Evernote Openbook: FAQ

How do I remove the Safari Clipper?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:20:20 GMT

To remove our clipper from Safari:

Quit Safari
Start Evernote
Go to Preferences > Clipping
uncheck "Use the Safari clipper plugin"

How can I import my Outlook Tasks?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:10:13 GMT

1. Make a copy of your Outlook database file,

2. Look up tasks containing images: Advanced search, look for items larger than say 30 kb. Copy and paste these (hopefully few) items over to Onenote, and import these through Evernote import.

3. Get the application Outport (available here: http://outport.sourceforge.net/ ). Outport lets you transform tasks in Outlook to individual files in rtf-format.

4. I now moved these rtf-files over to a Mac, and transfered them to Evernote through dragging them onto the Dock icon. Presto!

Pros: smooth, reliable transfer. Keeping most formatting (hypertext etc).

Cons: loosing som meta-information (creation date, priority, flags). Loosing some formatting not supported in Evernote (ie high-lighting of text). Item titles becomes task####, not the title in Outlook.

How can I import my Outlook Tasks?

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:14:28 GMT

1. Make a copy of your Outlook database file.

2. Look up tasks containing images: Advanced search, look for items larger than say 30 kb. Copy and paste these (hopefully few) items over to Onenote, and import these through Evernote import.

3. Get the application Outport (available here: http://outport.sourceforge.net/ ). Outport lets you transform tasks in Outlook to individual files in rtf-format.

4. On Windows: Use the Auto-Import Wizard to import these files into Evernote (Premium Users Only, as they are RTF)

On Mac: Move these rtf-files over to the Mac, and transfer them to Evernote through dragging them onto the Dock icon.

Additionally:

You can batch process the filenames on the Mac by using textutil command in Terminal, then a renaming application to strip "Subject:" from each new file.

How do I protect data on my own computer?

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:20:19 GMT

If someone can physically access your PC or your Mac, they may be able to access the data that Evernote stores on your hard drive. (They will also be able to access all of the other sensitive documents on your drive, such as your office documents, email files, temporary Internet cache files, etc.)

If you are worried about someone access the contents of your hard drive, you should protect your important files by enabling a password locking screen saver and/or file system encryption on your computer.

To password lock a Windows computer, see:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=600
To password lock a Mac OS X computer, see:
http://osxdaily.com/2007/04/23/ask-os-x-daily-how-do-i-lock-a-mac-os-x-workstation/

To encrypt a file system on a Windows computer, you can either use Microsoft's Encrypting File System:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encrypting_File_System
Or the excellent free TrueCrypt software:
http://www.truecrypt.org/

On Mac OS X, you can add file encryption using TrueCrypt, or you can encrypt your home directory with the built-in FileVault feature:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FileVault
Since Evernote's data is stored within your account's home directory, enabling FileVault will encrypt Evernote's data.

Text is blurry in Evernote for Windows version 3.5

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:10:52 GMT

On some systems, users may see text in Evernote's 3.5 Windows client as "blurry" instead of crisp. Evernote's client uses Microsoft's "Windows Presentation Framework" to construct its user interface, and this uses Microsoft's ClearType system to render text in the interface.

Microsoft has provided some recommendations that some users may find helpful to improve the text rendering:
http://blogs.msdn.com/text/archive/2006/10/18/tips-for-improving-your-wpf-text-rendering-experience.aspx

How do I get an exact copy of a page, with style and formatting intact?

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:19:58 GMT

Hold down the shift key and click the elephant in Safari to get a PDF of the current web page sent into Evernote.

How do I scan into Evernote?

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:07:02 GMT

Start ‘Image Capture’ – it is a free application that comes with OS X (/Applications/Image Capture)
If your scanner is supported (and turned on) you will see a window similar to the one in the screenshot below
Select the area you want to scan by dragging a rectangle around the preview of the scan
Set the quality of the scan to either B/W or Color Photo (depending on what you are scanning)
Give your scan a title
Choose PNG, JPEG as the format. Evernote will only process scanned PDF documents for search if they are added to a Premium account: http://blog.evernote.com/2009/07/27/pdf-search/
Select ‘Evernote’ as the Automatic Task – this is the key step in this process
And click ‘Scan’ – that’s all

For the subsequent scans, all you have to do is adjust the selected area and enter a different title. All the other settings will be remembered as defaults.

Receive "Oops.. access denied" when connecting via WiFi or "403 error" when connecting via Cellular

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:52:03 GMT

In Evernote for Windows Mobile you receive an "Oops.. access denied" or "403 error" when trying to view notes.
You still have the ability to:
- create new notes via Evernote for Windows Mobile, upload them and view them via Evernote for the Web or one of the Desktop clients
- access the internet via your Windows Mobile device
- access the www.evernote.com/m site via your Windows Mobile device and can view all notes

For Evernote Windows Mobile to work properly, you need to set the "accept cookies" property to "Yes" in Mobile Internet Explorer.

How can I get more information about errors on the iPhone?

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:10:22 GMT

If you are having trouble connecting to Evernote's servers from your iPhone application, there may be some problem with your device or your network carrier.

To get the detailed logs from your device, you can download the iPhone Configuration Utility onto your Windows or Mac computer:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/iPhone_Configuration_Utility_2_0_for_Mac_OS_X

Once you install that, you should Quit Evernote on the device and connect your phone to your computer. Select your iPhone using the left hand panel of the utility, and then select the "Console" tab on the main pane. Type "Evernote" into the search filter, and hit the "Clear" button in the bottom left corner.

Now, launch Evernote on your phone.
Go to the 'Settings' tab within Evernote and hit "Synchronize Now"
After the output stops in the Configuration Utility, you can look for obvious errors in the logs, or you can copy and paste all of it to Evernote Support. (There isn't any "private" information in this input -- the only piece of identification information is the Evernote username.)

Linking a shared notebook

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:46:01 GMT

Linking a shared notebook allows you to easily access it from your account any time.

1. Click the "Link to my account" button at the top of the shared notebook

2. Confirm the displayed notebook name

That's it. The linked notebook will now appear in your Sharing panel.

Try it! Link this notebook into your account. You can always remove it in "Sharing setup".

Evernote image processing vs. OCR

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:47:06 GMT

Evernote's image processing and search technology isn't quite the same as simple Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

Traditional OCR systems try to find a single match for every word in a scanned document. This may be appropriate for high-quality scans of printed text, but it usually produces unusable results for blurry images and handwritten text.

Evernote's image processing technology is a bit different. We analyze the image to generate a set of possibilities for each word that we see in an image. Each possible interpretation is given a score.
For example, we may look at a word and decide that this word may either be "clue" or "due", and we can assign a score to each possibility. This set of scored possibilities is stored in our database for searching.

As a result, there isn't a simple text representation that you can use. Instead, you can search our database to find the image based on the different sets of possible interpretations for each word.

Evernote for BlackBerry can't connect to servers

Sun, 31 May 2009 05:25:27 GMT

If your BlackBerry's Internet networking is not set up correctly, you may see a networking error message when you try to log in to Evernote. For example:

"Error communicating with the Evernote servers: HTTP Response code: 403"

This message means that either your device is not set up for Internet communication, or else your communications are being blocked by the "BlackBerry Enterprise Server" (BES) that is run by your company or organization.

Configuring your BlackBerry's APN:

To permit applications like Evernote to communicate over TCP/IP and HTTP, you need to configure the "APN" for your your BlackBerry based on the correct settings for your network carrier.
This setting is found in the BlackBerry under: Options > Advanced Options > TCP

We recommend that you contact your carrier or IT department to find out the right APN settings, or you can try the values on this page:
http://www.blackberryforums.com/blackberry-network/2185-blackberry-internet-msn-chat-web-telnet-tcpip-no-bes.html
We've also heard that you can try entering "blackberry.net" for your APN on some networks, with a blank username and password, but I'd recommend trying to get the right one for your carrier first.

BlackBerry Enterprise Server:

If your BlackBerry receives its data through a BES run by your organization, then you may see an error if your BES is not correctly configured to permit secure communications (via HTTPS) to standard Internet web servers.

To fix this, your IT department may need to log into the BES to change some Mobile Data Services (MDS) settings. On the Access Control tab, create a role that permits all devices to connect to any Internet server and add that role to the users' accounts.

Then, if your BES is not configured to trust standard Internet Certificate Authorities for SSL, you will either need to configure the BES to trust the Verisign Root CA, or else use the TLS/HTTPS tab to enable both options to Allow outbound connections to untrusted servers over HTTPS and Allow outbound connections to untrusted servers over TLS.

What advanced search can I use in the search box?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:48:32 GMT

When you type words or phrases into Evernote's search box, we will find notes that contain those words or phrases. Evernote also has some advanced expressions available that "power users" can enter into the search box to find notes by various criteria.

For example, you can type the following to find all notes that have the word "chicken" in their title:

intitle:"chicken"

The full description of the advanced search syntax can be found in in our Developer Overview in Appendix C ("Evernote Search Grammar"):
http://www.evernote.com/about/developer/api/

My computer or hard drive crashed, can you help me recover my synced and local notes?

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:11:47 GMT

All of your synced notes are located online, and you can download a complete copy via one of our desktop clients. When you sync, Evernote will automatically download all of your previously synced notes.

We do not have any copies of your local only notes. If you have not backed up the data, it cannot be recovered. We highly recommend syncing notes for this reason. You can create backup copies of your notes in many ways. One is to right click on the folder “all notebooks” select "Export notes". Ensure you store this database in a safe, secure place. The data is not encrypted.

How are attachments stored on my local machine?

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:13:37 GMT

Resources are stored as files in the relevant 'data' directory on a Mac. The *.sql file on the Mac doesn't have any of the raw bits of the attachments. When you open one of these attachments from the Mac client, it will put a copy in a temporary directory, open that, and then try to delete it when it's done.

On Windows, the SQLite database stores 100% of your data, including the file attachments. When you open one of these attachments from the Windows client, it will also put a copy in a temporary directory ("attachments"), open that, and then try to delete it when it's done.

Once in a while, the temporary file will still be left in the temp directory after you finish editing it, but this is sort of like the "Temporary Internet Files" in Windows ... it's not the primary storage location, just a temporary copy.

Evernote uninstalled my other browser add-ons.

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:59:37 GMT

Evernote is not designed to remove other software Add-ons. Likely, Evernote loaded the Evernote icon and the missing button from your additional application simply isn't showing. You should still be able to access it by making the space for your toolbar larger, or by making adjustments in Tools>Toolbars>Customize (Internet Explorer) or View->Toolbars->Customize (Firefox).

Can I encrypt an entire note or notebook?

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:14:36 GMT

Evernote 3.0 does not support the encryption of entire notes or notebooks. We do support encryption of small amounts of plain text inside a note (an account number, for example). To encrypt this data, simply highlight it and then right-click it. Select “Encrypt selected text”. Be advised, we are unable to access encrypted data, so safeguard the password.

Evernote for the Web will not encrypt or decrypt data.

Evernote does not recognize my default mail program.

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:44:46 GMT

Unfortunately, Evernote only supports current versions of Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird for Windows mail, and Apple Mail for the Mac.

You can use the "Mail" button on Evernote Web (http://www.evernote.com) as a workaround to mail your notes.

Does Evernote support non-English notes?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:48:32 GMT

Yes, Evernote is currently localized in English and Russian. We do plan to offer support for additional languages later in the year.

How Secure is Evernote?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:48:32 GMT

Security and privacy are extremely important topics for Evernote users, and for good reason. Evernote would like to provide a single service to manage your memories for many years. To achieve this, we must provide a very high level of system and data security while offering users a variety of choices to manage their own privacy requirements. Here is a high-level overview of some of the ways in which your data is protected by Evernote.

When you add a note to the service, it is secured like your email would be at a high-end email provider. This means that your notes are stored in a private, locked cage at a guarded data center that can only be accessed by a small number of Evernote operations personnel. Administrative maintenance on these servers can only be performed through secure, encrypted communications by the same set of people. All network access to these servers is similarly protected by a set of firewalls and hardened servers. Your login information is only transmitted to the servers in encrypted form over SSL, and your passwords are not directly stored on any of our systems. And, for our Premium members, all note data is transferred over SSL, not just your login credentials.

We also offer enhanced privacy options that would not be available from services like email:

If you have sensitive text that you would like to remember (passwords, PINs, credit card numbers), you can encrypt that text in our Windows client (Mac coming soon) using a passphrase that is never transmitted to Evernote. This encrypted text can only be decrypted and read on one of your computers after you’ve re-entered the encryption passphrase. The sensitive text is not readable on our servers or on your computer by anyone who does not know the passphrase.

If you have some notes that you only want to access from a single computer, you can place these into a “Local Notebook” on our Windows or Mac client. Notes in a Local Notebook are never transmitted to our service, so they aren’t accessible from the web, or from your other computers. T...

Will Evernote run on Tiger?

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:16:18 GMT

We are using a set of programming tools and libraries from Apple that they recommend for new applications like ours. These allowed us to build things like the "thumbnail" note view in weeks instead of months. Unfortunately, Apple has not back-ported these new programming interfaces to Tiger (OS X 10.4), so our application only runs on Leopard.

While we would like to support Tiger, it would take months of development effort to reproduce our current functionality on that platform. Since Leopard has been out for some time, we're not currently planning to do this work to back-port to older versions of OS X.

Notes on my phone are not appearing on the web.

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:44:07 GMT

The most common explanation for this is when people are somehow logging in to one Evernote account on their phone, and a different account on the web. Check the username listed under "Account" in your phone's Evernote, and then make sure it is the same name that you're logging into http://www.evernote.com with.

Also, check the "Pending Notes" section and see if there are any that are pending upload. If there are, click Edit and attempt to change the settings to push through the upload.

Evernote won't upgrade due to an error.

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:44:30 GMT

In some cases, the internal update feature does not work properly. Instead, please try downloading the latest version of Evernote directly from:

http://www.evernote.com/about/download/get.php?file=EvernoteWin

My new notes are not being indexed.

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 17:05:45 GMT

Evernote's Windows and Mac clients do not perform any image recognition locally. You will need to sync your notes to the web service in order to make the content searchable. The images will be processed within a few minutes, and then you can synchronize the results back down to your client to search locally.

If you are using a Local-Only notebook, images, PDFs and other documents will not be indexed. You will need to first synchronize them to the web, and then copy them into your Local-Only notebook.

Also, Evernote will only process images within PDF documents for Premium accounts:
http://blog.evernote.com/2009/07/27/pdf-search/

I can't search within a PDF file.

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:52:31 GMT

Only Premium members can search within image PDFs. If you're a Premium member and are not receiving results, make sure your PDF is not password protected, or otherwise secured. It takes some time to process some PDFs, so make sure you're allowing some time between syncing the file to our servers and then syncing again to download the results.