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Why is formatting so terrible on cut and paste?


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Evernote Team, why is the formatting of my note information so amazingly terrible whenever I copy it into another application; like Outlook or Word? Isn't this considered a use case for your product?

 

I am a huge fan of Evernote in general. I want to use it even more than I do, but this is a HUGE problem, Along with how often the formatting within a noted gets messed up when editing. These keep Evernote from being my go to tool for collecting and sharing information. They are the primary reasons I haven't upgrade to a premium tier - if I can't use the information in my notes seamlessly across my workflow the hassle of cleaning up the formatting outweighs the benefit of trusting Evernote.

 

I know there are substantial technical challenges to handling formatting cleanly across multiple platforms. But isn't this considered core functionality? It should be.

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Hi.  User forum here?  I think you're addressing the wrong crowd.  Also Evernote doesn't say it's a layout / design or anything else tool,  and it does show clips accurately.  Your problem seems to be when you try to paste into other applications - shouldn't you be complaining to them?

 

I agree it could be better,  but you really know not of what you speak when you glibly imagine that there are "substantial technical challenges" - in some cases it just ain't possible.

 

And "If this happened I'd upgrade to Premium?  Really?"

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Hi.  User forum here?  I think you're addressing the wrong crowd.  Also Evernote doesn't say it's a layout / design or anything else tool,  and it does show clips accurately.  Your problem seems to be when you try to paste into other applications - shouldn't you be complaining to them?

 

I agree it could be better,  but you really know not of what you speak when you glibly imagine that there are "substantial technical challenges" - in some cases it just ain't possible.

 

And "If this happened I'd upgrade to Premium?  Really?"

 

Gaz, I agree with the OP.  This is really a common, standard feature amongst all apps I know of that support rich text.

 

When you COPY from Evernote to another app that supports rich text, the formatting shown in Evernote is often not retained.

While it could be the other apps problem, I have observed other apps that support paste of rich text with out issue from every other app except Evernote.

 

It seems to me that Evernote is NOT putting the right information and/or the right format onto the clipboard when you do a copy.

 

BTW, it has NOTHING to do with whether or not Evernote is a layout/design tool.  Evernote supports rich text, and therefore it should handle the copy and paste of rich text properly.

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We may have to disagree here - I think Evernote does its job when translating faithfully(ish) from dozens of different display formats to its own note structure,  and shouldn't be responsible for translating that format back across the same dozens of different formats into another faithful representation.  It's possible to read and translate the code coming in,  but you can't provide a catchall output if you don't know what output will be required.

 

There is an obvious exception to the above - if we are talking typed text only,  then yes I totally agree Evernote bold 18pt should translate to Word or anything else bold 18pt - but again full word processor suites tend to have a few more bells and whistles than the current editor,  so may show the page wider,  insert random margins and randomize picture sizes.

 

There's an easy way round this - do your layed-out note in your WP of choice and attach it to the note.  Include the content in the note (if it's not searched and indexed by Evernote) so you can find the content.

 

Doesn't seem to me to be the fundamental defect that it's being painted.  Do I want better editing?  Definitely.  Doesn't stop me doing presentation work using Evernote - I just don't do my layouts here.

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We may have to disagree here - I think Evernote does its job when translating faithfully(ish) from dozens of different display formats to its own note structure,  and shouldn't be responsible for translating that format back across the same dozens of different formats into another faithful representation.  It's possible to read and translate the code coming in,  but you can't provide a catchall output if you don't know what output will be required.

 

Gaz, that's the beauty of the clipboard.  It provides a means to exchange data in standard formats for that platform.

It is the responsibility of the app which pastes data to the clipboard to put in in one or more of these standard formats.  Plain text, Rich text and HTML are three of the very standard clipboard formats.  Each app does NOT have to know or care about the internal format of any other app.  To be compliant with Windows standards and Mac standards, each app should support that platforms standard clipboard formats.

 

BTW, I don't know what you mean by "I think Evernote does its job when translating faithfully(ish) from dozens of different display formats to its own note structure".

Evernote does NOT do this.  It simply pulls data off the clipboard that is in one of the standard formats.  Even the capture of web pages is done using a standard format:  HTML.

 

I have never seen the problems that Evernote has with using the clipboard in other apps.

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We may have to disagree here 

 

You may be right about that Gazumped.

 

JMichael has stated the case very well for me. Here's an example of what I run into regularly.

 

I have a note that's all in 10pt Tohoma and I've used indention and bulleted or numbered lists to help organize the information. Really pretty basic formatting, but granted not plain text. I copy the the contents of the note into Word or Outlook and the font becomes 13.5pt the indention collapses and the line spacing doesn't match what was in Evernote (particularly not around the beginnings or ends of lists).

 

The type of work around you suggested illustrates the reason why I can't rely on Evernote as heavily as I would like to. It's too time consuming to work around tools that don't handle standard operations reliably.

 

I'm under the impression Evernote is supposed to be a notebook. Not just a scrap book for holding content clipped from elsewhere.

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OK, this is something that bothers me as well. Not a deal breaker, but yes, it drives me crazy, especially since I don't have much in the way of formatting.

 

I write in Times New Roman 12 pt. I even set the EN default to Times New Roman 12 pt. So why does it always become Times New Roman 13.5 pt in Word? My bold/italics come across fine. As do the sections in Times New Roman 18 (I actually need 20, but it is not an option in EN). So why does 12 always turn into 13.5?

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Hmmn.  OK I'll concede - I can't argue JM's technical points,  and I do agree that the editor is very overdue for attention.  However when stuff doesn't work exactly as I'd like it to,  I tend to look for workarounds as with the 'embed a file' suggestion.  It hasn't turned my life into a constant trial,  and I'm a jobbing writer so I tend to churn the stuff out - as you may have noticed. As to Times New Roman 12 becoming TNR13.5 I'll have to plead (even more) ignorance.

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  • 4 weeks later...

This is something that has bugged me as well for quite some time. I just installed version 5 and this was one of the top 2-3 items I was hoping to see improved.

 

After finding it the same, I obviously started looking here for a soluiton.

 

We are business subscribers so we are paying per user per month with the goal of creating a business knowledgebase. After creating documents there, I am often asking my staff to copy and paste items to send to clients. We are sending simple text, but some slightly better consistency with formatting would be very helpful.

 

A typical document with us might have a couple section headers (think 1-2 points larger and bold) and perhaps bullets here and there.

 

Here is an example of the formattting of a document that was created solely within Evernote v5.0.2 copied into both Word 2010 and an Outlook 2010 message:

 

Plain Body Text : Tahoma 10 becomes Tahoma 13.5

Header 1 : Tahoma 11 Bold becomes Tahoma 11.5 Bold

Header 2 : Tahoma 10 Bold becomes Tahoma 13.5 Bold

 

Brian

 

 

 

 

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Don't think Evernote ever suggested it could act as a communications hub - and,  as I may have mentioned once or twice,   it's always possible to format a document rather nicely in PDF, DOC or DOCX and embed that in a note.  Word files can be saved as templates,  which are loaded without changing the saved document to allow further individual changes to be made and a new file saved.  If I were setting up a similar system I'd have unchanging stuff like price lists as PDF or DOC and templates for anything that staff needed to personalise to a customer.  They could then save the changed file back to a note as a record.

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Don't think Evernote ever suggested it could act as a communications hub

 

Really???  How can you have an effective Business system without a decent communications?

I'm pretty sure they (EN) have advertised EN Business as a great collaboration tool.

 

Just do a google on "evernote business collaboration" and you'll get lots of hits.

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Hmmn - I guess they'll be introducing the email,  word processing and page-layout photo editing tools pretty soon then.

 

LOL, you know that's a gross exaggeration Gaz.

 

But we do need solid, basic, rich-text editing -- which is a far cry from word processing.

 

EDIT:  correct typo

Edited by JMichael
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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Hallo everyone,

 

I am new to the forum. Love Evernote, even got Premium for my 17-year-old

 

For instance: Writing urgent, but complex, emails on my phone/tablet

  1. it is easier to me accidently pressing the send button before I have finished. It is easy to write it in Evernote and then to copy it into the email programme
  2. often I have difficulty getting the formatting presentable, and end up copying the text to Word to format it

Would appreciate better formatting in v6.0

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  • 1 month later...

I'll add my voice to this discussion in hopes that the Evernote dev team will see this as an important issue to address...

 

I love EverNote and use it every day. I pay for the premium subscription so that I can share notes with my wife and coworkers. And, I find it really frustrating that no matter what I do, I can't copy text out of Evernote with the same formatting that it had when I pasted it in. One of my uses is that I save a lot of email form letters and clippings that I reuse to construct new emails. No matter how I format the text in Evernote, it never copies out of Evernote with the same font size that I use in email. What's weird, is that if I choose 11 pt, it pastes into Mail as 11 pt. But if I choose 12 pt, it pastes into Mail as 13pt! Grrr. I tried tricking it by putting 11.5 pt into the Fonts palette but it still just pastes as 11 pt. So, I have to resize the text in Mail EVERY TIME I paste from Evernote. 

 

I don't need a major overhaul of the editor. I recognize that Evernote is a note-taking application and not a page layout program or even a word processor. I just want consistency with the rest of my applications in terms of how it copies and pastes simple things like font size.

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It's not even the cut and paste to another document, it is not even retaining the formatting when you cut and paste within the same note. For example if I cut something with a font color of blue it pastes the text and reverts back to the default black color, very, very annoying. :(

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  • 4 weeks later...

Having to reformat and touch up everything I paste out of Evernote is worrisome and wears you down. If nothing else if we could have control over the font and point size of the exported text would be a great concession. 

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Having to reformat and touch up everything I paste out of Evernote is worrisome and wears you down. If nothing else if we could have control over the font and point size of the exported text would be a great concession. 

 

Agreed.

 

A COPY from an Evernote Note (from any client) should provide fully compatible HTML5 code to the clipboard.

 

Evernote Team:  Don't you find it embarrassing that a COPY from an Evernote note and a PASTE to THIS Evernote forum does NOT work very well ???

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Have you tried "Share> Open URL in Browser" and then cutting and pasting the content from the web page? I had a similar problem with Evernote when I shared Notes with hyperlinks. After cutting and pasting, the hyperlinks with disappear (along with the formatting). I tried this workaround and it retained the hyperlinks and formatting. 

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@rachee46:  Thanks.  That's a nice tip.   

 

But Evernote still needs to fix basic copy/paste.  This is one of the most basic features on a computer.  If they can produce proper HTML/RTF using the "Share" method, they should be able to produce the same via a COPY command.

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But Evernote still needs to fix basic copy/paste.  This is one of the most basic features on a computer.  If they can produce proper HTML/RTF using the "Share" method, they should be able to produce the same via a COPY command.

 

Yeap, really tiresome. I end up having to email myself "new snippets" when on the go, using Evernote Android applet. Or create a new Evernote note, to be discarded later...

  - when back at home using Evernote Windows client, merging new snippets from that email or surplus EN note. Very cumbersome. Time wasting. 

 

Now multiply this workaround by thousands (and more) of Evernote users all over the world = massive time spent. Multiple days / weeks lost collectively.

Why can't Evernote designers implement this heavily-requested fix (shouldn't be no more than a week on coding, testing & rollout) on their Copy/Paste's clean formatting issue...

 

@rachee46:  I discovered the Share option under 'Notes' submenu - and learnt some new options there, including 'Share > Copy URL to Clipboard'. 

However I apparently don't have 'Share > Open URL in Browser' in my Evernote (Windows Desktop) whether via top menubar or the opened note's toolbar.

-- Searched 'Getting Started with Evernote for:' online user guide for all seven platforms, one by one - and can't find a mention of that 'Open URL in Browser' option.

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  • 5 weeks later...

To be clear, this is a MAJOR issue.  I am a huge fan; but this is so basic and has been resolved for so long in other domains that it destroys any claim you might have to be a cutting edge solution.  I cannot promote you to my network, colleagues or clients because this would make me a laughingstock. 

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I have to agree with CDavis above. I still recommend Evernote to people, but it's always with this caveat in the same breath - "...but it sucks when it comes to cut and paste and formatting. If you're going to use it as a repositary for information that you want to reuse or share, don't waste any energy on formatting the information in your notes. You're just going to have to redo it when you take it out of Evernote to use it in something else."

 

I know there are some work arounds but, to be blunt, who has that time to waste on an on-going basis? The people I have recommended Evernote to readily share that they either 1) use it less than they would if the editor wasn't as bad as it is (cutting and pasting is viewed as a editing function) or 2) quickly gave up on it because of this and formatting problems and found something else to use. Everyone loves the idea of Evernote though.

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Fixing this issue basically means rewriting the editor - a little bit like coming up with a new version of Word starting from scratch - which they did for Mac recently in the new version 6.x 

 

It takes time to do development on that scale,  and they're definitely rippling it through all the other OS's that EN support - but it will take time.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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This is pretty frustrating. Basically if I want to copy/share bullted lists in applications outside of Evernote I have to manually create them 

 

While this is a very important feature to a lot of us, I don't think Evernote gives it much thought.

They have stated repeatedly that they want everyone to to ALL of their work in Evernote, to stay in Evernote app all day long.

So it appears that maintaining proper format when pasting into other apps is low priority for Evernote.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I believe the problem is not particular to Evernote's, but afflicting all common software.

 

I just knocked up a quick HTML page with text in Verdana font size 14 pt and blue colour.

 

Opened it in Firefox IE and Chrome, copied the text and pasted into Word.

 

All three had completely different outcomes.

Firefox ended up as black Times New Roman 12.

IE as black Verdana 11

Chrome as Verdana 14 blue bold.

 

Probably Chrome was the most accurate. Amusing that Microsoft IE cannot paste acurately into Microsoft Word.

 

I use Steve Miller's PureText all the time. It's the best way to paste as plain text. Let the destination control the formatting.

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There are two parties in the exchange, if you're cutting/pasting between different programs. The source cannot know what program you are going to be pasting into, so it usually offers up its content in a number of different formats. On the other end, the target can usually accept only certain formats. So right away, you are limited to the common formats supported by source and target. Common formats for text include: a number of plain-text formats, including Unicode. There's also HTML and Rich Text. Evernote offers up several plain text formats, plus HTML (which is a common interchange format) and also puts up ENML clips, in case you're pasting back into Evernote. MS-WORD will put up a plethora of formats, including plain text, HTML and RTF.

 

The target, in choosing among the proffered formats will probably have a preferred format, and will go with that one. For example, a plain old text editor like NotePad++ has no need of rich text formats like RTF or HTML, and doesn't understand Evernote's ENML, so it'll choose one of the plain text formats. Evernote will accept HTML (and I think RTF), so that you can transfer rich text into Evernote.

 

Plain-text formats are pretty well understood. One of the problems with rich text formats like HTML is that there are many different ways of marking up text to achieve the desired result. For example, MS Word's HTML markup is notoriously convoluted, and tailored towards interchange with other MS Office programs. For a different program, interpreting that may not result in perfect transfer.

 

You can make a start at understanding what's going on by using a clipboard viewer to see what's being stored up there; I use Clipboard Format Spy, which shows the available formats, and a viewer for various clip types, plus the ability to examine the raw clip contents in text or binary form. Viewing the text of say, an HTML or RTF clip is the start towards figuring out whether it's the source or target program that's going astray when you don't get what you expect.

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  • 1 month later...

Yes, when will this be fixed? What are the workarounds?

 

I use bullet points in evernote and it is super annoying they disappear when pasting into any other app :(

 

I have two choices at that point spend time reformatting them (5-10 minutes) or lose the hierarchy.

 

I hate picking either choice :(

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Yes, when will this be fixed? What are the workarounds?

 

I use bullet points in evernote and it is super annoying they disappear when pasting into any other app :(

 

I have two choices at that point spend time reformatting them (5-10 minutes) or lose the hierarchy.

 

I hate picking either choice :(

 

Workaround for me was to stop using Evernote.  :(  I've been beating on this topic since 2013 - no changes have been made to resolve the issue.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Many threads in this forum are about problems/lack of features/bugs about formatting and some answers justify that stating that Evernote should stay lightweight and simple.

But formatting is (in my opinion) the main feature over just opening plain .txt files in an advanced editor. Both options allow you to:

  • search text in all notes
  • keep note creation and last modification datetime
  • use URLs as hyperlinks
  • quick usage / lightweight application

And .txt is a more universal and standard storage format for your notes... you could even recover part of the text from a faulty hard drive.

 

So Evernote developers: take this into account, I think it would be really frustrating to lose users against plain old text editors ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have a workaround that may help some of you. I do a lot of writing using Evernote where italics and boldfacing is used. When I cut and paste into WordPerfect (or, Notepad, Wordpad, or, presumably MS Word), all the italics and boldfacings are lost. It takes a lot of time to go back in WordPerfect and add the modifications back to the typefaces where needed. 

 

However, I've noticed that cutting and pasting into Google Docs retains the formatting, at least italics and boldfacing. From that point there are lots of possibilities for manipulating the text, and I've found that cutting and pasting into Google Docs solves my particular problem. FYI for everyone.

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@ct236:

 

Thanks for the tip about using Google Docs.

 

This must be an issue only in EN Win.

I can copy from EN Mac 6.0.11 to MS Word 2011 and it retains the formatting (bold, italics, etc).

 

Note that in MS Word, when you do a paste, Word offers you the choice of using "Source" or "Destination" formatting.

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To Evernote - this is driving me to stop using (and paying for) Evernote because I often need to provide my notes to other people for inclusion in their docs.

 

A silver lining - in trying to work around this issue I have come to learn about and make use of the Copy Share URL feature and now commonly provide people with the URL to the doc.  While this doesn't resolve the issue if they need to copy and paste the content this has the HUGE advantage because for viewing purposes they are looking at a 'live' version of the note and will see updates that I have made to it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Evernote: You make a beautiful product. It's clean, well-organized, and highly available across platforms. However, I just can't handle the formatting issues anymore. Copying from my notes-taking app into any number of Microsoft Office applications is a must for me. When I copy from Evernote, this happens:

 

Original in Evernote (created here using the forum formatting tools):

  • test
    • test test
      • test test test
    • test test
    • test test
  • test
    • test test

Original copied from Evernote and pasted into an Outlook email or Word doc:

  • test
    •  
    • test test
      •  
      • test test test
    • test test
    • test test
  • test
    •  
    • test test

Also, more often than not, the font size changes drastically. I have been holding out for a year or so waiting to see if a fix would be offered, but Evernote's product development focus seems to be on keeping users within the Evernote universe (work chat, shared notebooks, etc.). I mean, I guess it makes sense, why would you want to make the process of someone taking content out of Evernote more efficient? But unfortunately, playing nicely with other apps (ESPECIALLY an app as ubiquitous as Microsoft Word) is on my must-have list. So, I'm off to find Evernote's replacement.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I also HATE the formatting of text in Evernote.

 

Examples:

1) When editing a list of check boxes on my Iphone, the indentation will be a complete mess.

2) When working on the Windows add-in, the format is constantly changing, for instance using the checkboxes (it jumps to Tahoma 11. Why??? I was working in Calibri 10).

 

It can just be me, but this really annoys me. If you can't offer proper text formatting, don't do it. Now we are stuck in the middle.  

 

Formatting is important, as you may want to quickly copy-paste formatted text from Evernote into an email to share it with others. For instance, I would like to use standard texts to explain certain concepts that I use a lot in my communication with clients (including a title in bold and including links to webpages) that have to be copied into texts in Word or in emails quickly. Unfortunately, that is not so easy at all.

 

It would be very helpful to have the following functions:

* paste & merge formatting

* copy and paste formatting (ctrl-shift-c and ctrl-shift-v in MSWord)

 

By the way, is this board ever checked by the Evernote? It has been running for years without a solution, let alone a reaction.

I have just upgraded to PLUS with the intention of using Evernote more, but this makes it a lot less attractive...

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  • 1 month later...

This is still a major issue. When I cut in paste from Evernote into Pages or Word, the spacing is grossly incorrect. I'm not even able to fix the space by deleting the large gaps and strange indentions and instead have to retype everything from evernote into word doc. It's great in some sense but an absolute waste of time for dissertation and extended literary work. It's a shame too. 

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This is still a major issue. When I cut in paste from Evernote into Pages or Word, the spacing is grossly incorrect.

 

What versions of OS, Evernote, Pages, and Word are you running?

What is the source of the content that you are copying/cutting?  Is it stuff clipped from a web page, or just stuff you've typed directly into Evernote?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Among several chronic frustrations, the remarkably crude handing of formatting was the one that finally frustrated me enough to get me to give up on Evernote.  I used it a lot, and depended on it, but in the end it's just too clunky, and it's not getting better.

 

I just today finished moving all of my notes out of Evernote to OneNote with the aid of this small, imperfect, but indispensable tool:  http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/Evernote2Onenote.html

 

ciao,

J

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  • 2 weeks later...

Okay, read through this thread that was started years ago.  I don't think I ever saw an Evernote company person respond, which makes me confident that this reply won't garner any attention from one who could really address it.   But to the thread faithful, thanks for your posts. It has been enlightening. 

 

Me:  MacOSX 10.10.4, Evernote installed Version 6.1 (452115 Direct), Current Chrome browser, Outlook 365 Webmail:

I could actually care less about if Tahoma 10 pastes as Tahoma 10.375 or not.  My issue is the pasting of text copied from Evernote consistently does the weirdest thing with carriage returns.  

 

Pasted text will give a carriage return (archaic term, I know) mid-word. It doesn't provide a hyphen and doesn't send the whole word to the next line. The text in Evernote was pasted from some website or document first, edited some more, and then copy/pasted into the webmail.  I thought erasing the Evernote formatting would fix it, but it does not. 

 

This group provided a working solution: Paste from Evernote into Google Doc and then into email.  More fun than chewing on aluminum foil!  

 

Not trying to slam EN with this.  I am constantly using EN on it's own and as an integration tool for IFTTT, Google Apps and other mobile device tools.  Can't live without it and still share it with my professional community.  Just seems that a thread as old as this should have some resolution by now. 

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

It's quite problematic. It seems to keep reformatting on its own. Adding spaces all over the place.

I delete out the spaces but when I return later, so do the spaces. They're not identical spaces. Sometimes they're larger, other times less so. What a waste of time having to deal with this issue.

I'm not sure what's worse: the routine crashing, the freezing when going from a web site to Evernote and back or this uncontrollable reformatting.

Evernote has the potential for being one of the absolute best apps available, something that everyone would need every day. BUT these issues make it so frustrating to use. It's the main reason I haven't upgraded. Free frustration beats paying for it!

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I agree that Evernote needs to handle copy/paste, in both directions, much better.

 

Until they get it fixed I have found that applying "Simplify Formatting" (CMD-SHIFT-F on the Mac) often makes the Note more readable and clears up most problems.

Of course, you may also lose some of the structure of the page.

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  • 4 months later...

Making a post so that poor souls who struggle with this issue can find this thread via Google Search.

To ct236, thank you very much for the Google Docs workaround, works perfectly well. Here is a direct link to "Create A New Document" on Google Docs: "  https://docs.google.com/document/create" Just copy/paste it to your bookmarks ba

To Evernote. I am truly BAFFLED why this issue hasn't been fixed. I don't ask for perfect 1-for-1 copy/paste format, just fix the bullet point formatting. The last time I checked, the highest paid Evernote membership is called "Business" and the 2nd highest has "for productive professionals" in its description. As someone who works in the financial services industry, I must say that Outlook holds at least 80% of market share among desktop email clients. I will not sign-up for the Premium account out of principal until this issue is fixed.

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  • 1 month later...

I am a musician and frequently get chord charts in MICROSOFT WORD format and try to paste them into evernote,most of the time it converts them to a different font then the original format and I have to reset the actual font and then the alignment is messed up and i have to go through the file and fix it.  I've tried setting the actual font size in evernote to the font i am pasting but it rarely works.  I use WORD MOBILE and OPENOFFICE. 

Is there a workaround or something I am not seeing?

 

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  • 1 month later...

Another workaround: Use the (new?) Evernote Webinterface to copy your text. It works in either direction (Evernote Web -> Outlook and vice versa) without breaking bullet lists!

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6 hours ago, kan0ne said:

I just filed a ticket ("Ticket# 1737217 - Copy-Pasting bullet lists from Evernote to Outlook destroys list format")...

Ok. So I got my feedback which can be summed up as "known bug", "some rather inconvenient workaround suggestions" and "unknown when Evernote will address this". 

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3 hours ago, kan0ne said:

Ok. So I got my feedback which can be summed up as "known bug", "some rather inconvenient workaround suggestions" and "unknown when Evernote will address this". 

Could have told you that was going to happen.  

 

It's been this way for years and I stopped believe it was going to be fixed.  When I stopped believing in that was also when I stopped paying.  

Unfortunate, disappointing, and seemingly uncharacteristic of a company whose sole purpose is managing notes.  It's all great until you leave the world that is Evernote, and when formatting is everything they fall a bit short.  Short enough I consider it a failure until this stupid annoying behavior of copy paste is fixed.  

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On 7/19/2016 at 1:06 PM, kan0ne said:

Ok. So I got my feedback which can be summed up as "known bug", "some rather inconvenient workaround suggestions" and "unknown when Evernote will address this". 

I think this is their standard response. It translates to "This bug has been a part of the Evernote experience for years and will remain so for many more."

 

23 hours ago, Tarrant64 said:

Could have told you that was going to happen.  

 

It's been this way for years and I stopped believe it was going to be fixed.  When I stopped believing in that was also when I stopped paying.  

Unfortunate, disappointing, and seemingly uncharacteristic of a company whose sole purpose is managing notes.  It's all great until you leave the world that is Evernote, and when formatting is everything they fall a bit short.  Short enough I consider it a failure until this stupid annoying behavior of copy paste is fixed.  

I'm not so sure how uncharacteristic this is. There are a lot of enduring bugs/glitches in Evernote's basic software functions.

Like you, I'll consider paying again after the company creates software with a LOT fewer 5+ year-old bugs and the basic functions just work.

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Seems like a small thing, but it was this very "we're not fixing it so just live with it" flaw that made me bail for Microsoft OneNote a year ago. I'm anything but an MS shill - they've made more than their share of blunders, but *wow* - the difference in usability is night and day. Formatting is like a mini version of Word, and everything just works. Note taking went from an exercise in frustration to something I do all the time without really noticing - as it should be.

 

Evernote may have jumped the shark: http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-is-in-deep-trouble-2015-10

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5 hours ago, jhd said:

Seems like a small thing, but it was this very "we're not fixing it so just live with it" flaw that made me bail for Microsoft OneNote a year ago. I'm anything but an MS shill - they've made more than their share of blunders, but *wow* - the difference in usability is night and day. Formatting is like a mini version of Word, and everything just works. Note taking went from an exercise in frustration to something I do all the time without really noticing - as it should be.

 

Evernote may have jumped the shark: http://www.businessinsider.com/evernote-is-in-deep-trouble-2015-10

After fiddling around with OneNote for a while, I agree that its basic functions are more reliable than Evernote's. OneNote beats Evernote for anything involving text, typing, tables, lists, fonts, colors, etc.

But Evernote has far superior tagging and a much more consistent experience across platforms (at least the ones I use, browsers and Windows desktop). I believe that OneNote actually has entirely different tagging capabilities depending on which platform you're using. This is a little weird but something Microsoft, I think, will fix.

Or did you find a way to handle OneNote's shortcomings?

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2 hours ago, patrickoh said:

@kan0ne thanks for opening the ticket and getting it escalated.  is there a way to upvote your ticket?  (i've been following this thread for 3+ years and still hoping to return back to Evernote one day...)

Unfortunately not. The ticket itself got even closed today "because the issue was given to engineering and they will look at it and there's nothing more we can tell you now so please just keep updating Evernote hoping for a fix"

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I have just digested this 3 years worth of thread. I only came across this because I have indeed came across the same issue. I have web clipped an article to the windows desk client and got some awful formatting with the double spacing that the shift-return didn't fix.

I thought that I would be smart then copy it into notepad (the king of no formatting) and paste it back into a note and still there is weird double line formatting. This is just some weird shoyt.

Keep up the fight. I will +1.

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  • 2 months later...

+1. Doing legal research, moving things around between notes is a necessary part of organization, which involved cutting and pasting. When I've found a case and taken the trouble to attach a hyperlink, the fact that I can't even copy and paste it has unfortunately led me to search for Evernote alternatives. This should be such basic, core functionality in  a product designed to organize information.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Crazy:
What's up with inter-operability of formatting? I cannot cut/paste bullets numbered lists, and other formats from MS programs and Google document programs without losing all the format.
What about change in spacing. What about change in case (i.e. ALL CAPS, all small, Sentence case, Capitalize Each Word).
Crazy that we pay more and MS Note can do all this for free. I want to stick with Evernote but you need to be at least able to do what OneNote does for free.
I've sent tickets, etc. before. This stuff is common sense. I have many collegues in my institution who have the same complaints. Particularly bullets and numerical. We get agendas in MS word, MS outlook, etc. and we want to paste them in notes. Alternatively, we want to use our Evernote notes to generate documents, articles, policies, etc. Crazy that this cannot be straightend out
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Crazy indeed.  I was a happy paying customer until it just became clear that this was not going to be fixed.  So I stopped paying and commuted to OneNote.  

Its sad.  I really wanted to see this fixed.  

 

I thought perhaps with major changes internally over the last year or two that this would come up on the docket to be fixed but no.  

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48 minutes ago, Mark Sprint Epic Touch said:
Crazy:
What's up with inter-operability of formatting? I cannot cut/paste bullets numbered lists, and other formats from MS programs and Google document programs without losing all the format.
What about change in spacing. What about change in case (i.e. ALL CAPS, all small, Sentence case, Capitalize Each Word).
Crazy that we pay more and MS Note can do all this for free. I want to stick with Evernote but you need to be at least able to do what OneNote does for free.
I've sent tickets, etc. before. This stuff is common sense. I have many collegues in my institution who have the same complaints. Particularly bullets and numerical. We get agendas in MS word, MS outlook, etc. and we want to paste them in notes. Alternatively, we want to use our Evernote notes to generate documents, articles, policies, etc. Crazy that this cannot be straightend out

Please stop pasting the same post into separate threads in the forum; this is the third instance so far.

  • Like 3
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  • 2 weeks later...

Just found a new nice "feature" of cut and paste from my Evernote to Outlook. Try pasting a list with check-boxes in it without converting to pure text (which would completely kill my indented bullet list).... It gives me "Fehler! Es wurde kein Dateiname angegeben!" (in English sth like "Error! No file name given!"). My Clipboard-Spying-Tool shows me that Evernote is using special img tags in the HTML-converted data in the clipboard "<img class="en-todo">". Apparently Outlook tries to parse these tags and complains about the missing file. According to http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_img.asp this is invalid HTML code as "The <img> tag has two required attributes: src and alt." ...

Apart from that bullet lists with different indent. levels themselves are also still a horrible mess...

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Hello,

I have used Evernote for 4 years. I have just lived with this problem but this is ridiculous. Most of these posts are over two years old and the text formatting in Evernote (Premium) is still terrible. I'm not talking about between apps but the format of text changes when I cut and paste text within the same note. Why???

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5 hours ago, tyoung77 said:

Hello,

I have used Evernote for 4 years. I have just lived with this problem but this is ridiculous. Most of these posts are over two years old and the text formatting in Evernote (Premium) is still terrible. I'm not talking about between apps but the format of text changes when I cut and paste text within the same note. Why???

Hi.  Are you pasting between two sections of a typed note,  or one that was clipped from a web page or another document?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'd like to bump this topic. After trying to copy from a simple text editor in plain text, Markdown, RTF and HTML, none of them gives a me a consistent, editable, good looking result. Bullets, for example, disappear or else come through as "hard" bullets with tabs before and after, rather than in Everrnote's bulleted list format.  A numbered list does the same thing. I think I'd be happy with structural continuity even if the formatting changed a bit. If Evernote understood and rendered Markdown, for example, that could work. I would LOVE it if lists maintained formatting and outline structures, including indentations.

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@joshfree - you're bumping a live topic.  It's agreed the editor could and should be better,  and Evernote have now created and installed in all clients a 'common editor' which means they don't have to solve problems with (for example) bullets in iOS, MacOS, Windows (all flavors) and Android (likewise).  They're developing further features for that editor which should resolve a lot of issues - but it wasn't (and will continue not to be) a quick fix.

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Apologies for characterizing my post as a bump. Started reading at the top and didn't check the dates by the time I got to the end.

I'm working with current versions on Mac and IOS, so it's clear it's not all solved yet. But I'm glad to know they're working on making it better.  

In general, I love Evernote and am a long-time user and fan with a Premium subscription. But this clunkiness is annoying as hell when so many other productivity apps seem to work fairly smoothly by comparison. Comforting to read that I am not alone in my frustration.

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Speaking as someone who works for a company who is using Windows 7 and Outlook 2013 while personally I use iOS and OS X devices Evernote formatting of notes when sharing is a huge negative to productivity. 

I was a OneNote user who leaped at the chance to jump to Evernote and I am in disbelief that years have gone by and I am not able to share my notes with proper formatting. To give you context I worked at Microsoft for over a decade and was really happy to leave their products behind. 

I was gifted a year subscription to Office 365 and will be switching to OneNote until this is fixed. I don't say that lightly. I hope Evernote gets its ***** together. This should have been a Pri 1 fix years ago. 

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Figured something out. If you export your notes from another application as an HTML file, then drag that onto the Evernote icon to create a new note, it seems to retain the structural formatting. Haven't finished messing with it yet, but it did (for example) create a new bullet when I hit Return at the end of a list. Which is what I was looking for. 

On a Mac, it should be pretty easy to create a Hazel rule that puts any HTML file you put in an "Add to Evernote" folder into Evernote as a new note. I'm sure there are equivalents for Windows. Worth a try.

Odd that this works, but pasting in HTML format directly into a new note does not.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I am just amazed to see how could a bug can't be fixed from 2013! I am very new to Evernote and faced an issues while cut and paste formatting. So I Googled and found this thread. After reading all the comments now I think should I use Evernote further or move to Onenote as many of them had already done...!

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On 12/3/2016 at 8:42 PM, joshfree said:

Odd that this works, but pasting in HTML format directly into a new note does not.

 

I have looked at the "HTML" format on some of the pages that I like to store as notes - much of the problem for Evernote maybe that there are different 'flavors' of HTML, and different sites use different implementations - <div>, <br>, <p>, <span>, etc, etc. Makes it hard to write rules that will apply to everyone. I know this because at one stage in my career I wrote PERL scripts to strip out all the HTML so that I could then reapply the flavor I needed for the website I was working on. PERL is great for doing that kind of search and replace, but learning it is not for everyone. OTOH, many scripts are available in the PERL libraries and/or somewhere out there in Internet-land! I am thinking that it might come in useful for many editing tasks - I just have to figure out if there is any way to access the database directly, or if I have to export, manipulate, and reimport all the notes that need manipulation.

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2 hours ago, FactMan said:

much of the problem for Evernote maybe that there are different 'flavors' of HTML, and different sites use different implementations - <div>, <br>, <p>, <span>, etc, etc. Makes it hard to write rules that will apply to everyone. I know this because at one stage in my career I wrote PERL scripts to strip out all the HTML

I'm thinking that as well; Evernote's using a basic level of HTML (documentation at https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/enml.php)5a41321c1827d_ScreenShot2017-12-25at09_13_37.png.0169f3a860b626f47031b6b77a5f2789.png
There is a "make plain text" command on my Mac which strips out the HTML

I've found the only way to ensure a web site displays 100% is to copy as an image.  I can store the .html file as an attachment for opening in a browser, or just use the url

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Thanks, @ruudhein, but I think I will stay with the way I have been using to capture notes from the Internet - simplified paste and then do a few tweaks on the imported note. Clip to Evernote does not work with offline files, so it makes it very hard to work with. I am reluctant to spend my time going through 6000+ lines of code to get to the start of the piece I need! And that was with a simpler page than some I work with!

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  • 1 month later...
On ‎7‎/‎19‎/‎2016 at 6:13 PM, Tarrant64 said:

Could have told you that was going to happen.  

 

It's been this way for years and I stopped believe it was going to be fixed.  When I stopped believing in that was also when I stopped paying.  

Unfortunate, disappointing, and seemingly uncharacteristic of a company whose sole purpose is managing notes.  It's all great until you leave the world that is Evernote, and when formatting is everything they fall a bit short.  Short enough I consider it a failure until this stupid annoying behavior of copy paste is fixed.  

Yes, get used to it. I'm an Evernote user since 2008, and there hasn't been a single Mac or Windows version where the editor worked. Instead, Evernote likes to "reinvent" the user interface, supposedly to improve the user experience. Based on their track record, they do not consider taking and editing notes part of their user experience.

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  • 2 months later...

Man, years later, this is still not fixed. Does anyone from Evernote even read this forum or care?

I was going to move my new company to Evernote but we then realized we couldn't copy paste our templates from within Evernote into a web browsers window using zen desk without loosing the formatting. 

We'll try OneNote then.

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22 hours ago, chezpaul said:

Man, years later, this is still not fixed. Does anyone from Evernote even read this forum or care?

I was going to move my new company to Evernote but we then realized we couldn't copy paste our templates from within Evernote into a web browsers window using zen desk without loosing the formatting. 

We'll try OneNote then.

I'm not a programmer or anything like that, so I can only guess.

And my guess would be that the bugs are baked so deeply into the system that fixing them would risk ruining access and ability to edit billions of notes that were made with the buggy code. Other than that, I cannot think of any reason why Evernote would still struggle so badly with ultra basic features like typing a word and having it appear on the screen, the location of the cursor, copy/pasting plain text, font sizes, blank lines, etc.

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3 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I'm not a programmer or anything like that, so I can only guess.

And my guess would be that the bugs are baked so deeply into the system that fixing them would risk ruining access and ability to edit billions of notes that were made with the buggy code. Other than that, I cannot think of any reason why Evernote would still struggle so badly with ultra basic features like typing a word and having it appear on the screen, the location of the cursor, copy/pasting plain text, font sizes, blank lines, etc.

Over the last year or so, Evernote has been working on redesigning the editor across all platforms (so I have read on posts in these forums). One hopes that ultimately this issue will get addressed in that process. But it may that in fact the older code has been ditched and the new code still hasn't been put completely right. Some updates to the Windows program (paste the ancient, well-functioning version I still use) have changed the pasting functions, but complaints about about formatting issues.

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I've noticed that things have gotten much better over the last year, but there are still some weird little nits.

In the Android app, when you are working on a list of check-marked items, sometimes a new line will be capitalized automatically and sometimes it won't. I haven't figured out the pattern, if there is one.

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1 hour ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Over the last year or so, Evernote has been working on redesigning the editor across all platforms (so I have read on posts in these forums). One hopes that ultimately this issue will get addressed in that process. But it may that in fact the older code has been ditched and the new code still hasn't been put completely right. Some updates to the Windows program (paste the ancient, well-functioning version I still use) have changed the pasting functions, but complaints about about formatting issues.

It has been well over a year!

The first public announcement was in September 2015 and they said they had already been working on it for a little under two years. Before that were CEO announcements in 2014 that quality would be a top priority.

So, we're rapidly approaching the fifth year of promises to fix bugs to the extremely basic features, such as not crashing when you open the program or try to type something, copy/paste, and having only one cursor that doesn't jump all over the program, etc.

It's fairly sad to think about how much greater Evernote would be if the company focused more on bug fixes and less on shockingly redundant buttons and branded business socks.

Can someone with a technical background explain to me why such ultra basic features would take 5+ years to fix?

  • Like 1
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11 minutes ago, JerrySNB said:

I've noticed that things have gotten much better over the last year, but there are still some weird little nits.

In the Android app, when you are working on a list of check-marked items, sometimes a new line will be capitalized automatically and sometimes it won't. I haven't figured out the pattern, if there is one.

Some Windows versions, too, have had some improvements (e.g. tables) but many other massive, show-stopping steps backwards as well. For example, I literally cannot type anything into V6.11.

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  • 5 months later...
I've read a LOT of this thread, and my issue is SO INSANELY SIMPLE compared to most posts here...
 
I've started a "Communication" notebook and in it, I write all my new drafts of all texts, website posts, business communications, and social media messages.
Every time I go to copy-paste a "Communication" note from Evernote to ANYWHERE, it's so completely off in terms of formatting that just a basic line break ("Enter" / "Return" / new line) fails to copy. (Not to mention tabs are converted to spaces.) An entire note with multiple paragraphs from Evernote ends up on a single line when posted to any website... ?
 
Since having the smarts to preserve my messages with a "Communication" folder, it's become BOLDLY apparent that Evernote is not designed with outbound compatibility in mind, and almost completely an inbound gathering process...

I would hope that they change their clipboard interactions to be more compatible with typical formatting standards.
Having text files in a folder on my computer is what I'm trying to leave behind...
(But I'm having to keep my most reusable template communications in a folder until something else is figured out.)

I wish no ill will on anyone!  I hope something good comes of this thread!  Thanks for sharing!

-Matt
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  • 1 year later...

Agree, it's trash. There is literally not a single other app that I can copy/paste a bullet point list to. 
I have to copy freaking bullet point by freaking bullet point. 

Since evernote will not fix this, what alternatives are there? 

evernoterichtextsucks.jpg

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17 minutes ago, redc said:

Agree, it's trash. There is literally not a single other app that I can copy/paste a bullet point list to. 
I have to copy freaking bullet point by freaking bullet point. 

Since evernote will not fix this, what alternatives are there? 

evernoterichtextsucks.jpg

Don't use Evernote?

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6 minutes ago, CalS said:

Don't use Evernote?

This works much better on the browser version. Why is it a problem on the desktop version?

 I downgraded to basic. Got tired of paying for this. I'm constantly copying/pasting information from Evernote to other apps.

 

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8 minutes ago, redc said:

This works much better on the browser version. Why is it a problem on the desktop version?

A mystery to me.  In theory the new releases they are developing are supposed to address this and other formatting issues.  Those releases have been delayed for how long I don't know. 

I just did a quick test creating a note on Windows desktop EN and then copy pasting the note contents into this post.  It appeared to work fine.  More confusion I suppose as to which app targets work.  :wacko:

Image of the note.    ScreenClip.png.a1aa70767fd022e22289202652220191.png

Copy/Paste the lines.

  • This is line 1
  • This is line 2
  • This is line 3
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11 minutes ago, CalS said:

A mystery to me.  In theory the new releases they are developing are supposed to address this and other formatting issues.  Those releases have been delayed for how long I don't know. 

I just did a quick test creating a note on Windows desktop EN and then copy pasting the note contents into this post.  It appeared to work fine.  More confusion I suppose as to which app targets work.  :wacko:

Image of the note.    ScreenClip.png.a1aa70767fd022e22289202652220191.png

Copy/Paste the lines.

  • This is line 1
  • This is line 2
  • This is line 3

Ha, yes this works for me too. Also works fine copying to gmail. Unfortunately the format is not preserved copying from gmail to the next app. Need a 3rd app to go betweeen.
evernote  > 3rd mystery rich text preserving app > other apps

But it's too annoying. Maybe best solution is to stop using rich text. Instead of the bullet points, numbered lists, italics, etc. 
Just use:
*one
*two
*three

1.one
2.two
3.three

this is an *important* word

 

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On 4/16/2015 at 1:39 PM, Tarrant64 said:

 

Workaround for me was to stop using Evernote.  :(  I've been beating on this topic since 2013 - no changes have been made to resolve the issue.  

What did you switch to for storing information?

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32 minutes ago, redc said:

Unfortunately the format is not preserved copying from gmail to the next app.

Hmm.  This seemed to work okay for me.  Pasted a bulleted list into a gmail to me on web and was able to copy/paste back into this forum and maintain bullets via my email client eM Client and the web gmail client.  OTOH I do know from personal experience that all copy pasting of EN note content does not have joy, but these two examples seem to be okay.  Sweet mysteries of life.

 
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