Bring to v10 the "save attachments" feature that Legacy has

[idoc 400]

I often deal with notebooks that are composed of notes that each have a pdf.  In Legacy I was able to highlight all of those notes and then select "save attachments".  This would allow me instantly transfer all of those pdfs into another folder on my computer where I could combine them into one giant file.  For example, I have a notebook in Evernote that receives hundreds or even thousands of faxes (pdfs) directly from Hellofax.  Every few months I would "save attachments" and then combine all of those faxes into one giant pdf which I would archive.  With v10 I  no longer have this very useful feature.  Please incorporate this back into v10.  Thanks.

[PinkElephant 8,075]

The forum is user2user.

To contact EN use the feedback function or issue a support ticket.

Currently using legacy is the best workaround.

Another option would be to export the relevant notes to HTML. This works best when they are in a notebook that can be completely exported, because the 50 notes limit will not apply.

The HTML has a folder under each note, and in that folder are all attachments.

[gazumped 11,652]

...Also.  Right-click the top grey menu bar and explore 'save as' ?

[Boot17 1,440]

13 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

The HTML has a folder under each note, and in that folder are all attachments.

Or - similar - if you export all notes as a single HTML then all attachments are in the same folder (right?)

[PinkElephant 8,075]

Correct, clever idea 👍

The only issue might be that if there are several attachments with the same file name, there will be a number in round brackets added to keep them from overwriting themselves in the joint folder. Attachments embedded into a web clip container will not be exported as attachments, they stay inside of the clip.

And the old HTML export bug that the links on the HTML page created by the export are dysfunctional is still unresolved 😟 But the attachments itself are OK.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,938]

I agree that this would be a useful tool to have. Another workaround: you could highlight a number of the notes and merge them into  one note, and then in the merged note you can right-click and select Save attachments. You would lose all the original individual notes this way, but perhaps since their purpose is to receive faxes for ultimate archiving, the single notes are not necessary to preserve.

[Mike P 2,625]

1 hour ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

You would lose all the original individual notes this way

Not necessarily. There is an option in the "Advanced options" drop down in the merge dialog box. You could opt to "keep copy of original notes", then save the attachments from the merged note and then delete the merged note.

[PinkElephant 8,075]

Since there is not really a need to merge (when exporting to 1 HTML folder, kudos to @Boot17 ), the discussion is interesting but in my opinion merely academic. At least for this specific use case - unless merging them all is good for archiving as well.

By exporting a whole notebook to HTML, the 50 notes limit can be avoided, which does not work with merging.

[idoc 400]

Exporting to HTML doesn't really work well for the purposes of combining the pdfs into one giant pdf.  It's true that export to html easily gets all of the files into another folder in which they all show up as html files (which can be converted to pdfs), but then there is no way to convert them all together to one file.  It just doesn't work.  The only work around that seems to work is to merge 50 files at a time.  This is cumbersome if you are doing hundreds of files and it also seems to crash the program quite a bit.  I was able to merge 350 files but the program crashed 5 times in the process.    The problem is that after you've merged the 350 notes you have separate pdfs and not one combined one.  There is no "save attachment" at this point that I can select.  Thus far I have not found any way to combine hundreds of pdf files in the new version.

[PinkElephant 8,075]

To correct some what was said here:

If there are attachments, they are not exported as HTML, they are exported as they are: pdfs as pdfs, xlsx as xlsx, docx as docx, pages as pages, keynote as keynote, txt as txt and so on. Only the notes themselves are exported as HTML.

If several notes are selected, or a complete notebook, and single HTML export is chosen, all notes will end up in one large HTML file. It is practically a web page that contains all content of the notes. And they hold Hyperlinks to a subfolder in the same folder in which the HTML file is saved. Unfortunately there is a bug, and these Hyperlinks don’t work.

But all attachments are there, inside of this subfolder.

Originally the question was how to archive a large number of notes, each holding faxed content. The faxes are saved a pdfs attached to the notes. In this case on exporting all the faxes will be saved in a subfolder, as pdf files, as they were attached to the notes. If all the single pdf files shall be merged, this is easily done with a number of programs that can merge pdfs, both free and paid.

The tools are in place for the workflow initially asked for - unless the workflow is different, which should be transparently described.

[idoc 400]

"If all the single pdf files shall be merged, this is easily done with a number of programs that can merge pdfs, both free and paid."

Yes, I use Adobe Acrobat for this purpose and it does not seem to be working in the  usual way.  Normally, I can highlight the first and the last of the pdf files in a long list and on a right-click it will give me the option of combining all the files into one pdf.  This did not work when I was dealing with the pdfs in the subfolder created by the html export.  I will experiment a little more with it and see if I am missing something, it may take a little work to figure out.  Incidentally, this is a work flow that I use all the time in Legacy and which I find essential.  For example, I may have 12 months of financial statements ie:12 pdfs.  At the end of the year I will useAcrobat to combine all 12 into one pdf which now is the entire year's worth of statements.  Many of my notes contain 5-10 years worth of statements all nicely combined in this way.  Each statement may have been 4 pages which means that the entire note for 10 years contains less than 500 pages in total (quite manageable).  I literally do this for dozens of different vendors and it is incredibly streamlined and simple.  If I want to see a particular statement from 2018 I simply go to that  year and scroll down to the month I need.  So far, I have relied on Legacy to do this until I can figure out a work around for v10.

[PinkElephant 8,075]

The export files from HTML export are normal files in normal folders, not black magic files that by some strange voodoo escape the  selection because they don’t want to be merged. Anyhow, this is outside of EN, so not the subject of this thread.

The point was to show how exporting attachments for whatever reason (among it merging them) can be achieved using v10. It was shown to use the export to a single HTML „note“ does the job, by creating a subfolder with all related attachments. That‘s it, as far as EN is concerned.

[idoc 400]

Thanks PinkElephant, the solution that you propose works very well.  I can take a note with hundreds of pdfs and select the option "export as single web page".  When I look at the web page in the target folder it looks fairly useless.  However, when I double click it it reveals all of those pdfs that existed in the original note.  I can now combine them and do anything that I want.  It's really quite magical (not the black type).  Thanks for that excellent recommendation (I would never have thought that would work).  

[idoc 400]

Hi Pinkelephant.  I am revisiting this topic again and am wondering if I was premature in declaring victory over this issue.  I am finding that I can export a notebook to a single page html file such that all the files copy over to the folder of my choice.  For example, exporting a folder of notes that each contain a pdf file will yield something that looks like this:

Each one of these is a pdf file that often has 3 or more pages.  If I double click on any of these files and select "Adobe acrobat" it will open a nice pdf file.  However, the problem is that I want to combine all of these files into one pdf.  I am not figuring out how to do this.  I can painstakingly do them one by one, and then combine all of them once they're all converted and open.  However, this is far too cumbersome.  With Legacy this entire process is different ie: if I choose "save attachments" they all appear as pdf files in the save to folder (which I can combine easily).  What am I missing here?  I've tried everything to change the way the first one saves but I haven't figured it out and therefore they are not combinable in the current format.

[gazumped 11,652]

8 hours ago, idoc said:

the problem is that I want to combine all of these files into one pdf

There is a (free) thing called NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner 2) which has a great GUI interface - drag and drop any number of multi-page PDF files onto it,  and all the pages will be shown as individual thumbnails.  Say you have files with 2,3 and 5 pages - you'll see all 10 thumbnails and will be able to re-order any one or combination,  and then go on to print the selection.  Don't know if that will help your situation - just a suggestion.

[idoc 400]

I have adobe acrobat. The problem is that the files as generated by the export feature are not recognized by acrobat. If i doubleclick each file i can save it as a pdf but the entire batch is not recognized. I routinely aggregate hundreds of files so i can’t use this method. I will try naps2 anyway. 

[PinkElephant 8,075]

Just tried a HTML export. The files titled "Evernote (X)" are from web clipped websites, not from direct attachments inside of a note. All files that were directly attached export with their full file names, including the extension. Every file lacking the file type extension in the export folder it is an attached file "wrapped" inside of a web clip.

They do not have an extension, that Windows uses to find out the file type. On the Mac they work, because the Mac uses its own Preview app to open them. Preview has more functions than Adobe Acrobat, and it opens a wide variety of files. And the Mac gets the information from the file itself, not from a 3-character file name extension, like in Windows. Ever used MS DOS ? That's where it comes from, and it is still stuck deep down in Windows. 

Probably the best way to handle these files - if they are all of the same file type - would be to use a helper tool that can change the file name in a batch run. Maybe on Windows IrfanView could handle this job, no idea.

[idoc 400]

Thanks PInk.  For now I will continue using Legacy (for this task) since it has always worked perfectly.  It will take hundreds of notes and save only the pdf attachments to a folder of my choice.  Over there I can summon Acrobat to combine all the files into one pdf.  The whole operation takes 1 minute and is always flawless.  I will hope that v10 eventually incorporates that utility, and if not I will need to hope that Legacy continues to work.  If not I will look at more sophisticated batching viewers as you suggested.  For now my entire workflow depends on aggregating pdf files so this is not a luxury for me.  Thanks as usual.