(Archived) Import 1000+ MS Notepads into Evernote

[TomG 0]

I have 1000+ notepad docs I'd like to import into Evernote so they are searchable.

It seems like I have to add them manually. If I drag and drop a bunch of them they get grouped together as notepads in a note and are not searchable.

How could I import them so they would be searchable? Thanks.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Really? I've imported several thousand at once. Open the app on your computer, select all of your notes, and drag them into a folder. They should all appear as separate notes.

[logandb 227]

Define an import folder (depends upon the client you are using, but in EN for Windows it's under Tools/Import Folders. You can drag and drop as many files as you like into that folder and EN will automatically import them when it is running. They become one note per file in EN. I just tested it with .txt files and the text becomes the note contents.

[heather 604]

Assuming that you are using Evernote for Windows (as you're talking about Notepad, a Windows program), here's my best suggestion:

Create a new directory and *Copy* all of these files into it.

Open Evernote for Windows and go to Tools->Import Folders and select that Folder for import.

Wait as Evernote creates new notes for each of your 1000+ notes.

On Evernote for Mac, if you drag a folder full of files onto the application, a new note will be created for each.

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Thanks Heather. Are you saying then that dragging them into Evernote in Windows will create one big file, but dragging them into Evernote on Mac will create separate ones?

I thought I dragged a bunch into Evernote using Windows a while back and got separate notes, but it was so long ago, I could be wrong.

[TomG 0]

Follow Up

I was able to import many of my notes via the tool - imports.

2 issues

1) it took the first line/phrase from the content and used that as the title - not the actual title of the notepad doc.

2) when importing the first line of the content as the header of the EN note there were numerous errors b/c of non allowed characters.

Thoughts on how to get around this and actually use the title of the notepad as the header for the EN header?

Thanks.

[jefito 5,589]

You might want to look into the ENScript command-line executable. It lets you specify a file to import, notebook name, tags, and title. Combined with the cmd.exe 'for' command, you should be able to switch to the directory and do something like this:

for %a in (*.txt) do ENScript.exe createNote /s "%a" /n MyNotebook /i "%a" /t MyTag

You may need to provide a full path to the ENScript.exe command. This will import all of the .txt files in the directory into a notebook named "MyNotebook", assign the tag "MyTag" to them, and give them a title that's the same as the filename. If you want to get fancy, you can clip off the file extension in the title; see the documentation for the cmd.exe 'for' command.