Merging Notebooks

[smiller57 9]

I have decided to go all-in on tags and will thus move down from three notebooks to one notebook. My work notebook has around 22,000 notes while my personal notebook has around 8,000 notes. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to merge them into one notebook without copying and pasting 50 notes at a time?

[gazumped 11,656]

8 minutes ago, smiller57 said:

I have decided to go all-in on tags and will thus move down from three notebooks to one notebook. My work notebook has around 22,000 notes while my personal notebook has around 8,000 notes. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to merge them into one notebook without copying and pasting 50 notes at a time?

Device? OS? Evernote Version? (Web or installed app?)

[smiller57 9]

I would do all the heavy lifting using EN desktop (10.30.5) on a Mac.

[gazumped 11,656]

Hi.  I'm not a Mac user,  but there are a couple of options you could look at.

Install the Legacy app (if you haven't already),  which runs alongside V10 and uses the same server database,  but does not have the 50-note limit on selections.  You should be able to select all the notes in one notebook and move them to another.  Do beware that re-sorting the indexes and updating displays is going to be pretty intensive for a while - make sure you leave some downtime for housekeeping after making the changes.  Other devices may not catch up very quickly either - the server needs to get this work done and sync new details out to any connected items.

While you can select all notes in one notebook in v10 from the Notebooks page,  this may be solely for an export to ENEX files.  You could export your notes into separate files per notebook and then re-import them into a single notebook.  You may be able to move notebooks instead once you've made the selection - see the export page below.

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

Export notes and notebooks as ENEX or HTML

[smiller57 9]

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond. This is helpful!

[PinkElephant 8,088]

The limit can be raised to 500 or more. It will run longer, but requires fewer actions. With 1.000 or close to it it stopped working, so there may be another limit.

1. Quit Evernote 10 
2. Open Finder
3. From the menu bar select Go > Go To Folder...
4. Paste ~/Library/Application Support/ and press Go.
5. Locate the folder titled Evernote and open it
6. Save a copy of the config.json file with an addition like .OLD as a safety copy.
7. Open the config.json file in a text editor
8. The "qa" section must be changed to this. If there is no QA section, add this code before the end of the config.json file, inside of the last bracket:
9. "qa": {

   "multiSelectionLimit": 500

   }
    
10. Set the number of notes you wish to allow.  There is a limit of about 1,000 maximum so there's no benefit in going for a larger number.  I have it set at 500.
11. Save the amended file and restart Evernote 10.

To speed things up you can go offline before moving notes. Remember after going back online it needs time to sync all changes with the server. Don’t use EN while it is still syncing.

[eric99 980]

11 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

The limit can be raised to 500 or more. It will run longer, but requires fewer actions. With 1.000 or close to it it stopped working, so there may be another limit.

Thanks for testing this, I haven't changed this limit so far because it wasn't clear for me why the limit exists: is it just for performance reasons, or is it a workaround to prevent memory management problems which might cause data corruption in the worst case?

[PinkElephant 8,088]

Good question. My assumption is they want to prevent excessive server load. When such a job is started, v10 works down a list of notes, processing each one as if it would have been opened, modified and saved again. This all happens on the server - one of the reasons it is much slower than legacy which is doing all operations on the local database, and syncs it later.

It runs at the maximum speed the client, internet and server allows. So setting a limit means it will pause after that number of notes. Like in programming where you usually have a supervision to break loops that accidentally run ad infinitum.

At least I did not encounter problems when going to 500. Somewhere around 1.000 notes it fails - so there is another limiting factor.

The second tip about going offline is to prevent the looping with the server. Sure this raises the probability that something may fail when it syncs later. So anybody may balance his appetite for risk with getting bulk jobs done faster.

[smiller57 9]

This all makes me queasy. I downloaded the legacy version and it loaded up a super old version of my EN database. I closed it and deleted it immediately as I didn't know if this old database would somehow try to overwrite my newer database. I am surprised that it would "remember" such an old database. If I downloaded it fresh, why would it pick up the old stuff. It must be an old file hidden away on my laptop somewhere.

Then I tried another tactic. I was able to export the notebook with 8,700 notes to .enex files into 5 separate files. See attached. I was able to successfully import the first file and it created a new notebook "(imported) My Notes 1" that I "think" mirrors the contents of the first file I imported. But after that, I was not able to import the second file. I kept getting an error message. See attached.

I tried to chat with support and with all due respect, they were not helpful whatsoever. I tried explain my situation, and the support person tried to convince me that moving them over 50 notes at a time was less tedious than importing five files. I thanked them for their time and ended the chat. So, now I have submitted a ticket, and I wait. I rarely request support, and it honks me off that after being a premium paid subscriber since 2011 that I can't get better support when I need it.

[PinkElephant 8,088]

EN can not load an old version of your database - where do you think it was hiding ?

Correct, on your own computer ! 

When uninstalling the standard process will not erase what it considers as data files. So it was preserved as it was. 

When you reinstalled, it found your old database and reconnected it. That’s the whole secret, caused by an incomplete uninstall some day in the past.

To make sure all parts of an app are removed, get the app AppCleaner and use it. In the list of components it shows for removal, a part will not be checked. Check them all, and it will remove every trace of it, including old settings and data files*.

You can then reinstall legacy, and everything will download from the server.

No idea what happened on importing.

Support chat may be ok for a fast question. It is from my experience not working for more complex issues.
 

(*) Edit: If you have local notebooks in the old data files, make sure to have a backup. Removing the files will destroy the local notebooks, and there is no server copy.

[gazumped 11,656]

Evernote Legacy is an 'enhanced' version of the last public issue of the device-specific application. It won't update to v10; it's not supported by Evernote and it won't display notes containing new features like Tasks - but in every other respect it's a standard version of the app and syncs to the main server database alongside v10. Additions and changes made here will sync to the server and be shown in v10 if you have it installed alongside Legacy or on another device. Similar changes made in v10 will sync back to Legacy - except for things like Tasks and Calendar entries.

When v10 is installed on a device it uses a different method and location for its support files. It respects the previous Evernote installation and does not delete the previous database - possibly in case you decide to use Legacy in future. Any 'old' notes will be time-stamped within Evernote such that if you re-install Legacy after editing one of those notes in v10, the app will not overwrite new data with old; it will just update the note. If you exported the database to separate files via an option in Evernote which avoids saving a single file too big for storage limitations, then restoring via Evernote should recreate all those notes without having to select individual ENEX archives. If you exported by selecting notes or notebooks manually, then you would have to restore the same way.

If you wish to try a backup and restore again, it should be fairly easy:

v10: go to the Notebooks page on a desktop, select a notebook and export all files to <notebook>.ENEX. Repeat as necessary.  Disable the option to split backups into separate files if there is one.

Export notes and notebooks as ENEX or HTML: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005557

Legacy: Without installing Legacy, find your Evernote database and rename it. Install Legacy. It will (apparently) download 9GB from the server to recreate your current database. Backup as before, restore to either version.

Back up and restore your data in Evernote for Windows: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313528

Hope all of that helps - Good Luck!