Problem With Copying & Pasting Checkboxes

[AnikG 0]

In 5.9.9.9915 Windows desktop running Win 8.1 64 bit

When I cut a line containing a checkbox at the beginning of the line and then paste it, the checkbox *looks like* it is placed inside another.  This appears to be just a visual problem.  If I go to another note and come back, the odd visual effect with the "box in box" effect is gone.

[N Allen 15]

I see the same thing except it does not go away by switching to another note and returning.

[Michael Goulding 49]

I've had this issue with checkboxes for a while now. If you copy and paste them, they end up in some weird extra box.

 

[wildcat 0]

I use Evernote to create checklist templates for projects, and thus use checkboxes extensively.  Within the last couple of months, I've run into an issue when copying and pasting lines with checkboxes, where the pasted checkbox appears is in slightly larger box forming a square, see below.

The only way to cleanup the formatting is to delete the pasted checkbox (which also removes the square around it) and manually re-add a checkbox.  This method of "cleanup" is quite painful when constantly copying and pasting or reorganizing lines with checkboxes.

I've tried the "paste and match style" option, but that just replaces the checkbox in the pasted text with "[ ]", which is not desired- I want a checkbox.  This issue has been occurring on 3 different Windows machines, (2) Win7 Pro and (1) Win8 Pro.

Please help.

[Austin G 527]

Thanks for reporting this.  This is an issue that the development team is currently aware of. No ETA on a fix at the moment.  

I've merged other reports to this post. I will update here when I receive more info. 

 

[emerick 155]

The fix for this will be available in the final version of 6.1, available soon. Thanks for your patience.

[Kim V. Nielsen 1]

Looking forward for the fix in the update.

However, meanwhile I have found another workaround a bit less tedious than replacing bad-looking check boxes. .

->...that is to sync the infected note. Go to your notebook through a browser (www.evernote.com/Home.action) add a simple word or just a period, somewhere in the infected note to trigger a new version of the note. Go back to your desktop app and resync your notebooks an voila.

Replacing single check boxes is good, when there is a few, but with many check boxes, I will use this method.

[s2sailor 2,199]

Slightly related but I am unable to copy and paste any checkboxes from Evernote into MS Word.  Any associated text copies over ok but instead of a checkbox I get the following error message in its place: Error! Filename not specified.  I think I may have mentioned this before but I am still seeing this in the 6.3.1.3370 prerelease.  This first started when the new editor was rolled out in late v5.

[Wozza 6]

On 2016-8-31 at 5:57 PM, s2sailor said:

Slightly related but I am unable to copy and paste any checkboxes from Evernote into MS Word.  Any associated text copies over ok but instead of a checkbox I get the following error message in its place: Error! Filename not specified.  I think I may have mentioned this before but I am still seeing this in the 6.3.1.3370 prerelease.  This first started when the new editor was rolled out in late v5.

I'm getting this too, when pasting into Outlook 2016 and Word 2016. Very annoying, and causing me lots of work when dealing with project checklists. 

[Andy_Unique 0]

On 2016-8-31 at 5:57 PM, s2sailor said:

Slightly related but I am unable to copy and paste any checkboxes from Evernote into MS Word.  Any associated text copies over ok but instead of a checkbox I get the following error message in its place: Error! Filename not specified.  I think I may have mentioned this before but I am still seeing this in the 6.3.1.3370 prerelease.  This first started when the new editor was rolled out in late v5.

I also get problems when going from Word to Evernote. If you use the "insert check box content control" feature in Word, this produces non-functional tick boxes when copied to Evernote. This occurs for both the PC Client and the web client. It would be a big bonus, if this could be fixed.

[Dacoz 0]

Instead of a checkbox, I get, "error filename not supported" when pasting into Word.  This problem has been known for months with no reply from the Evernote staff, and more importantly, no fix.  

[Rich Tatum 4]

I would love to be able to copy a ❏ checkbox from outside of Evernote into Evernote. 

For example: Our team works on a shared Google doc for meeting notes. When we’re done with the meeting, I archive the contents of the shared doc into Evernote as a meeting archive. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way to create a checkbox in Google Docs or Word that appears as a "to do" checkbox in Evernote. I have to manually add them if I want to retain their functionality in EN.

Maybe there’s a way to do this, but I haven’t found it. Would be nice if the checkbox played well with the clipboard (I’m on a Windows 64-bit machine, using Evernote 6.9.7.6770 (306770) Public (CE Build ce-1.39.4387).

Edit, 02/20/2018: I see that I can create an unchecked checkbox by typing [] and a checked checkbox by typing [x]. It would be fantastic if EN would recognize that in the clipboard (with an optional setting, of course) and automatically convert [] and [x] text strings to their respective checkboxes. — Rich

[jefito 5,589]

21 hours ago, Rich Tatum said:

Edit, 02/20/2018: I see that I can create an unchecked checkbox by typing [] and a checked checkbox by typing [x]. It would be fantastic if EN would recognize that in the clipboard (with an optional setting, of course) and automatically convert [] and [x] text strings to their respective checkboxes. — Rich

One problem with allowing this sort of conversion from the clipboard is that sometimes you want a literal "[x]" or "[]" to be pasted, as opposed to a checkbox. For example if I have a code snippet that contains "[]" and paste is into a note, then I sure don't want it to be replaced by a checkbox. Ditto any of the other keyboard-only replacement shortcuts (e.g. "1.", "* ", "---"). So now you need a mechanism to prevent that (or one to enable the other, depending on which is the default behavior).

[hij 7]

It's been about ten months since this recommendation was made, and I'd like to renew the request:

Quote

I see that I can create an unchecked checkbox by typing [] and a checked checkbox by typing [x]. It would be fantastic if EN would recognize that in the clipboard (with an optional setting, of course) and automatically convert [] and [x] text strings to their respective checkboxes.

I've written a program that auto-generates Evernote content, using logic too complex for an Evernote template to be sufficient, and places that content on the Windows clipboard. I'm then able to paste the content into a note... but the [] text isn't converted into a checkbox. I could theoretically reverse-engineer the data Evernote places on the clipboard when copying-and-pasting checkboxes from one note to another, but it would be much simpler to have the option to apply text-conversion from [] to an unchecked box and from [x] to a checked box when pasting plain text into Evernote.

[jefito 5,589]

6 hours ago, hij said:

but the [] text isn't converted into a checkbox

Right, because pasting isn't done by simulating keyboard input, or at least, the automatic conversion of strings like '"[]" is handled in a different way.

6 hours ago, hij said:

I could theoretically reverse-engineer the data Evernote places on the clipboard when copying-and-pasting checkboxes from one note to another, but it would be much simpler to have the option to apply text-conversion from [] to an unchecked box and from [x] to a checked box when pasting plain text into Evernote.

You don't need to reverse engineer it; it's documented. See "en-todo" in the Evernote ENML document here: https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/enml.php

[hij 7]

Thanks for the link, @jefito! The option to auto-convert pasted [] and [x] strings to checkboxes would certainly be nice, for round-trip sharing with Word and other apps. But, for my purpose, the ENML documentation is super helpful!