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How do I import bookmarks from Chrome Mac


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:excl:  :excl: Hi,

I am learning how to use Evernote. I also downloaded the extension for Chrome evernote clip.  I wanted to transfer my bookmarks to it, but the app Booknote importer is no longer available at the Apple store.  Did anyone figure out how to do it without such app?  I managed to make an HTML file for the bookmarks but... I don't know what to do next.  I did a bit of research trying to find a comparable app to Booknote, but found none (strange indeed).  If anyone has successfully done this, well please help.  Thanks very much

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One option might be to use a read-it-later app such as "Pocket". The pages you save are all searchable there... and you have tagging facilities. You can also send the pages to Evernote quite easily.

In the end, however, I have still found bookmarks to be quite useful for a handful of webpages… in that pages you visit quite frequently are more convenient to have right there in your browser. I've quit trying to consolidate everything under the sun into one app.

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"Pocket" saves the pages themselves. Not the same thing as a bookmark. But you can set up a system to easily find those pages.

If you "transfer" bookmarks to Evernote, you're going to need something visual… An image that will serve as a thumbnail image in either card view or snippet view in your note list. Unfortunately, I think the transfer would have to be done manually… Page by page.

In Evernote, you might consider saving bookmarks in individual notes, and set up a nested tag system on desktop to imitate the folders that you may have kept your bookmarks in in your browser.

You could also try importing your bookmarks into an outliner, such as WorkFlowy... Then from there, export them to Evernote. The hierarchical outline should be preserved within an Evernote note.

That HTML file that you mentioned earlier… Have you tried dragging that file into an Evernote note?

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I would suggest opening the HTML file in a browser,  then using the clipper to get it into Evernote..

Hi,

since I barely started using clipper, would you mind being more specific? I open the file in a browser and then click on each entry? Thanks for your patience. ciao

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If you click on the elephant icon in the top right of your browser once you have opened the html file in chrome, you will get a number of options. You can clip the "Full Page" and hit save. This should be sent through to your EN account.

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If you click on the elephant icon in the top right of your browser once you have opened the html file in chrome, you will get a number of options. You can clip the "Full Page" and hit save. This should be sent through to your EN account.

HI,

I tried that, but it says that it does not work on that page. I tried to reload, but it still did not work... any clues? thanks

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  • Level 5*

Hmmn.  My current browsers are Firefox and Opera (I fell out with Chrome using too much memory) and annoyingly neither of the current pair allow me to export bookmarks. Don't know why Clipper would be unable to clip that page,  unless you're clicking the 'Article' option,  which won't work.  Try highlighting some or all of the text and clip 'Selection'.

 

Second option would be to email the page / content from your browser to your Evernote email address...

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That HTML file that you mentioned earlier… Have you tried dragging that file into an Evernote note?

 

Yes the folder is in evernote (I put it there as an HTML) but I don't know how to make all the bookmarks get sorted... maybe I got the information wrong, maybe I would have to sort them all and put them in the appropriate notebooks myself... thanks again for your patience. ciao

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  • 2 years later...

Hmmm, last entry 2015, I am just starting EN, I hope!.  I have several thousand Chrome bookmarks arranged by topic. The topic is the standard way of applying tags in Chrome it is a folder name. I have the Chrome HTML export file. I do not want to lose these urls and their topic assignments.. Like to get them in EN either using a Tag or a notebook name corresponding to the Chrome file name  used within the Chrome bookmark file. See example below.  Example failed, I can't edit the HTML file easily.

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On 1/1/2018 at 9:04 PM, willis said:

I do not want to lose these urls and their topic assignments.

Hi.  Can you give us a screenshot of part of the file?  I don't get whether these are all headings and links (bookmarks) in one HTML file,  or whether you have a bunch of HTML files,  one per bookmark.  If it's a single file,  could you add it to Evernote as described above and just search for the assignments as keywords?

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Thanks, I have one large HTML file as exported from google. I spent considerable time searching for a non-programer conversion method. It is a common topic for sure, but the only converter I found failed to convert any records. ( Maybe because I am using a separate folder within Google Bookmarks to name each topic. Some folks just create bookmarks as just web entries with no attempt to tag or separate by topic.) Here below is a screen shot of the first page. The heavy black fonts with topics are my file names, ie topics). None of what you see is deletable or changeable in a word processing ap since it is part of HTML document. Hope my file attachment works.

Comment: Seems like most start-up directions for EN are focused on users just starting out,  I feel that most folks interested in EN are very experienced at trying to organize information, thus already have a lot of things to be ported over which is not easily done apparently.

BTW, this may or may not be of interest, In December Google released a new version which severely screwed-up their bookMark system. There are many and severe hate comments directed at Google about this. Folks with large and complex bookmark systems are abandoning Google, me included. Fire Fox uses the same BM file as Google, but has a friendly user interface so most folks are changing to FF. The complainers should use EN for all of these research databases, IMHO. A good interface to these files would encourage them, maybe.

regards

Google Bookmark HTML file, short clip.jpg

Edited by willis
added text
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  • Level 5*
9 hours ago, willis said:

one large HTML file as exported from google

AFAIK - and you'd have to check it out to confirm - importing that one large file into a note should be as easy as opening it in a browser,  using the standard Clipper add-on to clip the entire page,  and checking that the resulting long note is not too large for your version of Evernote.  (As in: less than 25MB for Basic,  more for other versions.)

The headings (and the links) should be added to your index and fully searchable by keyword.  As a longer term project,  it should be easy to copy and paste each section into a new note so that a more precise search is possible. - searching diet forinstance would give you multiple hits on that note and require a Ctrl+F search within the note to step between them.  Searching intitle:"actc & stem cells"  (including those quotes) would get you to the single note with those links. 

Adding a tag or another word to the titles would allow you to search for all 'index' (for example) notes and get an alphabetic list of all your categories.  You could then use a Table of Contents Note to list all your titles in whatever order you choose,  or to copy and paste sections into another note to share with others...

The possibilities,  as they say....

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Thank you Gaz, for the focus on my issue.

I will proceed as you suggest, will take a while since I have yet to explore the details of how to do stuff in EN. But it is great to see that this should be easy or at least doable. I will update you when I can report progress.

Regards

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Gaz, Thanks for great support. I have reluctantly decided to abandon my effortd to use EN. It was the most valuable and feature rich program out there.  But, now the clipper policies and problems give me too many concerns.

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On 1/3/2018 at 7:36 PM, willis said:

Thanks, I have one large HTML file as exported from google. I spent considerable time searching for a non-programer conversion method.

I don't know if you found a solution or not, but in EN Mac you can easily import the HTML file simply by dragging the file onto the Evernote icon in your Mac Dock.  Have you tried that?

If you want to assign EN Tags to each of your Google Categories/Folders, this could be done with a small effort using AppleScript.

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On 1/3/2018 at 7:36 PM, willis said:

BTW, this may or may not be of interest, In December Google released a new version which severely screwed-up their bookMark system. There are many and severe hate comments directed at Google about this

Can you please post links to web pages describing the change, and to the discussion about it?  Thanks.

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35 minutes ago, willis said:

Thanks.

However, we can revert (for now) to the old format:

Quote

You can revert to the old format by going to chrome://flags and searching for bookmarks. You will find chrome://flags/#enable-md-bookmarks ("Enable Material Design bookmarks") and then select "disabled." Unfortunately this flag will eventually disappear and you will be stuck with the new krap.

Also, I'd suggest that we all submit a complaint directly to Google as suggested here:

Quote

While I understand  where you're coming from, with regards to the old bookmark manager interface, I'd suggest sending your detailed feedback directly to our Google Chrome team.

 

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I have commented to Google forum. The method of reverting to previous Google bookmarks style only partially worked for me. Like most of you I have other projects more important to me than ***** with faulty software. For that reason I am dropping google and now use FF, and I drop EN because of their new direction and problems with the Clipper.

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2 hours ago, willis said:

For that reason I am dropping google

If the only issue you have with Chrome is the Bookmark Manager, then you might consider alternate methods of managing bookmarks (there are a number of third party tools available), and, for that matter, managing the data/links you are storing in the bookmarks (Evernote might be a good alternative for this).

I also dislike the change Google made to the Chrome Bookmark Manager -- but its not severe enough to cause me to drop use of Chrome.  I like many other features that it offers, and have found Chrome performance to meet or exceed other browsers.  I especially like the Chrome Developer Tools, where I can easily inspect any element on a page to view the associated HTML, and then work in the JavaScript Console with great tools.

I have found that no tool, no software app, is perfect.  None have all of the features I want; none have the exact UI I would prefer.  So, I find the tool/app that best meets my needs/preferences and go with that; and provide feedback to the developer about stuff I don't like.

BTW, instead of using the Chrome Bookmark Manager so frequently, have you tried using the "Bookmarks Bar", which displays the top-level folders across the top of the browser window?  I use it and really like it, so I rarely need to even use/view the Bookmark Manager.

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