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Is is possible to use web clipper to clip directly to a local notebook?


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I am looking at the possibility of clipping directly to my locally stored notebook using Chrome web clipper (on Windows 7) - but l my local notebooks are not showing as an option to save to under the "Organize" heading of the web clipper.

 

Am I missing something or is this not possible in the Chrome extension? If it is impossible, are there other browsers that have an EN web clipper where this is possible?

 

Thanks

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It is not possible to save directly to the local Evernote client using the Clipper in Chrome. Aside from IE and I believe Firefox, Chrome and other browsers do not allow their extensions to have such deep access to local files, so the clipper can only work via Evernote's servers FIRST, then sync down to your client. More, including a word from Evernote Staff:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/54415-send-clips-to-desktop-evernote/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/35268-save-clip-in-local-notebook/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67029-web-clipping-to-offline-notebook/

 

Since you are clipping things already on the web, it probably isn't terrible if they are in a synced notebook briefly. As such, a workaround (I stress the word Workaround, because there is no solution to this problem), would be to clip them into your default notebook, perhaps tagging them in such a way as to draw your attention to them as needing to be moved to a local notebook. Once you are done clipping, say, once a day, just move all those clippings to the appropriate offline notebook. 

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It is not possible to save directly to the local Evernote client using the Clipper in Chrome. Aside from IE and I believe Firefox, Chrome and other browsers do not allow their extensions to have such deep access to local files, so the clipper can only work via Evernote's servers FIRST, then sync down to your client. More, including a word from Evernote Staff:

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/54415-send-clips-to-desktop-evernote/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/35268-save-clip-in-local-notebook/

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67029-web-clipping-to-offline-notebook/

 

Since you are clipping things already on the web, it probably isn't terrible if they are in a synced notebook briefly. As such, a workaround (I stress the word Workaround, because there is no solution to this problem), would be to clip them into your default notebook, perhaps tagging them in such a way as to draw your attention to them as needing to be moved to a local notebook. Once you are done clipping, say, once a day, just move all those clippings to the appropriate offline notebook. 

 

Thanks for this info Scott,

 

To further this approach of first saving it to a synched notebook and then moving it to a local notebook- can I in any way ensure that EN is not backing up what is in the synched notebook (so that any clips truly stay local, ie will not ever get uploaded to EN servers)? In other words, is there a way to pause any synching by EN while I clip from the web into a synched notebook?

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Well... that depends on what you want to accomplish... 

When you clip something, it is placed first on Evernote's servers (and subject to whatever goes on there in terms of server snapshots, backups, caching, mirroring etc). Only when it is on Evernote's servers does it sync down to your desktop client. Turning on manual sync won't do anything except prohibit your desktop application from fetching the clipped note from Evernote's servers. The only way that manual sync would help would be if you accidentally added 

 

Now, when you remove it from the synced notebook, no further server side activity will occur, but it will not undo anything that previously occurred. So if that note got cached, mirrored, or caught in a snapshot, it will stay there until it gets purged (I have no idea which, if any, of these things Evernote does, and if it does any of them, how specifically they are handled in terms of retaining caches etc). (Additionally: This is not unusual for most cloud services, a lot of this has to do with ensuring that data is available to users quickly, and that users' data aren't lost, and to protect against corruption or hardware failures on the service provider's end.)

 

Now, since we are talking about the web clipper, presumably anything you are clipping was already on the world wide web, and thus, publicly available. So the serious concern over the privacy of that content is unclear. 
The exception would be if you are using the clipper to clip personal data from something like your bank's website or something along those lines. That, of course, is private data that a person may not want in anybody's cloud (except, of course, their bank's cloud...). If this is the case, for this particularly sensitive content, you might want to use your browser to print the relevant content to a PDF that is saved to your computer's hard drive, then add the PDF directly to a local notebook. This would prevent it from ever having to hit Evernote's servers. 

 

Not as elegant as the clipper, but it ensures your privacy and it isn't a terribly onerous process.

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Presumably that is correct. And presumably your local notebooks should show up as destinations for your clippings so you should be able to clip directly to them (there should be more discussion on this in the threads I have linked to earlier in our discussion). 

 

So for now, unless something changes with Firefox/Evernote's clipper, you should be in the clear if you choose to switch. 

 

The only way to 100% guarantee forever that you'll always be able to get directly into a local notebook would be to do the print to pdf method. This also safeguards against possible mis-clicks in which you tell the clipper to clip to a synced notebook accidentally. The print-to-pdf method would decrease the likelihood that something like this could happen. 

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  • 4 years later...
  • Level 5*
49 minutes ago, LCGriffith said:

Yet another reason to ditch Evernote. There are now so many.

Asinine comment to post in a discussion from 2014

There are many reasons to use Evernote, and many reasons not to use Evernote

This seems a reason not to use the web clipper

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