We have a big announcement to make…the new Evernote for Windows is here, kinda.
Windows has always been a big deal for Evernote. Fully 46% of our desktop users log into their Evernote accounts through our downloadable Windows version, compared with 38% on Mac and 16% on the web. However, over the past few months our Windows users may have felt a little left out, especially given all the rapid development on our other platforms.
It was all part of our cunning plan… Deep inside our secret lair, we’ve been discreetly (errr not so discreetly) working on a complete, from-the-ground-up rewrite of Evernote for Windows. The goal: make it faster, sleeker, more powerful, and—most importantly—easier to enhance in the future. Now, you can see the results in the brand new Evernote for Windows 3.5 Beta. We think it’s pretty neat. Get Evernote 3.5 Beta »
What’s new?
Evernote for Windows 3.5 has dozens of visible and under-the-hood improvements. In a nutshell, you’ll be able to capture stuff faster, find it easier, store more of it, and manipulate it in more powerful ways. It’s also quite handsome. Here are some of the changes:
Three different ways to view your notes
- Thumbnail view: Rendered thumbnails showing the contents of your notes, images, and PDFs for easy browsing and filtering
- List view: Multi-column “List View” with sorting on any column
- Mixed view: Mixed thumbnail + detail view
- Can zoom thumbnails to see more detail
- Can display thumbnail or mixed views in visual groupings by date, size, source URL domain, and start of title
Note editing
- Auto-complete tagging and easier tag creation
- Spell checking as you type
- Better support for advanced markup
- Can now create tables within notes
- Can specify default font size for text in notes
- Better handling of longer text notes
- Creating ink notes in easier with the new canvas-like layout
More functions available in single-note editor window
- Detailed note information and attributes
- Emailing notes
- Printing notes
Editable description of the search filter
- Ability to add or remove individual criteria from current search filter
- Save the current search for use later as a Saved Search
And so much more…
- Find and Find next/find previous (both within and across notes)
- Better consistency across the Mac and Windows versions of Evernote
- New icons and buttons
- More user-friendly “Folder Import” feature to automatically create notes from a watched folder–great for scanner and other integrations
- “View on Map” button opens geo-tagged notes in Google Maps
- Evernote for Windows introduction video included on launch
- Multi-lingual spell check included in application
- Quick access to your online account information
- Improved screen clipping requiring fewer steps, with on-screen explanations
- Menu options for attaching files to notes without requiring drag-and-drop
- Extend note search capabilities with ANY or ALL search criteria
- Remove tags from notes with a single click
- Advanced note text editor based on Google Chrome
- Improved synchronization performance via networking optimizations
- Improved database performance for faster searching and sorting of notes
- Single binary for all supported languages
Why is it in Beta?
We see Evernote 3.5 as a big (BIG) improvement in terms of features, performance and stability, but it’s such a big change that we want people to use it for a couple of months before it becomes the official version. This means that we won’t be auto-upgrading current users just yet. If you’re new to Evernote for Windows, by all means download and start using the 3.5 Beta. If you’re an existing user of 3.1, you’ll have to follow a few simple steps to migrate to 3.5:
- Export any local notebooks
- Completely quit Evernote 3.1 (including the taskbar clipper)
- Install Evernote 3.5 Beta
- Allow Evernote to sync your notes from the server (this make take some time)
- Import the local notebooks
Once Evernote 3.5 is ready for primetime, we will allow everyone to automatically upgrade to it. In the meantime, you can use both on the same machine or just keep using 3.1.
Which versions of Windows?
The Evernote 3.5 beta uses the latest Microsoft development frameworks so it runs great on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you’re running Windows XP, particularly on a fairly old computer, you may notice some graphical glitches. We’re working to fix these problems, but if the 3.5 Beta doesn’t work well on your configuration, you should switch back to 3.1.
What’s next?
Now that we’ve made the investment in modernizing the Evernote for Windows codebase, we’ll be able to release future enhancement much more rapidly. Look for lots of exciting features in the near future.
Big, big thanks to the hundreds of people who participated in our alpha testing!
Updates!
Evernote for Windows Beta keeps getting better:
- Evernote 3.5 Beta 2: read about it
- Evernote 3.5 Beta 3: read about it
- Evernote 3.5 Beta 4: read about it
- Evernote 3.5 is out of beta: read about it
365 Comments
Gordon
I have loaded the latest beta (3.5.0.567) on my laptops. On my Vista 32 bit machines, searching in a PDF doesn’t work. But, on my XP machine it does.
David Galbraith
Like the Beta format and it appears to be gradually improving with useful old tools like the Outlook clipper, etc. There seems, however, to be a bug in receipts forwarded from Shoeboxed which fails to include the receipt image and the link to the image is broken. When returning to the older version….no problem. When is that likely to be fixed. Would like to ditch the older version.
Michael Piefel
Takes ages to start up on Windows 7. Icons are blurred when using larger screen fonts.
Spell checking sucks. How do you even know which language my notes are in (I use several)? And I do not want red squiggly lines all over my notes when Evernote does not know one of the many special terms. Where is the option to turn it off?
The screen clipper is abysmal, but that has been said often enough, I hope.
I was thrilled when I saw the thumbnail view, but all in all I am better off with the old version.
Ian Bradbury
Using the beta, it is not possible to drag files directly onto a tag. You have to drag into the notebook first.
Sarah
I’m a new Evernote user. I decided to try it out (after being a long time OneNote user) because of its ability to sync to a web and iPhone version. I downloaded the beta rather than trying the official version, because I figured newer = better. Overall, I like it enough to try version 3.1 before giving up, but was annoyed enough with certain aspects to come here to complain. I’m not sure if they’re beta issues or not, since it’s the only version I’ve ever used.
1) Screen clipping is ! I would much rather screen clip to the clipboard and Ctrl+V to wherever I’d like to position it in the current note I’m writing. I really dislike that it creates a new note. (Btw, this was one of my annoyances about OneNote that led me to switch – that it created a new “Side Note” for each screen clipping.)
2) There seems to be a bug with bulleted lists. I’ll create a bulleted list all of Tier 1, and then later go back and add indented sub-bullets (Tier 2) to some. It looks as I want it until I go to another note and return. For some reason, there’s an extra Tier 1 bullet above the indented Tier 2 sub-bullets I added later. I remove these again to format it as I like. I work on another note, return to that note, and those extra Tier 1 bullets are there again! Very annoying.
3) It would be nice to hyperlink back to another note (like another commenter suggested). Sometimes I have concise “To-Do” lists with separate notes for each task. It would great to glance at my To-Do list and click on a link for the more detailed information, instead of having to search for it.
Denton Jacobs
I’m experiencing a bug that I wanted to report. I’m having trouble consistently reproducing this bug, but it appears that if I have Evernote running, but have closed the main window and then lock my machine (Win XP SP3), the main application screen loads and turns completely black before locking the machine. Upon unlock, the application is unusable. It cannot be closed, minimized, viewed; it stays completely black. The only way to recover the application is to completely close evernote and reopen.
Please let me know if you have other questions.
Chris
Cannot install on company computer. 3.1 installs fine.
Frederic Ducros
Cannot install on my pc either
LizzyHo
Love the 3.5 Beta. Many more features and improvements over the older version. Good job!
Phil Anderson
To echo others –> The ability to hyperlink to other notes would be very useful!!
Thanks for your great work!
Mike
timeline gone !?!?!?!??!?!?!?
This was the essence of the product originally !
Also can’t collapse the tag/folder pane. This used to be possible, no?
Finally – the use of space in the layout is a total mess.
I have a largish monitor (24″) but it still feels cramped and yet I see acres of grey real-estate on the top-rightish part of the display.
The ads, meanwhile, sit unmovable right below the one pane likely to be longer – folder/tags/etc…
Consequence is I have to constantly scroll to see all my tags and stuff.
I don’t mind the adware thing – but why not put it in some of those acres of free space on top?
Also.. the links above the notes for those clipped from web.
The long url goes to ‘rename’ if I click anywhere along it. Something I will seldom do.
To follow the link I have to bulls-eye this little tiny arrow by its side – something which I will be doing more often than any other thing with that link.
The new thumbnail looks are nice but why bury the different views only up on the menu system?
And bring back the classic collapsing panes and TIMELINE !!!!!!!!
Thanks,
Mike
JP
How can I turn off the spell check in 3.5 beta?
… my screen is full of annoying red lines :S
alex
apart from the missing features in the clipper, there is another problem with it: (at least on my 4-monitor setup)
-start ever note
-put another window in front of ever note
-right click tray icon -> start clipping
=> works as expected, you can clip what’s visible.
But do that a second time and evernote puts itself in the foreground when I choose start clipping from the tray icon, possibly obscuring the window I wanted to clip.
workaround: minimizing evernote instead of hiding it behind an other window.
alex.
PienaZupa
Is there a way to completely disable the tray icon and the close-to-tray function? I use Windows 7 and it is EXTREMELY annoying, especially the fact that you can’t turn it off. Also I hate that if I really want to close Evernote, I can’t do it with the close button – I have to manually left-click on the tray icon (I hate tray icons!) and then click “Exit.” At least on 3.1 I could manually delete the tray icon executable, but there isn’t one for 3.5. What gives!?
Jeff Parsons
Looks great so far, but would definitely appreciate the ability to disable spell check within the application – or at least give the ability to add to the dictionary – how’s that useful?
bruno
Ok i’m going back to 3.1
MISSING:
Linking betwen notes
Tape view
Hability to insert horizontal lines, like in the mac version
(so i can better organize the content inside my notes)
Anywasys afeter firefox, evernote is where i spend most of the time when i’m on a pc… so GREAT software!
extremeware
I purchased evernote 2.2.1
Frankly it is more useful rather than fancy like the current version. hope you guy’s can do something for people like me.
David Galbraith
Have a clean install of Windows 7…everything running fine but the new Evernote Beta will not load. It crashes immediately and provokes Windows to look for a solution. Version 3.1 is working fine but I was becoming used to 3.5 beta. It works on another Windows 7 laptop but cannot diagnose the reason for the crash. Very sad. Hope it is fixed in the next release.
purebulit
I do not like the BETA. There are specific things wrong with it:
1. Too much screen real estate is used up in the tag attributes.
2. Can’t use HTML type formatting (why not?) H1, H2, etc.
3. When I print the screen shots disappear from the note!!!!
4. Edit bar for window view of notes is too sparse. Add basis HTML enabled formatting.
Keep us the good work.
DB
Jan Vermeeren
I miss the screen clipper (show clipping panel option)
The 3.5 screen capture method sucks!!!
gee
is there anyway to change the appearance of the rendered thumbnail view? ie font, font size, color, etc
or to set the rendered font size either to use all the same size versus relative to the total text in the note?
Haider Khan
i use xp in a fairly new computer
scottjl
Sorry, but the 3.5 beta is a very large step backwards in functionality. The new views take up too much screen space with buttons and ribbons and show too little content. It is noticeable slower. I’ll stick with 3.1!
Clint Winterhalter
The beta on my windows xp laptop now catalogs every document I open? I just returned from a business trip and plugged in my back up software. Evernote started to add each document on my back up drive INTO EVERNOTE.. This is the second time it’s happened. The quick fix is uninstall. Re-install and sync.. The windows version isn’t has nice as the mac version.. I’ll give this one more shot. If it does it again, I’m going to downgrade..
Clint
hxgee
Not able to install on Windows 7 32 bit …. any suggestions?
e_reverent
I’ve been waiting for the right moment to switch to Evernote 3. I have tried 3.1 but was totally disappointed. It seems that each time EN comes out with a new version, they take away a few more features. Judging from the comments here, 3.5 is yet again a big step backwards. I’ve been relying heavily on EN 2.2 for a couple of years and absolutely cannot live without it. It has been working without a glitch. You can still find EN 2.2 on the web. Try it. You’ll be amazed how far downhill the new versions have gone.
MajorO
Overall, I like the Beta version. the only thing I’m experiencing that is strange comes when I have a second monitor hooked up to my laptop. the screen does not seem to want to paint correctly and none of the menus seem to work. The only option I have to shutdown the application is to use the task manager.
I know you’re still working on it, so I’ll hang in there.
Major O.
+jAy-
3.1 is very neat!
*Suggestion*
I would like to see a new mode in the Evernote Program. This mode would turn on/off with a hotkey or mouse click.
WHEN ON, EVERNOTE WOULD RECORD THE LAST 10 or so pages, the last 5000 words written, the last 10 pictures viewed, the last 3 videos watched ETC!! ALSO EVERNOTE WOULD CONTINUOUSLY OVERWRITE THESE ITEMS so as to have only a recent history “following” the users actions!
Get me??
Maybe even a video capture tool??
Just thinkin’
Keep up the good programming Evernote people!
:]
+jAy-
Ola Forsstrom-Olsson
Going back to 3.1 because of the screen capture tool, and also, there seems to be problems with ScanSnap. Both things dealbreakers on their own.
Bill Clayton
I’ve tried to like 3.5 but it’s not a good upgrade. I agree with all of the reservations people have listed. One of my own is that 3.1 used to pick up the first clip of a clipping and automatically use it as a title. But 3.5 has been picking up the name of the first image from the HTML on the page. I have to copy and past the title, or type in my own. Also, 3.5 is pretty slow compared to 3.1. I applaud the decision to improve 3.1, but 3.5 is a beta that needs a lot of work before it’s recommended for wide distribution and use.
Sergey Smirnov
I’ve been using your application more than a year not just for notes but for taking screenchots also. And it was great. In beta release this feature is unusable. Clipper doesn’t allow to change the borders of screenshot or save it as a separate file.
Steven Jurgeit
Must say that, despite some issues, the functionality and ease of having thumbnails to link to clips is a great move. I look forward to all future releases of a really handy program. Thanks guys.
Wilmer
I think Beta seems to react slower(loadup and just screen reactions). Is this because you guys used you used the gtk/gnome libraries on windows pc? I don’t really like it (although i can understand how this can reduce your workload for cross platform development).
feedback
1) the overall feel seems slower
2) screen clipping, I still want the freedom to CTRL-C and clip into any application I want.
3) quite buggy still(which is understandable, since you’re in beta)
I’m going back to the old version for now. Good luck!
ASL4U
I really hate the new interface – enough to stop using the online version of any evernote. why did you change the interface to add a bunch of icons in the middle of the page? – and in list view – you can see the list of titles but your page is cut in half with a HUGE EMPTY title bar (or loaded up with tags… like – really the information I want to see ??!!)… which is not adjustable – not disappearable… and you have to scroll and look at the acutal document in about 3 ” of lower edge screen space.
Sorry evernote – your priorities are weird. I’m going back to 2.2… when the program was useful
Tom
Big fan of evernotes.
I am using the 3.5 beta recently on windows xp box.
However, I found we have no status bar by default and don’t know how to turn on it.
I don’t like the new interface and think one native interface is better than others.
Viv
First of all, let me say that Evernote is a fantastic program, thank you! I’ve been running 3.1 on two machines for a while now without problems.
However, last night I installed the latest 3.5 beta on a BRAND NEW Dell 1720 Vostro laptop with Dual Core P8700, 3GB ram, XP Pro. CPU and RAM usage went through the roof, the program stopped responding and I couldn’t kill it in Task Manager. The entire systenm was unusable. In the end I had to reboot.
And what happened to the clipper?
Beta indeed. I really hope you iron out the major flaws and that the final release is worthy of the Evernote name.
thrillhouse
Seems a lot slower than 3.1 – also appears to leak quite a bit of memory. Doesn’t seem to take much to nudge it past 100mb soon after launch.
For my money, the interface in 3.1 just feels a good deal nicer to use than the beta. It feels a little unpolished.
Evernote is a fantastic product but I’ll be sticking with 3.1 for a while.
Rob Prouse
Since it is in Beta, wouldn’t it be an idea to have a place where beta users could report issues linked from this page? I looked and couldn’t find anything, so I’ll post the issues I found here. Please contact me if there is a better place for this.
1. Evernote does not seem to respond correctly to Windows power events. I put my laptop to sleep and when it woke up again Evernote did not paint and was not responding. The client area was just black and I could not close. I had to kill the process.
2. Create a new note, add a new tag, in the tag pane, drag that tag to become a sub-tag of another tag. The tag on the note you created is lost even though the new tag still lists the count as 1.
Kristi
I have 3.1 on my desktop and downloaded 3.5 on my netbook which I use in lectures. I was severely disappointed in the change of views.. getting rid of the good view to make way for 3 almost-unusable views? The screen on my netbook isn’t very big, so when I try to type notes in any of the views, it only shows a few lines at a time.
I was considering upgrading my evernote, but I certainly will not if the views don’t change in the new version (I’m also holding out for BlackBerry Pearl version).
Patrick Mackaaij
I came to this page to see where you’d like to gather feedback on 3.5Beta. I’ll keep using it so I can provide feedback, let me know if you’d like to receive it somewhere else
I think the interface is fine in general. I don’t like the way the fonts look (not sharp but a bit blurry). In a note the text is sharp, I’d like that in the whole interface.
First thing I really miss in indeed the way the capture tool works in 3.1. The “Prnt Scrn” button does not open the capture tool on the WinXP machine I currently use.
Performance might have improved in search speed, but the new note window that opens does not display text fast. It scared the hell out of me looking at an empty note screen, I was afraid I lost data but it took ~10 seconds to display (encrypted content).
I’d appreciate the notes to open fullscreen, at least not somewhere that appears to be the center of a much larger screen than the 1280×800 I use right now.
The shortcut of encryption changed to Ctrl+Shift+X, that’s fine I’ll just have to learn a new shortcut.
Very convenient that Ctrl+F is now available inside a note. I’d add it to the menu. Maybe make it cycle through the found instances, now “next” has no effect on the latest match.
Luke Abbott
Just want to echo Rob’s “problem #1″… I often get a black Evernote window and have to close the app through the tray icon.
Didn’t remember having this problem before, so I came here looking for a release history or changelog or something, but none was to be found…
Kevin
I love evernote. Really helps be an organized and more effective manager.
Will we at some point be able to use the ‘parent’ tag for filtering, i.e. show me all notes with child tags under the selected parent tag?
Josh
Two features that I miss:
1) The bullet feature was better…the new images seem low quality. Also the switch in hotkeys is more annoying. [‘s vs M’s isn’t a good switch.
2) I always would drop pictures into notes, right click, options, and resize them. Now I have to use an external application which is VERY much slower. Please bring back the right-click resize option for photos.
Gavin J Pearson
Hi,
Just installed the beta and I am very impressed. Your coders have certainly been working hard. As you state, this is a complete re-write. Its more intuitive, user friendly and much faster.
Thank you Evernote!
TesterX
I am a user for 3years, from paid 2.x version.
What is this 3.5? Are you out of you mind?
I am going back to 3.1
3.5 is ugly, unusable, and buggy (blank screen bug)
Patrick Mackaaij
I also noticed that Ctrl+Shift+X does not set “Use passphrase from previous sessions” as the default. Would be nice to have that back again.
itfan
I don’t want to install MICROSOFT .NET FRAMEWORK 3.5 SP1.
Randy
After the last update mine is always black as well after being in sleep mode on both of my computers. Everything else has been great!
Istvan Pi Toth
I am using the version 3.5.0.862 (66658) under Windows XP (SP3) and Windows 7 x64.
I found the following bugs and missing things:
1) After using the Evernote Button in the Firefox (3.5.5) then I cannot give tags and notebooks when the small popup arrived. I need to open the note in the Evernote then I can give tags.
2) The user interface seems like I changed a less screen resolution on my display. All menu, characters, buttons, everything is bigger then other windows application and it has blur too.
3) for the beta testing should be a “send bugs/feedback” button directly inside the program.
Thank you very much for the great and very usefull program.
Larry Cadloff
Add me to the list of people experiencing a problem with Evernote 3.5′s recovery from sleep mode. Evernote displays a black, unresponsive window when my laptop comes out of sleep, regardless of whether the app was minimized or not before sleep is initiated. I need to kill the process with Task Manager to make it go away. I’m running Windows 7 x64.