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Duplicate Notes Issue


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Hi Guys,

 

When I create a new note on the Web version It always creates multiple notes - at least 2 notes instead of 1, sometimes it can be even 5 notes that were created automatically.

The notes contain the same information or sometimes only portion of the information. (See attached screenshots)

 

This is not happen when I use the Desktop version. 

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks,

Assaf

post-230080-0-30560000-1418630343_thumb.

post-230080-0-90809100-1418630344_thumb.

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Hi Assaf, 

Thanks for reporting this issue. We've seen this happen before and had a bug fix a couple of weeks ago but it looks like it hasn't gone away entirely yet.  Can you help us understand a little bit more about your setup so we can help identify the root cause? 

  • When you created this note, do you remember if any of the following could have happened?
    • Multiple browser tabs were open with the note being edited
    • Your Mac or Windows Evernote client was open with the note being edited
    • Other people were looking at the note the same time you did because it was shared
    • You lost internet connection while editing 
  • What browser are you using? 

 

Thanks in advance. Your feedback will help us better understand how to resolve this issue. 

 

Nancy 

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I had this problem of duplicate notes again today. About 60 duplicate notes were created.

 

>>Multiple browser tabs were open with the note being edited
No, only one (1). I got burned with Evernote silently duplicating the entire note inside itself many times.
I don't know exactly what causes it, but obviously it is a lot of work to try to compare so I try to be very careful.
Others report that Evernote has no ability to edit notes at the same time, and has no ability to merge changes.
The least it could do is have a warning that another editing session is occurring.
 
>>Other people were looking at the note the same time you did because it was shared
No, only me.
 
>>You lost internet connection while editing
Yes. Comcast and wifi.
 
>>What browser are you using? 
Google Chrome Version 39.0.2171.71 (64-bit)
Macbook OSX 10.9.4
 
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Hi Nancy,

 

Thanks for your answer.

 

I can't recreate the bug but I usually work with multiple tabs opened. That said, I only open 1 tab of Evernote web.

My windows client was closed at the time I created the note.

The note wasn't shared so I was the only one who viewed this note.

I can't definitely be sure but I believe there were no Internet connection issues at that time.

 

I use Chrome Version 37.0.2062.124

 

Thanks,

Assaf

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>>You lost internet connection while editing
Yes. Comcast and wifi.
 

 

Hi LoveHateEvernote!   :)

 

We fixed this bug for this specific case in last night's release. We are still digging to find other cases where this happens, but hopefully you'll no longer get multiple notes when you lose your internet connection. Let us know if this happens again. This is an important issue for us to resolve. 

 

Nancy 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am consistently having the same issue with Evernote Web autosaving multiple copies of a note. I use a Chromebook the majority of time for note-taking and have the issue occur in multiple locations (and multiple networks). I have ended up with as many as 20 notes in an hour meeting. Yes - multiple tabs are open in the browser (since it is a Chromebook) but only one tab was Evernote.

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Hi Nancy, glad to hear another case of duplicate notes was fixed. Can we get more details about the scenarios the most recent fix has solved?

 

I installed the Evernote app on my macbook, and its UI was helpful in determining which of the 60 notes I should delete. Maybe it will be less susceptible to duplicates and conflicts.

 

Is there a UI coming to resolve conflicts? I am new to Evernote and end up with some of my notes being a set of duplicate notes. Just google "javascript diff" to see many projects for UI tools to help resolve conflicts. 

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  • Level 5*

Is there a UI coming to resolve conflicts? I am new to Evernote and end up with some of my notes being a set of duplicate notes. Just google "javascript diff" to see many projects for UI tools to help resolve conflicts. 

Duplicate notes aren't note conflicts. A note conflict in Evernote refers specifically to a note that is edited simultaneously in two separate devices, such that when they're synced, the server sees two different changed versions of the note; that being the case, the service does keep both changed copies, usually in a Conflicted Notes notebook, so that the user can figure things out. I don't think that that's the case here.

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I had the same problem happen to me today.

 

I am running Firefox 34.0 (on Ubuntu 14.04).  I only use the web client and only had 1 tab of it open.

 

I am working at a cafe, which occasionally has spotty wifi.

 

I did not have any of the other possible issues.

 

I was uploading a document and Evernote allowed me to continue working on my note while the document was uploading. After about 5 minutes, it told me that the document could not be uploaded and then 96 copies of my note appeared.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you everyone for reporting this again. We will try to reproduce this on our side. Bugs like this are hard to track down but we'll try our best to see if there are any additional things we can do here. Thank you for your patience. 

 

Nancy 

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  • 3 months later...

Fwiw, I had this problem a few months ago, but since then EverNote has been working well for me with no duplicate notes. I use the osx app, iPhone app, and chrome browser.

Also no more problems with the separate issuer of conflicts.

I changed my routine to always leave Evernote on a note I call junk so in case I have the problem again of collisions or dups I won't have any content affected. I have created hundreds of notes on three devices with no problems since using this approach.

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Well I thought I had solved it noticing I had both wifi and USB connections going.  Disconnected wifi, but issue still persist.  I'm using chrome browser too, and made sure the iphone app was closed out just incase there is some sort of conflict.

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I had a little hunch last night and it seemed to work so far.   All I did was click on  "Tools", then "Import Folders", highlighted (the correct folder by the way), then clicked "remove", and OK.  Then I re-added the same exact folder back in with the same exact settings "Subfolders = no" and "Source = keep".  So far, I'm no longer getting duplicates...............one-up for the subconcious!

Peace

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  • 1 month later...

Thank you for continuing to report this. We'll continue to try to dig in, but this issue has been difficult to track down. If folks have any consistent ways to repro this, please flag it with us. 

 

- Nancy 

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Hi Nancy (nanphan),  in terms of "If folks have any consistent ways to repro this, please flag it with us"........I'm not sure exactly what you were asking in terms of details........but the issue occurs every time I scan something.  I am willing to print/copy an error/operation log if you direct me where to copy the information from.  Thanks

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi Nancy (nanphan),  in terms of "If folks have any consistent ways to repro this, please flag it with us"........I'm not sure exactly what you were asking in terms of details........but the issue occurs every time I scan something.  I am willing to print/copy an error/operation log if you direct me where to copy the information from.  Thanks

I will follow up with the scan team to see if this is a known issue. 

Thanks,

Nancy 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thanks for all of the reports, everyone. We will continue to try to reduce the frequency of this case for folks. Unfortunately, right now the Evernote clients behave slightly differently when dealing with note conflicts on sync. If you see duplicate notes in the Web Client, it is because there was a note conflict that could not be resolved. You'll see that some of the Evernote clients will append the conflicting note to the bottom of a conflicting note, or other clients will save the conflicting note in a Conflicting Note folder. In the Web Client, a 2nd note is generated. 

 

We will continue to try our best to reduce these cases. 

 

Nancy 

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This thread was started in Dec 2014. I chimbed in for the first time in April of 2015. Based on the response so far, I would have to say evernote really doesn't care about this. Sounds like evernote needs a competitor to move in and make them at-least pretend to care a little more.

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I've been getting this regularly since putting in a new wifi nic on my desktop, although I have also had it happen sporadically over the last year or so. Currently Chrome 41.0.2272.89 64bit on Linux. My wifi has been glitching out and it seems if I'm editing a note at the time I'll get a heap of duplicated notes. No conflicts, just duplications. The oldest ones seem to be the most up to date (hinting that the later dupes are actually from earlier save attempts so were perhaps on a stack or queue). Also these are pre-existing notes that had been saved in previous sessions, not new notes.

 

By the way, to save sitting through 4mins of video to find out - Jody's issue ended up being what looks like a misconfiguration of the scansnap software (import folder defined twice in configuration) so not related to the OP's bug report.

 

Nancy it might be worth noting that a lot of these duplicates appear to be identical at least in the note body - if what you say is true and the note conflict path is being triggered it might be worth making the conflict detection a bit smarter - eg, if other note == this note, no conflict.

 

For that reason I suspect it's not actually the conflict resolution codepath that is being triggered, but simply network retries that are being a bit stupid about whether they are still valid or not.

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I've been getting this regularly since putting in a new wifi nic on my desktop, although I have also had it happen sporadically over the last year or so. Currently Chrome 41.0.2272.89 64bit on Linux. My wifi has been glitching out and it seems if I'm editing a note at the time I'll get a heap of duplicated notes. No conflicts, just duplications. The oldest ones seem to be the most up to date (hinting that the later dupes are actually from earlier save attempts so were perhaps on a stack or queue). Also these are pre-existing notes that had been saved in previous sessions, not new notes.

 

By the way, to save sitting through 4mins of video to find out - Jody's issue ended up being what looks like a misconfiguration of the scansnap software (import folder defined twice in configuration) so not related to the OP's bug report.

 

Nancy it might be worth noting that a lot of these duplicates appear to be identical at least in the note body - if what you say is true and the note conflict path is being triggered it might be worth making the conflict detection a bit smarter - eg, if other note == this note, no conflict.

 

For that reason I suspect it's not actually the conflict resolution codepath that is being triggered, but simply network retries that are being a bit stupid about whether they are still valid or not.

 

Thank you for the detailed report, Ashley. We'll continue to try to optimize this area moving forward. 

 

- Nancy 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am having this issue using the web clipper.  Typically I am on my iPad.  Often clipping from magazines within Next Issue.  Note then appears in the app multiple times.

 

Would love to see this resolved.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Having the same problem, but only when using my ipad mini with the web clipper for IOS Safari.  Everything is current and updated.  I clip a note, choose the notebook to send it to and I end up with 2 of the same note.  Both notes sync across all platforms.  I have to manually remove each duplicate.  Please resolve this bug!

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Hi 

Yes I'm having same issues while trying to use Evernote Web on Chrome OS/Chromebook (latest verson when I'm typing this).

 

The current notes time stamp seem to be slow to update and once it does several duplicates are created at the same time, each one with different edits in them. And also its not consistent as the latest not might be missing some edits I did only a few minutes ago. 

 

Very strange behaviour. Never seen this on my Android phone or my Win7 deskop at home, despite using web client or desktop app.

 

Would be great if this was solved soon, as I write long documents and its a horrible task to go back through 10 duplicates and try to find various missing paragraphs copying and pasting all over the place.

 

Thanks 

David

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  • 1 month later...

This is becoming a real serious issue!

 

In my case (and this happens on both windows version and web ... not sure about ipad or android yet)

 

1. I sort my notes (in a particular notebook, or when viewing a tag) - for Title-Ascending

 

2. this is where I notice that there are notes that are in the WRONG SORT ORDER !!

(this was my original problem - but it gets worse!)

 

and sort order is very important, since, when writing a book, I have chapters/sections sorted by the note title

eg

Chapter 1.0

Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1.2

..

Chapter 4.0

Chapter 4.1

etc

---

but I noticed that maybe 6-7 of the 100 notes are out of order ... 

 

e.g

Chapter 1.0

Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1.2

Chapter 4.1

Chapter 2.0
Chapter 2.1

..

Chapter 4.0

Chapter 4.2

Chapter 4.3

etc

-----

 

 

3. So i tried to retype the note  to see if it would go back in order

BUT after I retyped  the note title for, eg,  Chapter 4.1

Evernote made a copy of the note

(so there are 2 notes titled Chapter 4.1)

 

4. AND when I tried to delete the duplicate note 

they BOTH got trashed!

 

5. In the trash ... both copies of chapter 4.1 appear

I restored one of them, and BOTH got restored!

 

6. the only way I could (some times) get this to work ... is to create a new note, manually cut and paste the Chapter 4.1 contents, and retype the title into the new note

this worked most of the time,but not all the time!

 

sigh ....

very tiresome ... 

and also very instable, for a mature product, that I pay for every month!

 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi, I'm using the web client since I'm a linux (Xubuntu 12.04) user.

 

I've realized that when I leave a note opened in a tab, sometime I get several notes saved or duplicated, I did not took the time to verify if they were different/older versions of the same note. I've just erased them and kept the most rencent.

 

I would like to ask you if you have some strategy to avoid this. Is really anoying to erase 20something notes.

 

For your consideration:

  • Multiple browser tabs were open with the note being edited : Surely! there is no other way to work
  • Your Mac or Windows Evernote client was open with the note being edited: linux user here, no evernote standalone client available, saddly.
  • Other people were looking at the note the same time you did because it was shared: No shared notes. Just me, and my client in my phone, but I did not had the app opened.
  • You lost internet connection while editing: Possibly, I usually work from a proxy connection that sometimes disconnects and reconnects all by it self, sometimes I do have to do the reconnection "manually", kind of lame, but it is something I can not control. I just need to learn to live with that reality.
  • What browser are you using?: Mozilla Firefox.

Hope you can give some light over my situation.

Thank you very much!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Same problem here. It happens consistently when I access a note from two different devices (eg. web and iPhone). This is also problem with shared notes since you'd have to coordinate when to access the shared note. Not very flexible.

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  • Level 5

Evernote is not "multi-user" safe. It is possible to edit the same note on two devices or on two browser windows at the same time but the result is that when a sync happens and the server identifies conflicting contents of the same note it is duplicated. A solution would be to introduce a locking mechanism that ensures that only one client/browser window is able to edit a note or a transaction mechanism like the ones used for databases.

 

Until such a solution is implemented you need some self-discipline. At least you don't lose content. In case a duplicate note is created you have to carefully inspect which one contains the content you need or you might event try to combine the content.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi

I am still having this issue. 

 

Recently it increased. If i am editing a doc for continuously 1 hour, i will get around 10 -12 duplicate notes which is very annoying. When a new duplicate is getting created, the edit window blinks or flickers and the added text disappear. to get the lost text, i have to take the new duplicate.

I am using browser version. I tried on both chrome and firefox. My OS is ubuntu.

 

Please try to push a fix for this. Now adays my evernote experience is pathetic.

 

Thanks, 

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I have same issue...evernote keeps creating duplicate notes while using Web version. I am using chrome. On one computer client was not installed, only web and evernote created duplicate notes.

on 2nd, client was also running, web chrome and 4 duplicate notes.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/16/2015 at 3:03 AM, K M Nadir said:

If i am editing a doc for continuously 1 hour, i will get around 10 -12 duplicate notes which is very annoying. When a new duplicate is getting created, the edit window blinks or flickers and the added text disappear. to get the lost text, i have to take the new duplicate.

I am using browser version. I tried on both chrome and firefox. My OS is ubuntu.

This is exactly the behavior I'm seeing. While I'm in the middle of typing, Evernote flickers and I end up with a handful of duplicates (each with various chunks of what I've been typing). I first noticed this around early January of this year.

As to the questions asked earlier in the thread:

>Multiple browser tabs were open with the note being edited

No.

>Your Mac or Windows Evernote client was open with the note being edited

No.

>Other people were looking at the note the same time you did because it was shared

No.

>You lost internet connection while editing 

No.

I'm running Evernote web in Firefox 44 on Ubuntu 15.10.

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Hi Evernote Team

I have posted earlier in this thread about this exact issue earlier in 2015 and I'm astonished it hasn't been sorted by now.

I now use a chromebook extensively and its becoming very annoying that notes duplicate uncontrollably at any given moment. I want to emphasise whats described in the post above; Evernote experiences some kind of unwarranted "hitch" which more often than not results in that newly created content is divided into several new unwanted dupes. After this its not only a matter of deleting these new duplicate notes, but also forces one to recompile content from several of these 'dupes' notes, to make sure one doesn't lose material.
(Additionally the web client doesn't support selecting and deleting several notes at once, which undoubtedly adds to this already frustrating and aggravating situation)


As a long time premium subscriber I would like to request that this issue is addressed and resolved promptly, please.

Thanks,

David

 

 

On 28/01/2016 at 10:49 AM, ever_rucker said:

As to the questions asked earlier in the thread:

>Multiple browser tabs were open with the note being edited

No.

>Your Mac or Windows Evernote client was open with the note being edited

No.

>Other people were looking at the note the same time you did because it was shared

No.

>You lost internet connection while editing 

No.

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This issue is getting ridiculously old and remains frustrating. I don't know if nobody's simply taken the time to look at it or if none who looked at it have clicked as to what's going on.

My theory is that as changes are made and XHR requests are sent from the browser to https://www.evernote.com/shard/s136/enweb/notestore/ext via focusclient-0.js, some of those requests are getting through out-of-order.

Eg, request #1 is sent, but for whatever reason (single lost packet, wifi dropout, sunspots) it doesn't get through straight away and sits in a retry/retransmission buffer somewhere in the network stack. User is still typing, so a new save point is triggered, let's say request #2. The gods smile upon this XHR request and it goes through and gets committed. Some milliseconds later, request #1 gets its second wind, and finds it's way through to the evernote servers. Now it arrives like some time-traveller, holding an edit to an old version of the note. It seems that the backend logic by whatever means handles this by creating a duplicate of the note (perhaps with intent for it to be flagged as a conflict).

If this is what's happening (and frankly, evernote have shown zero ability to demonstrate that they have a clue what's happening so please feel free to elucidate) then perhaps the answer is to keep a client-side counter for shard submissions that it increments every time it sends to notestore/ext and submits along with the note data. On the backend, the server should check the last received counter that matches the note-id and session (whatever means you use to track the user's current session) and if the newly received counter is less than the one last received, discard the update (since it was obviously delayed and has been received out-of-order).

Now if you are submitting partial note data (as hinted by the "shard" term) then perhaps there needs to be a way to identify the shard range as well, so it only rejects old updates that relate to a specific portion of the note.

I find it hard to understand why this hasn't been thought through, is it that much more complicated than the above?

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  • Level 5

OOOPS,

I have been working for quite some time with the new interface now and I never experienced the diplicate note issue except when I used multiple tabs. Today all of a sudden I have > 30 duplicate notes containing different states of my note I am currently working on. Luckily, the one last modified was the complete one.

I immediately moved away to the old version because it allows me to delete multiple notes. I will stay with the old and still much better version until something happens with the new interface.

And looking to the update schedule I am not very optimistic that this will be any time soon. Considering the recent development with Evernote I think I need to switch to another solution soon. I have a very bad feeling because at the moment nothing much is happening and not just with the Web version. What are they doing?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am having a similar issue.While using Evernote web  version, Every edit i make saves as a different note.it creates multiple different notes. I want evernote to save my edits in a note to that note only. Please help. Are there any settings to do it.

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Same here. Quite annoying.

It has became a serious issue recently as everyday I have to delete 20-30 duplicate notes and some of the content actually gone missing.

It happens when I am on Evernote Web and also have a the same note open on another device, Samsung Note 2 and Samsung tablet. But, isn't it what Evernote is about? I should be able to use the product on different platforms and devices at the same time.

I am a longtime premium and I have no problems of whatsoever paying to Evernote; as long as I use a healthy product. But, recently I feel like it makes me less productive at times. And also,  servers are really really slow, desktop application is very "heavy", text editor needs some improvement etc.

So, please Evernote guys, before you add new features; offer us a healthy "note-taking" product. Otherwise, I am afraid we will have to watch the collapse of a billion dollar company.

I am an "unhappy" customer and I know I am not the only one. I will move on to another app once I find a decent one.

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Hi all

tbh I think this is the correct thread for this discussion. I posted in the 'old' Web client forum because I was unclear whether the current 'new' Web Client was beta still or not. It apparently is.

I have personally now switched back to the old stable Web version using settings/preferences in the web client, but haven't yet been able to reproduce the duplicate notes issue there.

Has anyone else had this problem before, using the old web client?

Also I was urged to report this issue as a BUG, using the support link in the web client. Be great if everyone here, who is still concerned about this, started sending Bug reports on this issue ;) and we might get more attention.

best David

 

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  • Level 5*
7 hours ago, dflamholc said:

I think this is the correct thread for this discussion

Over on the linked post I said -

Quote

 

I'd strongly recommend that anyone who's suffering from duplicate notes in the 'new' Evernote web

  1. Clicks the counter above,  and
  2. reports the issue by choosing "report a bug..." in the first dropdown after logging in here > https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action

 

Because

Quote

Evernote don't know if a problem is becoming urgent unless they get some convincing statistics

.. and clicks or bug reports is what they'll be looking for.

Obviously everyone is free to post anything you want (within the forum guidelines) anywhere at all - but it does make sense to keep it all in one place so arguments don't get diluted.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...
On 7/6/2015 at 1:39 PM, nanphan said:

Thanks for all of the reports, everyone. We will continue to try to reduce the frequency of this case for folks. Unfortunately, right now the Evernote clients behave slightly differently when dealing with note conflicts on sync. If you see duplicate notes in the Web Client, it is because there was a note conflict that could not be resolved. You'll see that some of the Evernote clients will append the conflicting note to the bottom of a conflicting note, or other clients will save the conflicting note in a Conflicting Note folder. In the Web Client, a 2nd note is generated. 

 

We will continue to try our best to reduce these cases. 

 

Nancy 

Or 27th note, as the case may be. At least with 27 copies of my identical note I know I'm not losing it. But it did happen the other day that I was typing (my BOOK) and it tried to autosave, but then said it couldn't, and DELETED the note. Today I did not try to save, but autosave was working, and then there were 27 of them. And it won't let me delete them. This does not inspire confidence when writing a book, original thoughts, first draft-type stuff, in Evernote. I'm on a chromebook, using the web version. Oh, and all 27 have been dutifully synched to my iPad. So. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I'm tired of syncing issues and my notes getting locked down for no reason. I'm out, I'll find another note alternative program.  I can't even contact support or get answers.  When I write to my notes on my mobile phone, suddenly it gets locked and it won't let me add contents,  can't remove the lock either.  Not only I get double contents when syncing, but the lock on note is preventing me to edit my content and can't remove the damn lock on the mobile version of the note.  Evernote has become useless.

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  • Level 5*
3 minutes ago, Ferial said:

I'm tired of syncing issues and my notes getting locked down for no reason. I'm out, I'll find another note alternative program.  I can't even contact support or get answers.  When I write to my notes on my mobile phone, suddenly it gets locked and it won't let me add contents,  can't remove the lock either.  Not only I get double contents when syncing, but the lock on note is preventing me to edit my content and can't remove the damn lock on the mobile version of the note.  Evernote has become useless.

So why can't you contact Support?  How does your note get locked - what messages do you see,  where and when do you see these double contents,  and what tells you there's a lock on your account?  Short of support this (user supported) forum is usually a good place to get assistance,  but you need to give us some information so we can help you. 

If you didn't want the help,  then sorry for the situation and goodbye.

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  • 3 weeks later...

This issue has been affecting me quite a lot recently, and I see from my notes that it was also an issue in February this year. (Not that it wasn't at other times, just these are times when I got worked up enough to make notes, and now to post!) Although there are far too few data points to go on it does seem others have posted in this thread at those times ... which supports my belief it's related to server load issues ... in that when Evernote's servers are slow to respond it exposes bugs in the web client design.

This is what I observe (new web client only; I don't think I've seen this in the old web client although I do revert to it for various features):

  • Very occasionally I get an error message - a red banner "failed to save note ..." (or failed to delete) which disappears before I can screen-capture it. But usually no error indication at all
  • Often accepts edits and appears to be saving (tick mark with circular animation), but multiple copies eventually show up with different amounts of the typed text, as many have described in this thread
  • Sometimes tag edits, reminder date changes and folder moves do not get applied: they are displayed for a few seconds then the note reverts to what it had before

The duplicate notes are not in a logical time order (assuming the note display is in time order), ie the most complete note is not necessarily the most recent. It's as if the notes are sorted only to a granularity of 1 minute.

I can't comment on this, appealing though it sounds:

On 31/01/2016 at 11:04 AM, Ashley Gittins said:

My theory is that as changes are made and XHR requests are sent from the browser to https://www.evernote.com/shard/s136/enweb/notestore/ext via focusclient-0.js, some of those requests are getting through out-of-order.

...

 

What I think is happening is that the web client saves to the server every few seconds (as it should), and when there is a timeout due to slow server performance, the following happens:

  • Edits to the note body get treated as a note conflict and the server saves a new note
  • Edits to tags, reminder dates and folder moves just get lost (which is worse than raising a edit conflict)
  • Under unknown rare conditions, the server end actually reports an error to the client

And when you manually refresh the web client some time, all the conflicted notes are shown - except that the web interface does not seem to do anything to mark note conflicts.

 

edit: I should answer the questions from the first page:

  • I avoid having multiple Evernote tabs for this reason
  • No Windows or Mac clients open
  • Android client running but not open
  • No noticeable connectivity issues at my end
  • No shared notes
  • Browser Firefox 47 (currently) on KDE Linux
Edited by Secret Code
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Hi all,

Just wanted to chime in that I experienced this bug yesterday afternoon.

I was using the web app on an unshared note and only had one Evernote tab open. I had spotty wifi that may have gone in an out (not totally sure of this though).

Evernote ended up creating about 10 versions of the same note before I realized what was happening. I use evernote for my to do lists so I'm worried that updates could be lost in the mix of all of the new notes.

Not sure what there is to do - just wanted to put it out there that the bug apparently still exists.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi,

I am having this issue again. I cannot say 100% how to replicate but I can tell you what I am doing.

1. I have 2 tabs open, one of them EverNote and the other is a course I am doing on MongiUni.com so these tabs are not related and certainly not both ever note.

2. I am switching back and forth on Google Chrome taking notes and watch videos and again taking more notes

3. I am in a public cafe with semi-good internet. While it does NOT disconnect, it slows down drastically sometimes and perhaps this is all a network related issue causing ever note to duplicate notes... 

 

very frustrating

please help

 

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Hi @Xenobius - I'd normally suspect bad connections for duplicate note errors - Evernote tries to sync the note with the server,  but if the connection drops out briefly it has to start again,  and who knows what data got through the first time?  If you're working with a laptop - ie a device that has built-in permanent storage - you might consider changing the sync settings so that 'instant' and 'background' syncs are not selected,  but sync changes on exit is.  Change auto-sync to 'every day' if you can,  but then realise that the onus is entirely on you to manually sync your edits at the end of each session.  Acquire the habit of manually syncing before and after each editing / note-taking session.

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I'm running evernote on Chrome and ANdroid... i use it as my primary note taking app and it has been fine until the last few months.Now it jsut duplicates my notes and moves them up or down in the web version. I don't know which one is the latest version. I takes me a lot of time to look for the latest version. I am going to go ahead and try a Microsoft and Google alternative. If they don't fix these issues soon. I will stop working with them.

 

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19 hours ago, hbaleegh said:

I'm running evernote on Chrome and ANdroid... i use it as my primary note taking app and it has been fine until the last few months.Now it jsut duplicates my notes and moves them up or down in the web version. I don't know which one is the latest version. I takes me a lot of time to look for the latest version. I am going to go ahead and try a Microsoft and Google alternative. If they don't fix these issues soon. I will stop working with them.

 

Hi.  Have you tried working in a browser other than Chrome?

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Ok cool. But for me thats a working possible solution; Im mostly on a chromebook. I posed about this issue ages ago and nothing has changed. Im a premium user and contacted support. They asked me several times in a row to supply bug reports, logs and other info - All while providing zero answers or solutions in return, nevermind solving the actual issue. I ultimately got bored sending personal info and logs.

This issue has been around for very long now, too long (8months+?). Its sad that its not been dealt with yet and it seriously tarnishes evernotes supposed quality stanadard. 

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IE Is giving me a new error. It keeps saying "Could not save note"  it is not saving any of my changes. It's too much work. I am moving to another app. This is really bad. I have recommended this app to a lot of my work contacts. This makes me look bad too.

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4 hours ago, gazumped said:

Hmmn.  This thread might help -

 

I'm confused, why would an update to webclipper resolve an issue with evernote-web (a separate product) which (at least in my case) wasn't even installed on my browser when I was having the issue?

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Evernote support got back to me opening a ticket and asked me to provide details about how many tabs were open in chrome etc (that was after i actually managed to explain clear enough to them to understand that im using a chromebook). They also of course wanted the log file which i supplied. I then received a message that they were dealing with 'my' issue, which clearly isnt just my issue. This didnt bode well. Nothing close to the expected "we are aware of this issue an are working day and night to resolve it. Please have patience and we would be most grateful for any details u could provide to help us do this faster." (just a suggestion). I proceeded to provide links to all the threads discussing this current(!) error/malfunction.

I did not hear back.

A week later I pinged them with another email asking how its going. I was then told they are waiting for me to send my logs and info. I said no i sent that already. Again silence. I pinged. Another guy answerd asking me to send the info again, at which point i gave up the hope that any further communication would prove productive for either party. 

I guess if they cant figure out mails and their own ticketing system there is little hope they can solve the database sync error we all suffer from. Im puzzled as to why nobody seems to feel responsible for this?? I mean on a business to customer level. I guess they dont care or they are just too busy selling socks backpacks and overpriced scanners.

I personally think its a head in the sand issue. To costly to fix. Lets pretend its not there. 

Great work tho guys!

Ps haha i love how spellcheck isnt working at all in this forum as opposed to anwhere else(!)

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I've been using IE for the last two days and the error has stopped happening. it is a pity that Evernote doesn't work with the world's most widely used browser. However, I'm going to stick with these guys with IE for now. Only because I love their android widget. 

But this will be the last straw, it something else happens, I'm out.

Thanks for the guidance guys. 

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5 hours ago, Ashley Gittins said:

I'm confused, why would an update to webclipper resolve an issue with evernote-web (a separate product) which (at least in my case) wasn't even installed on my browser when I was having the issue?

Sorry - so many queries,  so little time.  Posted to the wrong thread.  :blush:

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i'm an journalist who signed up for a year of premier today, only to spend hours and hours wrestling with a proliferation of duplicate files, losing crucial text in the process. so i'll just underline what has already been said: this seems to be a serious bug that, from the evidence here, evernote has temporized over for years. instead of helping me be more efficient at managing an unwieldy amount of information, which is what i paid up to do, i've lost the day negotiating with a nabokovian multiplication of files. 

(i'm working on a macbook air, in chrome, with only one copy of evernote open, and with no known interruption of internet.)

evernote people, any advice?

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Kb202

i haven't had a duplicate note in a long time. I am almost certain my issue was signal related and that one occasion I was continuing to make change while the sync was occurring. 

Which platform do you use most when you see this occurring?

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macneilpi did you read kb202's full post? I believe all the answers to your questions are in there! 

This is a reoccuring theme here on the forum and talking to evernote support. 

Signal related or not it is NOT resolved. And even if this duplication of notes was isolated to dodgy wifi its still an error as clearly dropbox, google and other similar services dont go bananas when connection is temporarily lost!

If its a chrome/evernote issue then its not acceptible to not be resolved.

i find it ridiculous that this dicussion time and again returns to "oh what did u do when it last happened?" 

Its a friggin malfunction in the programme guys !!!! Sort it out!! We are paying for it!!!!

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I posted here before, over a year ago in great frustration.  I primarily use Evernote web clipper to clip recipe pages which I organize into the digital cookbook I am creating with Evernote.  I was a premium member during all that time.  After months of getting duplicate notes, I decided to downgrade to being a plus member.  After reading the several recent posts sent to me as thread updates, I realized, and checked my files to be sure, that I haven't gotten a single duplicate since I downgraded!  My web clipping and filing procedures and devices haven't changed, only my membership level.  For whatever it's worth...

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OK:  This is a user supported forum so while you get more (or less) useful suggestions from us fellow users, and developers and other employees do read the posts here,  you're not establishing a place in the support queue from which to grab Evernote's attention.  If you have a problem,  contact support.  You'll get a ticket number and a direct channel to Evernote.  If you're a Basic user you should at least be able to raise a bug report - see comments here:  https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/51807-best-practices-submitting-a-support-ticket/

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well yes understood, but sorry to harp on to this.. I did contact Evernote Support with a Ticket on this Issue and it was a most horrid time wasting experience, even getting them to respond coherently, never mind actually discussing this database sync error. 

So yeah I am aware I'm moaning to peer users, who are trying to help, and for the moment I am aware that this is mostly for my own satisfaction. I do hope nobody is as offended by this, as I am that Evernote are not dealing and sorting this issue.

I am a long time premium user and,  sadly for me,  leaving evernote would be an arduous task.  I have huge huge huge amount of data and notes stored, which I wouldn't know how and where to find the time to move to another place.

Clearly at this point I am certainly not recommending Evernote to anyone else. On the contrary I am advising people against it!

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is exactly what's happening to me. It's getting super annoying because I'm wasting time deleting duplicated notes. The support team told me it might be a problem with my desktop app and having it open but right now my computer is turned off. 

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This has been happening to me since about April.

Everytime I edit/add a note on Evernote Web, it starts to create copies. The longer that I leave the EvernoteWeb tab and that note open, the more copies it makes of the note. Even if I've not changed note, it makes a duplicate. I've had 27 duplicates of the same note that I had to go through to check it was the latest version, just because I left the machine and went for lunch.

This doesn't happen on the windows desktop clients. But it happens on a windows platform in Evernote Web.

On my Ubuntu machine, I've tried both Firefox, all updated, and Chromiu  browser, all updated. But Evernote Web keeps duplicating notes.

The duplicated notes then sync to my android Evernote App. It's incredibly annoying, and is hamperimg my ability to work across my platforms - which was the whole point of Evernote in the first place.

 

Any fixes yet?

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I used to experience the multiple copies problem; but hadn't seen it for months until today (2016-09-18 shortly after 9am PST)   I was adding to the end of an existing Evernote when the right side note entry pane of the screen went blank.  I refreshed the content pane of the Evernote screen by clicking on the left abbreviated note and then completed my additions.  Later I noticed that there was a second copy of the note appearing below the amended version.  The second copy did not contain my additions; but the first note did.

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  • 1 month later...

The last post on this thread was more than a year ago now. This problem has just started with me. I now have 12 copies of the same note that I'm working on - if I continue working on the note, it will just make more copies..Extremely frustrating..

 

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On 21/10/2016 at 0:47 PM, Ben Lowe said:

The last post on this thread was more than a year ago now. This problem has just started with me. I now have 12 copies of the same note that I'm working on - if I continue working on the note, it will just make more copies..Extremely frustrating..

Hi.  Unless I'm hallucinating (again) the last post was a month ago,  and this is an ongoing issue for anyone using the web client / multiple EN clients on a poor/ intermittent connection.  Can you give us some more details?  Your OS,  which client and (if it applies) browser you're using,  and what exactly the problem is..?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Evernote Web

Firefox 49.0.2                             

Windows XP SP3 (1 desktop, 1 laptop, 1 notebook) and Windows 10 (1 netbook)

1.5 Mbps DSL internet service with strong, steady signal strength (1 desktop wired, 3 portables on Wi-Fi) 

 

Multiple browser tabs were open with the note being edited - YES; for example, 1 Evernote Web tab open in the desktop and 1 Evernote Web tab open in the laptop, inputting different text in each one at various times. However, in other instances I have had only 1 Evernote Web tab open in only 1 device, yet multiple copies of the note were still created.

Windows Evernote client was open with the note being edited - NO; not installed in any device.             

Other people were looking at the note at the same time you were because it was shared - NO, share is never used.

You lost the internet connection while editing - NO

 

I first experienced this issue of multiple copies of one note 6 months ago.  I currently have four copies of one note, and since this note is lengthy and detailed, I estimate that it would take two hours or longer to compare all four copies and determine which one is the complete version.

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On 02/11/2016 at 2:30 PM, Nevelyn said:

I first experienced this issue of multiple copies of one note 6 months ago.  I currently have four copies of one note, and since this note is lengthy and detailed, I estimate that it would take two hours or longer to compare all four copies and determine which one is the complete version.

This doesn't solve the root problem, but to resolve the multiple versions of the problem note, you could try copying the contents into Word documents and use a progressive 'Compare versions' to resolve the differences.

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6 hours ago, logandb said:

This doesn't solve the root problem, but to resolve the multiple versions of the problem note, you could try copying the contents into Word documents and use a progressive 'Compare versions' to resolve the differences.

Even better is to export to ENML or HTML, and compare those, as these are text formats, and use a file comparison tool:

6 hours ago, gazumped said:

Following on from @logandb's comment,  there are many apps out there that will compare two files and highlight any differences.  My (Windows) preference is Winmerge.

My vote goes to Beyond Compare. I use it every work day, and some non-work days, too. WinMerge is good too.

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Thank you @logandb, @gazumped, @jefito for your responses and suggestions.

Since I am not tech savvy, it is essential that the comparison tool I select be as simple as possible for me to use.  Of the ones suggested (Word, Winmerge, Beyond Compare), I have only used Word, therefore my questions refer only to Word.  However, one of the other two may be easier for me to work with than Word.

@logandb:  "try copying the contents into Word documents and use a progressive 'Compare versions' to resolve the differences."

Although I use Word (Microsoft® Word 2002) daily, I only work with its very basic features, so I am not familiar with the 'Compare versions' element.

I did a search on 'Compare versions' within the Help section of Word and the results were:

Compare and merge documents

 Compare documents with the Legal blackline option   

  Troubleshoot mail merge 

 None of the above, search for more on the Web.”

I read the instructions for "Compare and merge documents" and for "Compare documents with the Legal blackline option".  They both refer to "comparing the two documents" when I have four documents to compare, and it is not clear to me which of the two methods I should select for my specific situation. 

Do I copy/paste each of the four Notes from Evernote into four separate Word documents?  Or do I copy/paste all four Notes into one Word document?  

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I'm using the latest version of Word, so hopefully what I'm about to suggest still makes sense with your version, so good luck!

I'd copy the four notes you have into four separate Word documents and save them as 'Note 1', 'Note 2', 'Note 3' and 'Note 4', ordered from oldest to newest if you know (but I don't think it necessarily matters).  If it was a note to which you were primarily adding content, you could order them from fewest words to most.

With no documents open in Word, launch the 'Compare and merge documents' command and load 'Note 1' and 'Note 2'.  You should have a number of panes open on screen, but the central one will show the merged notes, with strikethrough for deleted text and additions highlighted in a different colour.  You should be able to work your way through, accepting and rejecting each of the changes, if any (sorry I can't help you with the finer detail of this, but hopefully you can work it out).  Then, save this new document as 'Note 1&2' or similar and close it.

Now, run Compare and merge again, this time loading the new document 'Note 1&2' and 'Note 3', check and accept/reject the changes, saving the output as 'Note 1&2&3' (for example).  Then go through for the final time, comparing 'Note 1&2&3' with 'Note 4'.  With a bit of luck, the final output will be your resolved version.

I figured out this logic just now, since this isn't a problem I have had to face, so I'm happy for any of my colleagues to throw in your own ideas or dispute mine!

Let us know how you go.

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@logandb nailed it I think - Word will only allow you to compare two documents at a time (any more would be a bit of challenge to sanity anyway).  The principle is how I get around comparing notes - I copy the content into separate files and compare/ edit,  then copy / paste the corrected version back into the original 'live' note.  Having separate files helps me keep track of which note version is the correct one.  :)

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@logandb

While trying to follow the instructions you provided, Evernote created 2 more copies of the same note, which added to the pre-existing 4, totaled 6 copies of the same note.  At that point I decided to just lightly review the 6 existing notes, and delete the 5 that appeared the least up to date.  I may later find that sections are missing in the one copy I kept, but the incessant duplication of the note became simply unmanageable.

Thank you very much for your assistance.

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There seems to be something odd going on here.  The procedure I suggested all happens outside of Evernote, using copies of the note text in Word documents.  What I failed to mention (but @gazumped hinted at), was that once you have the final document incorporating all of the changes, delete all but one of the duplicated notes in EN and paste the text from the Word document into it.

In response to the underlying problem, are you certain you were not editing the same note on different devices simultaneously (e.g. desktop and phone)?  I see in your original post, you have two copies of EN Web open.  This is not something I have tried, but is likely the source of your issues.  Perhaps prior to switching from one instance to the other, make sure you click on the note thumbnail on the left of the screen to finish editing and 'save' the note before you start on the other copy.

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I opened Evernote in my desktop computer only (not open in any other device) to copy/paste the 4 copies of the same note into Word, and while doing that, Evernote created 2 additional copies of the same note.  At that point I decided to just lightly review the 6 existing copies in Evernote, and delete the 5 that appeared the least up to date.  I never started the procedure you suggested.  My guess is that the copy/paste process from Evernote to Word must have caused Evernote to create the 2 additional copies of the note.  

Thank you very much for your assistance.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Hello,

Seems like this topic started back in 2014, and I'm still having the same issue!

No fixes that really work, hey? Here is what's happening. While I am working on a note in the browser on Mac (happened in both Chrome and Safari), Evernote keeps creating a copy of my note every few minutes. It looks like it auto-saves the note, but instead of saving the new version on top of the old one, it creates a copy. While doing so, it looses the last minute or so of editing. Extremely annoying. I once tried to delete all the version except the last one, and the web interface dropped into deep thought for a few minutes, and when it came out of it, all of the versions were gone including the latest one. Thank God I copies everything into Word before doing that, otherwise I would have lost days of writing.

Any suggestions what's going on and how to fix it?

Cheers, Alina.

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10 hours ago, Alina Z said:

Any suggestions what's going on and how to fix it?

Hi.  I probably said this already somewhere,  but just for the record;  if you're typing at length into a browser page it's very likely that any minor issue with the network connection,  internal traffic or device speed is going to sabotage your document.  Case in point - I have a bit of experience in typing into these pages,  and every so often I'll fat-finger a key combination,  have a system glitch or otherwise drop some or all of my content into a black hole.  The simple fix is to use an external editor - any external editor that does the job - to create your text,  and then to copy and paste the whole thing into place in one go

I expect Evernote has tried,  and will continue to try to improve things,  but essentially they're depending on the third party browser code and everything between that and their server to send them clear and uncorrupted data. 

If there's a hiccup in the sending,  you might still get two notes - but as long as you copy and paste from another editor you'll have your original content even if the save fails and you wind up with none...

In an ideal world none of that would be necessary;  but in case you hadn't noticed...  it ain't.

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