What happens to your Evernote notes when you die?

A quick warning. This post does talk a little about death, so if you’re recently bereaved or sensitive to the topic right now leave this post until another day.

Not wanting to dwell on something that hopefully won't happen for a very long time but there are buses and with so much of our content online the last thing we want is for all of it to be lost when we pass away.

Someone should be able to access all those memes you've been saving for years!

This is something I've started planning for so my kids have an easier ride of things and hopefully they don't just delete everything!

What happens to your Evernote account?

So Evernote will treat your account as if you are still alive. No difference.

This is from Evernote's terms of service:

Our pledge to protect the privacy of your Content will continue, even after your death or incapacity. If you wish to enable someone to have access to your Content or other data in your account after you are no longer able to provide them access, you need to implement a process for providing your information to them. We will not provide your information, or your Content, to anyone, even next of kin, unless we determine that we are legally obligated to do so. We encourage you to include your Basic Subscriber information, with instructions on how to access your Content, in your will or other estate plans, so that anyone you wish to have access to your account will have the means to do so.

This basically means that its up to you to create some sort of a process whereby your next of kin or executor can get into your Evernote. The responsibility is yours to set this up.

Regarding paid Evernote plans this information comes from their commercial terms:

If you are the authorized legal representative for a deceased or legally incapacitated individual or a legal entity that has been formally dissolved or otherwise ceased to be authorized to act for his, her, or its own account (without opportunity for revival), and you wish to cancel a current Paid Service subscription for such individual or entity, you must notify us according to the requirements in the Terms of Service (under “How Can I Send A Notice to Evernote?”), identify the account in question and request cancellation of the Paid Service. We will cancel the Paid Service subscription if you demonstrate to our satisfaction your legal authority to act and be legally responsible for such individual or entity and your ability to validate the details of the payment method used for such Paid Service.

This means that if a bank account or credit card will still be active when the payment is due, to cancel it you need to contact Evernote with proof that you have the authorisation to act on the persons estate.

Your Evernote Password

Passwords are meant to be secure so nefarious folk can't access all your stuff but your next of kin or executor will need the password to get into your account.

I use Zoho Vault password manager and all my passwords are stored here. There are many of these services around, like 1Password and Bitwarden.

What it means is you only need one password to access all your passwords. You don't need a giant Excel spreadsheet of usernames and passwords lying around.

My daughter has the password to my vault and its just stored randomly on its own on her computer. She knows my email so can get in quite easily. If you don't want to leave this information with someone then put it in your will.

Two Factor Authorisation

Passwords are all well and good but if you have Two Factor Authorisation (2FA) set up (which you should) then it can cause another level of problems.

Even if you know the username and password you'll need a phone code to gain access to Evernote.

When you set up 2FA you get a list of emergency backup codes. DO NOT STORE THESE IN EVERNOTE!

I have mine stored in my password manager so if my phone is not accessible one of these codes can be used to gain access.

If you are a next of kin or executor, then one thing I would recommend is not to cancel phone contracts too quickly. When my Dad passed away I cancelled the phone contract around a month later but 3 months later when I was doing some admin for my Mom an online account wanted a text number to my Dad's phone. This did cause a lot more admin!

Here's a some instructions on how to setup Two Factor Authorisation in Evernote.

Consolidate your digital content

Do you have stuff spread out all over the place? I used to but over the last couple of years I've been consolidating things with a lot of that content ending up in Evernote.

Right now I have stuff in my cloud drive which is Zoho Workdrive and Evernote. My Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox are all pretty empty.

I think more of my content will be going into Evernote over the next few months as its becoming a very important storage area for me, especially how easy it is to add context to photos and files within a note. You can't do this in Google Drive.

Digressing slightly, I'm also starting to buy more owned media so 'everything' isn't digital.

The music, movies and books I enjoy I'm buying in physical form so folks in the future can see the type of person I was. Just leaving behind a Netflix and Spotify account says nothing about you.

My Grandfather was a steel worker in the 30s and 40s, a seriously tough job but from the things I have from him I know he also read The Times, enjoyed Dickins and had a lovely singing voice. I think these things are important.

Do a bit of an audit about where all your digital stuff is and try to consolidate things.

Stop trying new services every five minutes, I used to and its why everything was spread about everywhere.

Something happy

So after the doom and gloom here’s a couple of things to put a smile on your face.

Fellow Evernote certified Expert Vlad Campos interviewed Federico the Evernote product lead this week. Lots of great insight on how they develop the product.

This was shared on X/Twitter recently. A files section, how do you envisage this working?

Have a great weekend

All the best

Jon