Finally discovered a workaround for converting EN export files into workable files for third party programs eg:Acrobat

[idoc 404]

In a previous post I pointed out that when trying to export notes using single web page html method, I would see that the files within those notes were being copied over in a manner that was impenetrable to third party programs such as Adobe Acrobat.  In other words, those "Evernote(x)" files can not be sent to Acrobat for merging or anything else.  In fact, they are useless unless they are opened individually and the pdf file within is extracted.  This is too cumbersome if there are dozens or hundreds of files in that folder that need to be manipulated.

I spent days trying to figure out a way around this and could not find a solution.  Finally I discovered a workaround.  This involves opening up "Powershell" on win10 and associating all the files in that folder with a new extension.  Once in powershell you type cmd and then cd followed by the folder path where those files reside in.

you then use the rename command to rename all of those files with the pdf, text or any other extension you may want

And now, miraculously, all of those files are converted to pdf files

And finally, I am now able to merge them with Acrobat or to do anything else I want with them.  

All of this used to take 30 seconds on Legacy because one could "save attachments" and these would all be saved directly in a folder of your choice in the exact format they happened to be in.  However v10 eliminated this convenience and presented the exported files in that bizarre wrapping that was unreadable to any third party program.  This workaround is the only one I've found that allows one to circumvent this issue.

 

 

[Mike P 2,731]

I'm slightly confused by this. When I export as "single web page html" the files in the files folder appear as normal pdfs that can be opened directly with no issues. I posted about this as a method of saving all attachments back in April:

The reaction to the post suggests that this works for other people as well. I've checked it again and it is still working (10.58.8, Windows 11). Perhaps something in Windows settings rather than an inherent Evernote problem?

[PinkElephant 8,274]

In the first picture of the post by @idoc the file extension „.pdf“ is missing. For Windows this extension works to identify the file type (a reminiscence to MS DOS). When it’s missing, the app to open the file can’t be identified.

No idea why the extension are missing after the export. Anything special about the attachments inside of EN ? Does the „.pdf“ extensions exist there ?

[gazumped 11,765]

16 hours ago, idoc said:

And now, miraculously, all of those files are converted to pdf files

Windows is far from miraculous - those files were valid PDF files,  but as @PinkElephant pointed out,  without the correct file type suffix,  Windows is unable to recognise or open them.

If it's feasible you can rename attached files within Evernote,  but if you have a lot of files in this state it would be worth contacting Support - all file types should be maintained correctly while attached to notes!

[idoc 404]

9 hours ago, Mike P said:

I'm slightly confused by this. When I export as "single web page html" the files in the files folder appear as normal pdfs that can be opened directly with no issues. I posted about this as a method of saving all attachments back in April:

The reaction to the post suggests that this works for other people as well. I've checked it again and it is still working (10.58.8, Windows 11). Perhaps something in Windows settings rather than an inherent Evernote problem?

Thanks Mike P, however, what you proposed is not a solution.  Here is your original proposal:

"There is a hack to allow you to do this.

• Select all the notes with attachments that you want to download
• From the blue multi selection popup choose export
• Select single web page
• Hit export and then choose location etc
• If you then go to the location you have exported to you should fine a single html file and a folder containing all the attachments."

This is not a "hack",  it's the intended procedure and it is exactly the sequence that I follow.  The problem is that those attachments do NOT have the correct extensions on them (as per several win 7 and win 10 machines that I tried it with).  Therefore they need to be opened individually to discover the pdf files inside.  I am assuming, as Pink pointed out, that perhaps other people do NOT have this problem and that when they open that folder of attachments they actually see proper  files such as ".txt" or ".pdf".  Perhaps I can find a way to tweak my Win10 so that it recognizes what these are and automatically adds the correct extension.  In the meanwhile I will need to use my batch hack method of adding file extensions to a whole group of files that do not have it.

This solves an important use case for us ie: our industry still receives thousands of pdfs from dozens of companies (faxes, purchase orders etc).   Faxes come as pdfs from a virtual fax server.  With Legacy we could concatenate  thousands of these every few months into one  pdf and make it searchable (something we could not do on the fax server).   The same issue applied to the pdfs that we receive from dozens of  vendors (we concatenate thousands of purchases into single pdf files).  Many of the people who work for me don't have EN accounts and wouldn't know how to use it anyway.  So I send them the aggregated Acrobat files of the purchases and ask them to track all purchases of item "X" over the last 5 years.  Of course, I realize that many of these tasks could be more easily done with 3rd party solutions but I do everything on EN alone.  Hence, the panic when important functionalities suddenly disappear.

[Mike P 2,731]

35 minutes ago, idoc said:

This is not a "hack",  it's the intended procedure and it is exactly the sequence that I follow. 

You need to read the sentence in the context it was given. The request was how to donload attachments. It's not obvious to me that in order to achieve this you need to export the notes as html and find the attachments folder. Therefore I used the word hack. A non hack method would look something like select the notes, right click and choose download attachments.

35 minutes ago, idoc said:

The problem is that those attachments do NOT have the correct extensions on them (as per several win 7 and win 10 machines that I tried it with).

This is new information not mentioned in your original post. May be it works on Windows 11 but not on previous versions.

 

35 minutes ago, idoc said:

I am assuming, as Pink pointed out, that perhaps other people do NOT have this problem and that when they open that folder of attachments they actually see proper  files such as ".txt" or ".pdf". 

This is certainly my experience (I apologise if that wasn't clear in my response) and presumably the experience of other people who responded favourably to my original post.

It would certainly be interesting to know why on some people's machines it just works while for others it needs your process.

[idoc 404]

Thanks Mike P.  It wasn't a rebuke, just wanted to let you know that it doesn't work the same way for me.  I can't explain why I get a series of files that are undecipherable.  At least I've figured out a way around it.  I spent another hour or two with win 10 trying to see if this had something to do with hidden file extensions or any other explanation but still couldn't find an answer.