Evernote to phase out Local notebooks

[tavor 668]

In the following thread, a user discovered that he/she did not have the option to create a Local notebook: 

EN provided the user a workaround, and also communicated the following to the user:

"I was forwarded this ticket from another representative in order to help you out with the inability of your Evernote account to create local notebooks.

This is by design, but there is a current work around.

A little back story - Evernote is studying the possibility of eliminating local notebooks all together and moving to a completely synced service. The reason we're trying this out is because synced notes can always count with our Note History feature as a back up, or "safety net" to recover previous versions of your note if something is erased by mistake. Local notebooks don't currently have any backup tool as such, therefore we feel that this is not the fair and compete solution our users expect from us."

 

I really hope this is some kind of misunderstanding, but if EN is indeed going to eliminate Local notebooks, perhaps Evernote should change their motto from "Your external brain" to "Your external brain for anything you are OK with hackers, foreign governments, NSA, and Evernote employees seeing."

[gazumped 11,652]

I agree it would be really bad to lose local notebooks,  but see my comments here too...

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

IF THIS POLICY CHANGE IS REALLY HAPPENING...

I don't know what is "fair" or "complete" about removing a feature that many users depend upon to keep sensitive documents (financial records, medical records, passwords, etc.) off the cloud. I'm sure there are plenty of users who complain when they muck up their accounts, but the same thing happens if they forget a password, so by their logic, maybe Evernote should just abandon encryption as well.

I suspect these are merely proximate causes, though, and the underlying issue is that local notebooks are a pain to deal with for developers and customer service, because they are clearly going against the grain. I guess that it isn't easy to match up syncing and non-syncing stuff, and every time you overhaul the app and force a rebuild of the database, something inevitably goes wrong. Maybe this is the best thing for Evernote to do (from a business perspective) -- as Phil once said, if you aren't comfortable sticking your stuff online (I believe he was talking about businesses) then Evernote isn't for you. With few encryption options and no way to keep your stuff off the cloud, it seems impossible to really talk about this as a place to "remember everything," unless, of course, "everything" amounts to a few web clippings and grocery lists.

What also bothers me is that Evernote is dropping core features (yet again) without a word to anyone. This is the same pattern we have seen in the past. One day things just disappear. I don't think that is a smart way to run any business, but I've already said my piece on this in numerous other threads over the years. Sorry to see this.

 

 

 

[tavor 668]

It may be that EN will make Local notebooks a paid subscription feature, though that may be completely off the mark given that the user who couldn't create a local notebook and received the response quoted in the OP is a Premium subscriber.

 A complete phaseout would be suicide, IMHO, because someone else will come along and offer an app that offers both online and local storage, and why would users bother with 2 apps - one for their sensitive data, and one for what amounts to, as GM put it, web clippings and grocery lists.

Or maybe 20-somethings have grown up online and are comfortable putting all their data online? I would have thought that high profile data breaches of companies like Target (which I imagine has an online security budget > 10x EN's online security budget) as well as the iPhone hack that resulted in nude photos of celebrities being stolen from their iPhone accounts, among many other known (nevermind unknown) data breaches, would have taught consumers that nothing stored online is truly safe from prying eyes.

[CalS 5,280]

A business has to do what a business has to do to survive, and sometimes businesses just get stupid.  Maybe there's some arithmetic that says cutting local notebooks makes sense, maybe it's just a thought someone had.  In any case I've been involved in enough turnarounds to know that you don't axe your way to prosperity.  You have to maintain a value proposition of some sort.

For sure though, you don't make impactful changes in what appears to be stealth mode.  That never works well.  "Say it ain't so, Joe! "

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

long ago, evernote buried the local notebooks in the menus, and i'd guess that most people don't even know they exist by now, so it probably doesn't make economic sense to keep them. they're pouring development manhours into a feature few people use. the loss of local notebooks wouldn't surprise me -- i suspected they were already on the chopping block (libin once mentioned his regret over making them, if i remember correctly). i'm more disappointed with how they are apparently going about making the policy change.

but, if there is no zero-knowledge encryption option for notebooks, and no local option, where do we put sensitive data? i doubt you'll find many security experts who recommend storing tax documents, medical records, and so forth unencrypted on the cloud. yet, that is basically what evernote is already telling users to do (literally -- some staff have recommended storing tax info in their accounts). i don't get it.

my fingers are still crossed for the day when evernote manages to fulfill its original  promise to be our personal, "external brains" where we can "remember everything." that'll take encryption (selective sync, and lots of other features), but i doubt we'll see it, because evernote seems to be headed rapidly away from this vision. again, it may be better for evernote overall. we just don't know. i wish them luck with the changes while encouraging them to rethink these unfortunate decisions.

[Nick L. 681]

The statement "local notebooks are about to be dropped from Evernote's service." is inaccurate. After surveying this feature, users will be able to resume local notebook creation in Evernote 6.5. The beta version of 6.5 is readily available to download, and includes the local notebook feature in it.

If you're interested in downloading Evernote 6.5 Beta 2, please see the link below:

 

Thanks,

[tavor 668]

2 hours ago, nicolml said:

The statement "local notebooks are about to be dropped from Evernote's service." is inaccurate. After surveying this feature, users will be able to resume local notebook creation in Evernote 6.5. The beta version of 6.5 is readily available to download, and includes the local notebook feature in it.

If you're interested in downloading Evernote 6.5 Beta 2, please see the link below:

 

Thanks,

I'm very glad to be wrong about this!  

Can you shed some light on the EN response quoted in the OP?

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

3 hours ago, nicolml said:

After surveying this feature, users will be able to resume local notebook creation in Evernote 6.5

Questions:

1. What does this mean?  
2. Were you considering removing Local Notebooks?
3. Were they removed in some prior version of EN Mac?

[Ralph Mrowietz 0]

With Release 6.12 for MAC OS of august 2017, it seems that I can not create LOCAL notebooks anymore. So is this a bug or a silent removal of this feature? Anyone has the same issue?

[Brandon Hill 0]

I just found the same issue. In my case, I'm was only trying the Basic version to test it out.  Is this also true in other 6.12 versions (say Plus or Premium)? 

It was actually this bit of documentation: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005107 that made me decide to give Evernote a try.  I planned on kicking the tires with Basic and local storage until I was certain I was in love with it (and then upgrade). The more I look, the more this feels like gotcha-ware.  Notice how the FAQ on the upload limits ( https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005827-FAQ-for-upload-limits ) skips talking about what happens once the limit happens.  Reading these forums ( https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/79752-how-does-data-limit-work-and-what-happens-if-data-limit-is-reached/ ), it seems like folks have had lots of issues if they hit the limits.  That seems like critical behavior to describe if you care about data. 

For now, I've just reverted to the previous version http://bit.ly/EN6-11. Local storage is still an option there. To get the 6.11 version to load, I had to delete all data stored by the 6.12 version before it would run ( on OSX that is everything under ~/Library/ with com.evernote in the name).  If you are an existing user, this would be bad to do if you did have local storage.

[gazumped 11,652]

On 01/09/2017 at 10:41 AM, Ralph Mrowietz said:

With Release 6.12 for MAC OS of august 2017, it seems that I can not create LOCAL notebooks anymore. So is this a bug or a silent removal of this feature? Anyone has the same issue?

Hi.  If you have a query about a recent release it's usually best to post that in the current release thread.  In this case -

 

[jefito 5,589]

Local notebooks may still be created in the latest Windows client beta (6.7.3.5682)

[DTLow 5,736]

Evernote’s making it less easy to create Local Notebooks.  On Macs we now have to hold down the option key when clicking Evernote > File

The explanation was given in this post

 

[Ralph Mrowietz 0]

On 4.9.2017 at 6:10 AM, DTLow said:

Evernote’s making it less easy to create Local Notebooks.  On Macs we now have to hold down the option key when clicking Evernote > File

The explanation was given in this post

 

This works for me "Hold down the option key BEFORE clicking > File". Tks a lot for the information... well hidden this feature , but happy it still exists 

[geetarplayer 6]

If Local Notebooks go away, bye-bye Evernote, for sure.

[DTLow 5,736]

5 minutes ago, geetarplayer said:

If Local Notebooks go away, bye-bye Evernote, for sure.

There's no current indication that Local Notebooks are being dropped.  Evernote looked into this over a year ago and decided to continue with this feature on the Win/Mac platforms

[Ksalito56 0]

I just upgraded without knowing my local notebooks would be gone.  3 years worth of notes gone, I can't see my local notebooks at all.  I think the upgrade did an automatic index only to the web notebooks.  I don't have internet access so I used only local notebooks now everything is gone.

[gazumped 11,652]

On 09/09/2017 at 9:42 PM, Ksalito56 said:

I just upgraded without knowing my local notebooks would be gone.  3 years worth of notes gone, I can't see my local notebooks at all.  I think the upgrade did an automatic index only to the web notebooks.  I don't have internet access so I used only local notebooks now everything is gone.

Hi.  If you read the above,  you'll see that Evernote just changed the way local notebooks are created.  Nothing in this thread relates to losing local notebooks,  which are stored solely on your computer.  An update should not have affected your notebooks at all.  Have you restarted your device?

If you don't have internet access how did you upgrade?  More information about your exact situation and upgrade process might help us to make some more useful suggestions...

[jefito 5,589]

On 9/9/2017 at 4:42 PM, Ksalito56 said:

I just upgraded without knowing my local notebooks would be gone.  3 years worth of notes gone, I can't see my local notebooks at all.  I think the upgrade did an automatic index only to the web notebooks.  I don't have internet access so I used only local notebooks now everything is gone.

Local notebooks are never synced, so it's impossible for Evernote to make copies of them on a new machine. You are responsible for making sure that content in local notebooks is backed up so that you can move it to a new machine. If you still have access to your old machine or hard drive, then you should be able to restore them.

[Ksalito56 0]

It isn't a new machine, Evernote downloaded an update, did an index and wiped out local files.  It only indexed files on the internet.  Doesn't matter now I uninstalled Evernote and now use Notes that came with my Mac Book.  I think it is going to work just as well as notes for me.  And it's free, plus I can control when it syncs to the cloud.  I have a limited data plan, so Evernote will no longer be a choice for me.

[jefito 5,589]

In that case, you should have been able to recover your local notebooks from Time Machine, I would think (I am not a Mac user)