Jump to content

Import To Evernote from Now Defunct Notebook?


Recommended Posts

I've been using Circus Ponies' (yeah, funny name) Notebook for a long time on iPad and been syncing to Mac.  I think it beat Evernote to the market, but maybe not.

I just saw on their site that they've shut down completely, and I would love to be able to build upon the years of content I've created in the app.  The Mac app has export options as follows:

  • .txt
  • .rtf
  • .doc
  • .opml
  • .nbpb
  • .nbml
  • .html (whole website with multiple files)

These notebooks have embedded audio in many cases, and I'm trying to figure out what the best format is for exporting from and importing into Evernote.  Thanks for any thoughts!

Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 11.10.10 AM.png

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
6 hours ago, schalliol said:

I've been using Circus Ponies' (yeah, funny name) Notebook for a long time on iPad and been syncing to Mac.  I think it beat Evernote to the market, but maybe not.
. . .

These notebooks have embedded audio in many cases, and I'm trying to figure out what the best format is for exporting from and importing into Evernote.  Thanks for any thoughts!

This will probably come down to you testing various formats/methods to see what works best.  The biggest challenge will be including any attachments, like your audio files, as part of the EN note.  I don't know of any automated import into Evernote from CP.

If you are up to a little scripting, you may be able to use AppleScript to automate the process, IF CP supports AppleScript.  

You can take a look at Evernote AppleScripts at Veritrope for some great examples of importing notes into Evernote from other apps.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

Link to comment

Thank you, and I'll definitely check out the scripts.  Do you know of any of these formats that will allow attachments if I can generate them in this way?  It's possible that I can convert to different types to keep them embedded.  It looks like you can just drag files in, but getting the format to maximize content availability is tough.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

I doubt that any of the formats will support embedding of attachments that will import well into Evernote.  Again, you will just need to test and find out for yourself.  It is very rare for anyone to have this need, CP into EN, so you're going to be the expert here.  ;).  Of course, you can always do some Googling to find out.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
4 minutes ago, schalliol said:

It's just surprising to me that Evernote doesn't support embedding content along with text.

It does support this.  They are called attachments, or images.  You can embed both in a Note.

Link to comment

Awesome!  What file format is that?  Hopefully I can assemble the file into that format if it's not one of the ones available as an export.

Very likely the vast majority of Notebook users will be coming to Evernote if I can come up with a graceful way to do this now that the company is given up the ghost.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

Evernote is quite flexible with the file format of attachments.
There is a list of formats if you're expecting the search function to access them.
My personal preference would be pdf, but you can also do word, jpg etc.

The reason for pdf and jpg is that Evernote can actually open them.  
Other formats probably require the application itself.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
47 minutes ago, schalliol said:

Awesome!  What file format is that?

Please do some research on Evernote Notes.  When you create a Note manually, you add text or rich text, you add images, you add attachments, all separately in most cases.  Images can be embedded in text if you are copying from a source like web page.  But you must add attachments separately.  My main point is I don't know of any way to import a file into Evernote with an audio file (or any other type of attachment) embedded.  The only exception to that is ENEX files, which are created by export from Evernote.

If you create a Note via AppleScript, then you can specify the note contents various ways, but you specify the attachments separately. Perhaps this section from the Evernote scripting dictionary will help:

Quote

create notev : Create a new note. You must specify exactly one of 'from file', 'from url', 'with text', or 'with html'.

create note

[from file file] : Clip the contents of the specified file.

[from url text] : Clip the contents of the specified URL.

[with text text] : Create a new note using the specified plain-text as content.

[with html text] : Create a new note using the specified html as content.

[with enml text] : Create a new note using the specified ENML as content. Do not include the <en-note> tags, only what should be between them.

[title text] : Title for the new note.

[notebook text or notebook] : Notebook in which to place the note. Can be the name of a notebook or an object reference. If no notebook with the specified name exists a new one is created. If no notebook is specified, the default notebook for the account is used.

[tags list of text or list of tag] : Tags to assign to the new note. Can be the name of a tag or an object reference. If no tag with the specified name exists a new one is created.

[attachments list of file] : Files to attach to the note.

[created date] : Creation date for the new note. Defaults to now.

 

Link to comment
  • 3 weeks later...

@schalliol:  Hi.  I'm having the same challenge.

You want to look carefully at Evernote:  I quit using it over a year ago because (at that time, anyway) it only supported a two-level structure ("Categories" and then all the notes in a given category at the same level).  I believe the founder (of Evernote) wants everyone to use tags instead of a Finder-like structure.  Which does not work for me.

So far, I'm inclined to think that Omni Outliner is the best replacement:  exporting NoteBook documents in OPML format keeps the structure and the attachments.  However, it loses the formatting...  Exporting in rtfd format appears to keep the formatting but it loses the structure...  Sigh...

There's a thread on this Omni forum:  https://discourse.omnigroup.com/t/how-to-migrate-from-circus-ponies-cp-notebook-to-omnioutliner/22335

Good luck!

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
6 minutes ago, mluka said:

I quit using it over a year ago because (at that time, anyway) it only supported a two-level structure

You're referring to notebooks; and its still true - only two levels.
Tags can be organized in a hierarchy.
The notebook function is replicated using tags; with much more functionality although there are a couple of exceptions
Personally I only use notebooks for their special functions; local and shared

Link to comment
  • Level 5*
4 hours ago, mluka said:

I believe the founder (of Evernote) wants everyone to use tags instead of a Finder-like structure.  Which does not work for me.

Who knows why the designers of the original Evernote chose to limit Notebooks.  But they did, and they have shown no signs of changing it in spite of many often repeated requests to do so.

The hierarchical folder organization available in all OS is preferred by many of us.  But since Evernote does not provide that, I designed a system using pseudo Notebooks (using tags), that provides most of what we want from real hierarchical notebooks.  For more info see:

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...