Evernote 3.5 Beta keeps improving on its path to general availability. The latest release adds a number of new features, improves speed and stability, and gives you lots of things you’ve been asking for. Here’s a rundown.
Drag and drop
With this release, you can drag files onto the Evernote application icon to create new notes. Free users can drag images, audio and PDFs. Evernote Premium users can drop any file including Word docs and PowerPoint presentations. If you use a scanner with Evernote, set the scan destination to be Evernote.exe, and those scans will become notes automatically.
Pop-up control
If you’re like me, then you like seeing those informational sync and clip pop-up messages. Some of you…well…you hate them. Now you get to choose. Keep them on, or turn them off. It’s your call. Just go to Tools > Options > Synchronization to change the setting.
Tons of other improvements
- Significantly improved performance when switching between notebooks
- New global hot-key for searching Evernote (defaults to SHIFT+Windows+F)
- Improved search support for Asian characters
- Addressed PDF search issues
- Improved auto-import dialogs
- Improved copy/paste support
- Incorporated more standard keyboard short-cuts
- More configuration preferences preserved
- Improved task tray with easier access to clipping and short-cuts
Known problems
- Graphics and text can appear blurry in some monitor configurations
- Firefox clipper is currently not supported
To everyone that has tried the Beta. Thanks. Your feedback is helping us build a better Evernote.
Updates!
Evernote for Windows Beta keeps getting better:
- Evernote 3.5 Beta 4: read about it
- Evernote 3.5 is out of beta: read about it
78 Comments
Dwight Schultz
I can’t get the beta to even run under Windows 7 – I like the new version of Evernote (windows) because it resembles the Mac version…
Andrew
Keep up the great work, guys! The Beta is getting better!
@Dwight : I’m running the Window 7 RC, and Evernote 3.5 Beta is working fine for me.
Chris
I liked using the Beta, but the one thing that made me go back to using 3.1 for now is the lack of support for the Firefox web clipper. I know it’s a known-issue for you guys, but I thought I’d throw that out there. It’s probably my most-used method for creating notes!
Andrew Sinkov
@Chris There will be a Firefox clipper for Evernote 3.5
Tom
Anyone else having problems with bullets in the beta releases? I have tried all three betas now and it still seems to be a problem where indented bullets result in blank bullets above it that cannot be removed.
Rich
Wish you would include printing from the screen capture function. Would save me about 6 clicks each time I want to save a picture and print it.
Thanks
Zac
It appears that one can post a bulleted list into the text entry window, and bullets actually show up! Of course, you can’t control the look (who cares) or the depth (via hitting tab, I care a lot!).
It would be awesome to see some basic outlining enabled in the UI — let us have a button for bulleted and numbered lists, and let us have multiple depths.
Additionally, the ability to “highlight” (really just have a quick-key for changing text background color) would be very cool. The same could be said of the text color changer: I’d like it to be a normal button, with an optional dropdown just to the right. It should retain my last text color choice. This makes for a lot less clicks.
Jim Kimmons
Your update downloaded but will not install. Get an error about a missing component in Windows Installer. I can install anything else I want, so assume it’s your issue. Hope you fix it.
Kyle
Looks great! Feels more like the Mac version to me as well.
Hey, does anyone know where I could get an Evernote t-shirt. I’m willing to buy or donate money for it. Evernote is flippin sweet!
Jeff
Two things I’m still missing:
1) The ability to rotate images like the old Evernote could do
2) A quick keyboard shortcut to insert things like “To Do” checkboxes
Is there another place I should be reporting these things?
Herb mann
I would like to save YOUR page as an Evernote. Be damned if I can see how.
Alos, how you save a web page that goes beyond one screen.
This sucks.
Taksina
Running on Windows 7 without problems so far. Only one minor annoyance: Program doesn’t minimize at Windows startup. Have to manually minimize it each time when I start Windows.
genevieve
I love Evernote, but the new layout takes up a ton of screen real estate. I have a 10 inch netbook and when I open up a note in its own window, the icons at the top and then the Note Title + the tags + the url take up roughly a fifth of the screen. That’s a lot! I know I can collapse the text editing menu bar, but can I collapse the other stuff too? Keep up the great work guys!
Lisa
Does this new beta fix the problems with scanning directly into Evernote with a ScanSnap? Or allow for a portable version? If not, I’m sticking to the earlier version until this is fixed.
pete
Works great for me so far. I’m using Win 7.
Stephen Hall
This seems not to be happening to anyone else, judging from the comments, but I get an error message from the beta download link (as I did for the last announcement about the beta). As a result, haven’t been able to try it out.
Ali
I agree with Zac – put some formatting buttons on the note window/section/thingy. I’ve learned the keyboard shortcuts but I’d prefer to have buttons. And tab to increase indent with bulleted lists would be cool.
And @Jeff there is a keyboard shortcut for the checkboxes – SHIFT+CTRL+C
Daryl
@ genevieve – you can get rid of the “showing n notes from x notebook” toolbar by going to View menu and deselecting “Show Search Explanation”. I can’t find a keyboard shortcut for this.
This then reduces the clutter at the top to no more space than in 3.1.
You can also reduce the font size of the main screen elements by going to TOOLS > OPTIONS > DISPLAY:
The “Source List” is the notebooks/tags/attributes lists down the left of the screen.
“Note List” is the scrollable list of notes top right pane.
“Note Text” is, I imagine, self-explanatory.
For info, although I haven’t yet tried this on my netbook, I have found that keeping the font size at 12 but changing the font to Calibri gives a nice balance. I’ve not extensively tested the main Windows fonts out yet though, so there may be something better, or of course something that it visually more appealing to you.
I hope this helps though,
Daryl.
Naas
Please bring back the following screen clipping features available on previous releases !!!
– ability to resize and move selected area before actually clipping
– option of clipping selection directly into Evernote or to clipboard (very useful for adding multiple screen clips into the same note)
– ability to add shapes into selected area prior to clipping.
Werner
I use tables extensively, since templates are not supported in version 3. Now, in 3.5, there is only minimal support for tables left, i.e. rows or columns can not be added or removed nor can the width of columns be changed. I hope this punctuality is added back soon, otherwise Evernote is no longer of use to me!
Matthew Routley
I get the following error on Windows XP:
“Administrator permissions are required to install .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. Contact your administrator.”
There’s no chance I’ll get my administrator to support Evernote.
TGhosh
I am seeing the problem with bullets.
agreed on the lack of keyboard shortcuts to create checkbox lists
My biggest problem with evernote and why i still keep onenote around is the total lack of a rich text editor. There needs to be more power and flexibility around formating text within notes
Ed
I really want to try the beta but until the web clipper for FF is supported, I just can’t. Let us know as soon as that gets resolved.
Mike
Matt Routley, .Net Framework is a standard upgrade package to a lot of stuff built into Windows. Subterfuge would probably work.
Echo the comments about the bullets throwing in extra lines if you are doing nested lists. I also have some weird font size issues when going back and forth, or printing notes.
Mike
Oops. Oh.. and Matt, you can use the web version at work. If you use firefox, you can get two extensions FaviconizeTab and PermaTab to make a little always up icon of evernote in your browser. (I use that pair for gmail, reader, and our intranet at work)
John Wylie
I concur with Naas. We need the old clipping back.
Jeff
Bottom line is that Evernote is a spectacular and “insanely useful” product. I think us “beta testers” should have another place besides this blog to air our comments. Is there another such place? Perhaps a “beta tester forum” separate from this one would be appropriate. No sense in potentially scaring away other customers just because they read comments on minor little problems on a beta version of a product, especially when the “main” product like the browser-based software works really well.
Zetalaki
Please bring back tape view as a viewing option! This was one of the main reasons I chose Evernote (Premium).
For those, who work mainly with text notes, this is such a nice feature. And now, as you got used to it, a must.
I guess the icon view is good for those who work predominantly with short text notes with a lot of photos, but I think most of your users store longer text tidbits in Evernote.
So eliminating tape view is a step-back for me. And i guess for many of your users.
And I have just lost so many good features in Evernote since version 2.2, which I had also bought ( like auto-tagging and intersect search, linking notes), that I am wondering if serious users will be left out in the cold while you are inviting more twitter-toting, iphone wielder webtoddlers into the bunch…
pavel
Really, Beta3 is better! Looking forward to it. But what about the Clipping Panel? I used it quite a lot. Together with the ‘D’ – Drawing feature for not only web clips.
Steve
Anyone having trouble re-launching after Evernote has run in the background for awhile? I’m on Windows 7. After putting mini to sleep and waking it up again, Evernote will not relaunch. Nothing in the task manager, but when I restart, I get indication that Evernote is still running in the background and needs to be forced closed.,
Mike Kanakos
Could you provide a time line as to when Evernote may leave Beta status?
I am a pretty heavy user and I use it in multiple locations (Windows, Mac client, iphone and web). I decided not to use the beta because i don’t have time in my life for working around the bugs…
I am anxiously awaiting a stable non beta build…
Teresa
Please, please, PLEASE figure out the Firefox Web Clipper for the beta version. It is so frustrating not to be able to easily clip into Evernote.
Tony Barra
Tried the beta, looks good but like others I had to go back because I use the Firefox clipper several times a day.
Daren Peacock
There is less control over screen clipper. Please bring back the ‘copy to clipboard’ feature. I find this very useful if a want to paste the clip into MS Office.
Also when a screen has been clipped and you attempt to copy (right mouse click in the viewing pane on the right) the clip disappears!
Nils
What about the ‘subject date’? I really need it back!
David Richards
When printing the font is huge if it is a small note. I want it to print at a small/standard font. Email if you want an example.
Jim
I am having trouble with the wake from sleep to an unresponsive evernote that has to be forced closed and also sometimes leads to a computer freeze. I am trying an uninstall and reinstall to see if that helps. Win 7 pro.
Jason Barone
Working well for me on Windows 7, but my first impressions are not good.
1. I’m doing a side-by-side comparison of this beta to the old version. RAM usage is 15k vs 90k. FIX THAT immediately. That is a HUGE step back if you release 3.5 consuming that much memory. The program overall isn’t that much different, I hope this is a coding bug or something. Pidgin, Skype, Gizmo5 and Thunderbird combined run on less than 90k RAM for me.
2. It “feels” a little slower when navigating through items in the left column. I’m doing a side-by-side comparison and just clicking different notebooks and things feels slightly sluggish compared to how it was. I’m not sure if it’s just me.
3. The text/font for everything is worse in my opinion, it’s much less sharp and crisp, which is odd because Windows 7 overall renders text really well. This isn’t a huge deal though.
4. I was hoping for a few additions to the text editing box, but I was disappointed when I saw that you actually removed items (the decrease/indent buttons). I was hoping you would input the most basic and useful feature I look for: Remove Formatting. I absolutely hate clipping items into my blog article drafts and the text copies in as courier, when the rest of it is Tahoma. I like everything to be a neater and unanimous. Please consider adding a simple “Remove Formatting” button that strips the selected text to default settings.
I’ll play with the beta a little more, but to be honest I’ll probably uninstall and go back to the previous version.
Evernote ROCKS, I’m confident 3.5 will come out great, but please consider looking into the RAM issue.
Jason Barone
A few more quick notes.
Playing with 3.5 beta, opening options and Viewing Thumbnail mode caused the RAM to go even higher– 110k.
Doing the same things on the previous version, I only got it max at 16k.
Also, am I missing something? I can’t figure out how to get back to the continuous view where you can just scroll through all of your notes in a notebook. I don’t like this either. That worked extremely well in finding things. Also the gray “whitespace” was perfect, it gave the program a bit more slickness to the UI.
Coming from an extremely happy free user, who will upgrade when the Android app is available. 3.5 is no longer the quick, slick, lightweight little app that I loved.
Michael Murphy
I really like the improved navigation.
Now if I could only sync all my data locally to my iPhone…Evernote would be perfect.
Yeah, I know your working on it.
Brandon
I suppose one of my simplistic gripes — though it’s important to me — is that the basic components of the new Evernote beta just don’t look right. The buttons are non-standard, the menu drop-downs are non-standard.
In the forums you guys talk about usability tests and getting things to be less “new” looking and more familiar to your new and prospective users.
So why get away from what we Windows users expect from applications as far as some of these basic elements?
Keith
Is it me? Although I can sync files with 3.5 the search function only really works online. I really need to be able to search PDFs and it doesn’t seem to do it. Is this a beta flaw or am I missing something?
Carl
Will we be able to sort Notes alphabetically like in the Mac version? This is important to me, because I will soon have hundreds of PDF notes that I need to sort that way.
Tom
Getting better with every release, keep up the good work! Few quick notes:
1. I’m not sure I like single process design ’cause it uses more RAM even when not displaying main interface, tho that’s not a big issue.
2. Linking between notes. Would that be very hard to implement? It’s I’m really missing this feature.
android
where is android support … we need it badly
Stacey
Let me echo the request for the return of tape view and of subject date to the Windows version. Is it standardization with the Mac that has caused the loss of these well-used features?
At least give us some automated way to convert the subject dates for thousands of notes to some other way they could be read. If all of us who use the subject date feature were all to do this manually, that would probably add up to thousands and thousands of hours.
Dan West
I would love to see tags set up as a cloud application the way Remember the Milk does its tags.
They are much easier to find and manage and highlight the amount of information in each tag.
It would also be nice to be able to merge tags.
Dan West
The Android application is lacking. however there is a workaround for sending pictures on the Droid.
Just go to the camera and take the picture you want. Then hit share and if you have Evernote installed it will have a share button for Evernote. This is much easier that going to the Evernote app first as that does not always work correctly.
Erin
Something isn’t right for me in Windows 7 Home Premium. As soon as I start Evernote, it jumps a bit, then my windows are turned into Windows Basic. I was just thinking of going premium, but this is a big issue for me. To get my windows back to normal I have to reboot.
Nicola
Please bring back the subject date!
I cannot use the Beta version without it!
Robert Durham
When trying to sync..3.5 says it connects to server, authenticates and starts to sync database…however at 13% it errors out and says Synchronization Failed.
This has been happening for several days now on Windows Vista. Any ideas?