Search on Evernote for Mac not working properly

[GeorgZ01 0]

Hi everyone,

Lately i'm having issues with the evernote search on my mac. If I type something in the searchbar to search across all notebooks, no results are displyed or a small fraction of what should appear.

Example: Searching for "Prag" returns 1 results on the mac, but 46 results on iPhone and iPad. This is just one of many examples, e.g. "recipe" returns 3 results on mac and 57 on iPhone and iPad

I first started noticing while running Evernote 6.8 so i updated to 6.9 Beta 2 to see if it would be solved but it's still broken.

Any ideas? Thanks

[gazumped 11,657]

Hi.  There are ways to 'refresh' your search index and even restore the whole database from the server but that's something that should really only be done on the advice of support.  I'd suggest you contact them initially...

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, GeorgZ01 said:

Lately i'm having issues with the evernote search on my mac. If I type something in the searchbar to search across all notebooks, no results are displyed or a small fraction of what should appear.

Example: Searching for "Prag" returns 1 results on the mac, but 46 results on iPhone and iPad. This is just one of many examples, e.g. "recipe" returns 3 results on mac and 57 on iPhone and iPad

I first started noticing while running Evernote 6.8 so i updated to 6.9 Beta 2 to see if it would be solved but it's still broken.

As per @gazumped, I'd recommend you open a support ticket.

I don't usually spend a lot of time troubleshooting my devices.

My first step is to reboot my device to see if that solves the problem

Next step is reindex my datatbase
The reindexing instructions are
1. Open Evernote on your Mac
2. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and select Help from your Mac's menu bar
3. Select Troubleshooting > Recreate Full Text Search Index

The final step is to delete the app and database and let EN rebuild the database from the servers (does not include local notebooks or unsyncd notes)

[jbushnell1 15]

I'm having a similar problem after updating to Version 6.12 for Mac. I know screenshots help, here are a few. I'm in a notebook of photos, but this isn't OCR-dependent: the phrase I'm searching for ("blue textures" in this example) is in the title of several notes. The first photo is me having searched the notebook manually (tedious) to prove the notes are there.  The remaining three show different searches for the phrase (no quotes, in quotes, in an "intitle" search), none of which yield positive hits.

Searching on this phrase pulls up the photos fine on my phone and in the Web version, so I'm guessing that it must be this build of the database in the desktop version, OR a flaw in the indexing process.  I'm trying to use the updated Help tools to "Recreate Full Text Search Index" but I don't know how long that's supposed to take, and searches in this forum on that tool don't provide illumination on that process. Is it a ten-minute process? An hour? 24 hours? Do I need to leave the computer on overnight? Do I need to adjust the power management settings so it doesn't go to sleep? Will Activity Monitor give me a sense as to when it is done? How long should I wait before trying it anew? Any guidance anyone has along those lines would be helpful.

[gazumped 11,657]

Hi.  6.12 is still in Beta so not completely housebroken yet,  and recently upgraded again to 6.12.2   If you're not already using that version you might want to update again...

If you have issues with one or other of the betas it's best to raise them in the release thread - the developers will be watching more closely there for comment.

[jbushnell1 15]

I upgraded to 6.12.2 tonight, but the problem persists. I'll move it over to the release thread.

[frodo788 0]

On 26/08/2016 at 1:17 PM, DTLow said:

As per @gazumped, I'd recommend you open a support ticket.

I don't usually spend a lot of time troubleshooting my devices.

My first step is to reboot my device to see if that solves the problem

Next step is reindex my datatbase
The reindexing instructions are
1. Open Evernote on your Mac
2. Hold down the Option key on your keyboard and select Help from your Mac's menu bar
3. Select Troubleshooting > Recreate Full Text Search Index

The final step is to delete the app and database and let EN rebuild the database from the servers (does not include local notebooks or unsyncd notes)

Thanks DTLow - this has solved the problem for me. I'd recommend this as a first port of call for people experiencing the same issue.

[TiaKara 0]

This is happening to me very regularly that the Search does not find any results even though the search bar shows notes have that search term. I rebuild the Full Text Search Index and it is ok again but it is annoying to have to do that a couple times a week. Anyone else having this issue?

[jbushnell1 15]

Hi TiaKara. How many notes do you have, and how long do you wait before restarting the "Full Text Search index?" I recently found that, with a large database, it can take nearly a week for the database to fully rebuild, and the process shouldn't be restarted before that's all the way done.

[TiaKara 0]

Hi jbushnell1 - I only have about 1200 notes and it doesn't take too long to rebuild. But it is so annoying that it happens so frequently. Here is the warning I get when shutting down the Mac desktop version of Evernote which means I will have to rebuild, yet again.

[jbushnell1 15]

Hm, what a hassle. That seems like the corrupted bit is in your underlying database (rather than in the text index), which would explain why the text reindexing doesn't work as a permanent fix.  Thus, you might want to rebuild the database from scratch (rather than just reindexing). It's been a few years since I've had to do that, but the last time I had to do that I archived the instructions here.  You might want to hunt around to see if those instructions have changed for more recent versions of the app....