How to export all notes, sorted by notebooks?

[isthisme 11]

From what I can see, the only option for easily exporting ALL your Evernote notes is to:

1. Be using the Legacy version (the proper desktop app, not the V10 local website app limited to exporting 50 notes)
2. click All Notes
3. Click the "..." to open the additional menu, and click Export Notes

Unfortunately the above is a bad solution because it's just a flat collection of all notes. So if you had been using hierarchical notebooks (school -> marketing -> marketing101) for organization, that info is lost and you have to hope you can recreate it manually.

Can anyone please post a working NON-MANUAL solution that would export my data while still providing the organizational context so I can recreate the hierarchy? Since Evernote can't seem to do it, I imagine this would require enscript, the scripting tool Evernote provides to developers.

 

So given the following Evernote data:

school (top level notebook/stack)
school/marketing101 (marketing101 notebook)
school/marketing102

 

Expected output is something like:

school/school.enex (because I had also have notes in the top-level school notebook) 
school/marketing101.enex
school/marketing102.enex

(OR)
school/whatever.enex 
school/marketing101/whatever.enex
school/marketing102/whatever.enex

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by isthisme
filtering the annoying fanboys

[DTLow 5,736]

46 minutes ago, isthisme said:

Can anyone please post a working NON-MANUAL solution that would export my data while still providing the organizational context so I can recreate the hierarchy?

You require separate exports for each notebook; either in the Legacy or Version 10 products

I'm using the Legacy product, automated with an applescript on my Mac   
Third party Backupery is another automated solution for Legacy

[CalS 5,280]

2 hours ago, isthisme said:

Can anyone please post a working NON-MANUAL solution that would export my data while still providing the organizational context so I can recreate the hierarchy?

Add a tag for notebook name to each note.  Not pretty but your hierarchy will be maintained.

[Robert1984 3]

I have the Windows client version  10.9.10 , and have found that all exports of more than 50 Notes have been disabled.     AND, there is no ability to right click on a Notebook to export it.    Removal of large scale capability is tragic for those of us who have for years critically rely on Evernote for data.     I used to tell everyone I met that they need to adopt Evernote, now you're moving to a level of use that is only for unimportant data.

It's hard to imagine why Evernote would eliminate this???

[gazumped 11,664]

26 minutes ago, Robert1984 said:

It's hard to imagine why Evernote would eliminate this???

Hi.  They didn't. Go to the Notebooks page and right-click from there - you can export the whole notebook.

[DTLow 5,736]

30 minutes ago, Robert1984 said:

AND, there is no ability to right click on a Notebook to export it

Right-Click works in the Notebook page; not in the sidebar

To open the Notebook page, click on the notebook icon in the sidebar

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Why does many people think something is disabled, when they just have not yet found it ?

[Robert1984 3]

Really?   So 1) here is the result when right clicking on a Notebook: 

 

and Really?  2) how does one export All Notes into one file like was possible with the prior release of the client?   The limit is now 50 notes, which is absurd.

Pink Elephant: Let us know where to find Export All Notes and we will no longer call it Disabled.

 

[gazumped 11,664]

26 minutes ago, Robert1984 said:

how does one export All Notes into one file

One would be ill-advised to do this,  since Evernote export options do not include notebook information.  This thread already covers the ways to export notes for backup,  and @DTLow's post above shows you what the option looks like.  If you're not seeing this,  what's your OS?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

It is as simple as 1-2-3:

1. Click on the phrase "Notebooks" in the left side panel
2. Click on the 3 dots behind the notebook you want to export
3. Click on "Export notebook"

The whole notebook will export to an ENEX-file, no note limit applies. Because the note-notebook relation is not in the ENEX export, export should be done notebook by notebook, applying a "speaking" name to the export file.

There was never an export to ENEX for "all". Who did it used a sort of scripting to cycle through all notebooks and export them. You could select all notes, and export them, but you were loosing the notebook information that way, leaving you with a heap of notes (yes, you could apply the notebook name as a tag, if you want to split hair. But this is an additional step).

What is missing from the new clients is the HTML-export - this is well documented and on the "open features" list.

 

[DTLow 5,736]

38 minutes ago, Robert1984 said:

Really?   So 1) here is the result when right clicking on a Notebook:

Looks like you're right-clicking a Stack (Really)

[Robert1984 3]

20 hours ago, gazumped said:

One would be ill-advised to do this,  since Evernote export options do not include notebook information.  This thread already covers the ways to export notes for backup,  and @DTLow's post above shows you what the option looks like.  If you're not seeing this,  what's your OS?

 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

???

[Robert1984 3]

I'm using Windows 10 for an OS.    For the instructions for full backup in the thread, I'm not familiar with enscript.   As for right clicking, I've learned here that it only works for the lowest level (non-stacked) Notebooks, for a long time user its not exciting to have to right click on 76 Notebooks each time.

I long ago decided to live with selecting all and losing notebook context but at least be able save the notes.    Had put in a feature request to have a one-action export that retained Notebook structure, but instead it now doesn't even allow a flat export.  sigh.   Thanks for your help.

[DTLow 5,736]

17 minutes ago, Robert1984 said:

76 Notebooks each time

Personally, I have minimal notebooks - basically a single Filing-Cabinet notebook

For organization, I use tags (over 300)

>>I'm not familiar with enscript

I use applescript on a Mac for daily incremental and weekly full backups

[PinkElephant 8,103]

As long as legacy exists, there is a far easier solution: Copy the whole data base with a standard backup program. On my Win10 PC I use Acronis Total Backup to run a daily copy of the entire EN database to my NAS.

Restore is a bit more complicated than importing an ENEX file, but there are instructions on that in the internet and (I think) as well here in the forum.

Same can be done on a Mac, with the advantage that there in legacy everything rests in an (hidden) files-and-folder structure. Time Machine will take care of that.

Have not yet worked on how to do something similar on v10 - no need as long as legacy is around.

[Robert1984 3]

Thanks.   Good points, but hate to rely on Legacy existing for long.   Will have to think about this, I've used Evenote since 2008, but the user Feature support is becoming hard to rely on in the way we did before.   This new client is disconcerting.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

They say they want to return HTML-export to the new version as well.

That makes it sort of easier, because HTML export a note into a single entity.

Sort all notes by change date, select recently changed notes, export to HTML. All the others that were exported before are unchanged and don't need another backup.

Until then, it is legacy or trust in EN running their servers well.

[fumbler 0]

I have been a loyal (paying) Evernote user for more than 10 years (not for long anymore) and been following the discussions here while searching for solutions.

Why delete functions that perfectly facilitated the users (export more than 50 notes)?

Why delete the HTML export function? It was very usable for me.

Why not implement a feature the can export all notes WITH their respective Notebook link metadata? This could not be that difficult. It's stupid users have to rely on scripts and external, third-party programs to be able to do a basic function like backups. 

Instead a lot of other functions got corrupted, like bullet point lists, checkbox functions, table formatting, update notifications, etc.

 

IMHO: In the course of history with this program, things got worse and worse. Every update made it more unstable and irritating to use. It is a sort of epidemic in software land en UX programming: invent new functions users will never use and make other, usable functions disappear out of sight or eliminate them. Evernote limits our ways to export/import to another platform. And made an unusable, unstable, moloch of a program out of a very nice solution which worked perfectly fine. Another example of bad UX programming. No wonder why a lot of users abandon Evernote.

Yes, I use the legacy version for now, and yes I am looking for an alternative, and yes, I am not very positive here, but realistic.

[gsucci 0]

On 3/19/2021 at 11:06 AM, PinkElephant said:

It is as simple as 1-2-3:

1. Click on the phrase "Notebooks" in the left side panel
2. Click on the 3 dots behind the notebook you want to export
3. Click on "Export notebook"

The whole notebook will export to an ENEX-file, no note limit applies. Because the note-notebook relation is not in the ENEX export, export should be done notebook by notebook, applying a "speaking" name to the export file.

There was never an export to ENEX for "all". Who did it used a sort of scripting to cycle through all notebooks and export them. You could select all notes, and export them, but you were loosing the notebook information that way, leaving you with a heap of notes (yes, you could apply the notebook name as a tag, if you want to split hair. But this is an additional step).

What is missing from the new clients is the HTML-export - this is well documented and on the "open features" list.

 

The last command does not exist in my Evernote from the web...

[gazumped 11,664]

16 minutes ago, gsucci said:

The last command does not exist in my Evernote from the web...

Hmmn.  It's always been the case that desktops can bulk export notes and notebooks,  mobiles and the web cannot.  There's less reason now though that the web version doesn't have this feature,  and it's not mentioned in the help pages - Export notes and notebooks as ENEX or HTML

I'm not on my v10 computer so can't verify,  but I'd suggest you try this on a desktop. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

50 minutes ago, gsucci said:

The last command does not exist in my Evernote from the web...

No, it doesn't since exporting notebooks is a feature of the desktop version. It is not possible neither on web nor on mobile. In these clients only individual notes can be exported.