ExportNote for Mac: Continuously export your Evernote notes to disk, including tags

[damian 51]

I'm a long-time Evernote user (since 2009, ~12,000 notes), and I wanted to always have a local html copy of my Evernote notes, including my tag hierarchy, so I've created an app for that, called ExportNote: https://exportnote.app

It is currently in beta and can be downloaded from https://testflight.apple.com/join/uwMdXI4d

My privacy policy is at https://exportnote.app/privacy/ (I don't collect/export any information, I just talk to Evernote's servers once you've logged in).

I'm looking for feedback, big or small, to see if this is something I should release to the world.

This app is in no way associated with Evernote.

Thanks,

   Damian

PS for those that care about such things, tagged notes are created as symbolic links to the note in the notebook folder, so you'll save space. Also I set the creation and modification dates of the generated files to match those of the original note.  I create an HTML index file, but you can also browse on disk.

PPS I did work for Evernote in the past, creating their Windows Phone app, working on Evernote Food, Evernote Pebble, Evernote for Android Wear and more ... none of which remain! This app is in no way associated with Evernote.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Hi Damian, looks pretty good.

Working with v10 as well ? Up to now all automations were restricted to legacy.

[damian 51]

Thanks!

To clarify it doesn't talk to your local Evernote app, but talks directly to the Evernote service - the downside is that the initial sync may take some time, the up-side is that you don't have to have Evernote installed locally.

[gazumped 11,664]

Hi Damian - I'm not a Mac person but it's good to know there are some independent developers out there working on Evernote tie-ins.  Your app would sit well with a lot of Windows users too: any plans in that direction?  I'd certainly use a Windows version - some users here currently pay (as @PinkElephant has pointed out elsewhere) around the same monthly cost as an Evernote subscription to run another app which generates an Enex file for each current notebook.  Those files are a good backup,  but are not 'usable' as such - they're just an archive.  Your set-up could offer some useful advantages!

[damian 51]

1 minute ago, gazumped said:

Hi Damian - I'm not a Mac person but it's good to know there are some independent developers out there working on Evernote tie-ins.  Your app would sit well with a lot of Windows users too: any plans in that direction?  I'd certainly use a Windows version - some users here currently pay (as @PinkElephant has pointed out elsewhere) around the same monthly cost as an Evernote subscription to run another app which generates an Enex file for each current notebook.  Those files are a good backup,  but are not 'usable' as such - they're just an archive.  Your set-up could offer some useful advantages!

I'd love to do a Windows version - I want to see if there is enough interest in the Mac version first - I've developed plenty of Windows apps in the past.

[DTLow 5,736]

3 hours ago, damian said:

always have a local html copy of my Evernote notes

Thanks Damien, it looks interesting   
Just wondering if file attachments are also saved?

edit: I signed up for testing - looks good so far

[gazumped 11,664]

Can I be your first volunteer for Windows beta testing? 

[damian 51]

Just now, DTLow said:

Thanks Damien, it looks interesting   
Just wondering if file attachments are also saved?

They are indeed. PDFs and images are displayed inline.  Here is the index file I create, although you can also just browse the html files.

[damian 51]

3 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Can I be your first volunteer for Windows beta testing? 

Absolutely 🙂 I remember you from when I used to post here back in the day as an Evernoter, along with GrumpyMonkey and others!

[macfixer 705]

This looks amazing, and I have signed up to kick the tires! Thank you for all of your service (and RIP for Evernote Food… gosh do I miss that app!).

[macfixer 705]

Uhh… Evernote's API is not so happy:

 

[damian 51]

51 minutes ago, Kyle D. aka macfixer said:

Uhh… Evernote's API is not so happy:

 

Uhh indeed ... in this version I tried making the app download two notes (or attachments) at the same time, to halve the sync time.  Looks like I need to change it to just download one at a time.  FWIW if you enter a dev token at login then it downloads 16 at a time, because the Evernote service doesn't seem to rate-limit dev-tokens.

I believe it is possible to ask that an app be given a special initial sync boost to allow multiple simultaneous downloads, I'll check with Evernote.

 

Damian

[damian 51]

1 hour ago, Kyle D. aka macfixer said:

Uhh… Evernote's API is not so happy:

 

One thing ... by default it only generates html for the first 1000 notes without a one-time in-app purchase. However in the TestFlight version you can "buy" the IAP without actually paying any money, so I suggest you do this to see all your notes - you won't need to re-sync everything, just regenerate the HTML (there is a menu option to remove the generated HTML).

[damian 51]

I've added support for generating Markdown

 

I implemented the Evernote Markup Language to Markdown converter from scratch over the weekend. I've a lot of tests, and I've checked a lot of my own notes, but I'd appreciate feedback if you notice Markdown not being generated properly.

 

I'm generating "pure" markdown (no HTML tags). Also I don't support tables yet. Let me know if the behavior isn't as you'd expect for anything.

 

I'm not generating markdown index files yet either.

 

Thanks,

Damian

 

damian@exportnote.com

[macfixer 705]

On 5/29/2022 at 1:54 PM, damian said:

I implemented the Evernote Markup Language to Markdown converter from scratch over the weekend.

over the WEEKEND??? 

[damian 51]

3 hours ago, Kyle D. aka macfixer said:

over the WEEKEND??? 

Indeed - it was a weekend of total coding bliss - family was away.  I reused some tests from a PHP html-markdown converter but wrote it all from scratch in Swift.

I'm sure there are bugs, but I have quite a lot of tests, all passing (at the moment):

I'm working at the moment to remove all the full paths in the generated files, so that they are all relative, so that you can move the generated files to another folder and all the symlinks, note-links, etc. will work.

[gazumped 11,664]

OK - I'm impressed!  

[PinkElephant 8,103]

That’s why Apple calls the programming language „Swift“ - not „Whiley“ 😉

[damian 51]

This morning I pushed an update to TestFlight that should make all links relative in the generated files.  You can use the File menu item to remove all generated files, and then export again.

This means you can move the folder containing the generated files elsewhere and all the note links, and the tag symlinks should still work.

[damian 51]

On 5/26/2022 at 4:37 PM, gazumped said:

Can I be your first volunteer for Windows beta testing? 

After working on it for a month, I've just published the first version of the Windows app - it is in the store, but not visible without the direct link which is here: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/exportnote/9N1SG9DJVT94

It really is the first version I've made available to test, so please don't hesitate with any feedback about how it looks or how it works.

You'll likely hit Evernote rate-limits when doing the initial sync, which forces the app to wait, so expect to leave it for many hours if you have a lot of notes.  Once that initial sync is done it should be much faster.

If you have a moment, let me now what you think!

Thanks,

Damian

 

 

[Sid DS 0]

On 7/4/2022 at 12:23 AM, damian said:

After working on it for a month, I've just published the first version of the Windows app - it is in the store, but not visible without the direct link which is here: https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/exportnote/9N1SG9DJVT94

It really is the first version I've made available to test, so please don't hesitate with any feedback about how it looks or how it works.

You'll likely hit Evernote rate-limits when doing the initial sync, which forces the app to wait, so expect to leave it for many hours if you have a lot of notes.  Once that initial sync is done it should be much faster.

If you have a moment, let me now what you think!

Thanks,

Damian

Appreciate this a lot. Will try it now.

This may solve my biggest worry about EN.

Huge Thanks!

[gazumped 11,664]

On 7/3/2022 at 7:53 PM, damian said:

If you have a moment, let me now what you think!

Wow - sorry for the lack of encouragement;  I seem to have had an action packed year so far...  just spotted the previous comment and downloaded the app.  First impression - it ate my test account with remarkable speed and generated HTML pages as I requested.  There's no text formatting on the pages though,  so they're edge-to-edge text.  Maybe MarkDown will be better.  The whole thing is a bit bare bones,  but it's early days yet.  More in a few days...

[damian 51]

On 10/20/2022 at 2:18 AM, gazumped said:

Wow - sorry for the lack of encouragement;  I seem to have had an action packed year so far...  just spotted the previous comment and downloaded the app.  First impression - it ate my test account with remarkable speed and generated HTML pages as I requested.  There's no text formatting on the pages though,  so they're edge-to-edge text.  Maybe MarkDown will be better.  The whole thing is a bit bare bones,  but it's early days yet.  More in a few days...

Sounds good - one thing I've done on the Mac version but not yet on the Windows version is to allow you to import an Evernote ENEX file, which speeds things up massively since the app no longer needs to download notes and resources from Evernote's services, it just downloads metadata such as the tag hierarchy.

Damian (grew up just outside Cardiff).

[freeatas 0]

Hi!

I bought the app from Microsoft Store and it doesn't work hangs at the stage of downloading missing attachments.  I wrote to damian@exportnote.app about the problem, but there is no response

[gazumped 11,664]

On 2/1/2024 at 12:20 PM, freeatas said:

Hi!

I bought the app from Microsoft Store and it doesn't work hangs at the stage of downloading missing attachments.  I wrote to damian@exportnote.app about the problem, but there is no response

Hmmn.  This is not an Evernote issue - Damian is a single developer last posting 18m ago - if you don't get a response I'd suggest asking the MS store for a refund.

[gazumped 11,664]

Further to my previous post - I wondered whether my original access still worked,  so tried it out;  it came up with an auth failure,  but it's more than 12 months since I tried this.  I also wondered if there were updates,  and a version I downloaded from the Store was different from the original install.  So I uninstalled the original app with Revo uninstaller to give me a 'clean' start,  downloaded the latest (?) version from the store and reinstalled.

Using the trial version the app downloaded my test account within seconds and produced a linked webpage copy.  There's an option to output to HTML or (a version of) Markdown so this app might be ideal for a small account holder looking for an easy conversion of a few notes.  The idea (I think) is for the app to maintain a 'live' copy of the account,  so all additions and edits will automatically be included.

<twiddles moustaches> Interesting... (evil laugh)

[Damian Mehers 1]

Hi Damian here - I closed my original Evernote account, not realizing it would cut off my forum access  https://discussion.evernote.com/profile/82660-damian/ 

The error that @freeatas is getting happens because the app makes too many calls and Evernote tells it to back off - in principle of you wait (potentially many hours) it should start again, but it is possible that Evernote have tweaked the limits for apps.

I should probably at least retire the Windows version - the Mac version lets you import an exported enex, so as to reduce the amount of data it fetches from the Evernote service (it still needs to talk to it to get the tag hierarchy).

@freeatas what happens if you leave the app running overnight - does it get further? It should retry.

Damian