The Windows Client Goes from Bad to Worse

[VideoSavant 20]

The past 6 months with the Evernote Windows client has been painful. I have been getting repeated "Not Responding" messages and I sit there in front of the screen waiting two, three, as much as five minutes for Evernote to resume normal functioning.

 

So, today I download the newest update and now I'm getting runtime error crashes.

 

I love Evernote (I also use it on Android) but the Windows client is an utter [moderated for language]. As Evernote gets bigger and more popular, the quality is in the toilet.

 

Fix it! And fix it soon. Or OneNote here I come...

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

The past 6 months with the Evernote Windows client has been painful. I have been getting repeated "Not Responding" messages and I sit there in front of the screen waiting two, three, as much as five minutes for Evernote to resume normal functioning.

 

So, today I download the newest update and now I'm getting runtime error crashes.

 

I love Evernote (I also use it on Android) but the Windows client is an utter f*cked up abortion. As Evernote gets bigger and more popular, the quality is in the toilet.

 

Fix it! And fix it soon. Or OneNote here I come...

 

 

"Not responding" messages are indicative that there's a hardware issue. 

 

WRT the Windows client...wow...totally generic descriptions such as "[effed] up abortion" are not only silly but way too generic.  Personally, I have no problem with the V5 Windows client & I've been using EN since V3.1 back in 2008.  And I'm not even sure what you're talking about when you say the "quality" is in the toilet" 

Also, issuing an ultimatum "Fix it! And fix it soon. Or OneNote here I come..." is pretty silly.  Especially since your complaints are so...generic. 

Good luck with OneNote.  I do use it but use Evernote a whole lot more than I do OneNote.

[chronistin 187]

Well, I won't defend the language, and I won't threaten to take my data elsewhere as there are no apps out there that do the job better. (I've tried them all - kind of obsessed with data collection and archiving - and I have to use Onenote with some of my clients almost daily, I have no idea why anybody would choose to use that monstrosity of a program) -  but it is true that the windows client seems to be getting more memory hungry with every update. The current version is a zen exercise in patience for me. Open client - wait 10 seconds for it to adjust itself. Click new note - wait 5 seconds for new note to appear. Type first line and enter - wait 15-20 seconds for evernote to decide on auto-titling (btw, I still want to see that gone). Search for something - freeze for seconds after every letter. This seems to be directly related to memory. On a machine with 8GB ram there are no noticeable lags, but in the identical hardware setup with 4GB RAM it ...

g--e---t-s ...........................  r---e----a---l--l---y ............................. s------l----o---w.

 

[i know that because I bought 2 identical computers 3 years ago for office and home. On one of them, one RAM chip died. The difference is stunning. Except from EN, I only notice it when processing big image files]

[dlu 628]

Hmm odd, I have 4GB of RAM on my machine and don't notice anything close to what you describe. Have you tried optimize database under the debug menu?

[chronistin 187]

Hmm odd, I have 4GB of RAM on my machine and don't notice anything close to what you describe. Have you tried optimize database under the debug menu?

 

Wow, I did this and it really makes a huge difference. Almost no more lagging here! Thanks, you really made my life easier with this pointer. 

 

(If it is important to optimize the db once in a while, maybe the option should not be hidden in the debug menu?)

[VideoSavant 20]

 

The past 6 months with the Evernote Windows client has been painful. I have been getting repeated "Not Responding" messages and I sit there in front of the screen waiting two, three, as much as five minutes for Evernote to resume normal functioning.

 

So, today I download the newest update and now I'm getting runtime error crashes.

 

I love Evernote (I also use it on Android) but the Windows client is an utter f*cked up abortion. As Evernote gets bigger and more popular, the quality is in the toilet.

 

Fix it! And fix it soon. Or OneNote here I come...

 

 

"Not responding" messages are indicative that there's a hardware issue. 

 

WRT the Windows client...wow...totally generic descriptions such as "[effed] up abortion" are not only silly but way too generic.  Personally, I have no problem with the V5 Windows client & I've been using EN since V3.1 back in 2008.  And I'm not even sure what you're talking about when you say the "quality" is in the toilet" 

Also, issuing an ultimatum "Fix it! And fix it soon. Or OneNote here I come..." is pretty silly.  Especially since your complaints are so...generic. 

Good luck with OneNote.  I do use it but use Evernote a whole lot more than I do OneNote.

 

 

Videosavant replies:

 

I apologize if you were offended by my comments about Evernote. I actually love the program and have been using it for nearly 5 years (going back to the ill-fated Palm Pre smartphone). I have more than 7,000 notes stored in Evernote, with extensive use of tags. Everything has been great until the past year or so. About 8 months ago I received an EN software update that refused to install repeatedly, despite several suggested corrective actions here on the forum. In the end I was stuck with an outdated version of Evernote for about 3 months, until I finally bit the bullet and nuked my Windows install and started fresh. At least that problem has not been repeated, but I do worry about it every time I see an Evernote software update notification.

 

Your suggestion that the "not responding" errors were hardware related appears to be off the mark. The suggestion further down in the thread to expose the debug menu and clean up the database does seem to have done the trick.

 

But again, I have to wonder, why isn't a database clean-up something that happens in the background automatically if this is a known issue? At the very least, EN could work in some algorithms to suggest when a database clean-up might be useful and some instructions or a step-through wizard showing how to perform that operation. 

 

I stand by my comments that I think Evernote Windows software has been unreliable over the past year. The decline in quality appears to have coincided with the expansion of Evernote's focus to the Hello and Food products, which I personally find a bit contrived, even though customer contact management and cooking are important activities for me. I would assume that Evernote Business has also been a distraction, though it seems clear that this is a potentially useful and lucrative product that Evernote should be pursuing. I am an sole proprietor/one-man shop, so EN Business doesn't have any appeal to me, though I would be using it if I were back in a corporate environment.

 

But the bottom line is that Evernote is a program that I use everyday and have come to rely on. So, that's why I've been frustrated with the hit-and-miss performance of Evernote recently. Expecting high standards from a company that regularly proclaims its high standards doesn't seem an unreasonable expectation.

[VideoSavant 20]

Hmm odd, I have 4GB of RAM on my machine and don't notice anything close to what you describe. Have you tried optimize database under the debug menu?

 

Thank you very much for this suggestion. It seems to have eliminated the "Not Responding" issue, at least over the past day.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Hmm odd, I have 4GB of RAM on my machine and don't notice anything close to what you describe. Have you tried optimize database under the debug menu?

 

This Evernote suggestion seems to have solved the slowness problem for both users.

 

Many other forum posts have also mentioned the slowness problem with version 5 for Windows. The debug procedure is mentioned on websites frequented by the tech power users, for instance:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/40769/use-evernote%E2%80%99s-secret-debug-menu-to-optimize-and-speed-up-searching/

 

But I am always leery of these types of web sites that also hawk a variety of questionable advertisements on the same page.

 

Has Evernote published an officially approved step-by-step guide on how to perform the Debug procedure?

[spg SCOTT 736]

...step-by-step guide on how to perform the Debug procedure?

Not entirely difficult.

Choose a time in which you can be without Evernote for a significant amount of time. This is a process that can take some time, depending on your account.

Quit Evernote via File -> Exit

Win + R

In the window that appears, type: Evernote /DebugMenu

This runs Evernote, adding the Debug menu option.

Select [Debug] -> Optimise Database

Wait for it to work. (Which can take a considerable amount of time)

What I want to know is, didn't the upgrade to 5 include an optimisation? I wonder if that worked or didn't work for some people.

I tried this the other day, and I think I see some improvement, but not sure just how much, or if I am imagining it. I don't have the largest of accounts either.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Choose a time in which you can be without Evernote for a significant amount of time. This is a process that can take some time, depending on your account.

Quit Evernote via File -> Exit

Win + R

In the window that appears, type: Evernote /DebugMenu

This runs Evernote, adding the Debug menu option.

Select [Debug] -> Optimise Database

Wait for it to work. (Which can take a considerable amount of time)

 

 

Thank you

My wife wants to go grocery shopping. I am the designated "cart pusher", so I'll be away for a while.

I just ran another backup and will give debug a try.

 

I have two Evernote accounts on my Windows desktop - 1 premium (30,000 notes) and 1 free (200 notes)

Do you think Debug will run both databases?

 

Edit - found the answer. It appears to run the most recently used database, but allows me to swap to the other one.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Well, I'm back. 

 

The Debug program froze while I was gone.

So I shut down, rebooted and tried another method. Since I have two copies of Evernote, instead of using the Quit Evernote via >File >Exit, I tried the option to >File >"Sign out of All Users", then quit Evernote from the icon down in the lower right taskbar.

 

Ran Debug (Evernote /DebugMenu), then signed in to Evernote program with my password.

Selected Optimise Database
The green bar for "Updated database notes..." finished quickly.
Now it is in the "Rebuilding full text search index...". This looks like it will take a long time to complete.

p.s. Before my first attempt, I had turned off the power saving features so there was no Screen Saver or Timed shut down.

 

 

1st update: 4 hours into the optimization... currently at 50% for "Rebuilding full text search index..."

 

 

2nd update: The optimization took 9 hours to complete. There has been an improvement in the response time.

The lag used to be 4-6 seconds and is now down to 1-2 seconds.
 

[victorsalman 0]

I totally agree with the OP, the program got more troublesome over time to a point that I forfeit my pro subscription and now  I use it as least as possible (Google drive works faster, and that says something) I have 10gb ram in my machine. 

 

Also the Select [Debug] -> Optimise Database  option is not available to me.

 

[logandb 227]

The dedicated debug menu, accessible with the startup switch, is no longer current.  In recent versions, the debug options are now accessed by holding down [CTRL] and selecting the Help menu.

 

 

[jbenson2 2,147]

The dedicated debug menu, accessible with the startup switch, is no longer current.  In recent versions, the debug options are now accessed by holding down [CTRL] and selecting the Help menu.

 

 

 

Does Evernote have an explanation that describes what each of these debug features does?

I recall Evernote seemed a bit aprehensive about users trying the debug features.

[logandb 227]

I've only tried the following:

• Optimize Database:  seems similar in outcome to a local deletion/complete reload from the server.  For my database (5 GB, 13K notes) this takes 3-4 hours to complete
• Delete Unused Account Tags:  Deletes all tags created by you, not attached to any notes (...or with child tags)
• Delete Unused Linked Tags:  Deletes all tags from notebooks shared with you, not attached to any notes

I haven't touched anything else, but a search of the forum might reveal whether others have successfully played around with the remaining options.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Logandb,

 

Thank you for your comments.

 

I'd feel more comfortable if Evernote offered a formal explanation on what each of the actions accomplish.

 

For example, the tag method I use has parent and child level tags. I do not have any notes tagged with the parent tag. The parent tag is a simple placeholder. My concern is that if I select "Delete Unused Account Tags", the feature will delete my unused parent level tags.

 

Evernote could solve the confusion with these features by including individual descriptions in their Knowledge Base.

[CalS 5,280]

JB, I use the same construct for parent tags, so I thought I'd run a quick test in a play DB I have.  Can't guarantee all cases, but executing the Delete Unused Account Tags option did NOT delete the placeholder parent tags.

[logandb 227]

I can verify @csihilling's observations.  Provided you have a child tag under the parent, the otherwise empty parent tag won't be deleted.

 

I should have clarified this in my explanation! [...and have done!]