Selectively sync notebooks support

[Hongbo-Miao 33]

It would be great to support selectively sync notebooks. Thanks!

 

Our notebook becomes bigger and bigger especial if you are a premium user. However, our Mac hard drive is usually just 256GB or 512GB.

iOS, Android version Evernote all supports. Alternote also supports this feature.

 

Some related requests:

• https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/21933-archived-howto-how-do-i-not-sync-certain-notebooks-apart-from-cancel-premium/
• https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/39658-selective-notebook-syncing/
• https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/61920-synchronize-selected-notebook-on-different-pc/
• https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/60643-stop-sync-of-folder/
• https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/60479-selective-sync-on-computer-roadmap/
• https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67191-syncing-only-a-few-notebooks-to-from-my-home-account-to-my-work-computer/
• https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/65599-request-sync-only-select-notebooks/

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

hi. thanks for,this. it's difficult to overemphasize how important this is. my evernote account simply wouldn't fit in my computer without taking measures to radically shrink it in 2012.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29245-how-to-optimize-your-evernote-experience/

as we head into 2016, four years later, i easily have several times as much data in my daily files, and it has even less chance of fitting onto my drive. it would be good for evernote and its users if it could scale better.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Frankly, I don't think votes matter, and I don't even think the votes should -- Evernote developers need to get together, discuss it, and make a decision that is best for the app, regardless of how many votes there are (after all, you'll never get any significant number out of 200 million anyhow). We don't have inside knowledge, after all. It's just a button like the red one on the elevator or the request for a Kindle book on Amazon. It might make us feel better to have it, but I don't think it is really meaningful.

But, first, Evernote developers should read the forums and figure it out for themselves. It won't take them long to see how much of a "priority" it ought to be. We've got a former CEO saying it is needed, former developers saying they are working on it, and years of posts by longtime users saying why they need it. The question is: why haven't they done it? I am guessing there are reasons, and they are good ones, even if I (and others) don't agree with it.

Still, I hope they will reconsider (regardless of how many votes there are / aren't). 

 

[Stuart889 1]

Sir/Madam, 

The idea of cloud server is to hv more storage capability and access them from anywhere. That is one of the key competency of Evernote. 

The Evernote app on MacBook defies the purpose above: the app will save a local copy of the notebooks. This implies that the max storage I could get is probability limited by my MacBook storage capacity and MacBook normally has very limited storage capacity. 

We need a feature where I could switch on and off for local copy. When I switched off, content will be saved on the server only but not on my local MacBook. Please develop this feature to help Evernote win the market.

Also I can not see my cursor in the dark mode, please make the cursor white in the dark mode for MacBook. 

 

Thanks.  

[nigelrumsey 17]

This is the most important missing feature for me. Without selective sync I have to unnecessarily sync all of my many thousands of work notes on my limited storage laptop. ☹️

[BSR 208]

Hi all,

We appreciate you writing in; keep voting on your request for this feature on the Mac in this thread so our developers can see how many of our users want it and keep the votes in one place. Cheers!

 

[DTLow 5,736]

On June 26, 2016 at 5:27 AM, niklass said:

So please implement this feature, the mobile client has it already.

I'm really wondering why this basic is still missing, and we get toys like "work chat": Is it really that hard to implement? Do you want to keep a hidden total online storage limit, because people will stop uploading when their computer is full?

I think this would be a good feature to implement but understand that Evernote has to focus on high priority requests

Please use the voting buttons in the upper left corner to indicate your support for this request.  The vote is currently 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

4 hours ago, DTLow said:

I think this would be a good feature to implement but understand that Evernote has to focus on high priority requests

What makes you think/believe this (selective sync) is not a high priority request?

IMO, it is one of the most high priority requests, just after providing zero-key, AES 256 encryption.  It is just a matter of time before most users will have more notes than will fit on all of their non-mobile devices.

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, JMichaelTX said:

What makes you think/believe this (selective sync) is not a high priority request?

IMO, it is one of the most high priority requests, just after providing zero-key, AES 256 encryption.  It is just a matter of time before most users will have more notes than will fit on all of their non-mobile devices.

As I said, I was looking at the number of votes.  
I'd like to get that increased to let Evernote know that user's support this request

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

3 minutes ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

Frankly, I don't think votes matter, and I don't even think the votes should

Voting is being actively encouraged by a number of Evernote employees in these forums.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

yes. i am aware that they are encouraging votes. as i said above, i don't think evernote's business decisions should be influenced with a few button clicks from a handful of folks (.0000001%?) among the more than 200 million members. evernote employees ought to read the forums, use their own judgment to pick out the best ideas (votes or not), and improve the product in the way that they think is best. 

in other words, if voting matters on the forums, i don't think it should. if voting doesn't really matter, then don't pretend it does by having it (see my elevator button analogy above). this might mean that one of my longtime suggestions (selective sync) doesn't get prioritized for another eight years. i can live with that, if they are reading, deliberating, and coming to such a conclusion in the best interest of the app. it's hard to believe we have gone this long without selective sync, and i don't know the reason (even the former ceo and former developers wanted it), but i doubt it's from a lack of votes.

if they want a real "democracy" (not this button clicking faux democratic process), then vote us into positions within the company (customer reps?) and give us official power to influence development. that would be "real" representative democracy.

[Mirtma65 46]

+1 This is one of my main expectation. Selective sync. And this should be on all platforms (MAC and PC).

[nemi 1]

note to senior management:

the failure to provide selective sync is a poison pill for evernote's ability to retain its most valuable customers (the people who use the platform the most).

because evernote does not support selective sync, the company has a de facto kill switch for its most valuable customers. you have ceded control over your churn rate to computer hard drive manufacturers. the lifecycle of evernote premium customers — and hence our lifetime value to evernote — is simply defined by the size of local hard drives.

for me, your kill switch tripped today, when the size of my mandatory-sync evernote data finally began impacting the performance of my machine. had i been able to choose which notes i carry around and which notes are cloud-only, i would still be a customer. instead, today i began using one note - a competing product. until today, i was evernote power user and brand advocate.

its astonishing that this discussion (at least in this thread) is reduced to some kind of pseudo-democratic metaphor, where "enough votes" will somehow result in a feature being added to the engineering backlog. obviously, only a small number of people are hitting the kind of data volumes that make selective sync a "do or die" issue. but — in case this isn't totally obvious to evernote management — the small number of people asking for this are the ones at the top of your value segment.

please let me know if you ever implement selective sync. i'd love to come back to evernote someday.

[Rabbit704 80]

Adding my strong support for this. My MacBook Air is running out of space and I'm facing the option of having to delete the Evernote application entirely and rely on the web version. That is a going to be right PITA, and not a long term solution since I don't always have access to decent internet when travelling (and I am not going to even attempt to fumble around with the iOS apps for content creation).

Given that selective notebook syncing is available on the iOS app, I don't see why this has not been implemented on the Evernote Mac App. It's not a technical issue. Get on with it guys. Please.

[Bertram Gans 1]

How is it possible that Evernote ignores all these requests for years? It's so comfortable on my iPhone: I mark selected notebooks as "offline available" and access the other ones online if necessary. Due to the limited hard drive capacity of my MacBook Air and my continuously growing Evernote-content I definitely need this feature soon, or I'll have to look for alternatives. I just can't think of a reason not to provide this feature, no: not to have provided it years ago!

[aneghosh 0]

+1 Strongly support this long awaited feature request!!

[KGT 7]

Still no selective sync for Mac ?

 

My son gave me his redundant MacBook Pro and is trying to convert me from being a long time Windows user.  My protests that I have some legacy Windows applications were silenced when he got them up and running on the Mac remotely from his desk.

 

The irony is that it might be Evernote that stops me from migrating.  The application isn’t quite as feature rich as the Windows version, but I’d live with that, but what I may not be able to live with is the automatic sync.  It’s not space that’s an issue as it has a 2TB SSD, it’s security.

 

With Evernote for Windows, I scan a bunch of documents, send them to Evernote, organise them into cloud or local notebooks, tag them, and only then do I sync.  With Mac, they go to the cloud before I get chance to organise them, including some sensitive stuff that I don’t want there.

 

I can’t select my local notebook as the default for import.

 

Any workaround for this ?  I can move them after sync and re-sync but as I understand it they could lie unencrypted on Evernote’s servers for, who knows how long.   And I'm quite getting to like the MacBook.

[brettmansdorf 6]

I've been quiet for years, but on this one I'll chime in...

MBP15 (2017) with 512 - and this has become an issue (since 2018) - for the first time - EN is not my primary source for information.  Don't get me wrong - I still use it - but cannot afford to eat up 120GB-180GB of HDD not the Mac.  This feature would put EN back at my go-to and allow me to STOP paying for bland cloud space (hence - I'd pay more).

I am just a premium since 2007 - and I would SOOOOO love to be able to park stuff in the cloud and NOT sync to the desktop in an effort to conserve HDD on my Mac (and keep the search churning at a livable speed).  EVEN BETTER would be the ability (admin) for us to choose what to sync to each device.  My iPad Pro has more storage than my MBP (cashed in miles, didn't win the lottery) - so on that device I don't care.  My Win10 machine - well fast TB drives on windows is like buying an apple branded mouse - no big deal (but you focused on windows before Mac - wish someone there would remember who got you to where you are, and then realize if I need to upgrade my Win machine from 512 to 1tb - its takes like an hour and hundred bucks, upgrading a MBP takes time - enough to buy a lottery ticket, win, collect, then wait in line at the apple store)...

I digress - COUNT MY VOTE FOR PRIORITIZING THIS...

[DTLow 5,736]

40 minutes ago, Stuart889 said:

We need a feature where I could switch on and off for local copy.

This should be do-able; we have the option on the mobile platforms - offline notebooks   
I merged your post with an existing discussion

An alternative is to use the web platform (www.evernote.com)   

[wtrmrk 6]

This is the #1 reason why I no longer use Evernote. it is a great program but I just cannot afford to use my laptop hard drive space because it is limited. If we could have Selective Sync (like Dropbox), I would instantly return to using Evernote.

[Helen Crozier 6]

I would like this - a bit like we have on the mobiles as in offline notebooks. One of my latptops is quite old - it struggled with my 10000 note account. Now I've taken that off and have a small account Evernote is running like a dream. Some people need selective sync for sure.

[Nathan R 1]

+1 

I completely agree with the above. While I'm not short on space at the moment, selective syncing of notebooks would be very helpful. Another, option to help save space would be to download the notes but not the images and attachments for some notebooks (much like a 'would you like to load the images?' toggle in email clients.

Thanks.

[jigp 3]

I've been a premium user since 2010, and this is a feature requested regularly i believe since the start. It is essential not only regarding space usage in local drives but also for keeping personal data from some notebooks not downloaded to a computer at work.

For me it should be a number one priority in development because it could really make a big difference in the daily work for many users.

[paulsnakes 1]

+1

Me too, I am facing the same problems pointed above... I am getting out of space available on my laptop; and selective sync seems the only way I could keep using Evernote as a main productivity tool on a mid-term basis...

Please, Evernote Team, whichever your roadmap is, get this thing done asap as it is becoming a critical issue for many of us! 

Thank you!

Pablo

[niklass 2]

 

+1

I'm using Evernote Premium for several years, dumping a lot of scanned documents into it.

But without the feature of selective sync for Mac it will become useless at some point, because my MacBook has only 512GB, and I prefer to use it for other things than old notes.

So please implement this feature, the mobile client has it already.

I'm really wondering why this basic is still missing, and we get toys like "work chat": Is it really that hard to implement? Do you want to keep a hidden total online storage limit, because people will stop uploading when their computer is full?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Yep. I completely agree. We could pay 70 USD a year to get 10GB-a-month uploads, but in Mac drives that only have 128 or 256GB, we are only talking about a year or so worth of uploads! Why Mobile has it and the Mac doesn't has always been a mystery to me. It is something they said at the beginning that they would need, years ago they said they were working on it, but in 2016 we still don't have it. I hope Evernote takes this more seriously. I know they are working hard on the app, and I appreciate it, but they really need to consider the long term if they want folks to stick around (and keep paying). 

This is what I have done in the past, though I admit that it is not my favorite solution, and I eventually got kind of annoyed with having to do it for everything.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127

But, it is a possibility.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

13 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

But, first, Evernote developers should read the forums and figure it out for themselves.

I disagree.  It is not the job of developers to determine product features.  Their job is to develop the app according to the requirements provided by senior management and product managers.  

Determining what features should be in a product is a very tough job, but certainly one major factor (if you want success) should be customer demand.  A very common practice in market analysis is to conduct surveys.  One method is to provide for voting of feature preferences by users.  Let's not kid ourselves here. This type of "voting" has nothing to do with democracy.  I'd think you'd know better than that.  Preference voting is simply one way (used by many software manufacturers) to obtain one view of customer demand.

You keep referring to the "200M" users.  Most of those by a wide margin are free account users, who have no intent to ever upgrade to a paid account.  We don't know how many of those have even used the app more than a few times after downloading a free app.  I would not discount the importance of feedback from forum users.  They may represent a larger portion of users than their numbers would indicate.

So, from a market analysis perspective, Evernote needs to do two things:

1. Determine what features and price point users will be willing to pay for.
2. Determine what features are needed to keep existing paid account users

I for one like and encourage preference voting in these forums.  If nothing else it may be one way of getting the attention of Evernote product managers to further evaluate providing a specific feature.  I'm not saying this should be the only consideration, but it should be one factor to be considered.  IAC, I don't see the harm in preference voting.

[jbenson2 2,147]

I agree with GrumpyMonkey. The number of button clicks is laughably minuscule, (including features that generate tons of user interest). Even with the down-vote option turned off, most of the vote totals don't even reach double digits! This subject, posted half a year ago, just hit 10.

And I have only seen one survey from Evernote. That survey had nothing to do with features. It was 100% devoted to how much I would be willing to pay for Evernote.

I have a hunch the average of all those survey responses show no resemblance to the 40% price increase Evernote just announced.
 

[DTLow 5,736]

On May 22, 2016 at 8:43 AM, BSR said:

keep voting on your request for this feature on the Mac in this thread so our developers can see how many of our users want it and keep the votes in one place.

On June 29, 2016 at 0:11 AM, GrumpyMonkey said:

Frankly, I don't think votes matter, and I don't even think the votes should

 

On June 29, 2016 at 1:59 PM, jbenson2 said:

I agree with GrumpyMonkey.

 

On one side, we have Evernote setting up a voting system, and employees recommending voting
On the other, @GrumpyMonkey and @Jbenson2 are saying voting doesn't matter

For myself, I will continue to encourage voting and to get the counts up
particuarily on the features I need

And for the record, I agree that this process is flawed and could be improved, however thats a different discussion. This discussion is support selectively sync notebooks!

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

48 minutes ago, JMichaelTX said:

I disagree.  It is not the job of developers to determine product features.  Their job is to develop the app according to the requirements provided by senior management and product managers.  

Determining what features should be in a product is a very tough job, but certainly one major factor (if you want success) should be customer demand.  A very common practice in market analysis is to conduct surveys.  One method is to provide for voting of feature preferences by users.  Let's not kid ourselves here. This type of "voting" has nothing to do with democracy.  I'd think you'd know better than that.  Preference voting is simply one way (used by many software manufacturers) to obtain one view of customer demand.

You keep referring to the "200M" users.  Most of those by a wide margin are free account users, who have no intent to ever upgrade to a paid account.  We don't know how many of those have even used the app more than a few times after downloading a free app.  I would not discount the importance of feedback from forum users.  They may represent a larger portion of users than their numbers would indicate.

So, from a market analysis perspective, Evernote needs to do two things:

1. Determine what features and price point users will be willing to pay for.
2. Determine what features are needed to keep existing paid account users

I for one like and encourage preference voting in these forums.  If nothing else it may be one way of getting the attention of Evernote product managers to further evaluate providing a specific feature.  I'm not saying this should be the only consideration, but it should be one factor to be considered.  IAC, I don't see the harm in preference voting.

have you read the job descriptions for these jobs? please do. they aren't code monkeys slaving away under their ceo overlord. they are engineers, designers, and developers who are expected to do something creative and innovative. they didn't raise the prices at evernote to pay code monkeys.

engineers got hired to build something great, and i want them to do that -- if they can't be bothered to read the forums to learn what some of their most passionate users think, or if they would prefer to see what a handful of button clickers think rather than consider some of the amazing ideas folks have had here (many of which get little attention, but would really be great for the app, in my opinion), then they are going about it all wrong in my opinion. at any rate, if they are basing any decisions on these votes (should the button clicks of 10 people influence the user experience of 200 million?), even if just as a factor in some decisions, then clearly (in my opinion) they are unlikely to build anything great.

frankly, i don't know what the voting is for, except to mollify folks who feel powerless (as suggested by my analogies above). users used to clamour for the voting option years ago. i didn't like the idea then, i was glad we didn't have it, and i like the idea even less now. at least, i hope it is nothing more than a meaningless button.

you can all vote if what i want them to do is use their brains. i want them to put more thought into this than any of us have, and i want them to make a great app that i can use, recommend to my students and colleagues, and would be happy to pay for every year (the current price would make it many times more than i spend on anything else, but there are plenty of feature requests out there that would make it a no-brainer for me). 

regarding this idea, we have fleshed this out for 8 years now, we had the former ceo saying it was needed, and we had one of the former top developers saying that they were working on it. it solves an obvious problem. a child could figure out the math on this one -- 10gb a month for 12 months and my drive is full. i cannot use the app anymore. if they need votes to figure out the problem here, then there isn't much hope for the app -- i actually think they are pretty sharp folks who haven't solved this problm yet for reasons we don't know, which makes our voting even more meaningless, because we are clicking the buttons without a full understanding.

a conversation / dialogue with us about this stuff would be nice. 

 

 

 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I see no value or point in campaigning against feature voting.  I don't see any harm it can cause, and it has the potential to be helpful in getting a feature implemented.  

Why are we seeing so few votes?  Could be because of:

1. It is a new forum feature that few are aware of.
2. The same feature request is often made in a number of different topics, thus splitting the votes
3. Many of the feature requests, like this one, apply to all or multiple platforms, yet there is no way currently vote for features that apply to all platforms (the General Discussion forum does not support voting yet)

I think it is a reasonable inference that Evernote plans to use the forum voting in some manner, else why would they have set it up and encourage it?

What impact it has remains to be seen.

With respect to surveys, I have received several from Evernote that deal with features.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

this isn't  a survey. ten people clicked a button. as for the reason for that button, i've explained why i think voting is there, and i've explained why i think it is terrible, both in concept and (heaven forbid) in practice. 

you seem to think they are a bunch of code monkeys, so i am not sure why they'd bother looking at the votes, and you said management ought to be looking at other data, so it seems to me that you don't think the votes are meaningful either. 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

1 hour ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

you seem to think they are a bunch of code monkeys

Where in the world did you get that idea?  It is totally wrong.  You're making up stuff I did NOT say.

1 hour ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

you said management ought to be looking at other data, so it seems to me that you don't think the votes are meaningful either.

Really?  I thought critical thinking was one of the main things taught to PhDs?  

Again, you are grossly misinterpreting me.  So, If you can't argue the technical merits, you attack the speaker?

I guess I need to spell it out for you:

• Feature voting is just one of many considerations to be used in determining new/changed features.
• If done properly, it can be useful.

Since you like to cherry pick my statements, and then add gross misinterpretations, let me remind you of exactly what I said:

2 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

I for one like and encourage preference voting in these forums.  If nothing else it may be one way of getting the attention of Evernote product managers to further evaluate providing a specific feature.  I'm not saying this should be the only consideration, but it should be one factor to be considered.

 

1 hour ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

i've explained why i think voting is there, and i've explained why i think it is terrible,

Yes, many times now.  Why do you keep repeating yourself?  Who wants to see it multiple times, besides you?  Please spare us.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Feature voting, if done properly, can be useful. (Notice the big IF)

I spent 20 years in marketing and from my perspective, the voting process in the Evernote forum is not being done properly. Many of the voting subjects are vague, repetitive, confusing, or ambiguous.  

The numbers are just not there, even after repeated urging by several users.

There are some topics that Evernote does not need a Forum vote. I noticed Evernote did not position their "Big Gorilla" post about the new Pricing Plan to allow voting. 
 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

8 minutes ago, jbenson2 said:

Feature voting, if done properly, can be useful. (Notice the big IF)

Agreed.

8 minutes ago, jbenson2 said:

the voting process in the Evernote forum is not being done properly. Many of the voting subjects are vague, repetitive, confusing, or ambiguous.

Agreed.  The Evernote needs a few good moderators (EN employees) to merge common topics and establish a clear request.  A pinned announcement notifying everyone of the new voting tool, and how to use it, and what Evernote plans to do with it, would be very helpful.

[s2sailor 2,186]

16 hours ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

have you read the job descriptions for these jobs? please do. they aren't code monkeys slaving away under their ceo overlord. they are engineers, designers, and developers who are expected to do something creative and innovative. they didn't raise the prices at evernote to pay code monkeys.

engineers got hired to build something great, and i want them to do that

FWIW, in my experience of the industry, this isn't exactly how it works.  It is the product managers and marketing team's role to determine the product direction, what is needed, what will sell ... etc.  The engineering team (programmers, architects ..),  are the implementers.  Yes, they influence the product and help nudge it in a certain direction but it is their job to deliver the vision that is set.  When done well you have a product that meets the company's objectives, customer needs and is profitable.  When done poorly you get Work Chat and the product manager goes off looking for a new job.

[akrde 19]

+10000000 for cloud-only notebooks in Mac and Windows desktop app!!!

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

5 hours ago, s2sailor said:

The engineering team (programmers, architects ..),  are the implementers.  Yes, they influence the product and help nudge it in a certain direction but it is their job to deliver the vision that is set.

Agreed.  Exactly my point above.

[David Reed 2]

I find it unacceptable that this feature isn't available yet.  I can't imagine how this isn't available, it's such an obvious fix for so many people for so many issues, and the only up-side to it I can see is driving us the number of EN accounts by forcing people to have separate EN accounts for personal vs. work uses, etc.  A little bit of coding would improve nearly every customers EN experience, and save EN much bandwidth as well.

I recently agreed to have my IS team start using OneNote for documentation.  I see nothing here that would encourage me to change my mind...but selective sync might.

[DTLow 5,736]

4 hours ago, David Reed said:

I find it unacceptable that this feature isn't available yet.  I can't imagine how this isn't available, it's such an obvious fix for so many people for so many issues, and the only up-side to it I can see is driving us the number of EN accounts by forcing people to have separate EN accounts for personal vs. work uses, etc.

I understand why they implemented this for mobile accounts - storage space on devices is limit
I don't see the urgency for desktop computers with bigger storage resources - can you elaborate on the issues you see for yourself?

[gustavgi 308]

I am pretty sure that they will never implement this, as it would be impossible to implement without also implementing a system limit (which will likely be smaller than the number that's causing you disk issues), or increasing the price to match other cloud services. The free space on OneNote is 5GB, as an comparison. If you want the space you are asking for, you have to pay $10/month on Google Drive, iCloud or OneDrive.

And in the light of the the recent "backlash" of increasing the price, I guess a new price hike is not something they will do again very soon. Evernote also doesn't want to be a cloud storage service, but a note taking service. That's also why they recently partnered with Google Drive.

[DTLow 5,736]

1 minute ago, gustavgi said:

I am pretty sure that they will never implement this, as it would be impossible to implement without also implementing a system limit (which will likely be smaller than the number that's causing you disk issues), or increasing the price to match other cloud services. The free space on OneNote is 15GB, as an comparison. If you want the space you are asking for, you have to pay $10/month on Google Drive, iCloud or OneDrive.

And in the light of the the recent "backlash" of increasing the price, I guess a new price hike is not something they will do again very soon. Evernote also doesn't want to be a cloud storage service, but a note taking service. That's also why they recently partnered with Google Drive.

I'm not sure what you're talking about.
This discussion is on selective sync (offline notebooks) that has already been implemented on the mobile platforms.

[gustavgi 308]

14 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I'm not sure what you're talking about.
This discussion is on selective sync (offline notebooks) that has already been implemented on the mobile platforms.

I'm talking about that fact that some people in this thread want selective sync because their local EN database file takes up too much space on their laptop hard drive. But EN doesn't charge enough to give everyone unlimited cloud storage, even though that is basically what people are refering to in this thread. At this point in time, your cloud storage will be limited to the free space on your hard drive. This means that some people with larger hard drives have the possibility to use EN in a way that EN isn't intended for (when you look at the price and compare with the competitors). But they can let this go for now I guess. But if selective sync were to be implemented, then everybody could place a complete movie collection in EN (in theory, as you also have a note limit), only being limited by their monthly upload...

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, gustavgi said:

At this point in time, your cloud storage will be limited to the free space on your hard drive.

I don't think thats correct.
Some people are using Evernote via the web and mobile platforms only.
Their data is only stored in the cloud, not on a hard disk.

Its an interesting perspective on the request.
Of course, users are still bound by the monthly upload limits.
If that was unlimited, I could see some users abusing the service

[gustavgi 308]

11 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I don't think thats correct.
Some people are using Evernote via the web and mobile platforms only.
Their data is only stored in the cloud, not on a hard disk.

Sure, but as with the people with large hard drives that can keep everything in EN, my guess is that EN is ok with that for now as long as they are far from a large number. I also guess that the people that only use the web service aren't the ones uploading a large number of big files either..

With a desktop app you can just let it sync in the background in a far more convenient way. So if you make it very easy for everyone to just upload stuff in EN like a dedicated cloud storage service, my guess is that there are many more people like those in this thread that would gladly use/"abuse" that function.

A 50 GB cap or something similar for everybody wouldn't be far away at that point then.

[CalS 5,280]

3 hours ago, DTLow said:

If that was unlimited, I could see some users abusing the service

As they apparently did when unlimited was the case for a while.

[chirmer 567]

10 hours ago, David Reed said:

I find it unacceptable that this feature isn't available yet.  I can't imagine how this isn't available, it's such an obvious fix for so many people for so many issues, and the only up-side to it I can see is driving us the number of EN accounts by forcing people to have separate EN accounts for personal vs. work uses, etc.  A little bit of coding would improve nearly every customers EN experience, and save EN much bandwidth as well.

I recently agreed to have my IS team start using OneNote for documentation.  I see nothing here that would encourage me to change my mind...but selective sync might.

I won't presume to know why Evernote hasn't implemented this yet, because I don't work there. For quite some time, the Evernote text editor handled lists pretty stinkily. People complained and complained, saying "it needs to be fixed, why hasn't it been fixed yet?!" when it turned out they had to completely rewrite the editor to make it work. So something simple, or seemingly simple, took quite a bit of work to enable. Perhaps this is the case here.

But here are my thoughts. We get a recent price hike. Free users are limited on the devices they can use (as in, limited on how much data they can pull from the servers at one time). Perhaps this is on the table? Fewer free users pulling data means more bandwidth for paying users. More bandwidth for... say... not downloading all notebooks locally. 

Just thinking out loud... but the first thing I thought of when I saw the free user device limit was freed bandwidth. I wonder what that will bring...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

6 hours ago, DTLow said:

I understand why they implemented this for mobile accounts - storage space on devices is limit
I don't see the urgency for desktop computers with bigger storage resources - can you elaborate on the issues you see for yourself?

IT'S MATH

The answer is math. If Evernote actually allowed me to take full advantage of the upload amount we pay for as premium users (at one point, it was even unlimited, but let's stick with the current 10GB per month limit), over time, given the 100,000 note limit and the individual note limit size, the theoretical storage limit for an account is roughly 9TB. Does anyone have a 9TB local drive? No.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

But, Mac Math is the most painful math of all. 10GB of uploads per month x 12 months of service = 120GB of storage for Evernote, not including the necessary (and unnecessary) bloat that comes with an account. I wouldn't even make it a few months through a premium subscription. Apple devices typically come with 128 or 256GB standard, and it can be prohibitively expensive to increase local storage beyond that (the "Apple Tax"), not to mention a bit ridiculous to pay hundreds of dollars every few years (when you upgrade your computer) for extra space that you need for your Evernote notes. About 6 years ago, I maxed out the available storage on my computer (that was back when the monthly upload was maxed out at 1GB, which people at the time said was a huge amount, LOL), and I haven't been able to use Evernote to store "everything" (or even "lots of things") since 2013. This doesn't even touch on some of Evernote's other scalability issues.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=127

So much for a one-hundred year company. Maybe, if you just want one-hundred years of shopping lists

USE CASE

It's pretty easy to max out your drive if you take going paperless to its logical conclusion, and you happen to work with a lot of paper. In my case, I regularly scanning hundreds of documents a week into PDF form, because lots and lots of paper comes my way. So, this is going to continue being a problem for the rest of my career. And, for businesses, I imagine the problem is much larger. 

IT'S AN OLD PROBLEM EVERNOTE HAS ALREADY ACKNOWLEDGED

Evernote's former CEO recognized this as soon as the app launched and said selective sync would be necessary. One of the former development heads said they were working on it, and recognized how important it was. It's not as if this is some isolated case restricted to a few users who want to store their video libraries here or something. This is a longstanding issue baked into the product. The connection with mobile in this context is usually the comparison of features -- selective sync is a technology that does not need to be invented, because it is already in use on mobile. Evernote simply has to extend its use to the desktop.

WORKAROUNDS

Besides the "textification" workaround mentioned in the first link, other workarounds include using mobile (which would be very, very difficult to upload much data into, but I suppose that could theoretically be done by loading stuff into other apps and "opening" the files in Evernote) or spending a lot of time clicking around on the web client (it only just came out of beta). Both of these experiences (especially the web client) severely restrict your ability to use the app (see comments on these forums for details) and offer you no local "backup" of your files if you happen to have less than blazing fast (and unlimited) Internet connections. Yikes. I'd be a bit nervous entrusting 9TB of my most important data to a third party without backups. Nevermind the obvious problems encountered when trying to do anything with those attachments you've uploaded. I don't think this is a viable plan for Evernote going forward. Neither the Web client nor the mobile clients are meant to handle such use cases. 

COMPETITORS

Are there other apps out there that can easily handle this problem? Yes! This isn't some obscure issue. Evernote's competitors long ago dealt with the issue of scalability in a paperless world. I regularly, and easily manage hundreds of GB of data with one other app at a fraction of Evernote's cost (the one I am primarily using is now cheaper to buy outright and use for several years than it would cost for a single year subscription to Evernote -- a sobering thought). So, why bother with Evernote? Well, it still has some great features unique to the service, which might be a discussion for another thread (in my mind, something like the wonderful user experience offered by Apple stuff, even though each device / application doesn't necessarily have the best specs in the industry). The effortless sync is the best part of it for me, though. When it works (it seems to be getting especially good these days), I can easily move among devices and do amazing things that no other app can manage, especially on the iPad. The potential is just amazing. With selective sync (and encrypted notebooks -- another longtime feature request), I think Evernote could differentiate itself from the competition and justify its pricing structure, especially for businesses and "power" users.

At the moment, my usage of Evernote is so restricted, it actually isn't worth the price of a cup of coffee every month. Sorry Evernoters. This isn't a complaint about having to pay money for something I use or anything like that. I happily paid for the app in the past, and would have no qualms about paying for it now, but cannot justify it to myself right now, because I am exceedingly unlikely to buy into a subscription model that promises me hundreds of gigabytes of uploads and virtually unlimited storage on the servers (this is what I pay for, right?), but only if I never install the app on my computer, or only use it on my iPad (making it almost impossible to actually use what I pay for). It just doesn't make sense. I'd like to hear from Evernote someday why they still have not introduced this.

While Evernote continues to muck around with the pricing without implementing this feature, Evernote's competitors already offer alternatives that easily handle hundreds of gigabytes of data (with advanced AI features, optical character recognition for PDFs, total encryption, and a host of other features as well). If we were still back in 2008, Evernote could afford to dawdle, but I think they are years behind on some of these things (especially selective sync and encryption), and they really need to rethink their priorities. Honestly, at this point, considering where the CEO comes from, and the recent integration with Google, the best explanation for still trying to go forward without coding in the selective sync is to chuck it all and fold Evernote into Google (I have come to suspect that might be the plan, because it might finally explain the long delay in implementing selective sync, but I hope I am completely wrong about this) -- a new old service with selective sync using Google Drive (wonderful for people without any qualms about privacy or giving up the data to be mined).

[DTLow 5,736]

44 minutes ago, GrumpyMonkey said:

The answer is math. If Evernote actually allowed me to take full advantage of the upload amount we pay for as premium users (at one point, it was even unlimited, but let's stick with the current 10GB per month limit), over time, given the 100,000 note limit and the individual note limit size, the theoretical storage limit for an account is roughly 9TB. Does anyone have a 9TB local drive? No.

So @gustavgi Was right; there's a good reason for Evernote to not implement this feature

Very sneaky @David Reed, @Hongbo-Miao  

I thought you were pushing this request for something like not having personal notes on a work machine

It didn't occur to me to use Evernote as a file storage service

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Let's work together.

While we can debate amongst ourselves (who are not EN employees) why Evernote has done, or has not done, this or that, it is really irrelevant.  Rather than argue the "why" details, I submit we should stay focused on providing more and more use cases for selective sync.  You may not agree with someone else's use case, and that is fine.  But taken as a whole, it should make for a compelling argument to provide this critical feature.

So, I'll  start with my primary use case:

Use Case #1 -- Some Laptops Don't have Adequate storage for the entire Evernote database

• I have a MacBook Air 11-in with only 128 GB of storage that I use mostly for travel and meetings out of the office.
• I cannot easily or economically upgrade the storage on this laptop
• I don't need my entire Evernote database offline when I am using this laptop.
• I usually need only my current projects/activities
• Anything I don't have stored offline/locally, I am willing to get from the Internet (connection to EN Cloud Service)
• IOW, my use of this laptop is very similar to that of an iPad or iPhone, but I much prefer the EN Mac app over the EN iOS app.

May I suggest that if you have a similar use case, that you click the "like" button, and, if you would like, quote it and add your support and additional details.

If you don't have this use case, then just ignore it.  Why bother to disagree and give Evernote ammunition to discount?

Again, it is the collective weight of all of our use cases that will make a more compelling story.

So, even if you have stated it before, restate your use case as succinctly as possible below.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

14 hours ago, DTLow said:

So @gustavgi Was right; there's a good reason for Evernote to not implement this feature

Very sneaky @David Reed, @Hongbo-Miao  

I thought you were pushing this request for something like not having personal notes on a work machine

It didn't occur to me to use Evernote as a file storage service

i don't understand what i said that ought to discourage evernote from implementing this, what i said that was sneaky, or where i said i was using this as a storage service. to reiterate, the former ceo recognized the need for this and evernote was working on it -- there is nothing nefarious or strange going on here.

maybe i was unclear. here is a use case from last week's blog that is actually quite close to what i do.

https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/06/24/8-ways-evernote-helps-genealogy/

basically, instead of my family's genealogy, i am looking as a historian at the genealogies of families in sixteenth century japan from a certain area of the country. evernote really is an excellent service for this. just as evernote recommends, i want to scan stuff and put it into evernote. however, due to the math i mentioned earlier, that is simply not feasible, and so i cannot effectively do my research (unless i use clumsy workarounds, as mentioned above). does this make sense? 

another use case is for teaching and admistration at the university, which is similar to this blog post. going paperless really takes advantage of amazing tools in evernote, but that is where the data quickly builds up.

https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/02/25/create-paperless-office-evernote/

evernote offers a premium plan with 10gb of uploads per month, so even with apple's most expensive device (the mac pro), you will max out your drive in just a few months. it's untenable in its current form and i simply cannot get the amount that i would pay for each month, so evernote has effectively offered a plan that would be perfect for me, but hobbled the service to make sure i can't actually use it. all i am asking the company to do is to extend the functionality they have on mobile to the desktop.

it's cool if they don't. that's their choice. perhaps there is premium level money in shopping lists and other use cases that require less server space or bandwidth than my use case -- people are willing to pay $8 a month for what, though? anyhow, their competitors long ago solved this problem for a fraction of the cost, so as much as i enjoy using evernote, and as much as i want them to succeed (as mentioned above, it does offer an amazing service), i can go elsewhere. it's a shame, and i don't understand it, but i can accept it. i just want to be clear what impact their decision has on real world use cases.

 

[gustavgi 308]

8 hours ago, JMichaelTX said:

If you don't have this use case, then just ignore it.  Why bother to disagree and give Evernote ammunition to discount?

There is no reason for trying to be "sneaky", by avoiding to discuss the eventual negative consequences for Evernote as a result of the implementation of a request. I think it's pretty fair to assume that Evernote go over all those effects pretty in-depth before deciding to go with a feature.

So if I point out some obvious problems with the implementation in a thread like this, I at least give the user a chance to argue against it.

[niklass 2]

In a nutshell:

- there are important use cases for the feature

- implementation should be fairly easy

but:

- today we get the illusion of unlimited space, while our sleek macbooks limit the actual space used to some GB

so: 

- if this feature is implemented, it might break the business case of Evernote: (e.g. 1TB on AWS S3 cost about 30$/month)

- to allow the feature, we would have to pay for storage / accept storage limits

Are you willing to do this?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

I've got no illusion of unlimited space. I pay other companies to use their servers (1TB a month on my service is about $12 a month). I'd be happy to pay Evernote for theirs. But, I thought that was what the $8 a month premium was for -- keeping stuff in there indefinitely has been the value proposition all along. Selective sync has also long been part of it, though mainly on mobile, and in an alternative form for Evernote business (Business library that is so very close to functioning like selective sync, but there is no searching available). 

But, let's say for the sake of argument that they have avoided doing this because making space for large accounts is cost prohibitive (I don't think it is, but let's go with it). I could see paying $12 a month for that. $30 might be a bit on the high end, and I doubt I will ever pay $30 a month for any single app, no matter how nice it is. IF that is the reason for the resistance from Evernote, then all they have to do is come out and say it. Then, you know where things stand. 

 

[Cevetone 1]

Hello,

I would like to see the ability to selectively sync notebooks across multiple devices.  For example, I have multiple notebooks on my home computer and iPad including notebooks that are personal and work related.  Let's say I have the following notebooks Personal, Fun, Work.  

On my work computer, I do not want to see the personal and fun, only the work notebook.  I would like a way to control access to the notebooks that I do not want to see on each device.  So, on my work computer only the Work notebook, but on my iPad, iPhone, and home computer all my folders personal, fun, and work.

 

I think this would be a great addition.

Thank you,

Joseph

 

[Frits 1]

just for the statistics: I would really appreciate the requested functionality.

Frits

[ntahall 2]

+1

[graceandlucy 0]

Yes please have selective sync for Evernote Mac. I can selectively sync on my ipad and phone, so why not on desktop. I have used evernote for 6 years, and have a HUGE account. I want to use the application on my Mac, rather than in the cloud, but each time I try with a new computer it takes up soooo much space I end up deleting it.

[sinman 3]

+1

I have a Windows tablet with only 32GB and my EN is 10GB. I really need selective sync.

[lifeavion2 2]

+1

Deal breaker, confidentiality issues do not allow me to copy all my notebooks to all my computers. So I'm looking for replacement.

[ctoepker 1]

Yes, yes, yes.

 

I would love to synch only selected Notebooks on certain PCs. I (like many others here) have a work PC, where I naturally keep work-related notes. Notes that I'd like to synch to my overall Evernotes...but *not* vice versa. I do *not* want my personal notes and ideas on the work computer. In fact, if I do...it literally becomes theirs, by virtue of their digital workplace policies. 

 

So, please, please, please...make it so that I can install the desktop client and then select which Notebooks to synch.

 

Thanks in advance!

[lpr 35]

On 5/22/2016 at 11:43 AM, BSR said:

Hi all,

We appreciate you writing in; keep voting on your request for this feature on the Mac in this thread so our developers can see how many of our users want it and keep the votes in one place. Cheers!

 

This guy pops in to tell us to use this thread and upvote, clearly the EN community cares a great deal about this, yet the EN staff is never heard from again on the issue... Classic EN. Just can't listen to their users to save their lives, it's exasperating. 

[BSR 208]

10 hours ago, lpr said:

This guy pops in to tell us to use this thread and upvote, clearly the EN community cares a great deal about this, yet the EN staff is never heard from again on the issue... Classic EN. Just can't listen to their users to save their lives, it's exasperating. 

 

We on the Support team welcome feedback and requests for features, and do pass these along to the development and management teams. Our development team does their best to review the requests on these forums for consideration, however posting a feature request is not a guarantee it will be implemented. While the development team doesn't always have time to reply to feature request threads, your votes do have an impact on what gets brought up in discussions as to what features to implement in future updates. However, feature requests are just that: requests. We can not promise that requested features will be added.

The Support team does not have the ability to provide the reasoning behind why the development team has not implemented certain features, because we don't work behind the scenes to know exactly what kind of resources are needed to do so. We also do not publicly share our roadmap for future updates or features.

[EAngell 4]

I am desperate for a Selective Sync feature -- which I consider a basic feature for any similar product.

1. Space constraints: My work laptop (which I travel with) has 8GB of space left on it because I'm unable to only sync my work-related notebooks. One purpose for using cloud storage is to reduce reliance on local hard drives for storage space.

2. Corporate Policy: Our company policy dictates that personal data NOT be kept on our work laptops. I cannot comply with that policy AND use Evernote Windows for work notes without the ability to selectively sync.

3. Privacy: Our company admins have remote access to our machines. Since I have personal data in some of my notebooks, that data is available to the company if I cannot selectively sync.

I'm a Premium user, but if I this issue won't be resolved in very short order I'll have no reason to continue my paid subscription; I'll either need to find a different product, or consider using free accounts to keep my personal and work content separate.

[EAngell 4]

On 7/1/2016 at 5:40 AM, gustavgi said:

I'm talking about that fact that some people in this thread want selective sync because their local EN database file takes up too much space on their laptop hard drive. But EN doesn't charge enough to give everyone unlimited cloud storage, even though that is basically what people are refering to in this thread. At this point in time, your cloud storage will be limited to the free space on your hard drive. This means that some people with larger hard drives have the possibility to use EN in a way that EN isn't intended for (when you look at the price and compare with the competitors). But they can let this go for now I guess. But if selective sync were to be implemented, then everybody could place a complete movie collection in EN (in theory, as you also have a note limit), only being limited by their monthly upload...

The solution for this objection would be to make selective sync a Plus or Premium feature for the desktop products. In fact, it would likely be a strong encouragement for convincing people to subscribe over using the free product.

Per my recent comment, I'm a Premium subscriber -- and frankly, I don't have that much stuff archived. I do have a very small had drive on my work laptop that I have no control over. If I have to start carrying a portable drive or stop using the Windows desktop app on my work laptop, I'll be better off using multiple free accounts or using a different product altogether.

[gustavgi 308]

32 minutes ago, EAngell said:

I am desperate for a Selective Sync feature -- which I consider a basic feature for any similar product.

1. Space constraints: My work laptop (which I travel with) has 8GB of space left on it because I'm unable to only sync my work-related notebooks. One purpose for using cloud storage is to reduce reliance on local hard drives for storage space.

2. Corporate Policy: Our company policy dictates that personal data NOT be kept on our work laptops. I cannot comply with that policy AND use Evernote Windows for work notes without the ability to selectively sync.

3. Privacy: Our company admins have remote access to our machines. Since I have personal data in some of my notebooks, that data is available to the company if I cannot selectively sync.

I'm a Premium user, but if I this issue won't be resolved in very short order I'll have no reason to continue my paid subscription; I'll either need to find a different product, or consider using free accounts to keep my personal and work content separate.

A form of selective sync has been added in the latest beta. The desktop version will only download the content that you are accessing. But you aren't really given a choice of what you want online and offline.

[EAngell 4]

1 minute ago, gustavgi said:

A form of selective sync has been added in the latest beta. The desktop version will only download the content that you are accessing. But you aren't really given a choice of what you want online and offline.

Thank you very much for posting this information. While I'd not consider it the ideal solution, it will hopefully at least provide some short-term relief for my situation.

If possible, could you elaborate on what you mean or how this works re: "the desktop version will only download content that you are accessing?"

[CalS 5,280]

43 minutes ago, EAngell said:

Thank you very much for posting this information. While I'd not consider it the ideal solution, it will hopefully at least provide some short-term relief for my situation.

If possible, could you elaborate on what you mean or how this works re: "the desktop version will only download content that you are accessing?"

It's called On Demand Sync in the current Windows Beta.  If you turn the option on and you rebuild your EN data base, then notes are only downloaded to your local data base when they are accessed.  Eventually should you access every note your data base would be back to the same size, but that could take a while.  Downside would be when you are without an internet connection since you won't be able to access notes not on your PC.  You can go to the beta thread and see some of the posts regarding this function.

 

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

Voted. We need this ASAP.

Imagine how much space Evernote takes from Business users. 10GB max per user, multiplied by 50 users = 50GB possible data added per month. For a standard 256GB  SSD, this means you will need to uninstall Evernote from your laptop in about 3-4 months.

Evernote will not prosper in the Business environment with this kind of imitation.

[DTLow 5,736]

4 minutes ago, Eduardo Estefano said:

Imagine how much space Evernote takes from Business users. 10GB max per user, multiplied by 50 users = 50GB possible data added per month. For a standard 256GB  SSD, this means you will need to uninstall Evernote from your laptop in about 3-4 months.

Evernote will not prosper in the Business environment with this kind of imitation.

My understanding of Evernote Business is that notebooks are shared to selected users.  It's not a requirement that every user receive the full set of notes.

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

This is true DTLow. But, most likely, the decision maker in the company will have access to all notebooks. 

At least this is the case on my company. But luckly we are just 6 users and we don't have lots of images in our workflows.

There is always a workaround: Create an "Archive" notebook and after you are done with a project, move the project to the Archive. And if you need to keep track of permission access to notebooks, create an Archive notebook for each Real Notebook.

But.....would be much easier to control what is downloaded to your laptop with a native functionality (selective sync, archive, or something else)

[Santanu 3]

On 22/05/2016 at 11:43 PM, BSR said:

Hi all,

We appreciate you writing in; keep voting on your request for this feature on the Mac in this thread so our developers can see how many of our users want it and keep the votes in one place. Cheers!

 

Present vote count is 53 on this thread alone, not counting the other duplicate threads for the same feature. 

[Santanu 3]

On 07/06/2017 at 10:09 PM, Eduardo Estefano said:

Voted. We need this ASAP.

Imagine how much space Evernote takes from Business users. 10GB max per user, multiplied by 50 users = 50GB possible data added per month. For a standard 256GB  SSD, this means you will need to uninstall Evernote from your laptop in about 3-4 months.

Evernote will not prosper in the Business environment with this kind of imitation.

Everyone who used evernote for any practical use would understand how badly this feature is needed. No explanation needed. 

[DTLow 5,736]

45 minutes ago, nemi said:

the size of my mandatory-sync evernote data finally began impacting the performance of my machine.

Just curious what that limit is.  I'm currently around 10GB and 10K notes.  I'm counting on having capacity to grow before I have to take action on this

I don't consider it a kill switch but I'll have to look at solutions.  I see Selective Sync on the mobile platforms, and Demand Sync on the Windows platform; I'm thinking it's a matter of time when we see it on the Mac platform

[nemi 1]

how "full" you can fill your hard drive without experiencing performance issues is relative to each machine. conventional wisdom says keep about half of your hard drive available, but its quite possible to fill it to 90% or more and not experience any negative results on some machines. in my case, my evernote data is approaching 300GB.
with only 10GB,  you probably have tons of room to grow, depending on how much storage your hard drive contains.

[DTLow 5,736]

37 minutes ago, nemi said:

in my case, my evernote data is approaching 300GB.

Yes, my Mac might choke at 300GB.  

We are fortunate with the Mac database that it's not centralized in one file; each note has its own folder

I'm guessing you're storing some large file attachments.  If you're interested in continuing with Evernote, you might think about storing these files externally and just including a file link in the notes

 

[nemi 1]

22 hours ago, DTLow said:

I'm thinking it's a matter of time when we see it on the Mac platform

well at 9,700 post in this forum you might be right "evernote user" to help evernote customers understand the roadmap in a more transparent manner instead of shifting the core topic of the thread. when is selective sync for mac OS scheduled for release?

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

Hi Nemi. DTLow is not an employee of Evernote. Employees are marked "EMPLOYEE" under their names.

[DTLow 5,736]

2 hours ago, nemi said:

when is selective sync for mac OS scheduled for release?

Evernote doesn't give us release dates, but I keep an eye on the other platforms as an indication of what's coming

[malcolm.b.anderson 13]

On 5/22/2016 at 8:43 AM, BSR said:

Hi all,

We appreciate you writing in; keep voting on your request for this feature on the Mac in this thread so our developers can see how many of our users want it and keep the votes in one place. Cheers!

 

99% of the requests are applicable to both Windows and Mac - I want the same selective synch feature on Windows.  Right now I have to use the web-app (which is better than one-note, but still sucks).  Why does evernote seem to treat it's windows client and it's mac client as 2 COMPLETELY different products, with completely different user bases?  If I have an issue I seem to have to make a comment and vote on the Mac side, and then search for the same issue on the Windows side, and then make another comment there.

[DTLow 5,736]

13 minutes ago, malcolm.b.anderson said:

Why does evernote seem to treat it's windows client and it's mac client as 2 COMPLETELY different products, with completely different user bases?

There is a General Forum at https://discussion.evernote.com/forum/53-evernote-general-discussions/ for discussions and feature requests.  I try to  use it for cross-platform posts.

[rotev 0]

Any new developments in this regard? I would LOVE to choose what gets synched to my desktop and what stays online only. 

[DTLow 5,736]

32 minutes ago, rotev said:

Any new developments in this regard?

No changes for the Mac platform

Windows has a "demand sync" feature.  No selection, but inactive notes are not stored locally

[mtbgreg 4]

+1 

I also think this is a critical feature for Evernote to incorporate.

[DTLow 5,736]

52 minutes ago, mtbgreg said:

I also think this is a critical feature for Evernote to incorporate.

You're welcome to indicate your support for this request using the voting buttons in the top left corner of the discussion.

You didn't mention your use case for this feature.  

Database size?  My database is currently around 15GB; not an issue with my total available storage.  

I see benefits in having a local copy of my data.  I have full databases on my Mac and iPad

[mtbgreg 4]

22 minutes ago, DTLow said:

You're welcome to indicate your support for this request using the voting buttons in the top left corner of the discussion.

You didn't mention your use case for this feature.  

Database size?  My database is currently around 15GB; not an issue with my total available storage.  

I see benefits in having a local copy of my data.  I have full copies on my Mac and iPad

I've added my vote.

My primary use case is that I use some Evernote folders to hold backups of information, emails, photos, etc. that I may want to reference at some future point in time, but that I don't access regularly. I may file things away for future reference, but not need immediate access to. Other notebooks get referenced more frequently.

Also, I agree with having local data backups, however, I have my Evernote account synced to multiple devices. With over a terabyte of space on my desktop, it's easy to keep all of my notebooks local there. But on some older laptop computers with smaller harddrives, not only am I afraid of running out of space in the future, but generally speaking, the greater the percentage of harddrive space that's used up, the slower the computer runs. Obviously this isn't an excellent computer--like I said, I'm talking about old devices. That's why I'd like the ability to, say, only sync certain notebooks to older devices and all of my notebooks to newer devices with more space and speed.

Especially as my Evernote database increases in size over the years, and as the number of devices that my Evernote account is connected to grows, I require greater and greater flexibility for database management.

[Ravindranath Akila 0]

+1

[R3DDVELVET 1]

+1

There are hundreds of votes for this across multiple overlapping feature requests!

[de Bang 0]

if this happens will i be able to keep using evernote as a student. because if my notebooks sync i can't use evernote for my exam. 

[olpa-swiss 0]

MY DB is 39GB now - I am in big trouble on my worklaptop wit SSD. I have to get a solution now....! I need to remove my main account now from this device with big troubles.

Paying so much money year over year and now this year much more again.... good solved on iphone, so it is POSSIBLE to DO and such a standard feature isnt available since years..., big joke!

[CalS 5,280]

2 hours ago, olpa-swiss said:

MY DB is 39GB now - I am in big trouble on my worklaptop wit SSD. I have to get a solution now....! I need to remove my main account now from this device with big troubles.

Paying so much money year over year and now this year much more again.... good solved on iphone, so it is POSSIBLE to DO and such a standard feature isnt available since years..., big joke!

If Windows, you can turn on On Demand Sync on your work machine and keep the complete data base on your home machine.

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, KGT said:

With Mac, they go to the cloud before I get chance to organise them, including some sensitive stuff that I don’t want there.

 

I can’t select my local notebook as the default for import.

The default notebook restriction applies to all platforms; it has to be a cloud notebook.

When I scan documents, I file them to an import folder.  I have control as to which notebook they get imported to.         create note  from file bbbbbbbbb  notebook "aaaaaaaaa"

[KGT 7]

Well I hadn’t realised that Import Folders was another feature missing from the Mac version.  But with your prompting I got the import Folder Action script to run which asks which notebook to send the notes to, and it can be a local notebook.  So the automatic sync is no longer a security issue for me.  From here: http://veritrope.com/evernote-desktop-folder/

Thank you ! 

[DTLow 5,736]

15 minutes ago, KGT said:

Well I hadn’t realised that Import Folders was another feature missing from the Mac version.

Mac's have import folders; but it's OS based, not application based.
It's a little extra setup, but much more flexible than the import folders in Evernote/Windows.

[Ionut Oprea 2]

I've uninstalled evernote on my macbook, it was taking 25 gb of valuable space, from now on I'm only using the web version now because of the lack of selective sync.

[PinkElephant 8,088]

There are 2 competing threads (or better: on both issues multiple threads) running:

• Selective sync for the desktop clients, to avoid that all stuff from the cloud Storage is building up on the local disk
• Full download for the mobile clients, especially driven by powerful machines like the iPad Pro Series.

It seems the best solution would be a sort of unified client, where the mix of downloaded and web based notes could be set by the user, at the same time defining memory consumption and related functionality like multi-note operations (merging, batch tagging an moving etc.).

This could be controlled by 2 basic sets of installations, one completely web-based (like todays mobile clients), one completely local database (like today’s desktop clients), and the option to select this notebook by notebook.

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

This could be controlled by 2 basic sets of installations,

Or one installation that allows selective notebook sync   😋

[PinkElephant 8,088]

However ....

Today we have 2 extremes: Desktop, where you can’t „unsync“ selectively, and mobile, where you need to sync, even if you downloaded all your stuff. I think most users can live with these basic setups. So I would set these as starting points, one for desktops, one for mobiles.

Power users should then have a chance to put their individual selection somewhere in between. I just hope that all that do are aware of the implications the choice will have ...

[Ionut Oprea 2]

theyre the same thing actually: add/remove evernote notebooks to the sync on all platforms.

[PinkElephant 8,088]

Sorry, not the same:

If you are on a desktop, you have a mobile database. Not syncing means you can have a local notebook, it just will not sync. This exists, called local notebooks. However, all the other notebooks will sync down, master copy on the server. I understood this should be avoided, because some users are on desktop OS computers with little memory (like some Apple laptops with small SSDs).

On mobile devices, not syncing makes less sense, because there is no local database. The only local database you can create by setting notebooks to offline. This means they will sync (unlike local notebooks on the desktop, that will NOT sync), but offline notebooks contain the only notes you can work on when offline. This is helpful when you want to save on your mobile data. Plume, or are offline (abroad, without roaming, on a plane, in a train etc.).

Because the two use cases are different, and the basic setup of the clients is different, there is no „one fixes all“ approach - or I am not able to see it.

However, I have as well voted in favor of being able to select notebooks to sync, or not to sync. For me, the more relevant case is the laptop with a tiny SSD, combined with a large EN database. Maybe one works on a home desktop with all the power, and just wants to take a part of all with him on a laptop. 

This would speak in favor of making the choice on the device, not centralized on the server. Like „install EN, dial into your account, get a list of notebooks, and be able to select „all“ or only a part of them for syncing“. And of course the chance to change this whenever you want, plus having the un-synced ones be securely deleted from the local disk drive.

[DTLow 5,736]

12 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Not syncing means you can have a local notebook, it just will not sync.

Local Notebooks is a completely different discussion.

This discussion is titled selective sync; offline notebooks would be more appropriate