Moving data from Evernote

[Tamagotchi 46]

Moving data from Evernote is not as easy as it would first seem. In the last years, many note taking apps have entered the market but few permit Evernote data to be imported. NoteApps.info list six that do: Bear, Notion, OneNote, Joplin, AmpleNote, StandardNotes. Another not mentioned is Nimbus (an app with a wonderful editor). 

Even with these, success depends on:

1. the number of notes you have
2. the amount of data this represents
3. now much time you are prepared to invest 

Of the seven, here is a test of five: Notion, OneNote, Joplin, StandardNotes and Nimbus.

Method of data transfer: 

1. upload enex file to service: StandardNotes and Nimbus
2. API direct from Evernote: Notion
3. transcribe the local files directly: OneNote and Joplin

OneNote: a clear winner

Microsoft has produced a very nice import tool that reads the local Evernote files and creates local notes in OneNote that are synchronised with OneDrive. This tool can be download and is no longer support, but it had finished the job no time of transcribing 11,000 notes in about 20 minutes. The result looks very nice in OneNote. Tags are added to the notes as hashtags. The notes and attachments are all searchable.

 

Joplin: may work

The Evernote Legacy is a legend and exports all contents into a file of type enex. The export is broken up into files of 2GB in size. Joplin is native and once installed can import the enex files - you point it at the first and it finds the rest. I have done this in 2018 and completed with some errors but most went through: approximately 10,000 notes and 100,000 tags. Unfortunately, this pushed the Joplin database to its synchronisation limits. These problems are discussed in the Joplin forum - which is very good and the community great. In 2020, the import failed and Joplin crashed. I cannot say why. 

 

Notion: simple with limitations

Importing from Evernote to Notion is simple but with limitations due to the nature of how Notion works. In this forum, Notion was described a beautiful software, and it is, but the concept behind Notion is quite different from Evernote. In other words, the user will be required to change how they think. More about the process in this forum. Tags may be lost in the transfer. 

 

StandardNotes: possible but tedious

StandardNotes, give them credit, warn you upfront not to try to upload an enex file of greater than 250MB due to browser limitations. One user in this forum said they have 150k notes or 14GB of data. This is an extreme example perhaps but repeating the upload process 56 times is not going to be fun. I broke the test off at this point. 

 

Nimbus: the editing wonder

If you have seen Nimbus you will know this was designed for an Evernote user. Take everything that is a mess with the Evernote Legacy editor and Nimbus does it better (and better than Evernote 10 too). Having installed the native client the files can be upload to the service and then the background. When the process is finished you will be sent an email. Click on the synchronisation button on the app (and browser too) to watch the progress as the finished notes appear. The initial test with a 13k file and 46 notes showed that the conversion is not all that fast. The second test with a year of notes (2000) in a 2GB file has not concluded but the process has started without errors. It has completed about 120 notes in the time that I wrote this. I will provide an update of the conclusion of this test. 

[DTLow 5,736]

4 minutes ago, Tamagotchi said:

Moving data from Evernote is not as easy as it would first seem.

Moving data from Evernote is easy    
I use the export feature, html format   
This is run weekly on a Mac as part of my backup process; 40 minutes for 13GB

[saxophin 2]

On the Mac I would add Keep It to the list. Import .enex files quickly and easily and is quite full featured

[toao 148]

same with Devonthink (again Mac / iOS only)...

[PinkElephant 8,170]

Devonthink is one of the few options that install locally.

Nearly all others enforce cloud storage. Some offer strong encryption (that you need to trust, because it is usually not OpenSource), others don't.