Exporting local notebooks

[dataminer 1]

I am trying to export a local notebook. It all goes well but after the export procedure seems to have processed all the notes in the notebook I get the following message: "The file “content.enml” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file."
I can find no way to solve or remove this problem.

Eventually, after not getting anything useful from Evernote, I tried exporting the local notebooks one at a time and found that the problem was with only one notebook with a large number of notes.

I went through that notebook selecting 250 notes at a time and exporting them until I got the same problem as I reported above. By gradually breaking that batch down into ever smaller batches I was able to isolate a note causing the problem. It was an empty note with the title Screenshot. When I deleted that note the batch exported without problem.

So I searched through the remaining notes in the notebook for similarly titled notes and found about a dozen. Deleted them all and the problem went away.

I’m not sure what produces empty notes with the Screenshot title, but I suspect it is one of the screen clipping options in the dropdown menu for the elephant symbol in the top bar. The fact that it was only notes in that one notebook (titled !_InBox) where things directed to Evernote are saved makes me think that this has arisen from a program update issue at some stage. This notebook had 800+ notes in it and I haven’t sorted them into the relevant folders for a very long time, so (given that I’ve now deleted those notes) it isn’t possible to identify the time period (and hence the Evernote version) in which they were produced.

So, if you have this problem look for notes with the title Screenshot and delete them if they are empty.

Dataminer

[tocki 0]

I have this exact same problem. 

The file “content.enml” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file.

This error is returned after attempting the export of a 10-note notebook.

[asadal 0]

I have the same problem.

I can't export my note.

Anybody knows how to solve this problem?

[Gregg 0]

If anyone else runs into this problem after deleting the note you believe is causing the issue in a local notebook, here's what I found.  When you delete a note from a local notebook and then go to export, it apparently still tries to back that note up even though it is in the trash, so you need to delete it from trash as well.

[A.D. Midland 1]

I just had this same issue, exporting from the notebooks page, my main book of about 350 notes.
So after seeing this I tried just going into the "all notes" view and selecting the ones I was really concerned about backing up, about 121 notes, and they went just fine.
So this means there is what? Searching for notes in this manner  was a one kick step for me but could be quite tedious depending on where the wrong zeros are at.
Some miscommunication between OSX and Evernote that needs mending? Seems like it's probably more than just empty screenshots but I'm no coder.

Additional information: I'm still on Sierra. I don't trust Apple anymore.

[aaamr 0]

Same issue.  I have had multiple issues with local notebooks on Evernote, including a data loss issue last year.  Now I can't even export the 1200+ notes I have in a local notebook, which is the definition of lock-in.

 

I think I'm done here.  Been a premium subscriber for years, but have had enough.

[Jamesgstewart 0]

I have this same problem also. It really is super frustrating, partly because it limits the ability to copy Evernote notes on a local drive to another computer but also because Evernote's clearly known about it for many years as this chain of messages shows. Can you please resolve this.

[gazumped 11,652]

On 3/22/2020 at 1:55 AM, Jamesgstewart said:

I have this same problem also. It really is super frustrating, partly because it limits the ability to copy Evernote notes on a local drive to another computer but also because Evernote's clearly known about it for many years as this chain of messages shows. Can you please resolve this.

What exactly is there to resolve? Several of us have local notebooks and like the others I have no trouble backing them up. I could, if necessary, easily transport them to another drive.

[CalS 5,280]

On 3/21/2020 at 6:55 PM, Jamesgstewart said:

I have this same problem also. It really is super frustrating, partly because it limits the ability to copy Evernote notes on a local drive to another computer but also because Evernote's clearly known about it for many years as this chain of messages shows. Can you please resolve this.

This thread is almost 3 and half years old with not much traffic.  Are you experiencing exactly the same problem as the OP?

On 10/23/2016 at 3:06 PM, dataminer said:

"The file “content.enml” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file."

 

[DTLow 5,736]

Just some background information on content.enml
On a Mac, every note has an OS folder, containing a content.enml file and other note files

The above error message indicates the file is missing for a note

I don't know the reason, but a troubleshooting direction is to identify the note in question, and exclude it from the export

[Jamesgstewart 0]

I've been using Evernote for many years. I have got the error message below very regularly over the years when attempting to export notes:

Now, I read this thread very carefully, so respect that other people don't have the problem (see gazumped post above and others above it), so I've been trying to figure out what produces the error that I and others have. Clearly the error is not universal but enough people definitely have it. And to be clear, the export function works for most notes.

Here is what I have excluded as an explanation for the problem thus far:

1. It is not a single corrupt file that causes the problem because I can sometimes export each and every note in a batch that will not export together without producing this error;

2. Emptying the trash in Evernote (and on computer) does not solve the problem.

3. I do not think the problem relates to the overall size of the notes to be exported in a batch because other people seem to be able to export their entire notebook, but I'll explore this more because most of my notes have pdf attachments so are quite large.

4. I thought for a while that the export function was struggling with notes sent into Evernote from an email but upon further inquiry that does not seem to be the problem.

5. The problem is not that export struggles with duplicated notes. They seem to export fine as a batch.

As I say, there are enough people that have the problem that I think there's definitely a glitch here that's not about my setup, even if it doesn't manifest for others. in any event, all suggestions welcome.

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,077]

A thread 3 years old and not frequented thread does not speak for an enduring problem. A search in the forum did not produce a significant number of other issues regarding export.

Since this seems to be quite personal, maybe a look at the EN log file would help to find out what is going on. To start this you have to trigger support by issuing a ticket. Here is just a bunch of users trying to help, with no access to advanced analytics.

[fullysynchronized 0]

Today I gave it another try and was able to solve it. I hope this helps others.

Goal: Exporting a complete notebook (1400 notes).
Error: The file “content.enml” couldn’t be opened... (as above).
Solution: I selected batches of the size of about 150 notes and exported them. This somehow fixed the error. Now I am able to export all of them at once.

Background: I did this to identify the corrupted notes that cause the error message, but for none of the batches the error message appeared. (However, it did appear in the beginning when I used a larger batch size of about 500 notes.) After I ended up having gone through all of the notes without error, I was puzzled and tried exporting the whole notebook again -- no error message anymore.

On a side note, I believe the problem is enduring. I believe there are 100x more users who read this thread because they have the same problem but don't end up posting (for example, compare the number of views vs. actual engagement on stackoverflow). I was one of them. One of the silent users who saw this thread for the last 3 years and felt discouraged. Anyway, I'm glad I tried again today and I hope this approach works for others as well.

[RubenVilar 0]

Quite surprised that someone replies to an issue with an "I have no problem so there is no problem". Many of us pay money to evernote to store there all our knowledge and data so if people cannot back it up and has a thread for years that must be something to check, not to ignore or negate. 

I have 3k notes and I used to do these backups every few months, now Im facing the same problem. Tried all what you said and the only thing that worked was to split it in 10 exports of about ~300 notes each one. 

I would expect Evernote to change this, or to put a web download for everything, but after that many years I know they don't invest in the platform anymore, so Im moving to notion.so  

 

[DTLow 5,736]

12 minutes ago, RubenVilar said:

I have 3k notes and I used to do these backups every few months, now Im facing the same problem.

15k+ notes with daily incremental and weekly full backups     
No issues; which doesn't mean there's no problem

>>I would expect Evernote to change this

You're posting in a user discussion forum   
To contact Evernote Support, open a ticket at https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action

[some suer 1]

I managed to fix it - 3 notes I created in 2016 seemed to not have synced properly, after deleting them I can export all notes in one batch.

These were the steps I used find and delete the notes with missing content.enml files:

 

 

You have to repeat the process each time the error message shows when exporting if you have multiple notes that cause issues.

 

 

I think its really poor from Evernote to have bugs in the export process for so long, and also to not offer exporting notebook names - I have 100s of notebooks, it would take me all day to manually export them. Also their security bug bounty is 10-100x less then their competitors - do not trust Evernote with private notes.

 

 

 

 

 

[gazumped 11,652]

14 hours ago, some suer said:

I think its really poor from Evernote to have bugs in the export process for so long, and also to not offer exporting notebook names - I have 100s of notebooks, it would take me all day to manually export them. Also their security bug bounty is 10-100x less then their competitors - do not trust Evernote with private notes.

AFAIK there are no 'bugs' in the export process - I have 50,000+ notes in around 200 notebooks which are exported fully each evening without my intervention through a third-party add-in Backupery.  However there are other batch file options (Windows) and -probably- Scripts (Mac) that will do the job.  If oversize or corrupted notes cause issues,  that's a general IT issue not down to individual software.

[CalS 5,280]

18 hours ago, some suer said:

I think its really poor from Evernote to have bugs in the export process for so long, and also to not offer exporting notebook names - I have 100s of notebooks, it would take me all day to manually export them. Also their security bug bounty is 10-100x less then their competitors - do not trust Evernote with private notes.

Unsynced  notes do "happen" and it is unclear as to why.  Not a bug in the export process.  That is rote and works fine best I can tell from personal and forum experience. 

Depending upon one's level of paranoia real or imagined don't trust the internet with anything private.  Local notebooks are an okay compromise for some.  🤷‍♂️

[DTLow 5,736]

21 hours ago, some suer said:

I managed to fix it - 3 notes I created in 2016 seemed to not have synced properly, after deleting them I can export all notes in one batch.

Thanks for the solution in identifying the "missing enml content" notes
There's still the issue of recovering the 3 notes

My source to recover specific notes is incremental backups; my personal Note History
This runs each night, appending an html export of changed notes

I also have TimeMachine backups (Mac)

>>exporting notebook names

It's a curious omission in the export process    
Personally I work-around it with scripting (Mac)

[some suer 1]

@gazumped @CalS

I would absolutely say its a bug in Evernote - I think its caused by a sync process leaving the file system in an invalid state that the export process cannot handle.

I only ever used Evernote to read/write those files that are stored on my computer, and this has caused the export to stop working. I don't think things should stop working when used as they were designed to be.

@DTLow How do you export your notebook names? What about links between notes? Wouldn't these all be wiped out when importing them to a different system?

 

[CalS 5,280]

10 minutes ago, some suer said:

I would absolutely say its a bug in Evernote - I think its caused by a sync process leaving the file system in an invalid state that the export process cannot handle.

Didn't say it wasn't a bug in EN.  Just said my feeling is that it is a bug someplace else in EN wherein the note ENML somehow gets hosed and then sync and export fail. 

On Windows a red exclamation mark will appear on the sync icon when there is a sync issue.  Pressing the Ctrl key while clicking on the sync icon will display the list of problematic notes.  Haven't had this issue myself in quite a while so don't remember if there were any attendant export issues. 

[DTLow 5,736]

1 hour ago, some suer said:

What about links between notes? Wouldn't these all be wiped out when importing them to a different system?

Confirmed; importing notes creates new notes, and inter-links are no longer valid
Personally, I restore my local notebooks using a raw database backup instead of export/import

>>How do you export your notebook names? 

1. I use  a script to append the metadata to the note contents
   
    
2. My export script cycles through each notebook
   tell application "Evernote" 
        set allNotebooks to every notebook
        repeat with currentNotebook in allNotebooks
             set notebookName to (the name of currentNotebook)
             set fileBackupenex to POSIX path "/Users/DTLowDesktop/@Evernote/Evernote_Backup/Notebook-" & notebookName & ".enex"
             set theNotes to every note in notebook notebookName
             export theNotes to fileBackupenex format ENEX with tags
        end repeat
   end tell

 

[a1r 3]

On 6/10/2020 at 2:30 PM, some suer said:

I managed to fix it - 3 notes I created in 2016 seemed to not have synced properly, after deleting them I can export all notes in one batch.

These were the steps I used find and delete the notes with missing content.enml files:

This is so useful, thank you!

Another tip: If a note is causing an error, you don't have to delete it. I made a random edit (added a linebreak at the end) and re-synced, and now the notebook exports.

Thanks.