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(Archived) Can I download all my data from EverNote? (ie. future-proof)


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I'm very interested in using EverNote to store a ton of old documents (many shoe-boxes full of old bills, etc), but I'm concerned about storing my data "in the cloud".

For example, if I want to leave EverNote is it possible to download all of my images and notes? If so, how does that work?

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What Evernote client are you using? The desktop clients store the note database on yoor local machine, and you can certainly export your notes to HTML. I'm not sure how that works with the mobile clients -- you may need to use a desktop client so actually retrieve the entire database.

~Jeff

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I'm using EverNote on the iPhone, iPad, and Windows PC. I wouldn't expect to be able to do anything on the mobile clients though so let's just talk about the Windows client.

What do you mean by "notes" are stored locally? Are these the text notes or the photographs/scanned images?

Also, if I have several gigabytes of documents stored in EverNote (ie. scanned images) are they all stored locally (Windows client)? I thought the data only existed in the cloud except for the "favorite" documents.

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What do you mean by "notes" are stored locally? Are these the text notes or the photographs/scanned images?

For the Windows client, notes are stored in a database on your local hard drive. You can find out where it lives by clicking Tools / Options / Open Database Folder.

Also, if I have several gigabytes of documents stored in EverNote (ie. scanned images) are they all stored locally (Windows client)? I thought the data only existed in the cloud except for the "favorite" documents.

For the desktop clients, everything is stored locally as well as in the cloud. One exception: you can designate notebooks as 'local', in which case they are not sync'ed to the cloud. There's no such thing as 'favorites' for the desktop clients.

~Jeff

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You can export into 3 formats

>File

>Export

Then select:

Evernote export files .enex format

or

Web Page .html format

or

Web Archive .mht format

Although one may argue that the Evernote format can export out into .html and a Web Archive, it's still not as open as hoped. One cannot dump all the data out and have it ready for another application, or for manual use.

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Although one may argue that the Evernote format can export out into .html and a Web Archive, it's still not as open as hoped. One cannot dump all the data out and have it ready for another application, or for manual use.

Yes, that would be nice. I struggled with the same issue when I moved from Frontrange Goldmine to SalesForce.com

But considering the large variety of file formats that Evernote can save, I think the best we can expect is an international standard like HTML.

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HTML is a standard for text markup. It is not a standard for note storage. If you export your notes into HTML with one application, there is no guarantee that another application will be able to import them. Enex is probably your best bet for this purpose.

Personally, I wish Enex preserved content ids. Then it would be possible to use it for moving notes from one client to another offline.

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Well, thanks again for the information.

I'll have to give EverNote some thought. I absolutely love it right now but "future-proofing" my data is important. If I can't easily get my data out of the cloud then if I ever decide I'm not happy I'm completely stuck.

HTML export is nice but that's not an import-able format. Flat text-files are better than HTML because they don't contain any mark-up.

Ideally I'd like a bunch of JPG and TXT (or XML) files though.

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I've taken a look at the ENEX (XML) file and it does look like what I want...

I've also taken a look at the SQLite database they use (EXB file) and I'm shocked that it's not encrypted. I was able to open this file and view all of my images and data with any password/encryption. This means if somebody gets access to this file all of your information is immediately available.

I'm not sure I feel too comfortable storing my insurance/financial documents in there... Does EverNote know about this?

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I've taken a look at the ENEX (XML) file and it does look like what I want...

I've also taken a look at the SQLite database they use (EXB file) and I'm shocked that it's not encrypted. I was able to open this file and view all of my images and data with any password/encryption. This means if somebody gets access to this file all of your information is immediately available.

I'm not sure I feel too comfortable storing my insurance/financial documents in there... Does EverNote know about this?

Yes, Evernote knows. This topic and the various methods to protect your data has been discussed at great length on this forum.

  • - Encryption of note phrases, Pin numbers, etc.
    - Local non-sync'd storage
    - TrueCrypt encryption

Here is some info from Evernote on security. The info is almost 3 years old. I would really, really like to see it updated.

http://blog.evernote.com/2008/04/15/eve ... -security/

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Thanks for the link. I was reading that earlier as well but figured it was out-dated since it's so old.

I'm not a security expert by any means, but why doesn't EverNote use public-key encryption for it's data?

EverNote needs to be able to read the data for OCR and such but when we upload notes to EverNote I'd encrypt it with a public key given by EverNote. When it's sent back down (ie. synced, etc) I'd have EverNote re-encrypt the data using MY public key (ie. hashed password or something) so then it's safe. The local database could be encrypted with the same key and unlocked when data is needed.

Maybe the issue is more complex than this but at least this way if somebody got my EverNote database file they wouldn't be able to use it...

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I don't think there is any chance of there ever being an Evernote export to Word - and I can't see a single good reason for them to do it either, why export to a proprietary format that someone else owns?????

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We export to HTML for maximum portability because that format is an open standard that is supported by millions of different applications. It also can represent our range of data better than any other format.

For example, if you had a notebook full of audio recordings and PDF notes and wanted to export those to the proprietary MS Word file format, then you'd basically have nothing, since Word doesn't represent either of those in any standard way.

Just export to HTML and then open the HTML from MS Word.

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I understand the need for universality, especially with audio files and the like. I try to open in my word (for mac) and in Pages. Both do not happen. I am thinking of turning a short story into a full novel and would love to use Evernote. I am thinking exporting to pdf may be the key- any other suggestions?

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PDF would "lose" more data from your notes than HTML, so would be worse for preserving your content for external usage.

If you export to HTML and then open one of the notes in Word, what error do you see?

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One other suggestion, since you're a Mac user: there are Applescripts available online that will export your notes to RTFD files. I suspect the usefulness of this will vary depending on the content/structure of the original notes, but it might be worth a try.

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