Having Evernote on your Android device can be extremely handy when you are on the go. However, there is something that often trips people up: the ability to have their notes available offline.
There is nothing quite like firing up Evernote on your phone when you are on an airplane or somewhere with no data access and getting a big blank note where you thought your important PDF would be.
What you want to do ahead of time is mark your notebooks as available for Offline Sync. That way, the contents and attachments are downloaded to your device and should be available no matter what your data situation is.
This ability is only available to Premium subscribers, but depending on your needs it might be the thing that makes going Premium worth it.
I have a notebook with all my travel stuff called (wait for it…) Travel, so let’s see how to set it up on Android.
Enable Individual Notebooks
First, you want to go to your list of notebooks in the Evernote client. You’ll see, at least at the time of writing, a small triangle to the bottom right of each note name. Tap it.
You then have a bunch of options, among them being Enable Offline Sync. Tap that, and it will tell Evernote to download all the note contents and attachments to your device.
Once the app has finished downloading all the materials, your notebook will now be marked as offline.
Accessing Offline Notes
Accessing your offline notes is the same as normal. You go to the notebook, go to your note, and your PDFs (and other attachments) should be there available to open.
Offline Search
The Evernote Android client has the ability to search your notes offline, but you may need to enable that. Go to Settings > Search and Storage and make sure that Offline Search is checked. You will then be able to search your note contents even when offline.
Think Ahead
Whether you use Android or iOS, I recommend that you spend some time now thinking about which notebooks you’d like to have accessible when offline. The time to find out that you need something is not when you are in a foreign country nowhere near wi-fi.
(Photo by viteez)