Copy entire notebook?

[e-noted 3]

Is there any way to make a copy of an entire notebook (and rename it e.g. Notebook2) as opposed to making copies of individual notes? And if not, is there at least a way of selecting multiple notes at once and making copies of them?

[jefito 5,589]

I believe that the answer is no. You can select a single not, and copy it (Note / Copy... or Right click, Copy Note...), but if you select multiple notes, those options disappear.

On the other hand, you might be able to do this: export multiple notes to Evernote format, and then, using ENScript.exe, import them into a different notebook.

[e-noted 3]

Yeah that seemed to work, with a test of 10 notes. I wonder if it will work with 1800...

[jbenson2 2,147]

Is there any way to make a copy of an entire notebook (and rename it e.g. Notebook2) as opposed to making copies of individual notes? And if not, is there at least a way of selecting multiple notes at once and making copies of them?

Just curious - why would you want to make a complete duplicate of an entire notebook?

All those duplicates would cause unintended results with the Evernote search engine.

[jefito 5,589]

Yeah that seemed to work, with a test of 10 notes. I wonder if it will work with 1800...

Probably, but it might take a bit of time...

[e-noted 3]

So it worked, about 1800 notes divided across about 25 notebooks. Embedded PDFs and images also transferred fine.

The reason I wanted to do this was that I like to bold/underline/highlight parts of given a text/note, then delete the extraneous/non-highlighted parts, and then continue working with the "lean"/trimmed version of the original text/note. But I also want to keep a copy of each original (with the extraneous parts still included), just in case I need to refer to it later. So I've kept the structure and names of the new notebooks basically the same, only with an underscore appended to each so that it wouldn't have a duplicate name.

I hadn't, though, thought about how this would affect searching, so now I will probably get lots of duplicate/double hits when searching, but I will just train myself to ignore the irrelevant duplicate results.

[jefito 5,589]

So it worked, about 1800 notes divided across about 25 notebooks. Embedded PDFs and images also transferred fine.

Hey, that's pretty cool to know (it's more notes than I have in my entire database).

[isabel 1]

Great question, was just wondering the same thing for the EXACT same reason.  by the way, it's annoying when you ask a legitimate question like this and inevitably people ask "why on earth would you want/need to do that" about the myriad things you can't do on Evernote (e.g. color code so you can actually find things, randomize note order, etc.)

 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Great question, was just wondering the same thing for the EXACT same reason.  by the way, it's annoying when you ask a legitimate question like this and inevitably people ask "why on earth would you want/need to do that" about the myriad things you can't do on Evernote (e.g. color code so you can actually find things, randomize note order, etc.)

Asking why is perfectly reasonable. Asking why is because a fellow user wants to understand better. Understanding better means either being able to help in a more meaningful way, or being able to learn something new. A lot of how I use Evernote has come from asking "why", and I've helped a number of people make better use of Evernote, also through the "why?" question. 

 

While "why?" can be asked in a trivializing or pedantic way, in the case of this post it was being asked in a sincere way, coupled with a legitimate concern (duplicate search results).

 

What is annoying is if, rather than asking "why?", a fellow user decides to criticize or trivialize something without understanding. That sucks. 

 

Anyway, it looks like the export/import process is the ideal solution to this. However, it is also possible to select multiple notes, right click, and say "copy to notebook X". So you have options!

[Dave_in_Oakland 0]

Thanks Scott, the " select multiple notes, right click, and say "copy to notebook X" was just what I needed. Simple, effective, a nice option.

[Hero4Hire 0]

There can be a whole bunch of reasons for people looking to do this. I'm looking for a way to copy notebooks containing notes on different client's information so that I can retain one private company copy and another can be transferred to the client's ownership if they decide to not extend a service agreement.