[Fixed in Version 10.5] Fail to export local notebook

mlcarpen · October 26, 2020

I just upgraded to the latest version. I tried to export a local notebook by going to Tools> Check for local notebooks. I clicked on download for my one notebook, choose the location to save it, and get the message "There was a problem and we couldn’t export your notes. Please try again." What can I do?

Shane D. · December 18, 2020

Hi All,

This issue has been fixed in our most recent update, Version 10.5.

If you haven't already, please update to this version.

You can learn more here:

At this time, I am closing this thread.

If you encounter another issue, please start a new thread.

TEKjr · October 26, 2020

I have the same exact issue. I have 20 local notes that are now not accessible which is crazy.

Shane D. · October 26, 2020

@mlcarpen @TEKjr

Are there any commonalities in the notes that won't export?

Do they contain images, attachments, or other files?

Let me know as this will better enable me to determine how best to proceed.

DTLow · October 26, 2020

1 hour ago, mlcarpen said:

What can I do?

18 minutes ago, TEKjr said:

I have the same exact issue. I have 20 local notes that are now not accessible which is crazy.

Use the Legacy version to access your notes

Zulfiq · October 27, 2020

Just upgraded my Mac version of Evernote and experienced the same issue on my side. I tried to export 30 local notebooks and get the same error "There was a problem and we couldn’t export your notes. Please try again." Only managed to export 9 out of the 30. Please advise. Most of these notes have images / URLs.

mlcarpen · October 27, 2020

18 hours ago, Shane D. said:

@mlcarpen @TEKjr

Are there any commonalities in the notes that won't export?

Do they contain images, attachments, or other files?

Let me know as this will better enable me to determine how best to proceed.

For me the entire notebook won't export, so I'm not sure which particular notes are the issue.

PinkElephant · October 27, 2020

EN v10 does NOT support local notebooks. Not now, and not for the future.

If you want to export them, install the legacy version and export from there.

julien22 · October 27, 2020

Hi all,

Since the last upgrade, I can not access my notes which were all local notebooks. I tried to export them using the 'Tools -> check for local notebooks' but it fails and I get the following message 'There was a problem and we couldn’t export your notes. Please try again.'

I tried to change saving locations, restart the app, but nothing works.. I have got more than 2 years of uni notes that I cannot access, which is 30 notebooks for an overall of 300 notes ! Please can anyone help ? Is there anyway to retrieve the local notebooks from Finder ?

I know a similar message has been posted but no solution has been found yet.

Many thanks for your help !

Shane D. · October 27, 2020

Hi All,

For those of you that have already answered, thank you for providing more information.

@julien22

Are there any commonalities in the notes that won't export?

Do they contain images, attachments, or other files?

Let me know as this will better enable me to determine how best to proceed.

For everyone else, I'm currently further investigating into this issue.

Nick L. · October 27, 2020

For anyone having this issue still, can you please reproduce it and send me this set of activity logs please? Please DM them to me.

1. Open the Evernote app.
2. Go to **Help > Show Log Files** from the menu bar.
3. Attach the Evernote.log file to your reply.

Then:

1. Open Finder
2. From the menu bar select Go > Go To Folder...
3. Paste `~/Library/Application Support/Evernote/logs` and press Go. If you don't find this directory, try `~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application Support/Evernote/logs` and press Go.
4. Zip the files from that directory. You can do so by selecting all the files in there > right click > Compress
6. Attach it to your response

Thank you and I look forward to your reply.

julien22 · October 27, 2020

45 minutes ago, Shane D. said:

Hi All,

For those of you that have already answered, thank you for providing more information.

@julien22

Are there any commonalities in the notes that won't export?

Do they contain images, attachments, or other files?

Let me know as this will better enable me to determine how best to proceed.

For everyone else, I'm currently further investigating into this issue.

Hi Shane,

Thanks for getting back to me. The notes are a combination of text with images for the vast majority of them, some contain PDF.

cemax · October 28, 2020

I have the same problem "Failed to export local notebook"

I can't tell you anything about the content type because I can't see the local notebook. Duh.

Frustrated_With_Evernote · October 28, 2020

This is SO FRUSTRATING. I opened a ticket Monday and no response. Found this thread.

What incompetence to cut off local notebooks with NO warning. Did this export feature even get tested?

Why is an entry above marked as the solution? It's an ask for info not a solution.

I'm going to try to download the old version and export BUT why do I have to do this? I would have prepared if I knew I was going be cut off!

Do I need to look for an alternative product? This is total BS!

kcotton · October 29, 2020

This has been frustrating. The note at the top of this thread says NickL's response is the solution. No, it is a request for log files. A "solution" gives the answer, not a blind request for files which your company acknowledges may include sensitive data. We are paying customers, not beta testers. Also, it seems misguided to ask people who can't access files for the commonalities to said files. After I ran through the current solution and resolved this issue for myself, I can say my missing notes were a mix of JPGs, PDFs, URLs, tags, formatted and plain text. The only commonality was that they were in my single local notebook.

For anyone else who comes across this, the current solution is:

Download the legacy app (it can run side by side with the new up so no need to uninstall the new one)
Use it to export the local notebook
Import the resulting .enex file into the new version as a regular online notebook.

Warnings: I lost the notebook name and all time stamps for notes within it. Not sure if I could've exported the notes/notebook in a way that would retain the time stamps, but I could've named the notebook at time of export to import it correctly.

mlcarpen · October 29, 2020

On 10/27/2020 at 5:40 PM, Nick L. said:

For anyone having this issue still, can you please reproduce it and send me this set of activity logs please? Please DM them to me.

1. Open the Evernote app.
2. Go to **Help > Show Log Files** from the menu bar.
3. Attach the Evernote.log file to your reply.

Then:

1. Open Finder
2. From the menu bar select Go > Go To Folder...
3. Paste `~/Library/Application Support/Evernote/logs` and press Go. If you don't find this directory, try `~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application Support/Evernote/logs` and press Go.
4. Zip the files from that directory. You can do so by selecting all the files in there > right click > Compress
6. Attach it to your response

Thank you and I look forward to your reply.

This is silly but I don't see how to DM you with an attachment? Can you clarify or provide an email instead?

PinkElephant · October 29, 2020

Choose the envelope at the top of the Forum to open a new DM. Make sure you know the User you want to send it to. Attach files here:

s2sailor · October 29, 2020

4 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Choose the envelope at the top of the Forum to open a new DM

Or hover over the emoticon of the person you want to DM, and in the window that pops up, message is one of the options at the bottom.

Shane D. · October 30, 2020

Hi All,

Please make sure to update to the our most recent version, Version 10.2, to see if this helps fix the issues.

Also, we'd like for you to update to this version so that we have more accurate log information.

If you're still encountering this issue after updating, please see @Nick L.'s instructions.

karlfranz · October 31, 2020

Just updated to 10.2.4 for Mac and was forced to export my local notebooks. Same problem as all others. Also, the help page is wrong. It says:

Quote

you can find the tool any time by going to Help (Mac) or Tools (Windows) from the menu bar, then selecting Check for Local Notebooks.

On the Mac, the tool is under the Tools menu, not the Help menu.

beltway_man · October 31, 2020

I reloaded v 7.14 and the export worked perfectly...

Shane D. · November 9, 2020

Hi All,

Please try updating to our latest release, Version 10.3, and let me know if this issue is still occurring:

karlfranz · November 10, 2020

This still doesn't fix the problem for me. If I try to export an individual local notebook, I get the error indicating the export failed. If I try to export all local notebooks, it says "Export Complete" but the export folder is empty. 🙁

scross01 · November 11, 2020

I have multiple Local notebooks that won't export. Using the latest MacOS version v10.3.7 build 2018 public

In the ~/Library/Application Support/Evernote/logs/electron.log the following error is reported when I attempt an export

{"name":"electron.main","hostname":"SCROSS-mac","pid":38265,"level":50,"msg":" TypeError [ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE]: The \"path\" argument must be of type string. Received type object\n    at validateString (internal/validators.js:112:11)\n    at Object.extname (path.js:1229:5)\n    at LegacyDatabaseMac_LegacyDatabaseMac.getResourceContent (/Applications/Evernote.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/37.bundle.js:590:21352)\n    at LegacyDatabaseMac_LegacyDatabaseMac.exportEnexResources (/Applications/Evernote.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/37.bundle.js:590:21944)\n    at LegacyDatabaseMac_LegacyDatabaseMac.exportEnex (/Applications/Evernote.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/37.bundle.js:590:25281)\n    at LegacyDatabaseMac_LegacyDatabaseMac.exportNotebook (/Applications/Evernote.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/37.bundle.js:590:28340) {\n  code: 'ERR_INVALID_ARG_TYPE'\n}","time":"2020-11-11T13:45:43.653Z","src":{"file":"/Applications/Evernote.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar/node_modules/conduit-utils/node_modules/en-ts-utils/src/logger.ts","line":245,"func":"error"},"v":0}

Kristin55 · November 12, 2020

Same error after just updating today on mac. Two attempts to expert the only local notebook gave me errors and won't let me do it.

Matthias Dannenberger · November 15, 2020

I had the same problem, with version 10.3 on a Mac.

Solved it like this:

Downloaded the legacy app
Created a new notebook for every local notebook to export
Selected the local notebook in the legacy app and pressed "Cmd + A" to select all notes in this notebook
A pop-up window with possible actions opened --> chose 'Move To' and selected the new notebook
All notes where successfully moved, keeping last change date and tags
Deleted the old local notebook
Renamed the new notebook to the old name

It was a little work but in the end solved the problem.

As a long term user of Evernote, I am very disappointed with the way how this was handled!

No pre-notification of this important feature change
Taking away this essential feature to keep confidential information private and forcing us to put data in the cloud.

Shame on you Evernote Team!

sbliven · November 16, 2020

I don't even have a tools menu in 10.3.7. Is that normal? Does that mean I don't have any local notebooks?

elusis · November 17, 2020

I am also having this issue still in 10.3.7.

PinkElephant · November 17, 2020

@sbliven @elusis If you read the thread you are posting in, you would know:

NO local notebooks in v10.

NOT now, and if you read the release notes not for the future.

If you need to export them, you read in this thread above how to do it.

If you insist on having local data, there are not really many options, since most programs use cloud storage. AFAIK local storage is possible with DEVONthink.

tylerbickford · November 21, 2020

On 10/29/2020 at 2:09 PM, kcotton said:

This has been frustrating. The note at the top of this thread says NickL's response is the solution. No, it is a request for log files. A "solution" gives the answer, not a blind request for files which your company acknowledges may include sensitive data. We are paying customers, not beta testers. Also, it seems misguided to ask people who can't access files for the commonalities to said files. After I ran through the current solution and resolved this issue for myself, I can say my missing notes were a mix of JPGs, PDFs, URLs, tags, formatted and plain text. The only commonality was that they were in my single local notebook.

For anyone else who comes across this, the current solution is:

Download the legacy app (it can run side by side with the new up so no need to uninstall the new one)

Use it to export the local notebook

Import the resulting .enex file into the new version as a regular online notebook.

Warnings: I lost the notebook name and all time stamps for notes within it. Not sure if I could've exported the notes/notebook in a way that would retain the time stamps, but I could've named the notebook at time of export to import it correctly.

Thanks for this. Was still a problem for me in 10.4.3, so it's good to have this solution.

pdccnet · November 23, 2020

It appears there is still no resolution to this? I'm running 10.4.3 Build 2071 and getting the dreaded "Failed to Export Notes" message.

I'd like to try @Matthias Dannenberger's solution but I can't find where to download the "legacy app". If you could provide that information, @Matthias Dannenberger, I'd love to try your fix.

Otherwise, I hope someone at Evernote is reading this and addressing the problem.
This was a really bad way to release such a major change. Ditto, @Matthias Dannenberger, "Shame on you Evernote Team!"

gazumped · November 23, 2020

1 hour ago, pdccnet said:

I can't find where to download the "legacy app"

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

pdccnet · November 23, 2020

Thanks, @gazumped

fergycool · November 24, 2020

I've had the exact same issue with many years worth of financial documents, that I did not trust to the then unencrypted cloud. Export Local notes failed. Using the Legacy app seemed to work fine. However, after moving the files to a synched notebook and opening in Evernote 10.3.7 I find all the notes are EMPTY. They previously contained PDFs and now contain nothing at all other than a title. Very disappointing.

Edited November 24, 2020 by fergycool
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[Fixed in Version 10.5] Fail to export local notebook

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