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BUG: 'Paste to Evernote' has stopped working*


soundsgoodtome

Idea

Quite literally for years, I've been able to use the 'Paste To Evernote' feature (⌃⌘V) whether the Evernote Mac app was already running or not. If the app was not already running, it would launch, the copied text or image would be pasted, and I'd hear the purring sound, confirming the operation. This has worked flawlessly for years.

 

But recently, it stopped working.

 

*Now, if Evernote is not running, it launches -- but the copied data is *not* pasted. After the app launches, I now have to "reconfirm" the paste operation by hitting ⌃⌘V again in order to complete the creation of the note. It was so reliable in the past that once I initiated the command, I never thought about it again. But I recently discovered that a number of pasted items were not pasted. (Yes, the confirmation sound was absent, but because the command had been so reliable in the past, I didn't always actively pay attention to the sound being played. Multitasking and all... Now that I'm aware of this, I've observed that the sound no longer plays.)

 

I can't say exactly in which version this bug appeared, but I'm currently running v5.0.7 on 3 Macs, each of which is running OS 10.8.3, and the behavior is the same on each. I'd really, really love to see this fixed.  :-)

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Thanks for the reply.

 

I'm very glad you're investigating this, and it's somewhat encouraging that you believe you're homing in on the issue. But I can't help but remain skeptical that the OS is at fault, when, as a "power user" with several Macs, I've never observed what you're describing.

 

I do a lot of pasting (in many apps) and haven't encountered any problems with pasting in any apps except Evernote. You say "Restarting your machine is the only known fix," but I've never, ever, had to restart a Mac because pasting wasn't working somewhere. When Paste to Evernote fails to work (and it has failed hundreds of times), I've never, ever observed that pasting also wasn't working elsewhere.

 

 

Summary:

 

• The Paste to Evernote command fails on every Mac I own, except my brand-new MacBook Pro.

• All of my Macs are always running the latest OS.

• I have never observed issues with pasting anything in any app other than Evernote.

 

Thanks.

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  • Level 5

As it turns out, there is a known OS X bug where paste will stop working across the OS on certain versions of 10.9. If you see this happening, try pasting around the OS. Chances are other apps will also be unable to paste.

 

We've finally been able to reproduce it and have confirmed that it is an OS issue. Restarting your machine is the only known fix. Hopefully Apple will resolve it soon. 

 

Thanks for alerting us to the issue.

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Wow, I'm happy I saw this before trying to contact support as it looks like its been about a year and they don't seem to care at all.  It's not a system error, I have it as well.  I have it on both my macs and I have the latest versions of software on my systems.  Evernote, please fix this bug and don't ignore this thread.  The issue of not being able to copy and paste to Evernote without already having the program open and running really negativity effects the experience of using Evernote.  There is a loss of trust in using the program, and Evernote is supposed to be where you keep all your important stuff, and that's not cool. 

 

Precisely. Due to this unaddressed issue, I no longer trust Evernote. It used to work flawlessly. But it no longer does -- and hasn't for well over a year, now.

 

New info:

 

I just replaced my 2009 MacBook Pro with a high-end 2014 model. Needless to say, it's much, much faster -- and interestingly, so far, the Paste command has worked properly on the new machine. This evidence may be anecdotal, as I've only had 3 or 4 experiences, so far. But on my other 3 Macs, I can never, ever get this feature to work 3 or 4 times in a row. In fact, it rarely works even once, let alone 3 or 4 times in a row.

 

So, what does this indicate? I'm not sure.

 

- Is there some sort of time-out issue that only affects (older) Macs with slower processors? If so, something has changed, because (as stated numerous times) this feature worked perfectly for years -- on those older Macs. (I say "older" only in the literal sense. My secondary machine is a 2011 8-core Mac Pro, which isn't exactly "ancient," nor impotent. So, yes, it's now 3 years old -- but when this problem surfaced, that machine was only between 1.5 and 2 years old.)

 

- Or, is there some sort of corruption that creeps into the Evernote app (or the related files that enable the paste feature), over time, that causes this problem to surface? Since my brand-new Mac is not displaying the issue (so far), one might be tempted to consider this possibility. However, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the outgoing MacBook Pro's drive, so the data on the new MacBook Pro is absolutely identical to that of the previous one. So, if some sort of corruption were the culprit, you'd expect the behavior to be identical -- but it's not.

 

All I can do is state facts:

 

- On my 3 Macs that are each between 3 and 6 years old, the Paste to Evernote command fails if Evernote.app is not already open. (But it used to work flawlessly.)

 

- On my brand-new Mac, the Paste to Evernote command is working properly, even when Evernote.app is not already open -- and has done so 3 or 4 times in a row.

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Wow, I'm happy I saw this before trying to contact support as it looks like its been about a year and they don't seem to care at all.  It's not a system error, I have it as well.  I have it on both my macs and I have the latest versions of software on my systems.  Evernote, please fix this bug and don't ignore this thread.  The issue of not being able to copy and paste to Evernote without already having the program open and running really negativity effects the experience of using Evernote.  There is a loss of trust in using the program, and Evernote is supposed to be where you keep all your important stuff, and that's not cool. 

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We are unable to reproduce this issue internally. Please PM me your logs (help>activity logs) when you run the paste command. Please also verify that your system preferences don't have a shortcut that is overriding what's been defined in Evernote's preferences.

 

Thanks. I sent the logs previously, but I'll collect them and do so again.

 

There is no system shortcut that's overriding Evernote's shortcuts. As mentioned previously, when I type the shortcut, Evernote does in fact launch. The problem is that after it launches, the data to be pasted does not get pasted. If there were a shortcut conflict, Evernote wouldn't launch at all.

 

This is only an issue when Evernote is not already running. If it's already running, the command works 100% of the time. (And it used to work 100% of the time when Evernote wasn't already running. But something changed, months and months ago, that has since made the command unreliable.

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  • Level 5

We are unable to reproduce this issue internally. Please PM me your logs (help>activity logs) when you run the paste command. Please also verify that your system preferences don't have a shortcut that is overriding what's been defined in Evernote's preferences.

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Solution to this problem:

1. Make sure you are running the latest version of Evernote (5.4.3 at the time of writing).

2. Restart your computer.

 

If you are still experiencing issues, try pasting to Pages or Keynote. If those are broken too, it's a system issue.

 

Wow. While I appreciate the reply, those are definitely not solutions to this problem.

 

With all due respect, are you even clear exactly what the problem is? I ask because it's unclear how your suggestion that I "try pasting to Pages or Keynote" is relevant. Kindly scroll to the top of this thread and read my original description of this issue from last May. 

 

I'm unaware that either Pages or Keynote has a menu extra that contains a keyboard command — or a system-wide command — that (a) launches the app, if it's not already running, then (B) pastes the current contents of the clipboard into that app. That's what's broken in Evernote. For your suggestion to make sense, there would have to be similar commands in those apps. As such, if those commands for those apps do exist, please advise, so that I can carry out the suggested comparison.

 

I used this feature almost daily for years, and it worked flawlessly until earlier this year or late last year. Furthermore, I have 4 Macs, each with different sets of software, but each with Evernote — and this feature has stopped working consistently on all 4 machines.

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  • Level 5

Solution to this problem:

1. Make sure you are running the latest version of Evernote (5.4.3 at the time of writing).

2. Restart your computer.

 

If you are still experiencing issues, try pasting to Pages or Keynote. If those are broken too, it's a system issue.

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I am having the same problem, now.

 

The problem occured after I enabled CloudWork to automatically add an event in Google Calendar.

Disabled and restarted, still the same issue.

-Alex

 

For the record, I started this thread, and I don't use CloudWork nor Google Calendar.

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Per your request, I looked at the activity-log entries, but not until I'd done what I described above. So, the report is rather verbose. I've studied it, but I don't see anything describing a failed event. Now that I'm familiar with the procedure, the next time this happens, I'll be sure to look at the log immediately, to make sure I get the most relevant entries.

 

Thanks. In the meantime I'll look into the link between this issue and pending sync operations. I'm hoping that might be the key to reproducing this.

 

It just happened again, and I copied the console entries. I'll see if I can send you a PM with the contents. Otherwise, where should I send them?

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  • Level 5

Per your request, I looked at the activity-log entries, but not until I'd done what I described above. So, the report is rather verbose. I've studied it, but I don't see anything describing a failed event. Now that I'm familiar with the procedure, the next time this happens, I'll be sure to look at the log immediately, to make sure I get the most relevant entries.

 

Thanks. In the meantime I'll look into the link between this issue and pending sync operations. I'm hoping that might be the key to reproducing this.

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Does anyone at Evernote care about this issue?!?

 

We care, but we have not been able to reproduce the issue. Cmd-Ctrl-V works consistently for me whether Evernote is running or not.

 

Do you have any other insight about when it fails? Are you copying a certain kind of content? From a specific application? Anything else?

The next time this happens to you, please look in the activity log (Help->Activity Log…) for any log about the paste failing. If you do find anything like this, please PM it to me.

Thanks for your help.

 

 

Thanks for this reply. I really appreciate it.

 

OK. This literally just happened again (I invoked the shortcut, and Evernote launched, but no new note was created with the copied text). Here's what I observed:

 

- When the app launched, there was an update, so I was presented with that window (which I dismissed, hoping the paste operation would be completed; but it was not completed). For the record, I'm quite certain that there has not been an update window each time this issue has arisen. But today one did appear.

 

- Additionally, upon launch, Evernote needed to download a number of notes that had been created on other computers or devices. I certainly wouldn't categorize that as unusual, but I'm simply reporting everything that I observed during this failed paste operation.

 

Nothing else that appeared noteworthy happened.

 

So, I ran the update, quit Evernote, wen't back to the same web page, copied the same text, invoked the shortcut -- and this time it worked perfectly. [Of course the update is unrelated to the change in behavior, as you have yet to reproduce or fix this issue.]

 

Per your request, I looked at the activity-log entries, but not until I'd done what I described above. So, the report is rather verbose. I've studied it, but I don't see anything describing a failed event. Now that I'm familiar with the procedure, the next time this happens, I'll be sure to look at the log immediately, to make sure I get the most relevant entries.

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  • Level 5

Does anyone at Evernote care about this issue?!?

 

We care, but we have not been able to reproduce the issue. Cmd-Ctrl-V works consistently for me whether Evernote is running or not.

 

Do you have any other insight about when it fails? Are you copying a certain kind of content? From a specific application? Anything else?

The next time this happens to you, please look in the activity log (Help->Activity Log…) for any log about the paste failing. If you do find anything like this, please PM it to me.

Thanks for your help.

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Well, three months later, this feature is still broken.

 

Again, when Evernote is not running, the command (via the shortcut specified in preferences) for "Paste to Evernote" has always launched Evernote, then has pasted the clipboard contents into a new note. But for several months now, although the command still launches Evernote, the clipboard contents are no longer consistently pasted into a new note. About 50% of the time, the command does not work.

 

Once Evernote is running, the command works consistently. But the command is supposed to work, whether Evernote is running at the time or not. (And for years, it did -- and I had 100% confidence in this feature. But not anymore. Now, each time I use the command, I must second-guess it -- and manually confirm whether the note was created.

 

Does anyone at Evernote care about this issue?!?

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Can you please provide more specific information about when it fails?

 

Thanks for the reply. It's exactly as I described when I began this thread. :-)

 

Namely, in short, when Evernote.app is not running, the shortcut has always launched the app and then pasted the copied contents into a new note. Now, the app launches, but the copied content does not consistently get pasted into a new note.

 

- When I began the thread, pasting was never occurring (though it had in the past).

- After your May 24 reply, I downloaded the update, tried it once, and it worked -- so I reported that it had been fixed.

- Since then, I've observed that it's only working sometimes, not always.

 

Thanks again...

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This should be corrected in yesterday's release: http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/38324-evernote-for-mac-51/

 

 

This should be corrected in yesterday's release: http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/38324-evernote-for-mac-51/

 

And so it was! Thanks!!

 

I'm sorry to have to report that this is, in fact, not fixed, after all. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

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Quite literally for years, I've been able to use the 'Paste To Evernote' feature (⌃⌘V) whether the Evernote Mac app was already running or not. If the app was not already running, it would launch, the copied text or image would be pasted, and I'd hear the purring sound, confirming the operation. This has worked flawlessly for years.

 

But recently, it stopped working.

 

*Now, if Evernote is not running, it launches -- but the copied data is *not* pasted. After the app launches, I now have to "reconfirm" the paste operation by hitting ⌃⌘V again in order to complete the creation of the note. It was so reliable in the past that once I initiated the command, I never thought about it again. But I recently discovered that a number of pasted items were not pasted. (Yes, the confirmation sound was absent, but because the command had been so reliable in the past, I didn't always actively pay attention to the sound being played. Multitasking and all... Now that I'm aware of this, I've observed that the sound no longer plays.)

 

I can't say exactly in which version this bug appeared, but I'm currently running v5.0.7 on 3 Macs, each of which is running OS 10.8.3, and the behavior is the same on each. I'd really, really love to see this fixed.  :-)

 

Hi. I don't know what could have happened. It works fine for me IF the Evernote Helper is running. The Helper is the Evernote elephant in your top menu bar. If you go to your Evernote preferences, you can tell it to leave the Helper running even when Evernote is closed. 

 

If you have the appstore version, things might be different. I don't know, and I always recommend people switch to the direct download version, because you are sure to have all of the features. Here are directions if you are interested: http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/16062-uninstalling-everrnote-for-mac-os-x/#entry173494

 

On each of my Macs, the Evernote Helper is on and has always been set to (a) launch at log-in and (B) always run in the background.

 

I have never used anything but the direct-download version.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. This is a new bug.

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  • Level 5*

Quite literally for years, I've been able to use the 'Paste To Evernote' feature (⌃⌘V) whether the Evernote Mac app was already running or not. If the app was not already running, it would launch, the copied text or image would be pasted, and I'd hear the purring sound, confirming the operation. This has worked flawlessly for years.

 

But recently, it stopped working.

 

*Now, if Evernote is not running, it launches -- but the copied data is *not* pasted. After the app launches, I now have to "reconfirm" the paste operation by hitting ⌃⌘V again in order to complete the creation of the note. It was so reliable in the past that once I initiated the command, I never thought about it again. But I recently discovered that a number of pasted items were not pasted. (Yes, the confirmation sound was absent, but because the command had been so reliable in the past, I didn't always actively pay attention to the sound being played. Multitasking and all... Now that I'm aware of this, I've observed that the sound no longer plays.)

 

I can't say exactly in which version this bug appeared, but I'm currently running v5.0.7 on 3 Macs, each of which is running OS 10.8.3, and the behavior is the same on each. I'd really, really love to see this fixed.  :-)

 

Hi. I don't know what could have happened. It works fine for me IF the Evernote Helper is running. The Helper is the Evernote elephant in your top menu bar. If you go to your Evernote preferences, you can tell it to leave the Helper running even when Evernote is closed. 

 

If you have the appstore version, things might be different. I don't know, and I always recommend people switch to the direct download version, because you are sure to have all of the features. Here are directions if you are interested: http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/16062-uninstalling-everrnote-for-mac-os-x/#entry173494

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