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I am not here to discuss why or why not one should move from Evernote to another application or service. That is such a personal decision, and I am sure everyone has personally valid motives.

Myself, after careful consideration, I decided to move to OneNote.

And moving from Evernote to OneNote should be straightforward enough - after all, Microsoft offers a tool (OneNote Importer) just for this purpose.

On the other hand, many users (including yours truly) have encountered a number of problems: notes without a title or (oh the horror) notes without actual body. Oh, and keep in mind that I am not overly concerned with a bit of formatting issues.

In any case, a glitch here and there is probably to be expected. If you have a relatively small number of notebooks and notes it is not particularly onerous to manually adjust (copy & paste) even a couple of dozen notes. But if you happen to have an Evernote database with several thousand notes… or few tens of thousand notes… the percentage of import errors increases exponentially. To the point where you may be tempted to give up, or where manual intervention is simply unfeasible. I know I was in that situation. Then, because I am a (rather aging ) software developer by trade, I figured I should try and understand the problem (or problems).

It turns out I was too fast in blaming the Microsoft product for the poor import.

So here is a simple recipe to insure that conversion problems are kept at the very minimum. I just finished porting over 31,000 notes and, at my last count, I have 41 notes that I have to manually fix. And I can live with that.

Preparation

  1. Before you install and run the OneNote importer, export your Evernote database to ENEX files. Do NOT export the entire database in one pass. Export each and every single notebook. This may be a pain - especially if you have a large number of notebooks. Still.
  2. If you do not have a good text editor capable of handling large files (I assume some of your notebooks may produce large export files) get one and install it - there are several excellent freeware and/or opensource offerings (I happened to have become accustomed to Visual Studio Code)
  3. If you do not have a super-simple XML editor, get one and install it.  Believe it not, my tool of choice is the ancient workhorse Microsoft XML Notepad (1998 - yes 1998). I am not sure you'll be able to find it for download… but you will definitely find XML Notepad 2007 (still available on Microsoft site) .

Editing Session

  1. Using XML Notepad, open (or attempt to open) the ENEX file(s) you created when exporting your notebook(s)
  2. Many files will open without problem. But that does not necessarily mean that they will import without problems.
  3. Some files will report errors and you will not be able to open them. See Figure 1. In this particular case, the XML generated by Evernote breaks the entire file because of a non-breaking space in the title of the note. Who knows, I may have copied that title from a web page or from an email signature. Interestingly enough, the OneNote importer is often able to CORRECT the error and import the note correctly. In few cases, for rather mysterious reasons, the note will not import at all. Or it will import without a title. I could not detect a pattern.
  4. I will spare you the gruesome details of the investigation, and come to the important point: it turns out that the structure of the XML data in the ENEX files does not always and/or necessarily abide to the "declarations" found in the "document type definition" specified in the file's header. If you have no idea of what I am talking about, it does not matter. Just use the following nuclear option:
  5. The solution is surprisingly simple:
    1. open the ENEX file in your text editor
    2. Look at the second line - you should see the following:
      <!DOCTYPE en-export SYSTEM  "
      http://xml.evernote.com/pub/evernote-export2.dtd">
      See Figure 2.
    3. DELETE this line. Don't even ask.
    4. Save the file

Importing

  1. Fire up OneNote Importer
  2. When you get to the page "Select Evernote Content", click on the link "Import a file instead" - See Figure 3
  3. Select one of your datafiles, click Next and let the OneNote Importer do its job. No, it is NOT a fast import operation.

In closing: if you are moving to OneNote, for any reason, experiment with one notebook - before embarking in the full conversion. See the difference between a straightforward import with OneNote importer and one done after the editing I attempted to describe.

I hope this helps a bit...

image.png.dee94bd7c4d532275aedbe259ef7a332.png

Figure 1

 

image.thumb.png.375c3ce73d4642195ae7c3b221f4545e.png

Figure 2

 

image.png.fee2009d82d23efa1719250b4025deef.png

Figure 3

 

 

 

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  • 8 months later...

Thank you for sharing your experience.

How this can be done for multiple users, Importer asks for login. Lets say if there are 100 users and we need to import all of their EN into ON. by default if we import it actually stays under logged in user storage( if its work account, it store under OneDrive)

Any other approach or API?

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I do not think it could easily be done for multiple users. First and most important issue: how would you collect and manage the credentials for more than one user? Even assuming that users are "corporate accounts"... the security implications are quite serious...

Also, the verification and manipulation of .enex files is really a manual process. Automating that process for multiple notebooks for multiple users... it's a software projects that could demand weeks of time... !

That's all I can contribute on the matter. 

Incidentally, I can confirm that I have adapted my workflow and I am leaving in peace with OneNote. I easily juggle the two different apps (the original desktop version and the Windows 10 version). I found that I can leave without a ridiculous number or tags (and if I really need "tags"... I just insert a simple section with "keywords" that can be found by the OneNote full text search). I find that search most often appears to be much faster and - most important - more accurate. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

@OldManGeorge just wanna say thank you very much for the guide. Thanks to it, I was finally able to switch over to OneNote from Evernote after at 3 previous attempts over the years failed. I was seriously worried I was gonna be stuck paying $75/year for Evernote just because I couldn't find a way to properly move my data between services.

That said, there are some peculiarities on the OneNote side I'll point out:

1st of all, on Windows 10, you'll want to use the OneNote for Windows 10 app and not the OneNote 2019 app. The former uses the paradigm I describe below, while the latter mixes that paradigm with Evernote's, with very confusing results. You'll also want to have the OneDrive application running. Microsoft doesn't mention it explicitly, but it's what OneNote for Windows 10 uses as its sync backend. If it's not running and/or you're not signed into it, OneNote for Windows 10 won't sync properly. This took me a few hours to figure out; I believe the vast majority of OneNote sync problems reported are due to it.

OneNote for Windows 10's sync and file paradigm is different from Evernote's. While Evernote does operations locally and periodically syncs them, OneNote for Windows 10 is basically a desktop client that reads and writes files in real time from cloud filesystem. If the client is unable to write to the cloud filesystem, the operations queue up until it can.

Following from the above, OneDrive (NOT OneNote web) is the canonical location and record of OneNote files, not whatever you see in the client. To get an imported Evernote notebook to show up in your client, find it in OneDrive, where it will be in your Documents folder with the same name as the imported file. Right-click it and then click Open in OneNote, then follow your browser's prompts to open it in OneNote for Windows 10. If you want to delete a OneNote notebook, close it in the client (right-click -> Close this notebook), and then delete the corresponding file in OneDrive.

Confusingly, OneNote web is missing some of OneNote for Windows 10's features. I don't recommend it as a client.

OneNote shows recent notebooks in the in-app dialog for opening notebooks, even if the recent notebook as been deleted or you no longer have access to it. It's nice for history, but it's quite confusing.

The TL,DR of this is: if you want to do work within a OneNote notebook, open the notebook (if it isn't already open) in the OneNote for Windows 10 app and work on it there. If you want to do perform a file operation on a OneNote notebook, such as renaming or deleting it, close it in the Windows 10 app, and then rename (and then reopen) or delete it from the OneDrive Documents folder.

As to why I'm switching after over a decade with Evernote: price (my entire Office365 subscription costs less than my Evernote one) and much better freeform support. In OneNote I can, for example, hand draw a graph and then label the axes in text boxes, while Evernote forces writing and typed text to be separate. Also, the Evernote for Android suffers from awful pen-input latency, while the OneNote for Android app doesn't.

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On 12/14/2020 at 12:30 PM, KrisCo said:

Thank you for sharing your experience.

How this can be done for multiple users, Importer asks for login. Lets say if there are 100 users and we need to import all of their EN into ON. by default if we import it actually stays under logged in user storage( if its work account, it store under OneDrive)

Any other approach or API?

TBH I think the best way would be to provide migration instructions for the users and let them handle it from there (if they so choose). As @OldManGeorge implied, there's very little of the process that can be automated, as most of it (export, import, open) takes place within the proprietary apps themselves. Also, OneNote has a rather useless and annoying import behavior in which it splits imported notebooks with over 100 pages into separate 100 page sections. This means you have to manually remerge large notebooks within the OneNote for Windows 10 application itself.

There is, however, 1 area that can be automated with a script: removing the 2nd line (<!DOCTYPE en-export SYSTEM  "http://xml.evernote.com/pub/evernote-export2.dtd">) of each exported .enex file.

Another way to save time is to encourage users to discard obsolete notes from Evernote before beginning the migration process. I found that over half my Evernote notebooks were either empty or had obsolete information (e.g. job postings) with no current or future value.

The sooner you get started, the better, as Microsoft explicitly states that they no longer develop or actively support the Importer. Therefore, the longer you wait, the more likely you and your users are to run into bugs.

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  • 1 month later...

Wow!! I thought wanted to migrate from Evernote, after years of use, to One Note as suggested to me; it's a painful task. The export and import process is honestly too frustrating. Unless there is another user-friendly way to do the application transition, I think I will remain with Evernote. The more I attempt to transition to One Note, I realize how much of a dauting task this is which causes me to rethink my decision to make this change. Microsoft needs to develop a way to make the process easier if they would like longtime Evernote users to switch to One Note, their product.🤔 😒

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  • 1 month later...

I am a heavy O365 user and have longed wanted to move to Onenote. I have about 2,000 notes. I have tried everything I can think of. Used Windows 10 OneNote. I've used the last OneNote desktop version. I've downloaded Evernote and tried to newest version to export the enex file and i've downloaded the legacy Evernote version. I have adjusted the Enex file to take out the 2nd line as @OldManGeorgementioned, but I continue to get an error. I've signed out of my O365 account, I've signed in, I've disabled sync in evernote, I've tried everything...see screenshot below. If anyone was able to assist me, I can't tell you how much I'd apprecate it. 

Jason

 

image.thumb.png.b1876c060198424019e597131a82fd12.png

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 4/17/2021 at 4:02 PM, JasonEvernote said:

I am a heavy O365 user and have longed wanted to move to Onenote. I have about 2,000 notes. I have tried everything I can think of. Used Windows 10 OneNote. I've used the last OneNote desktop version. I've downloaded Evernote and tried to newest version to export the enex file and i've downloaded the legacy Evernote version. I have adjusted the Enex file to take out the 2nd line as @OldManGeorgementioned, but I continue to get an error. I've signed out of my O365 account, I've signed in, I've disabled sync in evernote, I've tried everything...see screenshot below. If anyone was able to assist me, I can't tell you how much I'd apprecate it. 
 

Did you ever find a solution to this?  I have done all this (except the removing the 2nd line thing) and I keep getting the error.  I tried exported a notebook that is really just text notes, most very small.  No good at all.  I have used Evernote mostly for document archives of searchable PDFs.  I don't think OneNote is practical for that.  However, I I do have some actual notes in Evernote.  It isn't that much.  Maybe a little over 500.  But, I do want to keep them and I don't really want to manually copy and paste them to OneNote which is what the importer recommends.

Has anyone been able to get the importer to work recently?

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I am having the same problem as Jason above. I was able to successfully import a notebook to Onenote once, deleted the notebook from Onenote (don't ask why), and have been unable to re-import it. I've gone to every synced device and deleted every local copies of the notebook I can find, but still get unexpected error message. Has anybody found a workaround for this?

--Doug

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@Koshkaboo and @DougS44

I have tried everything. Multiple computers, legacy Evernote, Evernote sync turned off, and all these steps mentioned above. It will not work for me. I’m hoping Microsoft can find a way to get behind this again, and convince Evernote not to be so insecure. If EN had any value, Microsoft should just buy them, but I don’t see that happening either. EN isn’t terrible, and for me, it’s just a consistent EcoSystem reason for me. 

 

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11 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Looks this is a problem of the importing program, not of the source application.

So better get MS moving on the issue.

Possibly. With something like this, it would take both companies to work together. I'm sure @Microsoft Windows would be willing to do their part. I'm not sure it's a good PR move for Evernote to trap you in their system. If you want to leave, allow customers to leave with their own data that most pay for. It would be similar to Microsoft not allow Word Docs to be opened by Google Docs or Apple Pages.

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The ENEX export is a well known format, unchanged since years and used by many import routines. If MS wants to use it, I doubt they need any help from EN.

What no import routine can do: Add missing functions to the receiving app. What does not exist there will be lost in translation.

Hint: It is important to create one ENEX file per notebook, name it accordingly and import one by one. The note-notebook relation is not part of the ENEX file.

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Thanks for the explanation. I’m not sure I’d call it a well-know export when it’s only specific to Evernote. If it was that well-know, I would suspect they would have even less customers. Perhaps you should search on the Internet, outside the EN discussion group, and see how big of an issue this is. As mentioned earlier, it’s an interesting tactic to pretty much not allow people with thousands of notes or those that have more difficult data to copy out of the Evernote platform. I’m sure this specific export format is probably fine, all I was saying is it does not work with the OneNote import any longer, and if that is a way EN wants to keep customers, then I guess that’s their right because I can’t get out. However, first time I can and safely and accurately import to OneNote, I’ll probably be gone. If anyone else reviews this thread in the future and can’t figure it out, please update this post. Thank you very much.

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Practically all note taking apps import ENEX (all of them probably eager to win over customers from EN).

Maybe import issues are only an indicator how serious MS it taking ON. It has a pretty mixed history of being pushed and abandoned and pushed …

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Like Jason above, I have tried everything I can think of to get the (unsupported) Microsoft OneNote importer to work and had no success. I finally have had some success using another tool mentioned in another thread - Stefans Tools Evernote2Onenote utility (Evernote2Onenote - Stefans Tools (stefankueng.com)). It does have some significant limitations, especially regarding notes with multiple tags - read the release notes carefully. I was able to get this to work by installing the OneNote desktop app (aka OneNote 2016, not the OneNote for Windows app) and the legacy Evernote app. When you run the Evernote2Onenote utility you may get a message "Could not find the ENScript.exe file" and will need to manually select this in the next dialog box. For me, this file was found in the C:Program Files (x86)/Evernote/Evernote Legacy directory. I was able to import my Evernote notebooks successfully using this utility, however I do have a lot of cleanup work to do to remove the duplicate notes due to the multiple tag limitation (I do not want to mess with my Evernote structure if I later decide OneNote isn't going to cut it for me).

Jason, this might be worth a shot for you, your mileage may vary.

--Doug

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Nothing is ever easy is it. I might have spoke a little too soon about how successful I was with using the Evernote2Onenote utility. If you want to get your newly imported notebooks up to OneDrive so you can access your notes from multiple devices, there's some hoops you need to jump through. I'm still working on this, but it's the whole transfer your notes from OneNote 2016 to OneNote for Windows issue (lot's of fun google reads on that). So not out of the woods yet.

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Thanks DougS44, the only thing that worked for me was installing the legacy Evernote, and exporting to ENEX files. I then used Stefans Tools to import those ENEX files. Once imported, I fixed some issues, moved them to the "right" notebook in OneNote. Many of my imported notes did not include my attachments. But this better than the alternative of re-creating each note manually. I will be keeping my Evernote as a back up to OneNote. All my new notes are going into OneNote. The result is not perfect, but I am working through it.
-Mike

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Mickle22 - yep, totally agree, lot's of cleanup required with this method, but I haven't found anything better either. I expect Microsoft quit supporting their migration tool because it required too much support for an app they give away for free. Oh, and once the notes are in OneNote 2016, you then have to share them to yourself to get them to show up on OneDrive so you can access them from other devices.

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  • 1 month later...

OneNote is ok but it’s search is too limited for me, that it doesn’t highlight or do inline search for me rules it out as a reasonable notes option. Not being able to easily find key words within notes is such a time waster for me. 

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Personally, I'm not sure this thread is to compare ON and EN. It's like Mac vs PC, Ford vs Chevy, Blondes vs Brunettes. 😉 

As a heavy O365 user, ON is easily superior for me, even though I've been a premium EN user since the beginning. It's just difficult to make the move from one to the other, if not possible. And that, is the reason for this thread. Continued conversation regarding moving to ON.

Happy 4th.

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  • 4 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I also decided after 15 years! yes my first note was 2006! to move to onenote.  No hard feelings towards Evernote, just I'm paying for office anyway and use OneNote a lot and  direction of travel of evernote seems not to fit with what I want from it.  It's just it used to be fun product (I really only use it for fun, I'm not trying to become a productivity ninja or somesuch).  So anyways I had 3,000 or so notes so not as many as many and a year ago I experimented and got them into OneNote using the MS tool.  

Then had second throughts and deleted much out of OneNote.  So then last month decided I would definitely move (my subscription was coming up for renewal) and the one note importer just didn't work at all.  (with that error posted above).  Tore my hair out, tried the stefan thing and spent hours and hours trying to get it to work.  No joy.

Then this week came across OneNoteGem http://www.onenotegem.com/a/addins/onenote-batch.html batch processor.

I have no skills to vouch for this in terms of security so please don't take this as a recommendation.

But, I emailed the chap and he said download it and try it.  In free mode it will import one evernote note to one onenote note at a time.  That worked for notes, notes with attached files, notes with pdfs.  PDFS become just attached pdfs, not displayed.

My OneNote is a Microsoft 365 subscription product, and the client I use (About OneNote) comes up as

Microsoft OneNote for Microsoft 365 MSO (16.0.14326.20384) 64 bit

and I used the OneNote Batch 21 version

Then paid for license, got a license key in 4 hours (it does say they are processed by hand).  And then I imported by exporting to ENEX from legacy Evernote one notebook at a time.  And then importing into OneNote using this program one notebook at a time.  I had one notebook that created 1Gb enex file so I broke that down into 200 notes each.  But that meant one was still 400mb.  

And it took an hour or so to do this but now it is all done, and every note I've checked has been fine.

I have a sense of nervousness that there is some malware in it, but nothing bad has happened so far and I do have all my notes out of evernote into onenote.

Edited by alasdair
missed off a bit of info about versions
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  • 1 month later...

Hi there, I have intended to switch over to ON after having used EN for twelve years now. As the ENEX import finally worked for me today, let me share the steps I took.
Windows 10 current version / Evernote current install / current version of Microsoft's Importer

1) According to my personal experiences, importing to OneOne won't work using the current or any newer version of EN - neither using Microsoft's OneNote importer nor using Stefan Kuengs "Evernote2Onenote" mentioned above. So,  first of all install the LEGACY EVERNOTE app from https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote along the current version you're using and let Evernote sync your current notes to it - which will be done automatically after sign-on.

2) Download and install "Evernote2Onenote" from https://sourceforge.net/projects/evimsync/

3) Startup E2O and point it to the local source of "ENScript.exe" as it is asking you to do so. You'll find it in Windows' install directory which is C:/Programs/Evernote or C:/Programs(x86)/Evernote depending on your Windows version. I personally choose the option to import notebook by notebook as I felt safer by comparing the results immediately. 

That's it. Although in contrast to the current Evernote install, the Microsoft importer recognised the Evernote Legacy install, neither importing automatically, nor importing ENEX files worked using the Microsoft tool. If you're having troubles with titles read on here: https://mantosz.medium.com/export-evernote-to-onenote-correctly-2c8a793126dd

and here:

 

5) Do not expect a perfect world .... to me, the import saved a lot of time but didn't work really well as some content inside notes has not been copied and resulted in blank notes in the first instance. It seems like that text-/table-only notes just need a kind of "headline" which is not a preformatting option in Evernote, but here's the workaround: Just put a line above your content and change its formatting to bold. For what reason ever: Now those notes - having been imported just empty befor - now keep their content in OneNote. Strange world, isn't it? :-

 

Please let me know about your experiences!

Maik

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/7/2022 at 2:43 AM, Blaubaer said:

Hi there, I have intended to switch over to ON after having used EN for twelve years now. As the ENEX import finally worked for me today, let me share the steps I took.
Windows 10 current version / Evernote current install / current version of Microsoft's Importer

1) According to my personal experiences, importing to OneOne won't work using the current or any newer version of EN - neither using Microsoft's OneNote importer nor using Stefan Kuengs "Evernote2Onenote" mentioned above. So,  first of all install the LEGACY EVERNOTE app from https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote along the current version you're using and let Evernote sync your current notes to it - which will be done automatically after sign-on.

2) Download and install "Evernote2Onenote" from https://sourceforge.net/projects/evimsync/

3) Startup E2O and point it to the local source of "ENScript.exe" as it is asking you to do so. You'll find it in Windows' install directory which is C:/Programs/Evernote or C:/Programs(x86)/Evernote depending on your Windows version. I personally choose the option to import notebook by notebook as I felt safer by comparing the results immediately. 

That's it. Although in contrast to the current Evernote install, the Microsoft importer recognised the Evernote Legacy install, neither importing automatically, nor importing ENEX files worked using the Microsoft tool. If you're having troubles with titles read on here: https://mantosz.medium.com/export-evernote-to-onenote-correctly-2c8a793126dd

and here:

 

5) Do not expect a perfect world .... to me, the import saved a lot of time but didn't work really well as some content inside notes has not been copied and resulted in blank notes in the first instance. It seems like that text-/table-only notes just need a kind of "headline" which is not a preformatting option in Evernote, but here's the workaround: Just put a line above your content and change its formatting to bold. For what reason ever: Now those notes - having been imported just empty befor - now keep their content in OneNote. Strange world, isn't it? :-

 

Please let me know about your experiences!

Maik

 

this has worked for me mostly.  thanks

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  • 3 months later...

I cannot get any method to work at all:

Microsoft's OneNoteImporter tool:

  • I'm testing it on a small ENEX file (3 MB) from a notebook of ~50 text-only notes exported from Evernote Legacy
  • I deleted the 2nd line of the ENEX file using a text editor as instructed
  • The importer results in the same error everyone is getting: 
    We couldn’t import the following notes because An unexpected error was encountered. Please try again later. Try copy and pasting them into OneNote manually.
  • I have also tried without modifying the ENEX, exporting the ENEX from the current Evernote version, and importing from Evernote legacy directly (not using an ENEX file)
  • Nothing works, same error every time

Stefan's evernote2onenote tool

  • I exported ENEX files from Evernote Legacy (have tried with and without tags)
  • I have tried using unmodified and modified ENEX files (where I deleted the 2nd line)
  • This results in a OneNote notebook successfully, but there are a significant number of notes that are empty
  • Some resulting notes in OneNote have the right title and attachment, but no text. a LOT have the note title but no text/images/attachments. 
  • So it's too unreliable for me to trust with 10k notes and 75 notebooks. I can't go through all notes and verify the body of the note is correct. 

Does anyone have any ideas of what to try next? 

Thanks!

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  • Evernote Expert

Given that these forums are for users of Evernote you may find more success asking this question in forums for OneNote users where you could find others who have traveled this journey successfully.

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11 hours ago, jt_04 said:

Does anyone have any ideas of what to try next? 

Whatever you do it's unlikely you will get an equivalent of old Evernote.  And your use case will dictate which of the competing products might or might not work well for you.  Personal story for what it is worth.

My use case with EN was predominantly paperless and task management, be it it GTD, TSW or just tasks.  None of the other products on the market worked for me as well as 6.25.1 did.  So I rolled my own.

  1. I created a repository on my C drive using MEGA as a cloud provider (for backup and access on other devices with end to end zero knowledge encryption).
  2. I exported all my notes (57,000) using the HTML option by year withing notebook (4) into one part of the MEGA folder tree.
  3. I created a new branch of the MEGA folder tree for post EN documents. 
  4. I used Windows Indexing of name and contents to enable search.  Search works remarkably quickly for a 25 GB "data base".  Surprised me.
  5. I use Directory Opus for access to and manipulation of the repository;
  6. I use WorkFlowy for task management  and access to the repository in some cases
  7. I use AutoHotKey to facilitate and streamline the process from saving emails to finding things.

This is not something I wanted to do but I saw no other option.  New EN was just too slow from a process perspective, so many extra clicks for my use case, and nothing else would work.  As you can see it took quite a few bits to replicate 6.25.1 for me.  🤷‍♂️ 

At this point I am as efficient as I was in 6.25.1.  But not a journey for everyone.  Good luck on yours.  Maybe new EN will morph to what you need.

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9 hours ago, agsteele said:

Given that these forums are for users of Evernote you may find more success asking this question in forums for OneNote users where you could find others who have traveled this journey successfully.

Yes, I've read dozes of MS help threads on this topic. I can't find anyone who has navigated this journey successfully in the past year. It seems that both the MS tool and Stefan's tool are now defunct. One of the key difficulties seems to be the way that Evernotes are html-based and Onenotes are not. 

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On 7/20/2022 at 8:06 AM, CalS said:

Whatever you do it's unlikely you will get an equivalent of old Evernote. ... Personal story for what it is worth.

My personal story
As an Apple user, I found the Evernote Legacy equivalent with Devonthink   
In fact, an improvement imho
No problems with data transfer via enex export, and html note format is maintained (my preferred format)
Downsides    
- Apple only   
- No cloud web access

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On 7/21/2022 at 2:00 AM, DTLow said:

My personal story
As an Apple user, I found the Evernote Legacy equivalent with Devonthink   
In fact, an improvement imho
No problems with data transfer via enex export, and html note format is maintained (my preferred format)
Downsides    
- Apple only   
- No cloud web access

Quick heads up for anybody doing Stack by Stack and notebook by notebook html backups in Legacy befor it dies from software rust.

The shortcut Alt F (file) followed by E (Export) only outputs the first note in a notebook. 

To get all notes in a notebook you have to use the mouse right click, export.

I wish I had spotted this a few hours earlier.

Regards 

Dab.

 

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  • 6 months later...

So, I just completed the wrestling match of moving over to OneNote.  I used:

http://www.onenotegem.com/a/addins/onenote-batch.html batch processor

I can't say I did it the most efficient way but it is done and every page looks perfect.  The software was $28 and well worth it.  I got great support  - maybe 6 emails answered from morning to late evening within 15 minutes.  I documented the method that I used for your enjoyment.

Goal: To take Evernote, organized in notebooks, sub-notebooks, and pages into OneNote as Notebooks, Sections, and pages. The main problem is that the Evernote .enex export flattens the notebook structure and loses the sub-notebooks.

File Explorer:
Create a directory for each top-level notebook in Evernote. This is a temporary holder for the .enex files.

Evernote:
Select each subnotebook (or main notebook if there are no subs), right-click on it, and select 'export'. Put it in the .enex file hierarchy you just created. This should create a .enex file for each sub-notebook.

OneNote:
Create a new notebook for each top-level notebook in Evernote

Batch:
Be sure OneNote is open.
The left column should show all your available notebooks in OneNote.
Select 'Import' and then the Evernote icon.
Under Options, select 'import all notes' and 'save as OneNote section'.
Use the folder icon to navigate to the notebook folder you want to import full of .enex files.
You can <ctl> A to select all the sub-notebook .enex files in that folder.
In the left pane, select the notebook you want to import them into.
Press the 'Play' icon in the upper right.
The .enex files will cycle through. You should see each note unpacking.
When done, use the red 'X' to clear the sub-notebook list.
Use the file folder icon to move to the next notebook and select the .enex files.
Select the next OneNote notebook on the left. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Since you have OneNote open and in between imports you can check - the notes will be filled in. There will be one empty section that can be deleted.

If you work in blocks, Batch can have its available notebook list refreshed by right clicking and select 'refresh'.

Once you are done, you can open a notebook, click on the down arrow near its name, and click on the pin on the right. This will make OneNote look a lot like Evernote with all notebooks immediately accessible.
 

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  • Level 5

Why shouldn’t we discuss about it ?

Everybody interested in leaving IS at that moment a user / customer. At least in the EU you have the legal right to grab your data from any service you used, and take them with you.

EN offers very good export routines, and helping fellow users to apply them is nothing negative. All the other way, for me knowing that there is a very solid export is one of the reasons to stay.

Every case discussed here is basically not about leaving (that’s provided) - it is about other services having trouble to import.

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  • Level 5

No, I'm not trying to criticize the discussion ... OK, well maybe a little bit, but just in my own mind ... I just wonder if Microsoft hosts a OneNote forum where they talk about how best to move to Evernote. But apparently I don't wonder enough to go look. No offense meant, just running my mouth.

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PinkE,

I am sure you are correct about the implementation, but in my useage, it feels like subnotebooks.  Maybe bad nomenclature on my part.  My notebooks frequently have one level beneath them and I wanted to keep that structure when I went to OneNote, using sections.

Evernote.png

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  • Level 5

You don't have a level below notebooks, you have stacks above the notebook level.

Which technically is a significant difference: You can only export a full notebook to an ENEX file (or selected notes), you can't export a full stack.

This means you can export every notebook to an ENEX file that holds its content. This is a bunch of files, each one representing a notebook. How you bring them into OneNote, and if that makes sense in the holy structure ON has given itself, you need to find out.

Here I agree with other posts: This is not a core question for an EN user forum any more. We would probably give bad advise, being ignorant (at least myself) about which possibilities to better organize stuff ON offers.

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