Evernote – The Dangling Pointer

Do you have a ScanSnap scanner on your Mac and scan things to Evernote? You notice that if you have Evernote running, ScanSnap can’t launch Evernote properly? You might get an error message like the following:

Failed to start up Evernote for Mac.
Make sure that the selected application is installed correctly.

Turns out Evernote is broken. EvernoteHelper.app is an embedded application that runs while Evernote is running (or while it’s in the background) and if you’re set to English, its name is the same as the main Evernote application. Technically, the CFBundleName is being overridden in the InfoPlist.strings file. You can verify this by running /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app and seeing:

How do you fix this? Well, Evernote should really fix it. In fact, I’ve opened a support request with them. But until then, you can follow these steps to modify the bundle name by hand. Follow these directions at your own risk.

Open Terminal.app in /Applications/Utilities.

Type the following command and hit enter:

curl -o /Applications/Evernote.app/Contents/Library/LoginItems/EvernoteHelper.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/InfoPlist.strings https://i.cloudup.com/ovQskXFl1h.strings

Type the following command and hit enter:
```
killall EvernoteHelper
```
Restart Evernote and try scanning!

Please note that this fix will most likely break every time Evernote is updated. Like I mentioned I submitted a support request to their team to see if it can get fixed permanently. This was attempted with the stand-alone download of Evernote, not the version available in the Mac App Store (it may work with the App Store version too).

Updated 2014/01/02 – The team handling support at Evernote has acknowledged receipt of the problem and is forwarding it to the product team for review.

If you don’t know what Evernote is, I’ll quickly summarize it for you. Evernote is a cloud-based service that is accessible through the means of a web site, mobile and computer application and various other APIs. The point of Evernote is that if you ever find something you want to remember – a piece of text, web page, a PDF, an image, recipe, sound bite, anything, you put it into Evernote. Their service indexes it to make it searchable and then you forget about it until you want to find it later in life. It’s more than that but you have to discover how it’s useful to you.

Anyway, I’ve been slowly integrating Evernote into my life. I’ve been scanning things in like extended warranty contracts for my cars and things that I normally keep in a filing cabinet at home but would need in a pinch when I’m not at home. Those scanned PDFs in Evernote become very useful wherever I am and now are searchable even if they are handwritten documents.

Time Warner had me in a great package deal including their digital phone, digital cable, RoadRunner and a cable box for one price. Because of a problem two years back I was actually at the same price for over three years. That package expired 12/31 and my bill ended up jumping up nearly $60/month which I couldn’t justify since I never use the home phone service. I ended up going in to the nearest Time Warner store and returning their cable box and remote, which they no longer include in any package, and exchanging the cable modem for one without phone service. The price I was quoted by their retention department for the new package was reasonable and was for two years. I was not told it would require signing a contract and the representative was a jerk about that in the store.

Long story short, he agreed to give a year at $5 a month more. I didn’t quite trust the guy so I had him give me a screen print of what he did showing the prices. When I got home, I scanned it into Evernote. A couples weeks later I discovered my bill was wrong while I was at work. When I called in, I popped open Evernote, read off a few screen codes to the rep and she believed my story and realized I had a screen print from their system.

Goes to show taking initiative getting the screen print and using Evernote to record that data makes life easier!

Sh*t my brain says and forgets about

Tag: Evernote

Fix ScanSnap on Mac not opening Evernote properly

How Evernote Won My Time Warner Battle