noted that it was syncing a note I had open. The thumbnail actually showed more content in this note than the body did, until it finished syncing of course when the thumbnail updated to show that most of the note had been deleted.

As well as it works 95% of the time, I'm considering moving back to paper as I can't risk this sort of data loss. Obviously help with preventing this in future is the #1 priority, but in addition to this it'd be really useful if the note history feature followed more along Apple's Time Machine model, eg. every sync over the last hour is saved, every hour for the last day, every day for the last week etc.

So: help!

Another minor irritant was that I would selectively highlight the second of two words on a line, copy, but then when I pasted both the first and second words were somehow pasted. This happened repeatedly... but then I lost the whole thing anyway, so you know, whatever. :|

 

It happened to me twice this month, when I have poor connectivity.

First time, I was editing in Airplane Mode and when I got a WiFi, the note syncronized and deleted 90% of the note.

Second time, I was editing with a poor 3G and then the note content disapeared after sync. I've searched in my history states, but I can't recover because the states are the same deleted content.

I love Evernote, but please, don't let it happen.

[jtynefield 1]

+1 to this bug.  Has anybody seen an official response to this?

 

I've used OneNote daily for years and never, ever, ever seen a bad sync/merge.  I was trying to port myself over to evernote but this is a showstopper.  

[Thag 0]

People are getting distracted and off topic here. Questioning backup policies and cloud fallback options is not the issue. The fact is that evernote randomly delete notes. That is the problem.

It renders evernote basically useless for anything requiring data integrity. If you can't trust your multi-node could-sync'd app, then why use it?

I regularly find notes in the trash from notebooks I haven't opened in months.

[smithdan 1]

I had same thing happen to me. Last week I applied the latest EN update from the App store on my Mac 10.6.8. (Also using latest version on my iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1.) When EN re-opened, my first - and most critical - note was EMPTY. Not in trash, not in sync problems folder, not on website. Content just gone. Opened EN on my iPhone, pulled up the note, saw all my content for a split second and then it vanished as EN synchronized. Right away I emailed tech support.

I did manage to recover a week-old version of the note using Time Machine as described above, but it was cumbersome and not ideal. Eventually, Evernote gave me a week-long free upgrade to Premium so I could use the Notes History function, and this is ultimately how I restored the note.

I think Evernote is worth $5/mo so I will probably upgrade to premium just to support them and to have the security of notes history. HOWEVER, I am very scared of this happening again and I will start archiving copies of my notes. I watched it happen to a client of mine several months ago, he only had evernote on his iPad and he was unable to recover some very important, costly data, mainly photos he had taken with his iPad that all disappeared along with his notes. And he was already a premium user! Unfortunately he does not use a Mac and only had the info on his ipad & iPhone and needed it for presentations to his clients. It was a huge blow for him. Evernote really needs to resolve this. Its one thing to offer premium features but that does not make it okay to put out an unreliable product!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Great advice here. I would say save, sync, backup, and become a premium member so that you can

access note histories

Note History, has nothing to do with the main issue here which is that notes entered while offline, on a portable device, are obliterated when re-connecting to a PC.

Hi. My post was not meant to provide a solution to any specific problem, but rather to summarize some of the best practices mentioned by other users, and express my agreement with them. I don't know what the main issue is in this thread, because there are several ones, but because note histories provide the opportunity to retrieve a previous version of a note, they seem relevant here.

Hi "Grumpy" - I didn't really mean for that to be a criticism of your post, I know everyone here is either complaining or trying to help (some, like me, both) :-). I was just saying that the OP and all, but one other effected user (by my memory) had an issue with syncing from an offline file. I was just saying that, for those with the same problem as the thread was started because of, should not get false hope that Note History would benefit them in any way. The solution that I recommended / described (and one other user referred to) could actually save them.

Sorry if it came off as a criticism of you - not meant that way at all.

We're cool. No apology needed! And, your solution was very helpful. I think the key is to be aware of all the possibilities and know what can be done if you get into trouble. Some of this requires preparations like external hard drives for backups, premium for note history, and so forth.

[zakk 0]

Great advice here. I would say save, sync, backup, and become a premium member so that you can

access note histories

Note History, has nothing to do with the main issue here which is that notes entered while offline, on a portable device, are obliterated when re-connecting to a PC.

Hi. My post was not meant to provide a solution to any specific problem, but rather to summarize some of the best practices mentioned by other users, and express my agreement with them. I don't know what the main issue is in this thread, because there are several ones, but because note histories provide the opportunity to retrieve a previous version of a note, they seem relevant here.

Hi "Grumpy" - I didn't really mean for that to be a criticism of your post, I know everyone here is either complaining or trying to help (some, like me, both) :-). I was just saying that the OP and all, but one other effected user (by my memory) had an issue with syncing from an offline file. I was just saying that, for those with the same problem as the thread was started because of, should not get false hope that Note History would benefit them in any way. The solution that I recommended / described (and one other user referred to) could actually save them.

Sorry if it came off as a criticism of you - not meant that way at all.

[jaeeonr 1]

I kind of ditched evernote because of this. Using Onenote instead.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Great advice here. I would say save, sync, backup, and become a premium member so that you can

access note histories

Note History, has nothing to do with the main issue here which is that notes entered while offline, on a portable device, are obliterated when re-connecting to a PC.

Hi. My post was not meant to provide a solution to any specific problem, but rather to summarize some of the best practices mentioned by other users, and express my agreement with them. I don't know what the main issue is in this thread, because there are several ones, but because note histories provide the opportunity to retrieve a previous version of a note, they seem relevant here.

[zakk 0]

Great advice here. I would say save, sync, backup, and become a premium member so that you can

access note histories

Note History, has nothing to do with the main issue here which is that notes entered while offline, on a portable device, are obliterated when re-connecting to a PC.

[zakk 0]

PLEASE READ THIS POST IT MAY HELP YOU RECOVER YOUR DATA

Ok, so let me start by saying I had this same issue described by other users where I had started a note on my computer and then continued it on my iPad while offline. When I returned to my computer and then turned my iPad on t synchronize, I saw the complete note on my iPad and then, as soon as it connected to the network, the note simply dissappeared right before my eyes. There does not appear to be any "undo" function and there was certainly no option to resolve a conflict in the data between the two sources (not that they should need that). Amazingly, Evernote gave preference to the older of the two files (not sure if that was because it was older, because it was on the computer rather than the iPad, or if it is just random). In any case, Evernote dropped instantly from one of my favorite apps to one I will never use again until this HUGE bug is fixed. Insane that this is an issue. The other commenters' posts tailing about the need to back up your computer and not relying on the cloud to protect your data may be good advice in general, but has nothing at all to do with this issue since the data lost was on a portable device and never made it to the computer in the first place.

Ok, so, now to how I got my data back...

1. On my iPad, I opened the note that got partially erased (all was gone other than what was already on the computer)
   
2. In the bottom left corner, I clicked on the gear icon (this opens a raw data log that has the all info that was entered buried in a mix of HTML and plain text)
   
3. Next, I clicked on "Mail", in the top right corner of the "Activity Log" box and sent the log, in plain text form, to my email.
   
4. I then saved that file on my computer AS AN HTML FILE
   
5. Now that it was an HTML file, I was able to open in it in my browser and find the deleted note, fully intact!
   

I am very glad that I could recover my data, but it does not make me comfortable enough to continue to trust Evernote with ANY important information. It is really amazing that no one from Evernote has chimed in on this thread with this info or, better yet, some helpful advice on how to avoid this situation, if there is a way. I have to assume this does not happen every time someone syncs or no one would use it on multiple devices any more.

In fairness, I have not yet emailed tech support, but I will. The fact is, though, that I should not have to email them to fix this obvious issue, assuming that there is a fix. They should push a fix or send an email to members or, in some way, communicate a solution.

I hope this helps!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

The key thing to remember here is that no one solution to storing and backing up your data is sufficient. I'm a heavy Evernote user, I keep tons of stuff in it and I'm sure that they do their absolute upmost to preserve my data.

I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw their elephant, not because they are untrustworthy, but because ***** happens and it will happen to Evernote like it happens to everyone.

So, I backup locally (two different backups because I really do care about my data) and I also back up to another cloud service. This way I should be able to cope with a single, or even double or even maybe triple point of failure and never have to get hysterical on a web forum.

I'm a lot like this. I trust Evernote, but stuff happens, and now that storage has become so inexpensive, it really makes sense to have multiple backups. It can get a little bit complicated, but basically, I use Time Machine every day, my current projects are saved into my Dropbox folder, and at the end of every month I dump everything important into an archival external hard drive, which gets copied at that point to another one kept in a separate physical location.

So, what this means is that if my house burns down while I am in the office writing this, I have copies of all my data on external hard drives stored elsewhere, and all of the current projects are not only in my computer at the moment, but on Dropbox. It would take an epic disaster of 2012 proportions to cause me any serious headaches. Wait a second, this year is 2012, isn't it...

[Metrodon 2,184]

The key thing to remember here is that no one solution to storing and backing up your data is sufficient. I'm a heavy Evernote user, I keep tons of stuff in it and I'm sure that they do their absolute upmost to preserve my data.

I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw their elephant, not because they are untrustworthy, but because ***** happens and it will happen to Evernote like it happens to everyone.

So, I backup locally (two different backups because I really do care about my data) and I also back up to another cloud service. This way I should be able to cope with a single, or even double or even maybe triple point of failure and never have to get hysterical on a web forum.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Great advice here. I would say save, sync, backup, and become a premium member so that you can

access note histories

[Murray 1]

Sorry for getting a bit hysterical there, gang.

I did manage to recover my file, through the help of Evernote's very kindly tech support, and Time Machine.

If it weren't for Time Machine, the file would have been lost. Time Machine is such a great system, and so easy to use, so powerful.

This technique below will help you recover stuff that has been lost due to syncing, whether it's an iPad syncing bug (as in my case), or you've just made a mistake!

But it'll only work if you use Evernote on your Mac, and you've back up recently using Time Machine... here goes...

What I did was this... I wanted to basically open Time Machine, browse back to my last backup, and go into the Evernote folder where it stores the local copies of the Evernote notes on your Mac HDD, and pull out the one I wanted... They're in there as HTML files, so you can pull it back out... well the text at least, and one way or another, all the data should be in there, even audio and images, I think. The HTML file I opened showed my text, and images of my doc.

You may want to disconnect from the internet first, just in case it can somehow sync this data you grab out of your Time Machine. Dunno. I don't think it can do that, seeing you'll be pulling these files out onto your hard drive, and not opening them in Evernote, but hey, thought I'd mention it!

1. I plugged in my Time Machine drive.

2. I used the Time Machine icon up at the top right (near your Mac's clock) to "Enter Time Machine".

3. I then skipped back to my most recent backup (by clicking on the next pane back in the Time Machine view)

4. I navigated to HDD > Users > MyName...

5. At this point you need to go into the folder called Library, which in OSX Lion is hidden. So you can't see it! This had me stumped me for a while. But I learned this...

6. Hold down COMMAND & SHIFT and press G (this is the "GoTo" command). Type in ~/Library and press Return. Now it goes into the hidden folder. Yay.

7. Now navigate into ... Library > Application Support > Evernote > Data > 101370 (inside here are your files - this last folder may have a different name depending on your internal user ID or something) [** note that this location has changed in the newer version of Evernote, see below **]

I pulled out the one I wanted, you might want to simply extract all your files. To do this, right click on the folder you want to restore, and select to "Restore to... " and select a location on your computer (I restored the files to my desktop, in a new folder I made called RecoveredEvernote, for example).

** I've noticed that with the newest version of Evernote (as of today, 7th June 2012), they have changed where those files are kept... That old folder location has been renamed, in my case, to "101370.obsolete"...

In roughly the same location, I found the files again, though...

HDD > Users > MyName > Library > Application Support > Evernote > accounts > Evernote > MyUsername > content

That's now where I find the same data I recovered from the other location. Look in both, and you should find it, one way or another!

And yes, to make sure your files are safe...

1. Regularly backup using Time Machine.

2. And another good idea is to use the Evernote feature... File > Export Notes to Archive

If your notes are not very large, you could even email a copy of your Evernote Archive to yourself, so it's stored in another cloud.

All the best, gang.

- Murray

[jefito 5,589]

@Murray: please file a tech support request. See the link in my signature.

[jbenson2 2,147]

I am amazed at the posts by people who think cloud storage (with no backup) is safe.

To the other people reading this post - please setup a consistent backup program.

Also if someone has problems with lost data, they should contact Evernote support.

Ranting will not bring their data back.

.

[Murray 1]

And yes, I know yo can make backups on your Mac of all your Evernote files. I wish I had done that, but seeing they're "safe in the cloud" and accessible from multiple devices, I had not backed them up.

And some stupid sync bug just destroyed months of inspiration.

This simply should not be possible.

I looked through my Time Machine backups, and nope, the Evernote cache files seem to be skipped over and not backed up! WHY NOT? I could have got the files back if they were in the Evernote cache folder, but no...

How can Evernote allow this to happen? Every possible way I could have tried to recover the files has been thwarted. The Cloud has done everything it can to destroy my data, forever, irrecoverably.

[Murray 1]

I just lost MONTHS of Game Design ideas for my iPhone and iPad games.

I've got a document called Game Ideas. It has a few hundred words, about 10 pictures, and I just added a voice recording tonight.

When I hit save, it synced, and all the words disappeared, only the images and voice recording remained.

Destroyed.

Flipped open my MacBook, and the new destroyed version was on there too.

No way to get it back. Can't believe it.

THE CLOUD SUCKS.

EVERNOTE SUCKS.

There needs to be a way to ENSURE that this does not happen. That backups of the files can be rolled back.

SOMETHING.

[3spots 1]

So, no hope? I can see the note content in the thumbnail, but not in the note (if I try to edit, I get a blank page). I have not syncd, thinking somehow I can save the data... no?

jan

[KamiG 1]

I encountered the same issue. I made a lot of changes to a note on my iPad when I was offline for couple of days. I saved often but when I got on the network and synced my notes, all my changes were gone! iPad synced back to the original note that was on the server!

Good news is I could recover my changes! I could get the activity log from Evernote on my iPad and email to myself. The latest version of my note was there in raw HTML format. I used an HTML editor to format the note and saved it as a new note on Evernote on my Mac.

[jaeeonr 1]

Yeah, this really sucks.

I'm pretty sure this bug has something to do with offline function.

Evernote iPad app is kind of.. not great. It works okay for viewing contents (even though it doesn't support fonts), but editing contents is horrible.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

A couple of times now I've witness disturbing behaviour during syncing on my iPad.

While taking notes during a class (switching between two languages so data input was tortuous) I saved two or three times over the course of an hour. At the conclusion of the class I synced a final time, then saw 90% of my note disappear! I thought it was maybe taking time to refresh, but no, it was gone, irredeemably so. I checked on my laptop when I got home just in case, but the note was the same as on my iPad (ie. mostly deleted). I'm a premium member so I hoped the "note history" feature would come to my rescue, but that's only updated several times a day.

This morning I started the app on my iPad again and noted that it was syncing a note I had open. The thumbnail actually showed more content in this note than the body did, until it finished syncing of course when the thumbnail updated to show that most of the note had been deleted.

As well as it works 95% of the time, I'm considering moving back to paper as I can't risk this sort of data loss. Obviously help with preventing this in future is the #1 priority, but in addition to this it'd be really useful if the note history feature followed more along Apple's Time Machine model, eg. every sync over the last hour is saved, every hour for the last day, every day for the last week etc.

So: help!

Another minor irritant was that I would selectively highlight the second of two words on a line, copy, but then when I pasted both the first and second words were somehow pasted. This happened repeatedly... but then I lost the whole thing anyway, so you know, whatever. :|

Hi. Welcome to the forums. Sorry to hear about your trouble with the app. I had a similar issue last summer, and despite Evernote's best efforts, I lost some important data at a very inconvenient time. I (re)learned a couple of lessons.

1. save often

2. for critical data, work in an app that saves every keystroke if possible

Concretely speaking, what this means is that I:

1. generate important notes in an app called Elements, because I know that everything will get saved safely to my device and Dropbox each and every keystroke (as far as I can tell -- I have never lost data there).

2. Then, I copy/paste it into Evernote. In general, Evernote on iOS is a great place to store things, but may not be the best place to create them (again, this is primarily an iOS issue). I am hoping we will get a "save and continue" button and/or more regular saving so that this is no longer an issue.

3. Most of the time, though, with regular notes Evernote is fine, and I just save often. I have not lost data in a very long time.

Regarding the copy/paste issue in Evernote, it is a bug that will be fixed with the next update. Sorry you had to suffer with it. Evernote has come a long way, but on iOS it is still a little rough around the edges.

Finally, when entering multiple languages I find the external keyboard and its shortcuts to be of great help. It depends on how you want to use the iPad and so forth, but I like it. If you are thinking about pen/paper, I'd at least try some of the handwriting apps. See the shared notebook in my signature for reviews of them.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Opening a support case is your best bet.

[Metrodon 2,184]

Not being Premium doesn't mean she won't get help - it just means that Premium customers get seen to first. She has access to all the same resources.

[Chris Mcanlly 0]

I recommended evernote to a friend with an iPad, and she showed me the same issue. spent the day in class making notes and taking photos, and she only has the first 3 lines and one photo. Her icon for the note summary has a thumbnail of a photo that does not exist. I tried to get her to open a ticket but since she does not have a premium account she does not expect any help.

Sounds like a serious problem. I've told her to connect to school wifi so her notes are saved but she does not like to. I don't know if that has anything to do with her missing notes on the iPad.