(Archived) Drag and drop not showing attachments

[TechGuy 16]

I've had this happen off and on for a few weeks but today, it's happening with all of my attachments.

 

Here is an example:

 

 

As you can see, I have 8 images that I just assigned to this note. I can't see them. I deleted the note and created a new one and it is doing the same thing. I am not able to drag and drop an pdf or image (png) to the note.

 

I am working on version 4.6.4.8136 on Windows 7.

 

Any suggestions?

[jefito 5,589]

Hmmm, seems to be working in 4.6.5.8200 Prerelease that came out today. I tried it with 4 different image types (jpg, png, gif, bmp). Does your activity log indicate anything?

[TechGuy 16]

Hmmm, seems to be working in 4.6.5.8200 Prerelease that came out today. I tried it with 4 different image types (jpg, png, gif, bmp). Does your activity log indicate anything?

 

I updated to 4.6.5.8200 to see if they show up and they still are showing as the original post, no images. I have rebooted my computer several times since adding them for something not related to Evernote so the program has restarted several times.

 

How do you want me to send the logs? I'd rather not have some of the info show up publicly.

 

Thanks!

[jefito 5,589]

I think that if you open up a support request, you should be able to send the logs privately, at least privately between you and Evernote.

[TechGuy 16]

I think that if you open up a support request, you should be able to send the logs privately, at least privately between you and Evernote.

 

ok I'll open up a ticket thx for the help!

[jefito 5,589]

You're welcome, and good luck.

[timfg 24]

I've been trying to get the support team to recognise this issue for the last four days - for some reason they were very obtuse about it.  But they finally passed it to their second-line guys yesterday, who responded with:

 

"Thanks for the information report. I'm sorry for all of the troubles. We do have an existing bug filed for this issue with the engineering team. They are currently working on a fix for the issue. For their reference, I have attached your logs and screenshots to their bug case. I hope that we can get this solved soon, as I understand that it is frustrating. I'm sorry about that. Let me know if you have any questions."

 

I've seen it with other approaches to attaching files, not just drag and drop. I also saw it happen yesterday with an existing note which I dragged an image into, which I captured a screenshot and logs for, after synching and confirming that I couldn't see the image in the iOS clients either. When I came back to the note later, the attached image was completely absent - no longer shown in the status bar or accessible via the Save Attachments option. When I dragged the image into the note again, it attached (and displayed) correctly. Go figure.

 

I suspect this is quite tricky to debug - I don't see the logs contain anything useful.

[jefito 5,589]

I suspect this is quite tricky to debug - I don't see the logs contain anything useful.

I'm guessing that you're probably right about that, since it doesn't happen in every case.

[timfg 24]

Actually, I'm finding that it is happening in almost every case now - I've created 5-6 notes this morning, all of which have the same problem.  This including a stop-start of Evernote, clean reboot etc. Evernote is essentially useless for me until this is fixed.

[gazumped 11,656]

There are other ways to attach or embed files;  have you tried all the options?  They may require a little more effort,  but at least they might actually work reliably...

[timfg 24]

Yes - I've deliberately tried different approaches to see if any particular way avoids the issue - but it seems to happen regardless of the method used. It also seem to make no difference if I add attachments separately or all at once.  For example, the note in the attached picture has three attachments - two PDFs and an Excel spreadsheet. The only attachment accessible is the first PDF, which was created, in this instance, direct from the scanner to EN. The thumbnail shown in the centre-pane is actually from the second PDF, which is 'missing' from the note. The .xls is completely absent, although it is there - as per the status bar, or 'Save Attachments' from the note.

 

The missing notes are also missing in other synced copies of the DB on other Windows installations, on the iPad, iPhone and in Clever. A search for text in one of the 'missing' attachments will find the note, but with no indication of why it's been found!

 

I find it hard to believe I am the only person affected by this bug (actually, I know I'm not - there are other posts about it).  It strikes me as particularly critical because it is, in effect, losing content: Most of my data 'referencing' is done from the iPad or from the web - and in both these environments I have notes that are missing attachments, with no indication that they are missing - I can only see the discrepancy in the Windows client. I do not know whether this can happen to notes created historically that were 'correct' when I first created them - but I do know (because I've seen it) that notes with 'missing' attachments sometimes seem to correct themselves at some later point in time - much later, not just after a synch for example. I've also seen one note where a 'missing' attachment subsequently completely disappeared - ie was no longer recorded in the status bar and couldn't be saved from the note. Adding it back into the note - because, fortunately, I still had it - worked correctly.

 

It's a highly unsatisfactory position - and I am disappointed that the developers don't seem to think it warrants more than a 'known bug, we're on it' response. Or perhaps they do, but don't want to make too much noise about it: If it became more public, it could very quickly turn into an 'Evernote shown to lose data' story, which would be quite disastrous.

[dddebug 5]

Have you looked at these notes in web interface (after a sync)? Are the attachments missing there as well bad?

 

-- dd

[timfg 24]

Yes - they're missing across all the clients I use - Windows, Web, iPad, iPhone

[jefito 5,589]

It's a highly unsatisfactory position - and I am disappointed that the developers don't seem to think it warrants more than a 'known bug, we're on it' response. Or perhaps they do, but don't want to make too much noise about it: If it became more public, it could very quickly turn into an 'Evernote shown to lose data' story, which would be quite disastrous.

Well, what position would you want them to take? "We're on it" means that they are working on it. Did you want daily/hourly status reports? Did you need them to wear hair shirts while they're debugging? Data loss is taken seriously by Evernote, but to me (outside of Evernote, as you are), the fact that it occurs for some people but not others indicates that this is some sort of situational bug that is difficult to reproduce reliably for the people trying to fix it, which is almost always a prerequisite to solving the problem. Yes, it certainly is a serious bug, but it may take some time for them to get a good fix for it.

[timfg 24]

I'd expect them to be engaging people like me - who can directly help, because we're experiencing the issue. But I don't think this is happening, given the nature of their responses to me.  I'd expect them to be offering some reassurances about the nature of the bug, so users generally could make informed decisions about continuing to entrust their data to the application. I'd expect them to be getting ahead of the possibility of some damning negative PR by offering some public guidance and reassurance. As far as I can see, there is no information anywhere about the nature of the problem, guidance for workarounds, actual potential for damage to historic data etc etc.

 

But thanks for the sarcasm. Jolly helpful.

[jefito 5,589]

I'd expect them to be engaging people like me - who can directly help, because we're experiencing the issue. But I don't think this is happening, given the nature of their responses to me.  I'd expect them to be offering some reassurances about the nature of the bug, so users generally could make informed decisions about continuing to entrust their data to the application. I'd expect them to be getting ahead of the possibility of some damning negative PR by offering some public guidance and reassurance. As far as I can see, there is no information anywhere about the nature of the problem, guidance for workarounds, actual potential for damage to historic data etc etc.

Bottom line: it's been escalated and the developers are actively working on the issue, per their communication to you. They've acknowledged that it's serious and frustrating for you. If they need further input from you, they should be asking (though most likely not on weekends), and I'd expect that they would. They may not need any from you in particular, if they have some other customer that has the same problem that they're working with (and remember that not everyone posts about their problems on the forums). There don't appear to be any workarounds for this, and usually if there are, they'll suggest them publicly (see the recent Windows installation snafu, for example). If it's a problem that's hard for them to pin down, they may not be able to offer you any assurances about possible side-effects to existing data.

 

But thanks for the sarcasm. Jolly helpful.

Fair enough, I do apologise for that.

That being said, their current response seems inside the range of reasonableness to me; granted, this problem isn't happening to me, and your frustration is understandable (I have had irritating problems get in my way over the 4+ years I've been a user). None of this doesn't mean that I wouldn't want this to be fixed, and have your frustration with the problem vanish.

[timfg 24]

You're right, I am letting my frustration get the better of my usual balanced perspective :-)  But it is a really annoying issue which undermines my confidence in the application - and I am a pretty heavy user, been premium for years.  It didn't help that it took four days to get past the first-line guys, who appeared to almost wilfully not understand the problem, despite me sending them multiple screenshots!

[jefito 5,589]

I try to aim for balance too, usually, don't always hit the mark. These types of bugs can be heckish to reproduce and fix and I do understand that being on the outside can laed to a feeling that nothing's being done. As I say, I hope it gets fixed for you and all that are affected.

[Trevor 0]

I am experiencing the same issue off and on. In trying to figure out what is happening, I exported a couple sample notes to an .enex file. I looked at two samples - one where the attachment is showing and one where it is not.

 

Here is the ENML for the example where attachment is displayed (simplified version):

 

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>

<!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd">

<en-note style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">

 <en-media hash="d3ae6b5c8e5616481a7d14888f2ba280" type="application/pdf" />

</en-note>

 

Here is the ENML for the example where attachment is NOT displayed (simplified version):

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>

<!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd">

<en-note style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;">

</en-note>

 

What I am seeing is that in the example where the attachment is not being displayed, the <en-media hash=...  ...> tag is not being added to the ENML code that is saved as part of the note. The resource data is all there, so the file is attached to the note, however without this tag and associated details in the ENML code the attachment will not display within the note.

 

I have no idea why this is occurring in the application - that's above my diagnostic capability  However, if I can find a utility to generate a proper hash code from the hash data in the <data> section of the .enex file then it should be possible to manually correct the ENML for the note so it displays properly.

 

Hopefully this may help those troubleshooting this issue. I would appreciate it if someone who has an open ticket for this issue with Evernote could pass these details on to them.

 

Trevor

[jefito 5,589]

Hopefully this may help those troubleshooting this issue. I would appreciate it if someone who has an open ticket for this issue with Evernote could pass these details on to them.

Thanks for the extra information. I'd guess that it would be better if you opened a ticket for this yourself.

[timfg 24]

My ticket on this has been closed - as per the note I got from the support guys on the 17/4:

 

 

Hello Tim,

I just wanted to update you to let you know what we are doing some work on the server today specifically to address this issue. Hopefully you will never see it again after today.

Fingers crossed!

Korben D.
Evernote Support

 

I haven't seen it since - but subsequent conversation confirmed that notes with the problem historically would not be fixed - and there is no easy way to establsih how many notes / which notes may have been affected.  There is, I am told, still a ticket open for that aspect.

 

Are you seeing the issue on newly created notes?