News

Evernote for Windows update

Posted by on 18 Jan 2011

Today, we updated Evernote for Windows with a slew of great improvements, fixes and some much-requested features. Here are some of the highlights of version 4.2:

Greater control over clips

If you use the Evernote Web Clippers for Internet Explorer or Firefox, then this is for you. In Evernote, you can now specify certain clipping preferences to give you the optimal experience when capturing webpages. Choose which notebook clips are sent to, how the clip should be formatted and whether the clipping popup should appear.

These settings only apply to IE and Firefox because these clippers send clips directly into the desktop version of Evernote. Don’t forget, we also have a great extension available for Google Chrome.

Improved note editing and viewing

In this release, we’ve significantly updated our note editor to make the experience much more robust and reliable. Here are a few of the improvements:

Improved font handling
Improved reliability when creating and pasting numbered, bulleted and multi-leveled lists
Better control over displaying encrypted text
Improved support for cut, copy and paste shortcuts
Date stamp shortcut (CTRL+;) works more reliably

Auto URLs

We’ve received a lot of requests for this one… Whenever you type or paste a URL, it’ll automatically become a link. Clean and simple.

Many more improvements

Improved proxy support. This is particularly useful for Evernote users in corporate environments
Enabled background sync from the task tray
Improved ink note support
Improved printing options
Improved file drag and drop, including adding text files
Improved localization
Added support for Polish, Dutch and Danish

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53 Comments RSS

Everton —

In version 4.2, the update download progress window still stay over all other windows?
I’m downloading now the update and that window drive me nuts!
- J-Mac —
  
  I agree – I’m peeking around that “Downloading Evernote Update” dialog now while typing this. I really hate the new installer they started using with 4.2. It tells you that you have to reboot – which is complete BS – and it really interferes with the entire computer, or at least any open programs. Why the switch?
  
  Also, regarding the update itself… What does Evernote have against Print Preview??!!? You deleted that feature about two months ago and never brought it back. That’s a big fail IMO. Just when you thought that they were starting to really try to improve this app.
  
  Jim
  - hugh —
    
    of course, you can just move it with the mouse out of the way like I have done? 🙂
loosewire —

Thanks for this update. But while the drag and drop of text files is a nice feature, I still can’t drag and drop text as was possible under previous versions of Evernote. This is a big disappointment as it’s by far the easiest way to get things in.
Martin Huard —

No notebooks sharing yet for Windows 🙁
Paul McGuire —

Text input improved for sure! Very happy with this version! I’m not having issues with the thumbnails either. Nice work!
Sirius Gooner —

Thanks! That’s great!
Rev. Brian Henderson —

Great updates. May I suggest a calendar/task function. This would make Evernote the perfect GTD/productivity program.
- Nicholas Lord —
  
  Agree on the Calendar /task function….. Google calendar has a gaping hole in the process you can drive a truck through…. Combined with the calendar/task function should be a billing time schedule with preferences to locate client.. hours and billing rate in a choice of currency with auto additions and summary report for invoicing time spent on a task… This does not need to be OTT but merely functional… learn and grow from there…
- Bruceoutdoors —
  
  I’ve been thinking about a calendar for quite some time… if they really did it Evernote could simply be the best software EVER
  - Tamás Csikós —
    
    Absolutely agree with Calendar request!
    A simple thing like having the ability to add a “special” tag to notes which tag contains a date format (eg. 21/01/2011) and a function in the EN clients to search for Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week etc. or specified date tag supported by pre-configured searches.
    (similar to Attributes search based on Creation/Modification date – but here the base of the search would be this special tag).
    
    A nice improvement option then to make it available in iCAL format – non-plus-ultra in read/write mode.
    Similar can be imagined with a special “Time” tag, or actually “Start Time” and “End Time”.
    Does that make sense?
- savagemike —
  
  Could not agree more with calendar request !
  
  Also – some macro code to use with templates to create a daily log which auto populates the date and time (along with whatever else I want in the template)! !!!!!!
  
  Oddly, you would think evernote would function very well as a journal as it seems heart and soul in lockstep with the central idea of the product.
  But, quite insanely, it has not even the simplest of concepts implemented to make it a friendly journaling application – such as these templates with auto insertion of time and date. Also search funtions which make it easy to view adjoining ranges of dates or perhaps the same relative day in multiple months or years simultaneously….
pepo —

Great/needed bug fixes and features!!
Michael Bierman —

When will the Mac version be out?
Beavis —

Just updated. Seems to be a bit speedier overall.
Ken —

Excellent! Whenever I type notes they are always in bulleted lists and I’m glad that the Evernote team made the necessary fixes.

Why can’t the chrome extension send clips to the client? Whenever you click on save button there is a considerable lag time for the note to be saved and uploaded to the servers.

If you click away during this time, the note is not uploaded and the extension displays it has unsynced changes. Or can the chrome extension be improved to upload in the background instead?
- Tamás Csikós —
  
  Ken,
  select the part you want to clip in Chrome (or anywhere on the PC), hit Win+A and it pastes selection right into EN Win Client. It does capture the source url as well so you got similar result like with the clipping extension.
  I tend to use this function nowadays because the Chrome extension leg is really disturbing for me too.
  - savagemike —
    
    I use firefox mostly but almost always use the CNTRL + A to put stuff in evernote as the built in clipper seems to always munge the html of web pages in some way or another. Usually text and or images overlapping somewhere.
    I am hopeful maybe that works better in this new release, but CNTRL + A has been my goto up to now.
- SUhendra —
  
  Agreed. Same goes with Chrome Clipper and Firefox Clipper on Mac. It’s getting so slow now I have to resort to using Instapaper and Read it Later (much much faster, instantaneous compared to Evernote’s clippers) before sending them to Evernote from these services.
  
  I use Firefox Clipper to send to my Mac Evernote application. Sometimes anything beyond 200KB doesn’t get sent.
  
  Evernote really need to optimize their clippers.
  
  Why don’t I use the Universal highlighting and clipping instead of the browser clippers? Universal clipping makes the articles static, meaning when I view this on an iPad, the words are too small, and the article width doesn’t change dynamically accordingly. So I get fonts that are too small, and a lot of unnecessary scrolling back and forth right and left.
  
  So frustrating.
Simon Rowe —

Thanks for another update – keep up the good work 🙂

Please could you do some further work on the editor – it it the most frustrating part of the product for me. I use Evernote on Windows, iPhone and iPad, and sometime the web interface. The inconsistency in the editing experience is not nice. iPad/iPhone – edit in plain text, and if updating have to loose the exsting RTF formatting. Web – no tables support (in Chrome), and the Windows editor makes me want to cry as it is so poor and frustrating to use.

Please can you adopt/offer the ability to just use plain text everywhere – to provide a consistent experience when imputing text manually?? Or even better offer Markdown as an option for text entry and updates?

Otherwise – great product, keep up the good work.

Simon
- Andrew Sinkov —
  
  Thanks for the feedback. Improved note editing is definitely an area of focus for us.
- Karl —
  
  Markdown or some wiki syntax would be great. So rich text formatting would also be possible on the iPad.
Luc —

I canceled the update because ‘my computer _may_ reboot during the upgrade’. Will it or won’t it, I’d like to know for sure!
Also, still no highlighting of text?
cp —

I wonder what the improved print options are? Looks all as before…
Simon Griffiths —

I love the new upgrade ; as Rev Henderson above, I’m using Evernote as part of GTD, and would also love calendar / reminder function that brings up the document required on the day required. Also an image rotation function within the software would be good too.

Thanks
Niels —

Please bring back the note ribbon view! I’m still sticking to 3.2 because this is the view that gives me productivity. Love Evernote, but really hate your habbit of removing useful features…
Mark Avey —

Good to get the update, but it’s re-downloading all 2,000+ notes 🙁
Ray G —

Spell Check button on the toolbar

I’ve mentioned this before. I store a lot programming code snippets in Evernote so I would like to have the ability to quickly toggle the red squiggly lines on and off as necessary.

Other than this still loving the new Windows version keep up the good work
Stephen Potter —

Still no way to include shared notebooks? IMO that’s worth more than all these features combined.
Rob Ives —

When I tried to update to 4.2 I lost EN altogether, after a very lengthy “install” process. I am now downloading 4.2 again.
- savagemike —
  
  I had a similar run around.
  If you have multiple profiles then this could be the culprit.
  Remove any installs from any individual profile accounts and log everyone off. Head to an admin level account and install. Be sure to chose ‘advanced’ when setup starts as I think this is where the ‘install only for this user or all users’ choice is.
  One installed in an admin account entering each profile completes the install in that profile.
  Very clunky !
  Took me better part of two hours to work out what was going on, identify the missed messages (such as it needing to remove a 3.5 install which actually turned out to be a 4.2 install in a separate user profile), etc…
  In the end it is all up and running on all profiles and did find the local notebooks on its own in each profile (sometimes with prompts to chose).
  Hope that helps.
Nigel Floyd —

Please reinstate the Print Preview option. It is invaluable when printing out clipped pages, and it helps to save paper.

Nigel Floyd
Glenn Webster —

Glad to see another update! Still need to have checkboxes coied instead of turning into images. I have been using copied checklists for a couple of years, and having that functionality broken is a issue for me
- Glenn Webster —
  
  The check boxes are fixed with the latest revision. Yes! Fantastic!
Hector —

I use a combination of remember the milk and evernote. For reminders and notes. It will be perfect if both applications were together.
Teresa —

I am new to Evernote and so far I love it. I use it primarily on my Mac. I have a Windows machine where I have installed it, but other than that have not really used it on that one as yet.

I saw this post about the update and decided to go ahead and run it since I’ve only just started using the service (no problems with features changing for me). When I opened Evernote I didn’t look too closely and started the update while it was still syncing. Mistake!

The update completed fine. No issues. However, the syncing was incomplete, missing nearly half the notes I have on the server. Doing a sync again did nothing to bring in the notes that were missing.

I was able to solve this by stopping Evernote, renaming the database files (the .exb files) and restarting. Once I did that, I got everything in the online database. Then I deleted the renamed files.

Just wanted to let people know – look carefully – let Evernote completely sync first. Then do any software updates. It will save you some time and searching to figure out how to fix it.
Mishka —

Thank you so much for fixing the URLs … that was driving me partially insane. I see you also fixed the checkboxes too.

Very pleased!
Michele
cp —

How about adding just printing the note title plus tags as a printing option (without note body). Would make Evernote a way better and still not overcomplex list manager. Also good for getting notebooks TOCs.
Myself —

Do we know when “Notebook Stacks” are going to come to the Window’s version? Very much looking forward to that.

I use EverNote as a sort of “commonplace book” / personal reference library / archive of interesting, useful, or helpful information / archive of insightful, interesting, or thought-provoking writing that I come across / research notebook / well you get the idea. I love it!

The promised “Notebook Stacks” feature is something that would vastly improve it’s usefulness to me. (Fortunately, the tags are hierarchical, so I’m able to get by without the “stacks” for the time being).

Editing of clipped web-pages is still weird. If the clipped portion of the website included any sort of table, then trying to edit it has very counter-intuitive results. Are there any plans to do anything about this?
- Andrew Sinkov —
  
  Notebook Stacks are available in this update.
  - Myself —
    
    Excellent! I was looking for that in the list of included features and didn’t see it. Guess it’s time to do the download and install. Thanks!
chadebrown —

Release notes and this blog post do not adequately explain what the changes were. “Improved font handling” for example. Are there MORE font types? Is the range of sizes changed? Or is something else different? Why was this change made now? What was wrong with the fonts before? Why was this not done “right” the first time? How does the change impact notes that pre-date the change? What will look different? Just because the developers call it an “improvement” does not mean it cannot create problems for some users. Is this a case where what was a simple tool becomes bloated? (For example Microsoft probably thought they were making an “improvement” each time they added yet another way to accomplish something leading to software that is way too complex because it has too many features. That little dog that popped up and wagged its tail for example.
savagemike —

On the install – just ask outright for all users or just the single current user profile. Don’t hide this behind an ‘advanced’ button.
On my recent update to a multi-profile vista machine clicking the ‘advanced’ button just hung long enough that I just set sod-it (thinking all that was behind it was the ability to customize directories anyway – as is quite normal for ‘customized’ or ‘advanced’ options of installs.
So I just hit ‘next’ and carried on.
Hour and a half later I finally figured out why evernote had disappeared from all other profiles on the computer.
Twenty minutes after trying to install it on an admin account and it telling me a 3.5 version was installed and needed to be removed (which I could not find at all), I realized it was probably talking about the 4.2 version I had installed on the other non-admin profile. I had to go into that profile and manually delete that install, then go back to admin account and install 4.2 again for all users.

So… 2 hours later, evernote was updated.
I honestly often don’t even recommend your mostly great product to friends and family because every update seems to bring some kind of running around like this and I don’t want to spend days and days on the phone walking people through trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Kess —

I tried to update my Evernote today. After the download finished, it prompted me to restart my PC. And so I did. But after the reboot, I lost Evernote 3.5 and there’s no Evernote 4.2 installed either. What should I do? After the reboot, no dialog box appeared to prompt me if my update was successful. A little help will be appreciated. Thanks!
Grzegorz —

Thank You for new release, especially for polish translation!
Miles —

No sharing still. Boooooo! 🙁
alimbada —

I think it’s utterly irresponsible to release an application that requires a reboot of the machine. Even Windows services can be restarted without a reboot; updating an interactive application *definitely* doesn’t need a reboot. There is absolutely *nothing* in Evernote that cannot be updated without the machine having to be rebooted. I have updated the application on both my desktop and laptop at home, but I refuse to do this on my work machine until the next time I actually have the time and/or feel the need for a reboot. Stop wasting our time with this useless “feature”.
Dan K. —

No Windows sharing? Ugh…….. 🙁
Mike Allen —

Any news on an Evernote for Firefox 4?
I’ve lost my favourite clipping application now my browser’s upgraded 🙁
- Howie —
  
  There were only 13 or so betas for them to prepare…
  
  I was stunned to sign in to my Evernote account using the RELEASED version of FF 4 only to receive a pop-up that this browser is not supported and that I should consider downgrading to FF 3.6.
  
  Come on Evernote, get with the program.
John —

Please add google desktop integration.
davidclausen —

IT looks like the web site clipping was broken in this update. Since the upgrade when I write click on the site in IE and select “Add to Evernote 4” it creates a new note a post a link to the site. Not what I wanted. It used to copy the web page to the new note. Please fix:)
amuramoto —

Evernote Web Clipper was upgraded in this version to match the experience in other browsers. Go to the Internet Explorer Options menu, then select Manage Add-ons, and enable the Evernote Extension. This will cause the Evernote Web Clipper icon to appear in your Command Bar. Clicking the icon will give you access to all the different Evernote Web Clipper features, including clipping the entire web page.