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HOWTO: Best ways of backing up Evernote periodically


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Hi sorry, I know this has probably been covered a million times but I just can't work it out! I've done a lot of Google searches and stuff, and my life is now pretty much 100% organized on Evernote so I can't afford to lose it lol

I use Evernote Web (I can't use any desktop clients as my laptop runs Ubuntu) and Evernote for Android.

Basically, all I really want is a quick and easy way to completely back up my Evernote notes either to my laptop or to my phone, so that if something happens to any of them (for example, sometimes my phone would go wrong or a mistake would be made and I would quit the Evernote app while it saved, meaning I lost an entire note) I can restore it quickly and easily.

Thanks so much!

Mike :)

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There is no "backup" of the web client. The most sure fire way to backup your Evernote notes is to use either a Windows or Mac client, sync all your notes down from the EN servers & then backup the EN database. If your phone is supported by an EN client & allows "offline" notebooks & you're a premium user, you can do this as well. It's not as safe, IMO, because if you munged up a note, the phone may start to sync & the change you made to the note on the web client would be sync'd to the phone.

Premium users also have access to note history, which is only taken once about every eight hours. And of course, if you accidentally munged up several notes, it would be more difficult to recover this way than from a backup of a desktop client.

Personally, I would hesitate to have very important information in a web based client (as you are using it). At least when I'm using the Windows client, if the EN servers were completely down, for whatever reason, I still have access to my notes.

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There is no "backup" of the web client. The most sure fire way to backup your Evernote notes is to use either a Windows or Mac client, sync all your notes down from the EN servers & then backup the EN database. If your phone is supported by an EN client & allows "offline" notebooks & you're a premium user, you can do this as well. It's not as safe, IMO, because if you munged up a note, the phone may start to sync & the change you made to the note on the web client would be sync'd to the phone.

Premium users also have access to note history, which is only taken once about every eight hours. And of course, if you accidentally munged up several notes, it would be more difficult to recover this way than from a backup of a desktop client.

Personally, I would hesitate to have very important information in a web based client (as you are using it). At least when I'm using the Windows client, if the EN servers were completely down, for whatever reason, I still have access to my notes.

hm ok. I wonder if I can run the client through Wine on Ubuntu (it's a Windows emulator) or sometimes you can run Mac programs on Linux too. I really can't be bothered to install the whole of Windows on my laptop or dual boot or something just for Evernote backups! :)

I think they should provide a small backup facility built into the web client and ideally Android and that too - that would be very logical and useful!

Thanks for the help though - I'll try to get a desktop client working.

Oh, and for now I am a premium user, but yeah once every 8 hours might not be often enough o.O

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I actually found an unofficial client for Ubuntu ^^

It works fine... it's not too fancy but it does allow backups! Yay!

I do use the Windows client from a Linux Virtual Box host in a XP SP3 VM. This works great for me but does mean that you will need to create the Windows VM in the first place.

A better solution in your case would be to install the latest Wine and then install the Windows client. That would also give you access to the edit Create Date function that you can't get from the web client.

I assume you are using the Nixnote client. That works, but, is effectively unusable for larger notes databases due to very high cpu and memory utilization.

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I actually found an unofficial client for Ubuntu ^^

It works fine... it's not too fancy but it does allow backups! Yay!

I do use the Windows client from a Linux Virtual Box host in a XP SP3 VM. This works great for me but does mean that you will need to create the Windows VM in the first place.

A better solution in your case would be to install the latest Wine and then install the Windows client. That would also give you access to the edit Create Date function that you can't get from the web client.

I assume you are using the Nixnote client. That works, but, is effectively unusable for larger notes databases due to very high cpu and memory utilization.

Yeah I am using Nixnote and yeah I guess the official client would be better... I'll give it a blast through Wine :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi everyone,

Can someone walk me through a step by step way to backup Evernote? I read over the above entries, but I was not able to discern the "geek speak" that is not a reflection upon the posts themselves, but more of a disclosure of "cluelesness" on my part.

I am a premium user of Evernote and presently all of my files sync to the net. But being a bit of a "control freak" :P I would like to also be able to back up these important files (many which includes irreplaceable research) on my own. --I don't even know in the slightest where to begin. Before Evernote, I stored everything in File Cabinets.

  • I have about 900 notes and growing every day.
  • I use a Dell PC
  • Windows Vista Home Premium
  • I also have Evernote on my Android Phone that syncs.

Thank you for your patience in advance and for an help you can afford me.

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Hi everyone,

Can someone walk me through a step by step way to backup Evernote? I read over the above entries, but I was not able to discern the "geek speak" that is not a reflection upon the posts themselves, but more of a disclosure of "cluelesness" on my part.

I am a premium user of Evernote and presently all of my files sync to the net. But being a bit of a "control freak" ;) I would like to also be able to back up these important files (many which includes irreplaceable research) on my own. --I don't even know in the slightest where to begin. Before Evernote, I stored everything in File Cabinets.

  • I have about 900 notes and growing every day.
  • I use a Dell PC
  • Windows Vista Home Premium
  • I also have Evernote on my Android Phone that syncs.

Thank you for your patience in advance and for an help you can afford me.

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  • 3 months later...

I'm a free web-only user.

This thread appears to say that there is no way to backup online notes without using Evernote 'client' software on a personal computer. Do I understand this correctly? Is this still the case now that we are one year later?

Thanks!

Dave

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  • Level 5*

For users who use Evernote on other platforms than Mac or Windows, I think that this is still the case for Evernote-provided clients.

You might be able to use the 3rd-party NixNote client (formerly known as NeverNote), if you're on Linux and you want to do is backup: http://nevernote.sourceforge.net/ (features: https://www.evernote...3c-ead02ccd16cc). For other platforms, you may be Stuck On a Log.

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I'm a free web-only user.

This thread appears to say that there is no way to backup online notes without using Evernote 'client' software on a personal computer. Do I understand this correctly? Is this still the case now that we are one year later?

Thanks!

Dave

hi. welcome to the forum daveever. i think that sounds correct to me. it would be nice if we had a way to download from the web, especially for people without control over applications downloaded onto their machines (many institutional environments). but, in this day and age, how many people using evernote don't have a computer to download the client onto?

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  • 1 month later...

I would welcome this too, also as a Ubuntu user and Android user. I can't see the logic of having a backup facility for Windows and Mac but not Linux or the web, either from the point of view of Evernote's employees, their business model, or their users. Nobody benefits. Think about it!

The web client is platform independent and would require no maintainance - this means that there is no need to spend lots of programming hours keeping up with the latest Mac and Windows versions. It's also readily available to all no matter what platform they use.

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  • 1 year later...

It would be nice to have a feature in the Evernote web application to make a backup archive file to sync with Google Drive, Dropbox, or Skydrive.  This would be a very nice value add.  They could make it a feature only available to premium users.  We could choose the frequency of auto-backups.

 

This way, there would be an external backup solution for those who do not use desktop client applications.  The desktop computer is becoming less and less relevant for many people who are learning to work more out of the cloud.  For us desktop users, we can just sync our Google Drive, etc, to our desktop for external backup as well.

 

My main concern that brought me to this thread was due to me clicking on a note the other day to edit it and it just went blank (empty note).  I tried to click away and reload the web page but it seems that Evernote auto-saved my note as a blank one and now it's gone.  I have no backups to restore the information from.  Since I'm a linux desktop user, I will try out the nixnote client many have mentioned in this thread for now in hopes that some Google Drive integration appears in the future.

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  • Level 5*

It would be nice to have a feature in the Evernote web application to make a backup archive file to sync with Google Drive, Dropbox, or Skydrive.  This would be a very nice value add.  They could make it a feature only available to premium users.  We could choose the frequency of auto-backups.

 

This way, there would be an external backup solution for those who do not use desktop client applications.  The desktop computer is becoming less and less relevant for many people who are learning to work more out of the cloud.  For us desktop users, we can just sync our Google Drive, etc, to our desktop for external backup as well.

 

My main concern that brought me to this thread was due to me clicking on a note the other day to edit it and it just went blank (empty note).  I tried to click away and reload the web page but it seems that Evernote auto-saved my note as a blank one and now it's gone.  I have no backups to restore the information from.  Since I'm a linux desktop user, I will try out the nixnote client many have mentioned in this thread for now in hopes that some Google Drive integration appears in the future.

 

Cloud HQ?

https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox

 

I haven't used the service, but I have heard good things about it. Personally, I prefer to have my backups on my desktop. The world may be moving away from desktops, but I'm not. The iPads and other gizmos are great (longtime forum members know how passionate I am about doing as much as I can on the iPad), but there is still a lot that is beyond their reach, and this includes local backups. You can get a relatively inexpensive computer anywhere these days (easily under $300). I'd just plug in an external drive and you've got two backups (the files on your hard drive and the ones on the external drive).

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It would be nice to have a feature in the Evernote web application to make a backup archive file to sync with Google Drive, Dropbox, or Skydrive.  This would be a very nice value add.  They could make it a feature only available to premium users.  We could choose the frequency of auto-backups.

 

This way, there would be an external backup solution for those who do not use desktop client applications.  The desktop computer is becoming less and less relevant for many people who are learning to work more out of the cloud.  For us desktop users, we can just sync our Google Drive, etc, to our desktop for external backup as well.

 

My main concern that brought me to this thread was due to me clicking on a note the other day to edit it and it just went blank (empty note).  I tried to click away and reload the web page but it seems that Evernote auto-saved my note as a blank one and now it's gone.  I have no backups to restore the information from.  Since I'm a linux desktop user, I will try out the nixnote client many have mentioned in this thread for now in hopes that some Google Drive integration appears in the future.

 

Cloud HQ?

https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox

 

I haven't used the service, but I have heard good things about it. Personally, I prefer to have my backups on my desktop. The world may be moving away from desktops, but I'm not. The iPads and other gizmos are great (longtime forum members know how passionate I am about doing as much as I can on the iPad), but there is still a lot that is beyond their reach, and this includes local backups. You can get a relatively inexpensive computer anywhere these days (easily under $300). I'd just plug in an external drive and you've got two backups (the files on your hard drive and the ones on the external drive).

 

Thanks for the quick reply and very acceptable solution.  I just tried out Cloud HQ and it does exactly what I wanted, plus will work to sync other services as well.  I feel $120 a year is well worth the price to backup my valuable information.  I sync my google drive with my desktop so this will give me my desktop backup integration automatically without my intervention.  Thanks once again.

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It would be nice to have a feature in the Evernote web application to make a backup archive file to sync with Google Drive, Dropbox, or Skydrive.  This would be a very nice value add.  They could make it a feature only available to premium users.  We could choose the frequency of auto-backups.

 

This way, there would be an external backup solution for those who do not use desktop client applications.  The desktop computer is becoming less and less relevant for many people who are learning to work more out of the cloud.  For us desktop users, we can just sync our Google Drive, etc, to our desktop for external backup as well.

 

My main concern that brought me to this thread was due to me clicking on a note the other day to edit it and it just went blank (empty note).  I tried to click away and reload the web page but it seems that Evernote auto-saved my note as a blank one and now it's gone.  I have no backups to restore the information from.  Since I'm a linux desktop user, I will try out the nixnote client many have mentioned in this thread for now in hopes that some Google Drive integration appears in the future.

 

Cloud HQ?

https://www.cloudhq.net/dropbox

 

I haven't used the service, but I have heard good things about it. Personally, I prefer to have my backups on my desktop. The world may be moving away from desktops, but I'm not. The iPads and other gizmos are great (longtime forum members know how passionate I am about doing as much as I can on the iPad), but there is still a lot that is beyond their reach, and this includes local backups. You can get a relatively inexpensive computer anywhere these days (easily under $300). I'd just plug in an external drive and you've got two backups (the files on your hard drive and the ones on the external drive).

 

Thanks for the quick reply and very acceptable solution.  I just tried out Cloud HQ and it does exactly what I wanted, plus will work to sync other services as well.  I feel $120 a year is well worth the price to backup my valuable information.  I sync my google drive with my desktop so this will give me my desktop backup integration automatically without my intervention.  Thanks once again.

 

 

Glad I could help. Well, actually, glad Cloud HQ could help. For more cool services that integrate with Evernote, make sure to check out the Evernote App Center.

https://appcenter.evernote.com/

 

One of the cool things about Evernote is the ecosystem, which I think doesn't get as much press as it should. Anyhow, enjoy Cloud HQ and be sure to stop in sometime and let us know how it is going!

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  • 10 months later...

There is no "backup" of the web client. The most sure fire way to backup your Evernote notes is to use either a Windows or Mac client, sync all your notes down from the EN servers & then backup the EN database. If your phone is supported by an EN client & allows "offline" notebooks & you're a premium user, you can do this as well. It's not as safe, IMO, because if you munged up a note, the phone may start to sync & the change you made to the note on the web client would be sync'd to the phone.

Premium users also have access to note history, which is only taken once about every eight hours. And of course, if you accidentally munged up several notes, it would be more difficult to recover this way than from a backup of a desktop client.

Personally, I would hesitate to have very important information in a web based client (as you are using it). At least when I'm using the Windows client, if the EN servers were completely down, for whatever reason, I still have access to my notes.

I run Evernote as a desktop app. I want to be sure I can access my notes in read/write if I should ever loose my free Evernote use. Yes they are part of the weekly system backup by Windows. No, I have not tried to access the notes through other means then Evernote.

 

I see a file:  C:\Users\...\EverNote\Evernote - My Notes\Databases\bjevs.exb.bak

 

This was created 07/13/13 (believe was the initial install), and is empty (0 kb). I find this strange as these .BAK files are typically used to revert to previous stable system data (in theory). Why is this empty? Is it not updated due to being a free license user of Evernote? And what is the best way to backup, and then have usable read/write access to my notes without the Evernote app?

 

The article: https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/28607737 just refers to .enex files which must use Evernote protocol. I want my notes to be free of Evernote hooks in case they ever take away the free version.

 

I am sure this is possible if I were a Premium user.

 

Running Windows 7 64-bit

 

Thank you for feedback.

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  • Level 5*

Your best protection is to do your own backups -- do NOT rely on Evernote.


 


If you don't have a backup system in place, now would also be a great time to set one up.   I recommend using a local backup system like MS Windows Backup for EN Win, and Time Machine for EN Mac, for ease of restore, and on online system like CrashPlan for catastrophic protection.


 


If you want a backup that is independent of Evernote, then export your Notes to HTML.


 


Here is a comprehensive Mac Backup strategy provided by long-time Evernote user/ guru and Forum member GrumpyMonkey (AKA Christopher Mayo).


 


Windows users may also want to review EN KB Article Backing up and Restoring Evernote Data under Windows


 


CAUTION:  Use of export to ENEX files will backup your Note content, but, when you go to restore, it will have these limitations/issues:


  1. All links to these Notes will be broken
  2. This is really an export/import process, NOT a true restore
  3. Notebook names and Stacks will be lost
  4. Tag hierarchies will be lost
  5. When you do the restore it will go against your monthly upload allowance because Evernote sees these as NEW Notes.
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Your best protection is to do your own backups -- do NOT rely on Evernote.

 

If you don't have a backup system in place, now would also be a great time to set one up.   I recommend using a local backup system like MS Windows Backup for EN Win, and Time Machine for EN Mac, for ease of restore, and on online system like CrashPlan for catastrophic protection.

 

If you want a backup that is independent of Evernote, then export your Notes to HTML.

 

Here is a comprehensive Mac Backup strategy provided by long-time Evernote user/ guru and Forum member GrumpyMonkey (AKA Christopher Mayo).

 

Windows users may also want to review EN KB Article Backing up and Restoring Evernote Data under Windows

 

CAUTION:  Use of export to ENEX files will backup your Note content, but, when you go to restore, it will have these limitations/issues:

  1. All links to these Notes will be broken
  2. This is really an export/import process, NOT a true restore
  3. Notebook names and Stacks will be lost
  4. Tag hierarchies will be lost
  5. When you do the restore it will go against your monthly upload allowance because Evernote sees these as NEW Notes.

 

Hi

 

I already read your reply. Since I am not a Mac user, that part won't help. And I forgot to mention I do weekly backups with Windows backup. But .enex files would require Evernote to access (is that not a proprietary file format?). And did not see any mention about the .BAK file being empty. With a lot of notes, doing an export within Evernote I don't see how to avoid doing that more than one note at a time.

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I already read your reply. Since I am not a Mac user, that part won't help. And I forgot to mention I do weekly backups with Windows backup. But .enex files would require Evernote to access (is that not a proprietary file format?). And did not see any mention about the .BAK file being empty. With a lot of notes, doing an export within Evernote I don't see how to avoid doing that more than one note at a time.

The Evernote ENML format (which is what the .enex files are in) is a proprietary but documented format, similar to HTML; see https://dev.evernote.com/doc/articles/enml.php for more information.These could be converted to HTML or some other format by a third-party program -- there may be one out there somewhere now already (though I haven't looked), and if Evernote ever went out of business, it's a pretty safe bet that someone will write one. That being said, your local Windows client should still work, even if you can't connect to the Evernote web services.

 

The exb.bak file you mention is not related to .ENEX files, and you should ignore it (and preferably delete it). If you want to back up the actual SQlite database, that would be the .exb file. I'd probably copy the entire directory, and I'd shut down Evernote before doing so, just to make sure that the WIndows client isn't actively modifying it. The linked instructions cover most of that. You should know that this backup won't be of much use to you without the Evernote client (granted it would be possible for a third-party program to access the data, as it is just a database).

 

HTML is also an option, and HTML is a well known format (so tools for processing it are available). but converting to/from HTML isn't wholly faithful to all Evernote content types. Still if you want to be really, really safe, you could add in an HTML backup as well. You can back up single notes or entire notebooks, or even your whole Evernote database.

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