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Erroneous popup "Read-only access" in personal notebooks


OHEN

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Greetings.

 

After upgrading to Evernote for Windows 5.5.2.4187, I receive a popup saying "Read-only access" and "You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook" every time I select a notebook, and sometimes when I open notes. (PS: I never use the note panel, I open notes as separate windows)

 

I do not have any joined notebooks in my account currently, only my own personal notebooks. No business notebooks either. The message is therefore erroneous, and this looks like a bug. It doesn't stop me from doing what I need to do, but it is indeed annoying. Do others see the same thing? I haven't tried deleting the local cache and rebuilding the local database files yet, but I might consider that if it's a rare symptom.

 

post-102083-0-25508600-1406199228_thumb.

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  • Level 5*

No experience with anything like that on two Windows machines here,  and I'm not aware of anything similar in the forums.  I'd suggest removing and reinstalling the software,  (use Revo Uninstall) and quitting and restarting Evernote and the computer.  If you're still seeing the symptoms,  please raise a support ticket.  (There are some steps to go through to ensure that local and unsynced notes are not compromised and your database is backed up.  There are more instructions on the forums if you need them,  or support can talk you through in detail.)

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Well, the issue seems to be gone after resetting all user data (%localappdata%\evernote\evernote and HKCU\Software\Evernote) and performing a complete resync. Shouldn't be necessary to do that, but in my opinion this is not "serious" enough to create a support ticket about it.

 

Anyway, if others should see the same, clearing user data should help.

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  • Level 5*

Folks if you're having a problem,  even if you fix it,  it's worth completing the support request as feedback for the tech teams.  Who knows - if they get enough reports there might be some traction for an early fix...

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The "Folks" @gazumped refers to should be the folks at Evernote.

 

I've been going back and forth with support on this same issue for weeks.  They insist it's my install, and I keep insisting to them that everything was fine until the new version came out.  They want me to uninstall and reinstall - which with Evernote being my "right-hand man" all day, every day, "no one got time for that!"

 

I hope they can do something to prevent having to do the "dump."

 

@Ohen - how do you do the "reset?"  Do you exit Evernote and pull everything out of that folder?  The fire back up Evernote and it re-syncs?  Thanks in advance.

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  • Level 5*

The "Folks" @gazumped refers to should be the folks at Evernote.

 

I've been going back and forth with support on this same issue for weeks.  They insist it's my install, and I keep insisting to them that everything was fine until the new version came out.  They want me to uninstall and reinstall - which with Evernote being my "right-hand man" all day, every day, "no one got time for that!"

 

I hope they can do something to prevent having to do the "dump."

 

@Ohen - how do you do the "reset?"  Do you exit Evernote and pull everything out of that folder?  The fire back up Evernote and it re-syncs?  Thanks in advance.

 

What I was saying was "don't avoid reporting what seems like a bug even if you fix it" - without feedback Evernote will never know they need to look into the cause.

 

...And uninstall / reinstall doesn't necessarily take more than a few minutes unless you're also renaming your database and recreating it,  which then can take a while depending on how many notes you have.

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Actually, I was too quick to conclude that clearing the user data helped. I was unable to reproduce the issue shortly after, but after a restart of Evernote (following a reboot of the computer), it had returned! Furthermore, I am seeing the same issue on five diferent computers, running the desktop client on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

 

The most annoying aspect of this is that it also happens while I'm searching for notes, as I enter the search text. That causes the search box to lose focus, and I have to give it focus again. When entering a rather long and cumbersome search string, this is enough to anger me greatly.

 

Still happening in 5.5.3!

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I'm getting the exact same error.  Don't know EXACTLY when it started because I don't use Evernote on Windows all that often (now my tablet, that's another story).  But, it's certainly within the last couple of weeks....  Have tried logging off and back on to no avail.  Might try the complete delete as you did - obviously not everyone is experiencing it or they'd be flooded with this question rather than having only one post....

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I'm experiencing the same issue. Using Evernote 5.5.3.4236, on Windows 8.1 (desktop-version).

 

After the message appears, it usually doesn't show (again) until i restart the client. To reproduce, it usually is sufficent to restart the Evernote client, then "click around" (e.g. flicking between 3-5 notebooks), then the message appears again.

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I'm experiencing the same issue. Using Evernote 5.5.3.4236, on Windows 8.1 (desktop-version).

 

After the message appears, it usually doesn't show (again) until i restart the client. To reproduce, it usually is sufficent to restart the Evernote client, then "click around" (e.g. flicking between 3-5 notebooks), then the message appears again.

 

I also experience this after an update to version 5.5.3.4236 on Windows 8.1 - and if I click "Request Editing Rights" it tells me "Can't request to edit at this time."  What gives? This happens when I click on a notebook the first time after the update. After that it will appear when I open Evernote again and click on a notebook.  Most of mine are synced notebooks but only one notebook is actually shared with anyone.

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Hey all, I have some higher level support techs checking into this and we're opening up a bug to investigate. If you've submitted a support ticket, you may see a follow up from them as well with requests for additional information. Thanks for flagging here.

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I've had a ticket open for quite awhile.  

 

Recently, they had me go through an uninstall of the Pre-Release and reinstall the Current Release.  Like above, at first it seemed like it fixed it.  But then it came back.

 

Today they escalated it to a different support team, and in a matter of a few minutes, I got this back:

 

Aug 08 12:39

It appears there is currently a bug causing this. We hope to have it resolved in an upcoming release. I do not have an estimate as to when that might be. I have filed an internal bug report with the product team team lead. They will classify and fix the bugs in the order determined by the project lead. I do apologize for the trouble caused by this!

Thanks for making Evernote a better product.

 

So, hopefully they will get it fixed soon.   :)

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I am just another one having this annoying problem.  Hope they can fixed it soon. I have version 5.5.3.4236 (272236) public loaded on my windows 7 and on another place with windows XP and in my Android HTC phone.

 

It started today after I accept the stupid update....  

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FYI: This appears to be a bug when the Note View is not shown. Thank you to all the people who sent screen shots into support - that was the only way I finally figured out what was wrong.

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It doesn't seem to prevent any function, I can still edit & add after I dismiss the warning, and the newly added/modified notes still sync to other devices.  Just more of an inconvenience.

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Is there a fix on the horizon for this bug?

 

As dconnet observed, when the Note Panel view is enabled this bug doesn't seem to occur, so for now I have enabled the Note Panel view but have dragged it low enough on the screen to be practically hidden (personally I don't prefer to see the notes displayed as I'm scrolling through them).

 

Chris

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I can access my notes on my iPad and iPhone, but when I try to view notes on my pc, they won't appear.  My folders are there and clicking on my folders earns me the message: "Read-only Access    You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook."

 

Nope.  I have exactly one shared notebook; I created it and is is definitely NOT read-only.

 

Please help!  Thank you.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 months later...

<The bump>

 

I'm getting the "You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook" blah blah...

 

Kind of puts egg on my face for suggesting my manager and I switch to EN to collaborate. 

 

 

Anyone have a fix for this? I'm using 5.8.3.6507 (Win 7)

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#20: "when note view is not shown" ... not sure what they mean there, but the error (not being able to edit, getting the padlock icon) is consistent whether I'm in List view, Snippet view, or Card view.

 

#24: "the fix should be in the current beta"

 

I'm using Evernote v 5.8.3.6507, so not sure if "the beta" has been superceded by that or not.

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  • Level 5*

Current beta just kicked over to 5.8.4.6736
 

 

Evernote for Windows 5.8.4.6736 Beta Release Notes

  • New
    • Improved how application looks on high DPI displays
    • Available business notebooks can now be added directly from the notebooks menu
    • Taskbar icon illuminates when a new chat is received
    • Misc improvements to Work Chat and sharing
    • Misc improvements to Context
  • Fixed
    • Various bugs causing crashes
    • Bugs that may cause sync to fail unexpectedly
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  • Level 5*

You may be the only one at present - the main part of this thread is 6m old.  Either the problem was fixed,  folks found a way around it,  or it wasn't enough of a PITA to continue posting here.  Do you fit the profile of the other users exactly?  The reason I asked about other apps was that If you try to edit notes created in Food or Hello or Scannable you may find they are 'read only'  -  for more comments on this see here - https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/read_only_notes.php

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So am I not the only having this issue? I thought this was a just a problem last summer/fall.

As far as we knew, this issue was fixed. This is the first I've heard of it still being around.

You will see this message the first time you view a note in a readonly (shared) notebook. But it should only happen once per notebook per user on a machine. (The visited status is stored in the local database - it is not synced data. This does mean if you delete the existing database files to download a clean copy, you have now reset that status.)

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There seems to be some kind of miscom between the Mac which shared the notebook and one (maybe both) of the PCs, which according to the Mac should both have editing rights: 

 

Mac                                                           PC

Screen clip                                                Screen clip                  

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There seems to be some kind of miscom between the Mac which shared the notebook and one (maybe both) of the PCs, which according to the Mac should both have editing rights: 

 

Mac                                                           PC

Screen clip                                                Screen clip

There was a bug where notebook permissions were not being properly synced when changed. (I believe this fix is in the current beta.) It manifested itself with a notebook that was originally shared readonly and was then changed to edit. On Windows, the change to edit never made it. I found that changing the permissions back/forth would sometimes fix it. If you kill the share and reshare as editable, it should be ok.

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Seems to have worked, everyone can edit.

Thanks dc

 

 

There was a bug where notebook permissions were not being properly synced when changed. (I believe this fix is in the current beta.) It manifested itself with a notebook that was originally shared readonly and was then changed to edit. On Windows, the change to edit never made it. I found that changing the permissions back/forth would sometimes fix it. If you kill the share and reshare as editable, it should be ok.

 

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  • 3 months later...

That bug came back. It's now July 1. Been getting it on my desktop on random occasions with no suggestion that it was even coming from evernote which is running in the tray. It's doing it on multiple machines in Win 8.1. I've been running 5.9.79 pre-release. Looks like a 5.8.12 public came out today. Going to update and see if that gets it. Any ideas why it keeps coming back?

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Well apparently this "glitch" has re-emerged.  Only now it's even MORE annoying.

 

This occurred with the last "automatic update" of EverNote.  Some day I'll learn NOT to update EverNote, because the last time I had an issue with it, it was right after an update.

 

So here's the issue.  Whenever I boot up my PC, there's this floating dialog on my screen WITH NO IDENTIFICATION ABOUT WHAT PROGRAM IS PRODUCING IT!

 

Now it's one thing to toss up an error message.  It's another to not even identify where the error is coming from.  When it appears, it's just a little white box with the message "Read-only Access" in bold, followed by "You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook." and a button saying "Request Editing Rights" at the bottom.  It's shaped somewhat like a taskbar balloon (but more square) and with a triangular extension to the box on top, like it's pointing to something.  Only it's not.  It's just sitting there floating on my desktop all by itself.  BAD EVERNOTE!  NO COOKIE!  Shame on your programmers!

 

Since I know some troubleshooting techniques, I was able to identify it was EverNote relatively quickly.  If I'd been a "normal" user, I'd have no clue.

 

So first, bad that the issue came up, since I didn't change anything.  But VERY bad that you give me an error message that doesn't give a clue!

 

FIX IT!  (And stop breaking it!)

 

Clicking the "Request Editing Rights" button does nothing.  It just pops up another dialog (again, with no identification) that says "Not Sent" in bold, followed by "Can't request to edit at this time." which, aside from being awful grammar, is entirely unhelpful.

 

After fiddling with it a bit, here's what I found.  If I have "Launch Evernote at Windows login" selected in Options/General, then EverNote puts a shortcut in my Start Menu's "Startup" folder which launches EvernoteTray.exe.  This launches at startup time.  In the Tray Icon menu, Options sub-menu, there's an option to "Sync in Background".  If that is checked, I get the error when EvernoteTray.exe launches.  If I don't have Sync selected, no error - but also no sync, so that's 80% of EverNote's functionality down the crapper.

 

So until you fix it, my work-around will have to be to launch Evernote.exe, then close it.  That will leave the icon running in the icon tray, so background sync runs, but it will mean that EverNote's window will be displayed every time I boot, which is annoying.  And yes, I can start it minimized, but it's sitll eating up resources (and a slot on my TaskBar) that it shouldn't need to.

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Well apparently this "glitch" has re-emerged.  Only now it's even MORE annoying.

 

This occurred with the last "automatic update" of EverNote.  Some day I'll learn NOT to update EverNote, because the last time I had an issue with it, it was right after an update.

 

So here's the issue.  Whenever I boot up my PC, there's this floating dialog on my screen WITH NO IDENTIFICATION ABOUT WHAT PROGRAM IS PRODUCING IT!

 

Now it's one thing to toss up an error message.  It's another to not even identify where the error is coming from.  When it appears, it's just a little white box with the message "Read-only Access" in bold, followed by "You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook." and a button saying "Request Editing Rights" at the bottom.  It's shaped somewhat like a taskbar balloon (but more square) and with a triangular extension to the box on top, like it's pointing to something.  Only it's not.  It's just sitting there floating on my desktop all by itself.  BAD EVERNOTE!  NO COOKIE!  Shame on your programmers!

 

Since I know some troubleshooting techniques, I was able to identify it was EverNote relatively quickly.  If I'd been a "normal" user, I'd have no clue.

 

So first, bad that the issue came up, since I didn't change anything.  But VERY bad that you give me an error message that doesn't give a clue!

 

FIX IT!  (And stop breaking it!)

 

Clicking the "Request Editing Rights" button does nothing.  It just pops up another dialog (again, with no identification) that says "Not Sent" in bold, followed by "Can't request to edit at this time." which, aside from being awful grammar, is entirely unhelpful.

 

After fiddling with it a bit, here's what I found.  If I have "Launch Evernote at Windows login" selected in Options/General, then EverNote puts a shortcut in my Start Menu's "Startup" folder which launches EvernoteTray.exe.  This launches at startup time.  In the Tray Icon menu, Options sub-menu, there's an option to "Sync in Background".  If that is checked, I get the error when EvernoteTray.exe launches.  If I don't have Sync selected, no error - but also no sync, so that's 80% of EverNote's functionality down the crapper.

 

So until you fix it, my work-around will have to be to launch Evernote.exe, then close it.  That will leave the icon running in the icon tray, so background sync runs, but it will mean that EverNote's window will be displayed every time I boot, which is annoying.  And yes, I can start it minimized, but it's sitll eating up resources (and a slot on my TaskBar) that it shouldn't need to.

Thanks for this elaborate explanation and your investigation.

I noticed this as well since the last upgrade of Evernote.

 

I hope you do not mind if I refer to this description when I'm contacting Evernote Support.

 

Thanks again.

 

Regards,

Rob.

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Here's another vote that the issue is real. I'd never seen it before, but it appeared on booting up a notebook with latest Evernote.

 

I can't underline too heavily that it is a very large problem NOT to have any indication this alert and it's child after pushing the button BELONG TO EVERNOTE.

 

I seriously considered whether I'd gained malware, having just visited a Chinese site.

 

PLEASE ASSURE  ALL YOUR ALERTS ARE TITLED THAT THEY COME FROM EVERNOTE.

 

That  is all. Other than that as a very long term user, I find the iPad note-writing interface almost impossible these days. Try to add a title, and you are  likely to delete the note. Etc., etc.. I write now in another app, and send the results to Evernote. 

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It's taken some time, some VMs, some interesting debugging techniques... But I have been able to finally reproduce this. (What's really annoying is that it's intermittent.)

 

A fix should be available for the next release.

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Well apparently this "glitch" has re-emerged.  Only now it's even MORE annoying.

 

This occurred with the last "automatic update" of EverNote.  Some day I'll learn NOT to update EverNote, because the last time I had an issue with it, it was right after an update.

 

So here's the issue.  Whenever I boot up my PC, there's this floating dialog on my screen WITH NO IDENTIFICATION ABOUT WHAT PROGRAM IS PRODUCING IT!

 

Now it's one thing to toss up an error message.  It's another to not even identify where the error is coming from.  When it appears, it's just a little white box with the message "Read-only Access" in bold, followed by "You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook." and a button saying "Request Editing Rights" at the bottom.  It's shaped somewhat like a taskbar balloon (but more square) and with a triangular extension to the box on top, like it's pointing to something.  Only it's not.  It's just sitting there floating on my desktop all by itself.  BAD EVERNOTE!  NO COOKIE!  Shame on your programmers!

 

Since I know some troubleshooting techniques, I was able to identify it was EverNote relatively quickly.  If I'd been a "normal" user, I'd have no clue.

 

So first, bad that the issue came up, since I didn't change anything.  But VERY bad that you give me an error message that doesn't give a clue!

 

FIX IT!  (And stop breaking it!)

 

Clicking the "Request Editing Rights" button does nothing.  It just pops up another dialog (again, with no identification) that says "Not Sent" in bold, followed by "Can't request to edit at this time." which, aside from being awful grammar, is entirely unhelpful.

 

After fiddling with it a bit, here's what I found.  If I have "Launch Evernote at Windows login" selected in Options/General, then EverNote puts a shortcut in my Start Menu's "Startup" folder which launches EvernoteTray.exe.  This launches at startup time.  In the Tray Icon menu, Options sub-menu, there's an option to "Sync in Background".  If that is checked, I get the error when EvernoteTray.exe launches.  If I don't have Sync selected, no error - but also no sync, so that's 80% of EverNote's functionality down the crapper.

 

So until you fix it, my work-around will have to be to launch Evernote.exe, then close it.  That will leave the icon running in the icon tray, so background sync runs, but it will mean that EverNote's window will be displayed every time I boot, which is annoying.  And yes, I can start it minimized, but it's sitll eating up resources (and a slot on my TaskBar) that it shouldn't need to.

 

 

I am also seeing this problem intermittently on my laptop.  When I start up my laptop a white text box balloon appears on the desktop with "You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook" with the button to 'Request Editing Rights' at the bottom.  The button doesn't appear to do anything other than clear the floating balloon text box. This happens before I have even started using Evernote.

 

I have Windows 7, Evernote is started at logon and runs in the background for syncing. 

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  • Level 5*

Interestingly I had never seen this error until recently,  but then had a major connection outage (no internet for a week!) and while I continued to use Evernote,  I started to get those pop-ups.  Might be a connection issue - if you have Evernote starting with your OS,  maybe delay it to make sure you have a live network connection!

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Greetings.

 

After upgrading to Evernote for Windows 5.5.2.4187, I receive a popup saying "Read-only access" and "You cannot edit this note because it is in a read-only shared notebook" every time I select a notebook, and sometimes when I open notes. (PS: I never use the note panel, I open notes as separate windows)

 

I do not have any joined notebooks in my account currently, only my own personal notebooks. No business notebooks either. The message is therefore erroneous, and this looks like a bug. It doesn't stop me from doing what I need to do, but it is indeed annoying. Do others see the same thing? I haven't tried deleting the local cache and rebuilding the local database files yet, but I might consider that if it's a rare symptom.

Yes I am getting the same thing, really annoying

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  • 2 weeks later...

Greetings to similarly irritated EN users. I have subscribed to Premium since January 2015 and it's mostly been a very happy experience. And thanks for that.  Only recently has this 'Can't edit' bug flitted onto my Windows 8.1 desktop at startup. None of my notes are intentionally shared. Don't recall having seen it on my erstwhile Macbook Pro but maybe having both an Android and an iPhone has something to do with it? Cross-platform gremlins?

 

I'm somewhat dismayed that on this thread the first consumer reports of this entomological nuisance date back to a year ago. Thought I'd misread the date. Is it too much to ask that those at EN who can do so, get it fixed? Soon?

 

Cordially in anticipation

 

Heffalump

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  • Level 5*

To move to the Windows beta stream,  go to Tools > Options > General in the desktop version and tick "enable beta features".  These usually become general releases pretty quickly unless a serious issue is found...

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Same issue here. Brand new install of Windows 8 Professional. Installed and synced Evernote yesterday for the first time after having to reinstall my OS (Windows 10 is not for me). After applying system updates the weird message was on my screen. Premium user going on 6 or 7 years now and this is the first I've seen of this. Luckily the message pulled this thread up first in Google or I'd still be wondering what was behind it. It was not apparent to me that it was anything regarding Evernote. Closing the app seemed to kill it. If it emerges again I guess I'll try a beta. Compared to my search woes on the Evernote Android client this is nothing. 

 

Thanks for the posts. I thought that I possibly had some malware running wild.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Fixed in the current beta.

Confirm this issue is fixed in 5.8.16 prerelease, thanks! Share and enjoy!

 

I enabled beta in Tools > Options > General , checked for updates, installed the beta, then turned beta back off again, maintaining the beta prerelease install without staying on betas automatically.

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