I've been a registered user of
Evernote for a few years now, and I love the theory of being able to use it as a bucket to collect lots of different types of information and be able to access them from whatever device I'm using. Sounds great doesn't it? Unfortunately I have heard a couple of horror stories (such as
this one) about Evernote losing a lot of people's work, and I just don't trust it enough to use it for anything important. This means it hasn't really integrated into my way of working, though I do have browser buttons installed and I do occasionally use it to keep copies of online order receipts (though usually use Microsoft OneNote as well if I'm on my home laptop).
Revisiting it as part of CPD23 has encouraged me to use it again though I'm still not sure I could trust it for work purposes. I'm on annual leave for a couple of weeks at the moment and planning to visit some local museums and go for walks, so I've been collecting web links and tagging them with 'Holiday ideas'. I've also got some paper leaflets, so I've taken a photograph of them and added them to Evernote via my iPhone, also tagging them with 'Holiday ideas'. This is all synced now on my iPad, laptop, and iPhone so hopefully wherever I am I can use this as inspiration for things to do.
 |
| My 'Holiday ideas' tag on Evernote for iPad |
I do really wish I could trust Evernote as it does seem like such a useful tool and it integrates well with other systems I use, but I just can't get over the fact that some people I know lost a lot of work through no fault of their own. Does anyone know if there is a way to automatically back up information from Evernote?
Why not just do an Export of all your notes periodically? It's simple enough: right-click "All Notes", select "Export Notes...", choose ENEX format, browse to the location (which could be a USB stick). If you ever lose everything, you can then reimport the Evernote Export File. Took me more time to type this than to do a full export...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip, PaulV!
ReplyDeleteJo, I've just done this and it did take only seconds. I've become increasingly reliant on Evernote so reading the story at your link was a bit harrowing - thanks for pointing it out!
Thanks Paul - also good to know it's a quick process (thanks for testing it too, Samantha). I think if I do start using Evernote more I'll set recurring reminders to manually back it up once a week or something (and more regularly if I've done a lot of work on there).
ReplyDeleteIt's always a concern when using cloud computing. Probably my IT background, but I always feel the need for a backup which I control, and which happens outside the cloud-based service itself. I've got so much on Evernote, Dropbox and Google Docs. Evernote has its Export facility, Dropbox syncs an actual physical directory on each machine linked to your account, but Google Mail and Google Docs sometime make me worry, since I've not identified a good independent backup regime for those.
ReplyDelete