Transferring Notes from Outlook Contacts to Evernote

[IT Consultant 0]

I have a Microsoft Exchange account, so I am using Microsoft Outlook to interact with this Microsoft Exchange account.  I have lots of contacts within Outlook, and many of these contacts have notes typed in the notes field within the contact record.  Is there any intelligent way to have each of the outlook contacts that contain notes to become a new Notebook within Evernote, then with a new note in Evernote to contain the notes from Outlook?

[gazumped 11,656]

Hi.  There's an Outlook (Evernote) Clipper that works on single or multiple notes as well as emails - but it can be a little fussy about the records it processes,  so don't select 100+ notes for a first go - start with 10 and work up...  Contacts is a different issue - can you export to CSV or something similar?  And matching the two - John Smith note + JS contact details - might not be possible,  except in searches.  Presumably a search for "John Smith" will turn up both notes...

[DTLow 5,736]

19 hours ago, IT Consultant said:

Is there any intelligent way to have each of the outlook contacts that contain notes to become a new Notebook within Evernote

Do you have any export options for your Outlook Contacts

In another discussion, a user managed to export his Outlook email to a .csv file
Another user is helping with a macro to import the .csv file to Evernote

Just out of interest, why a new Notebook for each contact?

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

19 hours ago, IT Consultant said:

Is there any intelligent way to have each of the outlook contacts that contain notes to become a new Notebook within Evernote, then with a new note in Evernote to contain the notes from Outlook?

First, I would suggest that you do NOT make one EN Notebook for every OL Contact.

• The max# of EN Notebooks is 250. See EN System Limits.
• So, you are likely to soon reach this limit.
• Each Note can belong to only one NB, so if you had a Note you want to associate to multiple Contacts, you could not.

Instead of Notebooks for each Contact, use a Tag.  

• The same Tag (Contact) can be assigned to multiple Notes.
• I would use this naming convention:
  • CON.FirstNameLastInitial
  • For Example:  CON.JohnD
• Adjust for your style and preference.
• This will make it easy to search/filter on all notes for one contact, or all contacts:
  • tag:con.johnd  <-- only Notes for JohnD
  • tag:con.*  <-- notes for all contacts
• When you need to assign a tag to a Note, just type "con." and Evernote will show a dropdown list of your contacts you can choose from by further typing, or arrow key.
• I also have a tag named "MasterNote"
  • I assign this tag to Notes that represent the primary, or master, content about an entity.
  • So you could have one Note for each Contact that you assign "MasterNote" to.
    • This would be the contact info (phone, email, etc) for that Contact.
  • Then, you could list all of your contacts in EN by:
    • tag:con.*  tag:masternote

You don't say which platform you are using, but if you are using a Mac, you could write an AppleScript that gets the OL Contact Name from the current list shown, and create a tag in Evernote for that Contact.  Then get the OL Contact Notes, and create an EN Note, assigning the tag you just created.  You could even go further by creating an EN Note for that Contact (tag:MasterNote) with the contact info.

Sorry, but I don't know of a way to automate this in Windows.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

 

[IT Consultant 0]

I hadn't realized the system had limits.

 

I have roughy 1,000 contacts in Outlook.  Should I put all 1,000+ notes from the contact section into one notebook named "Outlook-Contact-Notes", for example, and then use tags accordingly?

[DTLow 5,736]

14 minutes ago, IT Consultant said:

I have roughy 1,000 contacts in Outlook.  Should I put all 1,000+ notes from the contact section into one notebook named "Outlook-Contact-Notes", for example, and then use tags accordingly?

Sounds like a plan, separate note for each contact

You could use a Notebook or a Tag    "Outlook-Contact-Notes"

I would use a standard naming convention for each note, for example    Contact - <last name>,<first name>

Are you planning to have multiple notes per contact that you need to link.   
If not, there may be no reason to create a tag

 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

8 hours ago, IT Consultant said:

I have roughy 1,000 contacts in Outlook.  Should I put all 1,000+ notes from the contact section into one notebook named "Outlook-Contact-Notes", for example, and then use tags accordingly?

That is one approach, but I think you will ultimately find it constraining.  As I said above, I would put the Contacts from OL into my normal "Active" Notebook, with a Tag named for the Contact Name.  You could also assign a Tag of "Contact" to make it easy to find/filter these Notes.