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(Archived) Favorites is NOT the same as offline working


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You'd think from this self-congratulatory blog post http://blog.evernote.com/2008/10/28/offline-notes/ that the offline problem has been solved.

"No network? No problem. Offline Notes on iPhone and iPod." is the headline. Complete rubbish. No network, and Evernote really sucks, and it is a huge problem for anyone (like me) who is used to using notes offline with a system that works as it should (the Palm TX - see Palm TX showed how offline SHOULD workhttp://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=7961.

I find the current offline system TOTALLY unusable.

ALL notes MUST be available offline - and I have over 5000 notes so don't make me laugh by suggesting I should mark each one as "Favorite" individually on my iPod Touch.

SEARCH MUST be possible. What the use is it having all my notes with me if I can't do a simple find of one I need? When I am in my Dutch class (which is what 90% of the notes are for), it would be quicker to walk home (10 minutes) switch on my PC (5 minutes), find the note (1 minute), walk back to class (10 minutes) - total 26 minutes, rather than hunt manually through 5000 favorited notes - about 1 hour.

NOTEBOOKS MUST work the same as when connected. What the **** is the point of carefully grouping notes into different notebooks if favorites completely doesn't use them?

Even with the current favorites there are huge numbers of problems with the stupid way that they work:

* when you make a change to a note (e.g. you change the content), it does not actually change the content where you are working but simply sticks it into the pending box. This is absurd. Just make the change on the offline version and mark it as needing an update but enable the person to keep working. Maybe I'm going away on holiday for 2 weeks and just want to keep on working.

* text-only notes can be inaccessible if there is a small non-text part of the note, so you end up with the message something like "cannot access note body because it contains non-text stuff" - when I have tried to use favorites as an offline solution, about 10-20% of my all-text notes get this message. It's so frustrating!!

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Favorites are designed for people who want access to only a few of their notes. If you want access to *all* of your notes, and the ability to change them, you need to configure IMAP:

Incoming Mail Server (IMAP):

Host Name: www.evernote.com

User name: your Evernote user name (not your email address)

Password: your Evernote password

Port: 143 (or 993 for SSL - Premium only)

Address or Email Address: Enter your Evernote incoming email address (To find your Evernote e-mail address for incoming mail, login to www.evernote.com and click the Settings link.)

Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): Use the same SMTP settings as the other accounts on your mobile device. Please contact your service provider for specific settings.

Advanced Settings:

Most of the other settings you may leave as default and not change, but the following are some suggestions for best performance.

Use SSL: Should be set to no or off. (Premium members may set this to on or yes, if desired.)

Check for messages: Set for every hour. Checking more often will greatly reduce battery life.

Show: Show as few messages as you can, this will greatly speed up your connection times. This may be a setting like 25 recent messages, or last 2 days.

Preview: If allowed to get message headers only, do so. This will only grab subject and sender information, and the smallest amount of message text. When the message is opened you can choose to download the entire message.

Handset Specific Setup:

Blackberry (BIS): Click on the Manage Internet Email icon on the home screen. Choose Email Accounts then Add An Email Account.

Blackberry (BES): Contact your IT Administrator for assistance

iPhone (1.4 software or earlier): Touch the Settings icon on the Home screen, select Mail and select Add Account. Select Other.

iPhone (2.0 software or higher): Touch the Settings icon on the Home screen, select Mail, Contacts, Calendars and select Add Account. Select Other.

Palm: Open VersaMail. Tap the top left to get the menu. Tap Accounts. Tap Account Setup. Tap New.

Windows Mobile 5 (or higher) Phone: Select Messaging from the Start menu. From Menu, select Tools→New Account.

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Here, Here, brussels.

Can somebody OTHER than the evernote staff weigh in on how well the IMAP access is working on the iphone?

Once again, I seriously hope this is a temporary solution to off-line notebook management. This all needs to be integrated into the application.

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As noted on several other threads:

Clearly, it would be nice to have a full synchronizing client that could manage and search your entire account on every mobile device from every manufacturer and carrier around the world (plus Linux, etc.). Unfortunately, we're a relatively small company and this would require many months of engineering effort per device. We won't be able to do this for everyone's favorite platform instantly.

In the mean time, please try out the IMAP and/or POP3 support to see whether it's "better than nothing" on your mobile device. If it's not better than nothing for you ... then you don't have to use it. ;-)

http://evernote.com/about/support/imap.php

Thanks

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Too late, I've found the solution to my notes requirements. It's http://www.toodledo.com which I've now tried and it gives FULL offline synchronisation of ALL my (6500+) notes with their website with NO effort on my part - I just specify my login and password and everything is automatic. None of this ridiculous "load 25 more notes" (yeah, right). None of this ridiculous "favourites" stuff (sorry, but ALL my notes are my favorites). None of this appalling new notes being unchangeable when you create them when offline. None of this unusable delay when changing notes (see my post: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=7995). The Toodledo solution also gives me FULL ability to Create/Change/Update/Delete folders offline (see my post viewtopic.php?f=40&t=7965). Toodledo also gives me the ability to SEARCH all my offline notes.

I'm sorry that Evernote is not able to provide the functionality which I was hoping for - basically text notes online PLUS on my iPod Touch, in a simple user-friendly way. That's all I wanted (I don't need or want any of the fancy stuff - just plain text notes).

In fairness, the Toodledo solution will not be appropriate for people who want more than text notes.

Nonetheless, I find it ironic that Evernote principle boast "Evernote allows you to...make this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere". For me, that was just not true. For me, the iPod Touch Evernote solution was more like an iPod Touch NEVERnote.

So for me, this is goodbye to Evernote.

Thanks for trying.

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If you don't have any use for web clippings or images or voice notes or PDFs or desktop clients or email gateways or ink notes or encryption or integrations (Pelotonics, Tarpipe) or geotagging or Windows Mobile or USB support or publishing, etc. ... then there definitely simpler solutions out there.

Glad you've found something that meets your particular needs.

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(we do read every post on every forum, so there's not really any need for "bump" or "+1" posts.)

Understood, but when new features are introduced with the description, "this is our most requested feature", it makes "+1" feel more important somehow. Like we're actually making our voices heard, and that once heard, our voices might be heeded.

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Too late, I've found the solution to my notes requirements. It's http://www.toodledo.com which I've now tried and it gives FULL offline synchronisation of ALL my (6500+) notes with their website with NO effort on my part - I just specify my login and password and everything is automatic. None of this ridiculous "load 25 more notes" (yeah, right). None of this ridiculous "favourites" stuff (sorry, but ALL my notes are my favorites). None of this appalling new notes being unchangeable when you create them when offline. None of this unusable delay when changing notes (see my post: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=7995). The Toodledo solution also gives me FULL ability to Create/Change/Update/Delete folders offline (see my post viewtopic.php?f=40&t=7965). Toodledo also gives me the ability to SEARCH all my offline notes.

I'm sorry that Evernote is not able to provide the functionality which I was hoping for - basically text notes online PLUS on my iPod Touch, in a simple user-friendly way. That's all I wanted (I don't need or want any of the fancy stuff - just plain text notes).

In fairness, the Toodledo solution will not be appropriate for people who want more than text notes.

Nonetheless, I find it ironic that Evernote principle boast "Evernote allows you to...make this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere". For me, that was just not true. For me, the iPod Touch Evernote solution was more like an iPod Touch NEVERnote.

So for me, this is goodbye to Evernote.

Thanks for trying.

sorry to see you go brussels, but i understand where you are coming from. I have avoided trying the toodledo/notebook solution just because I really want evernote to work as my solution. I'm hanging on for a while, because i do love the value in the other features, that dave listed above, and there is serious potential here.

Sometimes though, you have to realize whats really important, and simplify.

If there isn't progress made in full synchronization for the iphone, i might just have to simplify.

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I have an iPod Touch (phone contract will only allow a handset change next July ...) so I really need someting that's going to work offline, as well as allow me to edit notes on the big screen (either web or Mac app). I too am I convert from the Palm TX, so I've got a lot of notes that I need with me. Even if I had an iPhone, I'd want access to notes when on the underground / subway or out of network coverage...

I really like the idea of Evernote & the recent change to Favourites to make them available offline means there's some chance I can use it, but it does seem a case of "get the simple stuff right first."

So there seems a few more things that might make Touch users like me happy, such as the ability to set ALL notes as available offline (or perhaps a setting per category). Might take up a huge amount of space, but that's out (the user's) problem ...

I want to reiterate how much I like Evernote & how interesting I think the idea is

I'm also really glad that the company has listened to people's concerns & made available the offline feature

... so I'm persevering with it for now - really want to make this work

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Hey,

I am still a big fan of evernote, but indeed offline is necessary,

readonly would be enough for me.

so I tried imap. on wimo, and on ipod touch, but the !@#$% thing only gives me 100 messages/notes, which is NOT due to the imap

client on my mobile device.

what could be the problem?

Tom

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I realize "+1" posts aren't terribly constructive, but I do want to say that this is also my #1 most desired feature by far. Favorites is indeed a good idea for people just want a few critical things with them, but for me it isn't helpful at all. IMAP is cute, but also really doesn't offer what I need. It feels like the app "should" just have local copies of everything which can be quickly searched, reviewed, and edited either on the network or off, with changes synced to the server when possible. I am frequently without network, in a foreign country where network is expensive when I'm not near my hotel wifi, or simply in a spot with poor network.

I love the features of Evernote, but this one really would make it finally feel "done" for me, especially if the local note storage were combined with a more category/browsing centric method of finding notes, rather than just brute force searching which is only occasionally what I want to use.

Thanks for a great app, and looking forward to more...

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  • 1 month later...

Enberg, dear, you say you read every forum posting (an admirable task, indeed), but I notice Tom's simple question was NOT answered while that brussels snot got a fair amount of attention before fleeing in high dudgeon.

As I haven't got that many notes in Evernote, yet, I've not noticed the 100 note IMAP limit on my iPT but it concerns me. So I reiterate (bump, +1, whatever is necessary to get EN attention) the question:

IS THERE a limit on how many "Show 25 more" can be shown, either imposed by Apple or Evernote?

Thanks.

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I have a few apps whose forums I have joined over the years and I invariably always end up feeling sorry the app developer when I read forum posts! They produce a great app that everyone loves but still get the headache and pain of folks wanting more and wanting it right now!

My philosophy is that its better to keep supporting an app you love, despite any shortcomings, and to keep posting your thoughts and feature requirements alongwith any praise and encouragement. No one is immune to flattery! Evernote is an amazing app by the way!

For what its worth I am also keen to have full offline visibility of my data on my iphone. A simple list view option and read-only would be fine.

My desire for better tagging functionality is posted elsewhere . . .

Did I mention that Evernote is an amazing app and the developers are clearly genius gods of some sort!

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Answered the "100 notes per folder limit" for IMAP question in another thread ... this limit is artificial, and it's on our side, and we plan to raise it.

Our testing with IMAP has been somewhat disappointing, unfortunately. There's too much variability in how mobile devices use IMAP. My new Blackberry Bold has a broken IMAP implementation that goes through the carrier in an odd way, etc.

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We haven't done that because it is a LOT of work to get it correct for the scale of account we support. We already have people with several GB in their account, and mobile platforms don't give us an easy way to manage this type of volume in a way that supports fast browsing, searching, etc. For example, the OS X "Core Data" storage APIs that we use to manage data on the Mac client are not available on the iPhone.

I'm not saying that it can't be done, but the work to add "full bi-directional synchronization capabilities" exceeds the total effort that has gone into each mobile platform so far. I.e. that's not "10% more work", but rather "2-5 times as much work." Our desktop clients have many times more lines of code than our mobile clients.

So it's something we'd like to see, but not something we can slap together in a weekend.

(The testing we did as part of the unreleased WM 2.2 beta helped illustrate a lot of these platform limitations and risks.)

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I hear ya Dave... Thanks for the message, too...

Can we then turn development attention to significantly beefing up the searching, tagging, printing, and categorizing capabilities of the desktop versions, specifically (and selfishly) the Windows version?

Note linking, automatic keyword categories, better printing, an unlimited number of saved searches, etc... These are all things that are currently missing from the Windows desktop client.

(Also, on a side question, why does the "NOTE LIST" icon on the Windows desktop version lack text under the icon when everything else on the toolbar has text? I've always thought that strange.)

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More than half of the engineering-hours at the company are going into the Windows client. About 60% of this is going into replacing some of the dated UI in the current Windows client with a UI that will be: easier to maintain, easier to grow, fewer quirks, better note editor, etc. If our best-laid schemes go as we hope, this should allow us to better satisfy a lot of the persistent feedback about this platform. E.g. the quirks in the list view are an artifact of the older Win32 UI platforms we're currently using.

It's tough to compare the WIndows client, which is a big system with 4-year old code, to the progress we can make on a brand-new platform with better UI and data management libraries baked into the OS. Adding 10 features to the iPhone (when you're starting from 0) is a lot easier than adding 10 to Windows without breaking anything in the process.

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Excellent, thanks Dave.

(note: I do tech support/user hand-holding for our little group of programmers, I REALLY appreciate the time and effort you put into monitoring the forums and the astonishing calm you managed to hold onto in the face of brusselshrek's ongoing rudeness. Bravo.)

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  • 5 weeks later...

Have been checking back on the iPhone versions progress every now and then and while favourites does help a little it really isnt a solution for a comprehensive "available anywhere" note system so I will probably give evernote a miss again for a bit. I would love to be using it as some of the features are fantastic, having images in notes is great and the tagging is good too, but not having notes properly available without a connection I just cant quite get over - so back to toodle do for a while I guess. Is there anywhere to vote for evernote features or are forums the best way to do that kind of thing ? Anyway thanks Evernote team for the good work and heres hoping you find time and resource to enhance the offline stuff.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm a big fan of Evernote, but I was disappointed on Wednesday by the product. (I should have known better) I was deep in the basement of a building in a meeting. I knew I had the necessary information in my iPhone, but I had no phone service or WiFi. Needless to say, I was hosed.

I appreciate the feature set, but if I mark a "favorite" as such, then by gosh that note MUST me available on my phone. I realize there are limitations with the iPhone but I need something I can count on.

I'll hang in and hope for something soon in a future release. I'd rather not switch to a "cloud only" product like SimpleNote or Toodledo.

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I've been curious about some of the comments. I have had no problems accessing "favorites" without a network connection (although you do have to click through some error messages). I don't find ToodleDo and Evernote mutually exclusive. I use them both. Even though I like "Swiss Army" knives they aren't necessarily the best tools for the job. ToodleDo is for to do lists and Evernote is for collecting and organizing information that has to stay with you. Back in my PocketPC days I used to carry everything on a memory card. I no longer do - it just isn't necessary to have everything with you and in the same format. Passwords and Codes are best kept in an ewallet (Splash id, eWallet etc) program, Static information in a program best designed for static info (Notebook , Mobile Studio etc). The concept behind Evernote to my way of thinking is the handling of dynamic, growing amount of material typical in research and somewhat temporal, i.e., can be off-loaded at the end of the research cycle to a more permanent format and location and properly backed up. The big deal with Evernote is the multiple ways of collecting information. Readdle's Take-A-Note isn't half bad either but doesn't actually sync and you can't email to it (although for entering notes that I'll eventually email to Evernote it's quick and easy). ToodleDo has both those features but still doesn't have a real desktop client that allows image, voice and web clips imported.

Now if the program was a brick when not connected to a network, I'd agree but it still has view functionality if you've marked the notes you'll need and I can't believe anybody needs ALL their information with them all the time. Now for those who can't view their favorites when off-line I AM curious about that - what errors do you get ?

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Good discussion.

I understand the desire, but I don't see how on earth we could have full access to all notes while offline. I mean... I'm sure I've got multiple GBs of notes, images, etc. Trying to get them to synch would be a bit of a mess. I don't want my Scrapbook folder on my device!

Maybe we need a dedicated Tag, "Favorite", so it is easier to assign from multiple platforms. Maybe we need a toggle switch for Notebooks so we can mark a Notebook as always syncing. But we need some kind of gateway or logic for what actually gets downloaded.

Anyway-- So far, I like the Favorite tool. I've marked all my To-Do lists (about 14, including one for each project) as Favorite. That's all I need to have instantly.

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Surely there are ways of making simple rules to handle this. As has been suggested, notebook by notebook, text only, max space restrictions. I'll add the idea of most recent within these limits. So, only load 50 MB of notes, dropping the oldest ones if there is no space. This one problem is what's holding me back from putting important things into evernote and really relying on it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Good afternoon:

I thought I had a lot of notes with 112. Compared to 6500...ouch.

Anyway, I would love to ask for the same functionality everyone else is asking for: some way to enter a note, tag a note, mark a note, etc such that when it syncs to my iPhone and iTouch they become resident on them and not just accessible where there is internet access. As it stands now, for every new note I add, I have to go mark each one as a favorite on each of the devices. That, of course, is annoying so I don't do it and then when i remember to do it, I can't remember which ones are which and have to sort through them all again. Perhaps there could be a "Make This Permanent" button or setting?

Now, not every application can be everything for everyone. I use and like Evernote, but then I don't have 6500 notes either. Perhaps the Evernote niche is the 0-250 note user?

Just my two cents. Happy guy here. Thanks.

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i am a new evernote user. i need to view my notes offline on my itouch.

from what i have read, if i mark a note as a favorite on the touch, i can view it offline. is that correct?

HOW do i mark it as a favorite on my touch?--i don't see the STAR anywhere when i am viewing a note.

if i mark it as a favorite on my imac, then sync, do i need to mark it as a favorite also on my touch? (once i figure out how to do so!)

syncing: to sync, can i just sync my itouch to the imac?

thks!

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  • 6 months later...

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