Side notes migration to Evernote 10

[james300 5]

I have been using Evernote since around 2007/2008, and I understand that software development requires users to be willing to pay a reasonable price. My Evernote archive contains approximately 50,000 items (55GB). As a writer and researcher (lecturer), I have exclusively used Evernote on one computer and only with local notebooks. The reasons for this are maximum speed and performance, sensitive materials not being stored online (such as reminders, health-related information, correspondence with friends, etc.), and direct control over backups. I was (and to some extent still am) a fan of Evernote's design and functionality, even though I noticed that development had somewhat stagnated in recent years.

Like many others, I lamented Evernote's decision to disable the ability to use local offline notebooks. There was and still is no technical reason to do this. It would be beneficial if the current owner reconsiders this course of action. I considered (and to be honest, I still am considering) switching to other software options like Obsidian or Joplin. Ultimately, I decided to give the new version (and the new company behind Evernote) a chance. However, during the migration of my old legacy version of Evernote and my local notebooks to the new Evernote 10, I encountered significant obstacles.

a. When importing enex files, it seems (unless I am mistaken) that the creation dates of the original notes are lost, effectively destroying the historical dimension/memory of your archive. To address this to some extent, I organized all my notes in the legacy version into yearly notebooks and then exported them as enex files. It's baffling that the software cannot correctly import data from previous versions.

b. I have an Evernote Personal account that allows 10GB of uploads per month. This means it would take me 5 months to transfer my old Evernote archive to Evernote 10. Even the professional account with the 20GB upload option doesn't provide a solution, as it would still take 2.5 months. This is unacceptable. Why doesn't Evernote allow users to import their local notebooks all at once into the new version?

c. Furthermore, after I imported 6GB of enex files (a few of the old local notebooks) into the Windows version of Evernote 10 as a test, the application kept crashing. This rarely happened with the old versions of Evernote.

What should I do now? Honestly, I don't know. I'm considering temporarily reverting to the legacy version until points B and C are resolved. At the same time, I am starting a serious investigation into alternatives for Evernote, even though I would prefer to continue with a properly functioning Evernote.

[agsteele 2,955]

I think your use of only local notebooks is very untypical. Mostly the local notes don't breach the data limits. I doubt that it was conscious decision to prevent users like yourself from importing the local notes in one go.

Since you have decided to go online with V10 I would move your notes by moving the currently local notebooks online inside the Legacy software. When that is complete the login with V10 and the notes will be in your account. I think that this will resolve the date issue.

As for the crashes I would uninstall V10 using an uninstall program such as Revo Uninstaller to be sure you restart the process cleanly.

[james300 5]

Thank you very much for your response. I am going to try it out and will report if that solves my notebook uploading problem. 

[PinkElephant 8,178]

Some remarks (this place is user 2 user):

Creation date: You don’t import your old notes, technically speaking. You create new notes with the content from the old ones.

I would use a different approach than notebooks. You can create yearly tags, and monthly tags, and if you want daily tags.

Sort your notes by creation date. Then select the bunch that matches, and apply a year and a month. Like c2010 for created 2010, and cJan for created in January. You can cover all the time from 2008 til today with 16 year tags plus 12 month tags.

You can think about later nesting them into a creationdate structure. Tags will be maintained in the ENEX files and through import.

Update volume: Yes, since they are new notes, they need to sync, and thus counts into the upload. No way around it.

Data volume: You have a huge load of data, an elephant. To eat an elephant, cut it into elephant steaks (talking in general 😉).

There used to be a function to split every export into smaller ENEX files. Do this. Then on importing, take your client offline. If necessary the whole computer, I use a small software on the Mac that allows this for a specific app.

Now import the ENEX. And only after the import was done, take it back online. It will now sync the new notes in the background.

Wait until it has done so - then repeat until done.

Just my experience - I never imported more than several hundred MB, and no exports from local notebooks, so maybe give it a try before going all in.

[VincentC 272]

You might also consider contacting support about the upload limit.  Perhaps they would be willing and able (two different things!) to lift the limit for you for a month given the uniqueness of your situation.

 

Vinnie

[PinkElephant 8,178]

We have had similar before. In that case somebody exported everything to an ENEX of more than 20GB in size. It couldn't be imported, because every time it went beyond the upload limit. Support told they can't do anything about the limit.

So either you manage with Professional and it's 20GB upload, or need more time. If the source content is properly structured, it should usually be possible the export/import the actual content first, followed by the notes used as an archive.

But of course, support can be asked.

[james300 5]

Thanks very much for the tips and responses. I am going to work on it: a) find out if I can upload my 55GB local notebooks via the legacy version while maintaining date attributes; b) contact the Evernote people if they know a solution to the fact that the 10GB (also the 20GB) upload limit in my case makes migration to the new software (Evernote 10 without local notebooks) complicated (takes 5 months or at least 2.5 months).

 

[james300 5]

The evernote team gave me a solution by increasing my upload limit to 60 GB for 1 month. Meanwhile, using the legacy version, I converted all my local notebooks to regular notebooks and synchronized them.