How do I export all my notebooks out of Evernote?

[KrisHD 10]

I am a longtime user of Evernote but the recent price increase has me looking for an alternate platform.  I see that exporting files to Onenote was an option but it seems that is no longer an option.  Any suggestions?

UPDATE

I finally got the answer from Evernote support. The trick is you can only export files from the desktop version!! What you get is a file that looks exactly like the online one. I will still have to manually move files into Onenote by copy & paste. 
Here are the instructions:

To export your notebooks on your Evernoteapp for Windows and follow the steps below:
 

• Select a file format (ENEX, single-page HTML, or multi-page HTML).
• Check or uncheck the attributes you'd like to export with your notes (e.g., tags, created date, author).
• Click Export. The file will be saved to your computer's desktop.

1. Click notebook on the left panel list.
2. Select the notebook you want to export.
3. Click the three dots (more action) on the right side of the notebook.
4. Select "Export Notebook".

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by KrisHD

[agsteele 2,964]

The OneNote importer is not supported by OneNote any longer.

The often suggested route is to cancel your Evernote subscription and drop to the Free package. Keep your old notes as an Archive and start afresh with OneNote. Copy content across whenever it is needed and just use Evernote as a store for your historic notes.

[gazumped 11,737]

57 minutes ago, KrisHD said:

Any suggestions?

Have a look for another provider and check whether they offer importing from Evernote - it's in their best interests to make it as easy as possible for new users to move across...  But I agree with @agsteele - I have 60K+ notes,  and last time I tried to import that many into a third party solution,  their support took about a month to confirm it had completed - with lots of errors.  If I ever move I'll downgrade and keep my account open but create any new notes in my 'other' account and link or copy across anything I still need as and when I need it.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

To answer the original question: Notebook by notebook.

[eric99 995]

2 hours ago, gazumped said:

But I agree with @agsteele - I have 60K+ notes,  and last time I tried to import that many into a third party solution,  their support took about a month to confirm it had completed - with lots of errors.  If I ever move I'll downgrade and keep my account open but create any new notes in my 'other' account and link or copy across anything I still need as and when I need it.

That's one of the reasons why a working HTML export is so important, no need for free Evernote or other note-taking apps, a perfect archive saved in the world's most popular file format, readable by all browsers for the next 100 years ...

 

[KrisHD 10]

I am really upset that Evernote doesn't have a way to do this.  They have priced me out but the least they could do is make it possible to transfer my stuff.  Really poor customer service!!

[PinkElephant 8,241]

You can export everything, that’s the end of this discussion. There are several options available, do as you please.

Hint: Save your adrenalin until you learn about the export options of many competitors. They are more than happy to take your data, but as unhappy to release them.

[gazumped 11,737]

5 hours ago, eric99 said:

That's one of the reasons why a working HTML export is so important,

Are you saying that the Evernote export notebook to HTML feature isn't working?

[eric99 995]

12 hours ago, gazumped said:

Are you saying that the Evernote export notebook to HTML feature isn't working?

Yep, Evernote claims to have  html export but in reality it's just a half baked prototype implementation  without working links to attachments or other notes, which is  the essence of html !

 

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/136131-in-the-exported-html-clicking-on-the-attached-pdf-or-word-documents-does-nothing/

 

[gazumped 11,737]

So: an HTML export that does work to export note content,  except for links to other notes and any attached files.  Agreed that's an issue - and it's being deal with in that other thread.  It's still possible to export notes by other means,  plus occasional competitors who are obviously motivated to get their hands on ex-Evernote users,  have ways to Import from Evernote directly or via ENEX.

[eric99 995]

54 minutes ago, gazumped said:

So: an HTML export that does work to export note content,  except for links to other notes and any attached files.  Agreed that's an issue - and it's being deal with in that other thread.  It's still possible to export notes by other means,  plus occasional competitors who are obviously motivated to get their hands on ex-Evernote users,  have ways to Import from Evernote directly or via ENEX.

Yeah, but I mentioned the html backup as an alternative way to access your old notes without EN free or any other tool in case EN would disappear for some reason. Unfortunately, as long as real html isn't supported in V10, this is no option.

I month ago, support advised me to use the legacy windows client for real html export!

[PinkElephant 8,241]

How shall it convert the links between notes ?

There are 2 basic methods: Local links (in-App) or web links (to the EN server).

The local links won't work, because there is no local database any more that could handle the links, and no cloud server to which the link could reference.

There would be absolute local links, and relative local links as options - both easily destroyed when moving content in the export. For an export, links are a challenge.

That not even the links (that exist) to the attachments do work is IMHO a relatively small formatting issue - still unresolved.

[gazumped 11,737]

Hmmn.  I wonder what happens to the much vaunted "backlinks" when exported...?  No time to play right now,  but if anyone does,  please report any negative outcomes to Support!

[eric99 995]

31 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

How shall it convert the links between notes ?

There are 2 basic methods: Local links (in-App) or web links (to the EN server).

The local links won't work, because there is no local database any more that could handle the links, and no cloud server to which the link could reference.

There would be absolute local links, and relative local links as options - both easily destroyed when moving content in the export. For an export, links are a challenge.

That not even the links (that exist) to the attachments do work is IMHO a relatively small formatting issue - still unresolved.

A local note link should be implemented as a relative html link to another html note in the html export folder. It's important to use a relative link to ensure that you can move the export folder in its whole to another location.  No rocket science, this is how it has already be implemented successfully  in the windows legacy client. It should be noted that note-ids aren't required in this implementation, just plain html links (actually not different from links to other attachments).

[PinkElephant 8,241]

About Backlinks: They are an active service provided by the database. You can see this, because they are not embedded into the note itself, but show in a little icon provided by the database. Plus they update within a short moment when a link is inserted - they are created in that moment by a background task. So basically, the backlinks will be gone on export.

[thedavidbeach 2]

they really are ***** the pooch with this move and the charges... Im desperately trying to figure out where to go. Idiots seem to be in charge right now

[mackid1993 892]

14 minutes ago, thedavidbeach said:

they really are ***** the pooch with this move and the charges... Im desperately trying to figure out where to go. Idiots seem to be in charge right now

https://noteapps.info 

They are doing what is necessary to right the ship. If you don't find the price is fair go elsewhere. You'll find most other competitors charge a similar fee and that EN was underpriced for a very long time. 

[Feitz 187]

BTW: Is there a difference in the exported ENEX files between Legacy and V10?

[agsteele 2,964]

1 minute ago, Feitz said:

BTW: Is there a difference in the exported ENEX files between Legacy and V10?

I don't think so but I've never seen any discussion of this. I get my exports via a third party application. Perhaps they are also subtly different.

[Feitz 187]

4 minutes ago, agsteele said:

I don't think so but I've never seen any discussion of this.

So I basically can use Legacy until it stops working and then use V10 to export? Any known issues / export limitations in V10?

[AlbertR 562]

8 minutes ago, Feitz said:

So I basically can use Legacy until it stops working and then use V10 to export?

Not a good idea. I'd use Legacy until it stops syncing (if they really go this way :-|) and then export from complete offline data in Legacy.

9 minutes ago, Feitz said:

Any known issues / export limitations in V10?

At least for now: You cannot select more than 100 notes at one time to export - or export a notebook itself (with unlimit #of notes)

[Feitz 187]

4 minutes ago, AlbertR said:

export a notebook

Thanks, I would only export per notebook, so the 100 notes limitation doesn't bother me.

[agsteele 2,964]

19 minutes ago, Feitz said:

So I basically can use Legacy until it stops working and then use V10 to export? Any known issues / export limitations in V10?

I'm not sure I'd consider this as an option. We cannot know what will happen when Legacy is finally withdrawn. I think I'm well known for extolling the virtues of the evernote-backup project on GitHub.

[AlbertR 562]

On 6/12/2023 at 6:41 PM, PinkElephant said:

So basically, the backlinks will be gone on export.

Yep - but not because backlinks itself are not exported. Because Backlinks are managed immediately if an internal link to a note is created (based in the GID (unique note ID)). ENEX (and I'm sure any other export format, too) does NOT keep GIDs of notes, Backlinks cannot be re-contructed after an import because the old (destination-)GIDs are no more available.

[Feitz 187]

1 minute ago, agsteele said:

I'm not sure I'd consider this as an option. We cannot know what will happen when Legacy is finally withdrawn

OK,then I'll stick to my regular backup routine and the offline exports...

[HeBoIz 247]

21 minutes ago, Feitz said:

So I basically can use Legacy until it stops working and then use V10 to export? Any known issues / export limitations in V10?

As far as I can see there seems to be / has been a bug which leads/led to "untitle notes" with V10-enex-export in some cases.
(this never happend to me with legacy enex export)

see: 

 

 

[bengan 0]

On 11/1/2023 at 10:11 AM, agsteele said:

I'm not sure I'd consider this as an option. We cannot know what will happen when Legacy is finally withdrawn. I think I'm well known for extolling the virtues of the evernote-backup project on GitHub.

I am not an Evernote user but my wife is and evernote-backup saved my/our day. Quite frustrating trying to help with a platform like Evernote when everything seems designed to be locked down. Anyway, thanks again. Now the quest to get her to use something more open like Joplin (my note taking app of choice).

Edited December 4, 2023 by bengan
no dash for evernote-backup

[clipnote 24]

On 6/11/2023 at 6:45 PM, PinkElephant said:

To answer the original question: Notebook by notebook.

yes, but that is a very hard time job. if you have a huge selection of notebooks, it is not funny - but possible...

[PinkElephant 8,241]

A possible solution is the GitHub Backup project. It will build a database from the EN account. In a next step it can export from there to ENEX-Files, one per notebook. What it requires is to install the project, and run it. Some terminal work necessary, but it’s all well documented.

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

On 12/4/2023 at 5:33 AM, bengan said:

I am not an Evernote user but my wife is and evernote-backup saved my/our day. Quite frustrating trying to help with a platform like Evernote when everything seems designed to be locked down. Anyway, thanks again. Now the quest to get her to use something more open like Joplin (my note taking app of choice).

Does Joplin still permanently change attachment filenames when exporting a notebook ? This was my primary issue when I tested it but that was a couple years ago. I use lots of pdf attachments and not losing the original filenames is absolutely crucial.

[ChristyMF 0]

I'm not seeing any option to export anywhere. And export as a PDF is not what  I want. I need it in ENEX format.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

You need to use the desktop client.

And then you find it in the menus, in the middle panel, in the notebooks section ....

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

On 12/6/2023 at 7:07 AM, Wanderling Reborn said:

Does Joplin still permanently change attachment filenames when exporting a notebook ? This was my primary issue when I tested it but that was a couple years ago. I use lots of pdf attachments and not losing the original filenames is absolutely crucial.

Well I decided to check for myself and, lo and behold, they fixed this issue. Now when I export my test notebook as HTML or MD, all attachment names are preserved. This was literally the biggest problem I had with Joplin.

I also tried exporting a MD file with attachments and a table from Onenote (using the Onemore plugin) and it imported to Joplin - not as an exact copy (markdown tables are not great), but a whole lot better than I expected. Now if they add OCR and freshen up the iPhone app… it could be interesting.

[gregster73 1]

On 6/11/2023 at 7:38 AM, KrisHD said:

I am a longtime user of Evernote but the recent price increase has me looking for an alternate platform.  I see that exporting files to Onenote was an option but it seems that is no longer an option.  Any suggestions?

UPDATE

I finally got the answer from Evernote support. The trick is you can only export files from the desktop version!! What you get is a file that looks exactly like the online one. I will still have to manually move files into Onenote by copy & paste. 
Here are the instructions:

 

 

So here's what has turned me off to this app permanently. Not only was I blindsided by the new owner's restrictions on how many notes I could add, but I found it doesn't do any good to downsize the number of notes. Not in my case anyway, as I have a few hundred over the years. The capper here is this. I can't even export the notes I have anywhere! I have always used Evernote on my phone. Don't have it on my PC.  So I must go through them one by one and re-copy to some other app. This will take time, lots of it. 

This is a mighty poor way to treat customers. And yes, I'm still a customer, even if I only subscribed to the "free" version. Goodwill is worth something. People's opinions are worth something. 

[gazumped 11,737]

Hi.  Did you empty the Trash notebook?  And subscription apart,  no-one can export from a phone - if you don't have access to a PC you could maybe print the notes and photograph the pages for another app?

[eric99 995]

On 11/1/2023 at 10:12 AM, AlbertR said:

Yep - but not because backlinks itself are not exported. Because Backlinks are managed immediately if an internal link to a note is created (based in the GID (unique note ID)). ENEX (and I'm sure any other export format, too) does NOT keep GIDs of notes, Backlinks cannot be re-contructed after an import because the old (destination-)GIDs are no more available.

Yes, just adding the GUID to ENEX would help a lot... but in the meantime, my own Enex to HTML implementation reconstructs the for and backlinks from the note title. This works perfectly as long as the title has not changed since the link was created. My tool warns when a note title no longer matches so you can manually correct it in EN.

 

[jen4700 0]

On 11/1/2023 at 4:50 AM, agsteele said:

I don't think so but I've never seen any discussion of this. I get my exports via a third party application. Perhaps they are also subtly different.

What third-party app did you use? 

[agsteele 2,964]

evernote-backup There's is also Backupery which is a paid for service.

[John Jablonski 18]

I compared the price quoted for essentials for one year at about $200/3TB. That is close to the price I paid for Professional last year.

I've been using Evernote since 2010 and now my choice is to continue.

Earlier this year, I played with Notion. Too structured and not so intuitive. I still love Evernote.

I have so many intra-note links (I appreciate the recent Backlink feature to point to "parent" notes)

I guess I worry a bit about migrating this giant interconnected network of notes to another tool.

-- John

[Pavel7777 1]

50 notes limit for free? really? For 10 years I was happy with EN, but now I'm also going to export everything and close the account.

Google drive/Onedrive/yandex disk have the same posibilities for me.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

If these services (that have nothing to do with EN, they are "dumb" cloud storages) do the job - what are you waiting for ?

[Pavel7777 1]

BTW Found that "Xiaomi notes" have similar functionality (for the ones also looking for free tools).

[PinkElephant 8,241]

For anybody who wants to stick with Xiaomi forever, this is a brilliant move ….

[skywinder 2]

finally https://github.com/vzhd1701/evernote-backup project saved my hours! it works. 

[Dale Rodmell 0]

There is a route for exporting and then importing to OneNote, this works great:  https://www.wikihow.com/Migrate-from-Evernote-to-OneNote

[gazumped 11,737]

On 12/11/2023 at 1:09 PM, Smokerschef said:

For Web Version:

If you're using the web version of Evernote:

1. Log in to Evernote Web: Access Evernote through your web browser and log in to your account.

2. Select Notebooks: Navigate to the Notebooks section to view your list of notebooks.

3. Export Notebooks:

   • To export a specific notebook, click on the notebook name, and you may find an option to export notes.
   • To export all notebooks, you may need to repeat the export process for each notebook individually.

For the record - exporting is not possible from the web version.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,981]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

For the record - exporting is not possible from the web version.

Which probably means @Smokerschef is yet another example of AU (artificial unintelligence).

[PinkElephant 8,241]

It will get easier to shine with copied unintelligence: Windows will introduce a new key on the Windows keyboard, called the Copilot-Key.

And Dell today presented the first 3 laptops boasting that key on the keyboard.

I have a new slogan for these guys (yes, you are meant, @Smokerschef ) :

Just press the button, we do the rest 📸 

Isn't that flashy ?!

[Sobia 2]

I am exporting my notes to Notion as I can't use Evernote for free anymore.

[Siz 0]

Hello all.

A long-time (paying) user, I also want to move from Evernote.   For me, it is not the charges that are the issue.  But there are other things that have made me lose confidence in the organisation.

Over the years I have built up quite a large collection of notes, many of which link to each other (the links are of this form: evernote:///view/19258324/s133/ba6400e8-0c21-4294-b109-c4cd36f2fd7e/62cb6c82-bdbf-416f-b2cb-d202376b475a/)

Is there a way of preserving the functionality of these links so that notes that were linked in Evernote are still linked in the new application?  

From reading of this forum, my understanding is that the answer is 'no', but I might have missed something (I got a bit lost at the github stage).  In this case, how do people deal with this problem? 

Keeping my existing notes in Evernotes and starting afresh somewhere else will not really work for me, since the notes I create in the future will often need to be linked to historic notes.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

The links all use the UUID, the unique note identifier as a reference.

Up to now we have found no way to preserve the links when the notes have lost their identifier. This is true for all exports or imports - the links will only work between the original notes inside of the EN ecosystem.

[Siz 0]

7 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

The links all use the UUID, the unique note identifier as a reference.

Up to now we have found no way to preserve the links when the notes have lost their identifier. This is true for all exports or imports - the links will only work between the original notes inside of the EN ecosystem.

If I had infinite patience, I could go through the manual process outlined below.  The key is to create a table which has one an entry for each note, containing the UUID in one column and the note's title in another.  So:

1. Within the Evernote application, open a note and copy the internal app link.  Paste this into a table (in some text file).  Then copy the title of the note and paste this into the table.
2. Repeat for all notes.
3. Now you have a text file which has a table showing the UUID and title for all notes.
4. Export the notes
5. Open each exported note and search for links.
6. For each link you find, the UUID contained in the link, together with the table you have created, will enable you to look up the title of the note that is linked to.
7. Search for the exported note with this title.  Change the link to point to this note.

It relies on each note having a unique title.  But if this is not the case, the process could be tweaked by creating an additional column in the table containing date created.

My coding abilities are pretty much zero, but I would have thought that it should be possible to write a script to automate this.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

You wouldn't try to do this through the client interface, if you talk about coding.

Developers can obtain a token for API access. Through the API this stuff can possibly be extracted and handled by a database. Looks like a python project to me, similar to the Evernote Backup project many of us use.

[Siz 0]

So am I right that you think that it is doable, but are not aware of anyone having done it?

[PinkElephant 8,241]

You can check these sources. Developer tokens can be obtained through support:

https://dev.evernote.com/support/glossary.php

 

https://dev.evernote.com

[Dave Green 212]

12 hours ago, Siz said:

Is there a way of preserving the functionality of these links so that notes that were linked in Evernote are still linked in the new application?  

The best I have found is going to Obsidian and using Yarle.  I have a post documenting the process I arrived at in my exploration: https://glimmer.gwizlabs.net/blog/2024/01/17/migrate-from-evernote-to-obsidian/

Note:

1. I am, for now, sticking with Evernote

2. The linkage only works if the name of the note and the text view of the link match.  Evernote allows the linkage to be maintained even if you have changed one or the other, but since the linkage is by text, not the Evernote ID, it will fail.

[Siz 0]

14 hours ago, Dave Green said:

The best I have found is going to Obsidian and using Yarle.  I have a post documenting the process I arrived at in my exploration: https://glimmer.gwizlabs.net/blog/2024/01/17/migrate-from-evernote-to-obsidian/

Note:

1. I am, for now, sticking with Evernote

2. The linkage only works if the name of the note and the text view of the link match.  Evernote allows the linkage to be maintained even if you have changed one or the other, but since the linkage is by text, not the Evernote ID, it will fail.

Thanks - this looks fantastically useful. 

One question you might know the answer to: My default view for internal links has always been 'text'.  Looking at the ENEX file in a text editor, the title of the note does not appear to come across.  But if I go back into Evernote, change the view to 'title' and re-export, then the title is included.

As part of the initial tidy up process, is there any way of doing a global change from 'text' to 'title' or do I have to edit each link individually?

[Dave Green 212]

I am using view as text, and the process deals with that.  This may be my issue of when one changes the text, the matching fails. 

...

Alas, I just tried looking into this (changing an existing link to title) -- it looks like while the title style link changes when you change the note pointed to, the underlying Yarle linkage is using the old text in builing the link AND the underlying text link is not changed.

That said, you can toggle a link from text to title and back to text in Evernote to fix the text link -- again a manual process.  It also seems that  if you set the link default in Settings to Title, then things will work as desired for new notes when you later change it.  Of course, you have to like the way title looks in your note -- I have used text since it has been the default and I have used it in my workflow to advantage (inside sentences, etc.  (and I have 8000+ notes done the other way.)  A second set of changes after an initial export had an earlier version of the text used as the text for a link not following the title change.

In the documented process, the note's filename is the title.  The link is based on the displayed text matching the file name which occurs as long as the text or the note title did not change since link creation.

I don't know of a way to toggle existing notes to change them or fix them.

 

 

Edited January 26 by Dave Green
Updated text (see strikethrough)

[LasseS 0]

I just noticed that Awesome Note still syncs to Evernote. I earlier synced to move FROM Awesome Note. Now if you just precede the notebook name in Evernote with:

[aNote]

The notebook will start syncing into aNote. Am renaming my folders and syncing them now gradually back to aNote. At least images and basic formatting seems to remain the same back in aNote. Will give more info if more complex things work also..

[Tape 0]

I would like to export my notes from my mobile phone [ Samsung S7 ] ; as I am having issues with the recordings in them not showing up on browser or desktop versions of evernote.

To export them via any other version than the mobile app, would mean exporting them without the recordings.

Is there a way to export the notes while using the mobile phone app ?

 

Thank you

 

Tape

[gazumped 11,737]

On 2/12/2024 at 7:20 PM, Tape said:

Is there a way to export the notes while using the mobile phone app ?

Hi.  No.  Do your recordings not show up at all in notes? Or do they show up but remain unplayable.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

What sort of recordings ? Audio ?

It would be unusual if they don't show everywhere. They may be not playable, depending on the platform, but they should be there as attachments.

[calandril 0]

On 6/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, PinkElephant said:

You can export everything, that’s the end of this discussion. There are several options available, do as you please.

Hint: Save your adrenalin until you learn about the export options of many competitors. They are more than happy to take your data, but as unhappy to release them.

I mean a lot of them use md or similar flat formats and allow you to save on your own disk... so yeah, you don't even have to export and it's in a human readable format that computers will be able to read for the next 1000 years... happy to take that over one that has issue allowing me to export..

Check out Obsidian, Dendrite, Notesnook, and their competitors. Some are even opensource.  Unless Evernote catches up, I'm going to be moving my money to Obsidian because these traits are worth the money to me.  At the moment I'm paying Evernote and can't really use it because it's ***** on Linux, I need the internet to access my files, and I feel like I could lose my data at any moment, while Obsidian is polished, doesn't lock me in, and has better privacy policies (my data is on my networks only and since it's all flat files and network independent, I've spent the 30 min to setup my own synchronization between my devices, so they never even see my notes).  The fact that I am completely internet independent alone is worth my money, so while I can use it for free, I'm going to pay them soon as my renewal for evernote comes up.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

You can choose what you want. If you will be around in 1.000 years to find out if you can still read your notes from 2024 remain to be seen. I will greet you then …

[sidorvm 0]

I used Evernote since very beginning of 2010 or 2011. I'm ok paying for a software but I think changing pricing policy in a way which leave no choice but to pay is not fair to existing users. Device limit is ok, why to limit number of notes to 50 when I already have thousands of them?? I hate being held hostage.

The reason I move is because Evernote don't care about users. 

[gazumped 11,737]

13 hours ago, sidorvm said:

I hate being held hostage.

You have been using a free app to build up a library of (apparently) thousands of notes.  You still have access to those notes,  you just can't add more because the company has decided it can't afford the cost of maintaining a free service.  Do you work for free?

No hostages here - you're free to find another free note-taking app to use in future and to export your existing notes if you wish.

[PinkElephant 8,241]

@sidorvm talking about fairness: Somebody needs to pay for your free app use. Under the former plans, 1 paying user carried the expenses for roughly 10 non paying user. Let us assume you are one of the 10 users my subscription fees were diverted to.

And now, in all fairness you claim: Can you give me one single good reason why MY subscription payment should be used for YOUR continuous free ride ?

[dbvirago 508]

Upgrade to Premium, or we shoot the dog