Importing Notes from MS Word List

Mitchell Z · November 30, 2015

I'm a newbie, just using Evernote Basic. (I don't mind paying for a better version, but first I want to see how useful it is.) I have a list of contacts, roughly categorized, in an MS Word document that now runs 40-odd pages. Only separated by carriage returns.

I want to import these into Evernote Basic as Notes. Anyone have any idea how to do this efficiently? I can drag and/or cut and paste, but this has proven very time-consuming with the first half-page! Thanks.

gazumped · November 30, 2015

I haven't used this in a while, so I don't know how easy it would be with current versions of Office, but it's pretty easy (I think) to set up a 'mail merge' in Word and Excel, using a Word document as a template, and the address (and other) details in Excel, and to pipe the results of this mail merge to individual document files rather than a printer. Something like printing index cards or address labels with extra information added. If you can get your contacts as lines of plain text into separate documents, you'll be able to import those files into Evernote.

Windows users get an Import Folder to move files into Evernote, There's no similar function in the Mac client yet, but various script options are available, including this one - http://veritrope.com/evernote-desktop-folder/

Other workarounds for Mac are discussed here https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/29948-evernote-auto-import-folder-for-mac-os-x/

If you're good with scripts you may be able to work out something less round-about.

Hope that may help...

JMichaelTX · November 30, 2015

I'm a newbie, just using Evernote Basic. (I don't mind paying for a better version, but first I want to see how useful it is.) I have a list of contacts, roughly categorized, in an MS Word document that now runs 40-odd pages. Only separated by carriage returns.

I want to import these into Evernote Basic as Notes. Anyone have any idea how to do this efficiently? I can drag and/or cut and paste, but this has proven very time-consuming with the first half-page! Thanks.

Evernote makes a very poor contact manager. So, unless you have a very specific use for doing so, I would not import each contact into a separate EN Note.

40 pages is a lot of contacts. I would normally suggest that you just attach the Word doc to one EN Note, but with such a large number of pages, you might be better off separating the contacts by logical categories into a number of separate Word files. Then attach each of those Word files to a separate Note.

For Premium account owners using EN Mac:

you can (optionally) show the Word file inline, so you see the contents in the Note.
EN Mac will also index the Word file.

As an alternative, especially for EN Free account owners, you could print each of the Word docs to PDF, then attach each PDF to a separate EN Note. Then you can (optionally) display the PDF inline to the Note, and EN will index the PDF for searching.

There are a number of good contact managers available for the Mac. Evernote is not one of them. Personally, I like and have used Outlook for many years. If it were me, I'd import the contacts into Outlook.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

Mitchell Z · November 30, 2015

Thank you, friends, for your comments.

Here's a sample of what the 40 pages look:

ADOPTIONS

COUNTY

Santa Clara 408-441-5116

San Mateo 650-595-7615, 7963

Alameda 510-268-2422

STATE 510-622-2650

Bay Area Adoption Services MV 964-3800

PACT 221-6957

ADOPT 1-800-969-6665 Lisa .clark 100 Brannon St SF Suite 301 94103 cp 415-810-1987

Independent Adoption Center 408-986-8343

Future Families (special needs - abuse) 408-298-8789

Aid to Adoption of Special Kids 510-451-1748

Family adoptions juvenile court www.dss.cahwnet.gov

AIM www.mrmib.ca.gov 916-324-4695 less than 35,875 1-800-433-2611

AIDS ARIS 408-293-2747

San Mateo AIDS 573-2385

Gazumped, I don't know how a mail merge would act with respect to this.

JMichael, attaching the whole document to a Note won't get me anywhere, because I already have the document on my iPhone in non-Word form -- the problem is that I have to scroll through it. I've thought about using Outlook, but the problem is that I don't think I can sort easily using Outlook -- with Evernote I can create a tag (e.g., Adoptions, Housing, etc.), and quickly pull a list of relevant contacts. This isn't contact management in the sense of taking notes each time I am in touch with a contact; it's pretty much entirely a look-up-information issue. Thanks for any further thoughts.

DTLow · November 30, 2015

Possibly use AppleScript code.

An example can be found at http://veritrope.com/code/evernote-csv-and-text-file-importer/

It might be too difficult if your info is not structured.

JMichaelTX · November 30, 2015

JMichael, attaching the whole document to a Note won't get me anywhere, because I already have the document on my iPhone in non-Word form -- the problem is that I have to scroll through it. I've thought about using Outlook, but the problem is that I don't think I can sort easily using Outlook -- with Evernote I can create a tag (e.g., Adoptions, Housing, etc.), and quickly pull a list of relevant contacts. This isn't contact management in the sense of taking notes each time I am in touch with a contact; it's pretty much entirely a look-up-information issue. Thanks for any further thoughts.

Actually, filtering and sorting in Outlook is just as easy, if not easier, than Evernote.

In Outlook, you have these tools for Contacts:

Each contact in a separate record, with specific fields for many things, including:
1. Each part of the name
2. Title
3. Company
4. Multiple addresses (home, work)
5. Multiple emails
6. Multiple phone#
7. Many "Personal" fields
You can both sort and search on these individual fields
Or you can just search across all fields
1. In the global Search box for Contacts, you can:
  1. enter some text, which by default searches across all fields
  2. OR, after you enter the text, click on the dropdown field list for Name, Company, Category, Email
Categories
1. These are just like EN Tags
2. Create as many as you want
3. Color code them
Smart Folders
1. These are link EN Saved Searches
2. But more powerful
Notes Field/Tab
1. This tab on the contact record gives you a rich text page to enter anything you'd like, including links to Evernote Notes.

So, it seems to me that Outlook gives you far more capability than Evernote for managing contacts.

You may want to enter 2 or 3 Contacts into Outlook to test it out.

If you decide to go with Outlook, then we can explore some automated ways of getting the contact info from Word into Outlook.

Having said all that, and looking back over your sample of data, I have to say that which tool you select should depend on how you want to use the data. If each "dataset" is a broad category like "Adoptions", and the data is mostly unstructured, then Evernote could be a good solution.

Some key questions:

How would you like to search for the data you want?
Once you find the records you want, what data do you want to see?
How do you want to use this data, phone, email, use in writing articles/blogs, or what?

This is probably a situation where you may want to enter a small sample of data, say 4 or 5 datasets, into both Evernote and Outlook (or other contact mgr) to test the use of both tools.

In either case, the import can be automated using either AppleScript and/or Word VBA, but it will most like still take some "cleanup" of your Word file to facilitate the automated import. Do you have any experience scripting?

Mitchell Z · December 1, 2015

I've created catagories in Outlook, for things like Christmas lists. But I have no idea how to sort by category on my iPhone 6, so I'm not sure how to try out using this idea. Also, unless I'm wrong, it requires remembering what color is associated with what category, no?

Re your questions:

1. I would search either for entries by name of organization or individual or by category (or tag).

2. Mostly phone numbers for the identified organizations.

3. Entries not used in creating other works like writing projects.

And I don't have any experience with scripting.

Thanks for thinking about this!

Mitchell

Mitchell Z · December 1, 2015

I've looked over the Word document in different views, and that doesn't seem to help! I think I could go over the document and remove all line breaks within each entry, so that each entry was in effect a separate paragraph. Would there then be some way to expert this so separate paragraphs became something Evernote could important as separate Notes?

JMichaelTX · December 1, 2015

I've created catagories in Outlook, for things like Christmas lists. But I have no idea how to sort by category on my iPhone 6, so I'm not sure how to try out using this idea. Also, unless I'm wrong, it requires remembering what color is associated with what category, no?

If your primary device for searching will be your iPhone, then Evernote is probably the best tool.

The Apple Contacts app is very limited in searching -- does NOT support all of the fields that Outlook uses.

As far as prepping your Word file for automated import, I would replace the single blank line between each of your "contacts" with something that clearly indicates the end of data for that contact. Something like "[CONTACT_END]".

If it were me, I'd use AppleScript to read/parse the Word file, creating an EN Note for each "contact" in the file.

This is not a hard task, but if you don't know anything about AppleScript, there would be a lot to learn.

You might try some searches on "evernote AppleScript import word document"

Good luck.

EDIT: Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 5:48 PM CT

Of course, it is because of needs just like yours that has led many Mac users to first learn AppleScript -- you have a compelling need, and no other automated way to satisfy it. It can be very rewarding, and open up a world of opportunities to extend Evernote (and other apps) in ways not otherwise possible.

If you decide to tackle AppleScript, let me know and I'll share some getting started refs that will help. BTW, if you happen to already be familiar with JavaScript, then you could use JXA instead of AppleScript.