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Posted by Andrew Sinkov at 11:06 am in Product updates

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Evernote for Mac Update: Better Text Handling

August 18th, 2009

text
We’re just going to come out and say it: Evernote for Mac has had a history of doing funky stuff when you created text notes. There were issues with text sizes, font switching, double spacing, and a host of other small annoyances.

That’s now mostly in the past. Our latest release (version 1.4.8) fixes a number of these nagging issues.

Here’s a rundown of the text handling improvements:

Pasted plain text will match the style of the note and properly preserve spacing.
Hitting enter on a double-spaced line converts it to a single-spaced line.
Undo continues to function after a note is saved.
Plain text copies of a note now preserve lists and to-do checkboxes.
Pasting HTML from a web browser preserves newlines from text inside <pre> blocks.
Copying and pasting a list item within a note preserves list indenting.
Pasted rich-text font sizes are preserved when saving and syncing.
Cutting and pasting a line of text within a note properly preserves line endings.
Pasting multi-line text from an HTML <textarea> in Safari preserves newlines.
Improved handling of newlines when pasting rich-text.

Get the latest »

This is all part of our ongoing effort to make sure you have a great experience when using Evernote.

34 Comments

Colin
August 18, 2009
11:29 am

Any chance in the future of updating evernote for mac to be able to rotate pictures/scans within evernote?
That would be stellar feature. Thanks for all the text handling bug fixes. You guys are stellar

Tom
August 18, 2009
11:59 am

At last we can finally copy code snippets properly, thankyou!

Stephan
August 18, 2009
12:29 pm

Colin, that’s easy:

In Evernote, right-click on the image, click “Open” and Preview.app starts (you may choose other apps using “open with”). In Preview, you can – among other things – rotate your image, see Tools menu for details. Save the image (it has a cryptic filename, but you shouldn’t care) and close the window.

The changes appear automatically in Evernote.

DK
August 18, 2009
12:49 pm

Great, now if we could have a robust table maker that allows you to properly add/remove rows/columns after the initial table is created – we would have a winner.

Jake
August 18, 2009
1:30 pm

This is great!

One feature I would love to see is either a rich text editor on the iphone or the ability to clear all formatting from a text note, like the web version. even better; mark a note as plain text instead of HTML and never worry about accidentally making it uneditable on your iphone.

i’d also love to see either integration/sync with “stickies” or some ability to make evernote notes look like stickies; simple, streamlined, color coded.

thanks so much for a great product!

phil
August 18, 2009
2:12 pm

Yay, thank you so much!

JT
August 18, 2009
2:57 pm

now for that brand new windows version and i will have lived

mark
August 18, 2009
5:26 pm

Okay – installed the update – but now I have a problem – I open evernote and then close the window (but obviously leave the program open) – but clicking on the dock icon will not bring back the evernote window…it changes the titlebar to read that I’m in Evernote, but the program window does not load…help!?

Andrew Sinkov
August 18, 2009
5:57 pm

@mark If you close the main Evernote window, go to File > New Evernote Window. That will open up a new window.

Dave Jaworski
August 18, 2009
7:30 pm

Thank you thank you thank you!!!

Love it!!! A great product gets even better.

Dave

Ashish Bogawat
August 18, 2009
9:38 pm

Is it just me or is the ‘new improved Windows version’ of Evernote really joining the vaporware league?

Andrew Sinkov
August 18, 2009
10:48 pm

@Ashish Definitely not vaporware. It’s on its way.

gam
August 18, 2009
11:04 pm

AAAAAAAAh, at last, the paste without formatting. GREAT!
My only remaining problem with it is that it’s not the usual Mac OS X keyboard shortcut (opt-shift-cmd-V) but shift-cmd-V.

Great udpate.

Gam

Henning
August 19, 2009
2:00 am

Definitely an improvement over previous versions. This was the #1 issue for me, it bugged me so much, I was bitching about it at every opportunity.

Now I see the font-resizing issue has been solved technically, for the most part, but some quirks still remain. And then there’s the User Interface: x-small, small, large etc. will not cut it.

One of the biggest improvements I’m still hoping for is the support of line-height (leading) in copied text.

Shelly Brooks
August 19, 2009
4:22 am

That’s quite a list of changes for the last Mac update, I told my Mac not to install it, but now that I see the list I will definitely update! Thanks!

Daniel
August 19, 2009
5:53 am

@ mark:

I have the same issue. If I close the window then try to re open it (as was the previous behavior), the window no longer re-opens.

Steve Bryson
August 19, 2009
4:23 pm

@mark & @daniel, I am having the same issue. The suggestion that @Andrew suggested works, but I would much rather click on the evernote icon sitting in the doc to open it. This needs to be fixed.

Peter Norman
August 20, 2009
4:01 am

This is good news! I very much want to use Evernote for writing notes as well as capturing web clips etc. Up to now it’s text-handling has driven me mental. Thank-you for the improvements!

Question about clicking the Evernote Dock icon issue described above by Steve Bryson, Mark & Daniel: For years I’ve wanted Finder to produce a new Finder window on clicking it’s Dock icon. This is similar to your request for Evernote. Is the requested functionality something that Evernote’s devs have to create or is it already part of Apple’s existing Dock code/functionality, only needing to be activated in Finder, Evernote etc?

Thanks again!
peter

ShenanDon
August 20, 2009
7:33 am

I’m with DK. Really would like the table function to allow for insertion and deletion of columns and rows after the initial table creation.

Also would be helpful for tables to display in the iPhone / touch version.

Zach Clark
August 21, 2009
9:09 am

@Mark @Daniel I’m having the same issue, just wanted to say so. They need to resolve this, very irritating!

mhurwi
August 21, 2009
3:54 pm

@Peter– I think what the others mean by this bug, is that when you close the evernote window so none is open, then when you click the dock icon, a window should open. With the finder, this does happen– when no finder window is open, click the dock icon and a finder window opens. I also long for this to work in evernote– so very much, I do!

Also, a new bug for me, just this latest update– closing the evernote window, and reopening a new window– it freezes. Cannot switch notebooks, or tags. Need to quit and restart the program. Anyone else?

thanks evernote!

Richard Levenson
August 22, 2009
8:04 am

Still not able to convert double-spaced lines to single (by hitting “enter”??–all that does for me is to add a line-return. What am I missing.

Also, echo a previous comment–line spacing should take its cue from the size of the text, and not retain the value from the original paste.

Thanks!

Drew
August 24, 2009
9:06 am

Just wanted to add my voice to the call for a return to the previous click-dock-icon-to-open-Evernote-window functionality; the loss of this basic feature is both frustrating and counterintuitive!

Amy Stewart
August 24, 2009
10:02 am

I too am having the problem of Evernote window not coming up when you click the icon in the dock. I hope Evernote fixes this soon.

This release has also has frozen multiple times. It’s a lot less stable than the previous release.

Steve Burgess
August 25, 2009
12:41 pm

Appreciate the updates – thanks.

A couple of bugs in text handling:
1. Seems that the editor converts tab characters to spaces – about 4 per tab. Makes a mess of editing if you are trying to reformat note to be more readable.
2. Bulleting acts weird – first line always double-spaces from previous line. Bullets stay together as single-spaced, which is good.

Steve Burgess
August 25, 2009
12:44 pm

Oh – and also, a feature request – something that I bet a lot of folks would love: highlighting!

It would be terrific to be able to select a portion of text, click on a toolbar icon and/or context menu option and have background change to a “highlighter” color like yellow or – even better – a user selectable color. I guess I might be able to applescript it, but it would be better to have it in the application.

Thanks!

Sheila
August 25, 2009
2:56 pm

My two cents: I’m having the same problem as everyone else above. Evernote has suddenly become super unstable and is freezing constantly. I am trying to remember to minimize rather than close the window, but without much success.

Also, in the past I could drag an image directly from a webpage onto an Evernote note, and it would copy over. Now, the little green circle with a “+” in it still shows up, but the image doesn’t copy over. I am having to “ctrl+click” and “add image to evernote,” which can be less than efficient if I want to add the image to an existing note, since this puts the image into a new note.

All this said, I am still using this app EVERY day. So thanks for creating something that has been so life-changing!

Andrew Sinkov
August 25, 2009
3:06 pm

@Sheila [and everyone else that commented] We will bring back the ability to open the Evernote window by clicking on the dock icon in our next Mac release.

hoyla
August 26, 2009
2:44 am

The paste-and-match-style feature has somewhat reduced my problem noted earlier (http://blog.evernote.com/2008/04/29/evernote-meets-iphone/#comment-17135) that stuff inadvertently becomes rich text and I then can’t edit it on the mobile platform.

But, seconding @Jake above, I still think it would be nice to have a convert selection to plain text option in the Format menu, an “always enforce plain text” option for a note, and some indication whether a note is plain or rich text.

TInu Cleatus
August 29, 2009
12:58 am

+1 for not able to open up the Evernote window on clicking on the dock icon. Needs fixing asap. Thanks.

Wil Harris
September 1, 2009
11:36 am

+1 for the Evernote window coming up – this behaviour has changed since the previous release, please bring it back!

Mitch
September 23, 2009
6:56 pm

So why can’t we copy text from the uploaded pictures, shouldn’t that be pretty basic?

Eddie Forero
October 13, 2009
9:35 am

Ok, great. How about rotating images? Really.

Paul
October 18, 2009
3:43 am

Please fix the strange tab behavior!

When making lists, such as expenses, everything gets all mixed up pressing the tab key on each line.
No lines match up and it laooks terrible.
How hard can it be to make the tab key behave like it does in all other text editors – move the cursor to the next column so one can have properly aligned columns please.

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Evernote for Mac Update: Better Text Handling

August 18th, 2009

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