How to Migrate Your Notes From Evernote to Apple Notes

[duervo]

Evernote is multi-platform (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android), and for systems where it cannot run natively (Linux) there is the web-based version. OneNote is similar in that aspect. Apple Notes is more restricted in this area (macOS, iOS, plus iCloud.com,) which makes it a no-go for me.

For me, there are better alternatives (Synology DS note if I want to use my NAS (which gets backed up to AWS,) or OneNote.)

 

[feldy]

One of the features I rely upon in Evernote is automatic OCR of any image I upload as it makes searching for notes that contain text images, screenshots, etc. so much easier. Does Notes also do that for whatever you add to a note?
[doublepost=1540585720][/doublepost]Another feature I use a lot: forwarding email to a dedicated Evernote address that automatically adds a note - can you do that with Notes?

 

[duervo]

One of the features I rely upon in Evernote is automatic OCR of any image I upload as it makes searching for notes that contain text images, screenshots, etc. so much easier. Does Notes also do that for whatever you add to a note?
[doublepost=1540585720][/doublepost]Another feature I use a lot: forwarding email to a dedicated Evernote address that automatically adds a note - can you do that with Notes?

Yeah, I use that email function as well ... more often than I initially thought I would. That would be annoying not having that ability anymore. I’ll have to check and see if I can do that with my Synology NAS, as I’m currently leaning towards switching to that now.

 

[0970373]

One of the features I rely upon in Evernote is automatic OCR of any image I upload as it makes searching for notes that contain text images, screenshots, etc. so much easier. Does Notes also do that for whatever you add to a note?
[doublepost=1540585720][/doublepost]Another feature I use a lot: forwarding email to a dedicated Evernote address that automatically adds a note - can you do that with Notes?

The Notes/iOS scanner does not but you can use other apps that do have OCR like Scanner Pro and then save them in notes. It will preserve the OCR.

You can't email to Notes either but Spark for iOS lets you save to Notes. On a Mac, you can just drag it over or add a Print workflow to save to Notes. I do this a lot.


- -

BTW, the Export/Import didn't save the folder structure at all. Bummer.

 

[codehound]

Another good alternative is Devonthink if you have a lot of notes. Pretty awesome app. They also have a good iOS app. Import from EN is pretty seemless even with zillions or notes.

 

[eas]

Thanks. I tried to export all my notes as HTML a couple months ago but partway through Evernote would throw a vague error about an unnamed note and delete everything it had already exported. I didn't realize there was a better export format.

Unfortunately Notes.app is pathological importing them. I have ~1500 notes exported, mostly web page clips or captures. It's been five hours since I started the import. It's only 2/3rds of the way done Notes and the Notes.datastore process have been burning 2-3 cores worth of computing power for the whole time!

 

[riverfreak]

Just download the Mac client and sync. It’s a cloud-based product.

Sure. I just wasn’t sure if cloud syncing was connected to a subscription model. I vaguely recall something like that with Evernote in the past.

 

[applebro]

evernote refuses to evolve, obviously this isn't going to bring in new users lol

if they would fuse their penultimate app with evernote instead of needing 2 different apps, i would use it (the way they do srolling while writing is ten times better than Notability or GoodNotes

if evernote evolves, takes the good ideas from the competition and change, they could dominate the segment

 

[Schnegg]

I really hope Notes gets Folder sharing, that would be nice.

 

[AndyR]

Evernote Plus user here as well. Been with Evernote for what seems like forever, got angry when they changed the device limit originally so I moved everything to OneNote. But I had so many problems with it not syncing correctly that I moved back to Evernote after 6 months and paid for the plus subscription.

Seeing the news about them being in a risky spot I thought I'd try moving back to OneNote to see if its any better, but man the OneNote Importer tool is junk. Doesn't bring titles over from notes consistently and there are pages of support issues with it on the Microsoft site, and basically MS just tell people to "import it differently"

Anyway, I'm not a power user of Evernote at all, just a brain dump and scanned docs facility for me. So I tried an export and import to Apple Notes as I use Mac and iOS at work and home. Wow, notes has come a looooong way! Imported in litteraly 10 minutes, sure its lost my tags but everything seems to be their and I tend to search for anything i need in Evernote anyway and yep, spotlight is working perfect with this.

Colour me impressed with the improvements Apple has made to notes!

 

[AndyR]

Is Pinch To Zoom not possible on iOS Notes?

 

[Emanuel Rodriguez]

Definitely a point for Evernote here if you need a native app on Windows. I don't know what a "thick client" is, but with Notes you can get to all your stuff via icloud.com on a Windows machine if you need to, though.

Not my favorite terminology, but a thick client is a client with full functionality. Apple's notes app on macOS mostly has just basic functionality. A thin client, in other words.

To me, those terms sound like one has weight issues, and one doesn't. Again, not my favorite. xD

EDIT:...although thinking about it further, Apple may consider their Notes app to be a thick client. I suppose it depends on how you define "full functionality".

 

[ignatius345]

Apple may consider their Notes app to be a thick client. I suppose it depends on how you define "full functionality".

It does more than you'd think at first glance: collaboration, document scanning, tables, image and file embedding, checklists... it's a modest feature set, but for me anyway it's hitting a sweet spot of simplicity and functionality.

I generally use Notes (and Evernote before that) to squirrel away reference materials so as long as I can do that in a way that lets me clip things, sync and search them, I'm good. I have other apps in place for task management and document creation.

 

[rhett7660]

Tried about 6 months ago - not Mojave - Notes couldn't handle it. I think I have way too many notes. And it screwed up all the organisation and formatting. It was stuck syncing for about 12 hours, the only way to get my computer back was to painstakingly delete each note.

This is what I worry about. While I have not tried to do the exporting, I have over 1400 notes and a lot of them have pictures and are quite large.

No way the notes app can replace Evernote. If Evernote does eventually die, it makes more sense to just archive your Evernote content and look for a better alternative.

I have actually PDF'ed all of my notes, while not the best solution, it is something while I look for an alternative. Like I mentioned above I have a lot of notes with mixed media in them.

 

[neliason]

Yeah, that's a troubling omission. I'm always big on having an exit/migration strategy for any app before I pour my data into it and Notes seems to be missing one.

I haven't tested it, but a quick search led me to this, which might be a decent option? Plain text is really limiting, but it's something at least:

https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/macos-export-apple-notes-plain-text-files/

Thanks for the link. AppleScript might actually be fairly easy to use to export notes. I messed around with it specifically testing note functionally a while back, maybe a year. Another option, although extremely ridiculous, would be to use Apple's new export all your data feature.

 

[ignatius345]

Thanks for the link. AppleScript might actually be fairly easy to use to export notes. I messed around with it specifically testing note functionally a while back, maybe a year. Another option, although extremely ridiculous, would be to use Apple's new export all your data feature.

I'd be interested to know, for sure, if you come up with a good export method. Right now the only official Apple export option I was able to find is PDF, which is just beyond useless. :/

 

[gojira]

Just download the Mac client and sync. It’s a cloud-based product.
[doublepost=1540569880][/doublepost]


The whole “Evernote is going to die” flurry of articles a couple months back was a great example of Silicon Valley groupthink and did hurt the company far more than any of the departures did. It has a large paying user base and it’s doing alright (pays the bills with its income as companies should).

There are other reasons for concern with Evernote but they are not the ones that have been reported.

This is 5 years later, but this article popped up first in my Google search, so here’s my export to Notes experience.

So, I was an Evernote user since about 2009. Started paying when I needed to sync 3 devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad).
Got an email this week with EverNote announcing they were jacking up the yearly rate to $129 ($141 after taxes!) $76 to $141? WHAT!?!?! That was the end for me.

Anyway, exporting worked fine.

One caveat, EverNote only allows 50 notes to be exported at a time. Nice trick.
I was able to select a bunch. The 50 note hard limit selected and exported the 50 notes.
Luckily, they stay selected, so I carefully scrolled down and Shift-clicked to select the next batch.
Same thing. It exported 50 and those remained selected.
It took maybe 20 minutes to export about 400 notes.

Importing was a snap. Folder structure remains intact.

 

[FoxyKaye]

So, I was an Evernote user since about 2009. Started paying when I needed to sync 3 devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad).
Got an email this week with EverNote announcing they were jacking up the yearly rate to $129 ($141 after taxes!) $76 to $141? WHAT!?!?! That was the end for me.

Anyway, exporting worked fine.

One caveat, EverNote only allows 50 notes to be exported at a time. Nice trick.
I was able to select a bunch. The 50 note hard limit selected and exported the 50 notes.
Luckily, they stay selected, so I carefully scrolled down and Shift-clicked to select the next batch.
Same thing. It exported 50 and those remained selected.
It took maybe 20 minutes to export about 400 notes.

Importing was a snap. Folder structure remains intact.

Another resurrection on this thread: I've been a consistent Evernote user since 2012, though I'd intermittently used it for several years prior. Endured the whole "You Have To Pay Us To Edit The Home Screen" drama (which, I didn't, because it was a "feature" I didn't want), and kept a legacy subscription plan active for "offline," access and syncing to three devices as @gojira mentions. I noticed I was coming up on my subscription renewal this month, and decided enough is enough.

Migrated a dozen Notebooks out of Evernote one at a time in ENEX format, and they each came in as a folder in Notes called "Imported Notes," that I renamed to the title of my existing Evernote notebook. Everything came over pretty much intact with a few formatting bugs for checklists/unordered lists. Didn't hit the 50 note export limit, but I wonder if it was because I was creating ENEX files directly on my laptop? <shrug>

The whole process took under an hour, I re-shared a few key folders with my wife, and we're both up and running.

Wow, I loved Evernote when it was first released, but agree with many others that the app has since lost its way.

 

[dbook]

As of 8/17/23, trying to export all notes doesn't seem possible anymore. It looks like Evernote has set a limit of the number of notes that can be selected to 100. This seems like an intentional effort to hinder the export process.

 

[dbook]

This is 5 years later, but this article popped up first in my Google search, so here’s my export to Notes experience.

So, I was an Evernote user since about 2009. Started paying when I needed to sync 3 devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad).
Got an email this week with EverNote announcing they were jacking up the yearly rate to $129 ($141 after taxes!) $76 to $141? WHAT!?!?! That was the end for me.

Anyway, exporting worked fine.

One caveat, EverNote only allows 50 notes to be exported at a time. Nice trick.
I was able to select a bunch. The 50 note hard limit selected and exported the 50 notes.
Luckily, they stay selected, so I carefully scrolled down and Shift-clicked to select the next batch.
Same thing. It exported 50 and those remained selected.
It took maybe 20 minutes to export about 400 notes.

Importing was a snap. Folder structure remains intact.

Jumped the gun on my post before reading your msg. Yes, doubling the annual price is not cool with me. I am seeing a 100 note limit, not 50, but I have about 1800 notes, so I just need to figure out how to maintain their organization if I export in chunks.

 

[gojira]

Jumped the gun on my post before reading your msg. Yes, doubling the annual price is not cool with me. I am seeing a 100 note limit, not 50, but I have about 1800 notes, so I just need to figure out how to maintain their organization if I export in chunks.

It's irritating and a bit time consuming, but doable.

As long as you export groups of files (50 or 100) and keep them in order… I exported naming the export files with A, B, C or something… they should stay in order like you want when you import.

In Notes they appear all together in an "Imported" folder/group. So it's easy to move them into Notes proper.

I don't miss Evernote at all, but then, I didn't use many of it's features.

 

[MareLuce]

I SO need do this (migrate).

 

[FoxyKaye]

It's irritating and a bit time consuming, but doable.

As long as you export groups of files (50 or 100) and keep them in order… I exported naming the export files with A, B, C or something… they should stay in order like you want when you import.

In Notes they appear all together in an "Imported" folder/group. So it's easy to move them into Notes proper.

I don't miss Evernote at all, but then, I didn't use many of it's features.

This is very similar to what I wound up doing with my own - they come in to Notes pretty easily, and from there, it's drag/drop/rename to get them organized. One "gotcha" I'm remembering now is if Notes is already configured to sync to iCloud during the import process (as mine was), I noticed that the local renaming of notebooks didn't always make it over to iCloud: there were a lot of "Imported Notes" bundles when I viewed it through iCloud online. So, maybe import everything to Notes first, locally, get them organized, and then turn on iCloud sync would be my suggestion.

Sidebar: After living with Notes for most of August, while there are some advanced features in Evernote it does not have, by far and large it's reminding me of *why* I started using Evernote in the first place: Notes is simple, easy to use, organized enough, and focused on note-taking and not much else. So far, so good!

 

[mike.schall]

You can export more than 50/100 notes at a time if you export a notebook. I just exported 2300 notes to a single .enex file. Select a notebook and then click on the Meatballs menu. Select `Export notebook...`. I have not tried to import to Notes yet, but so far so good.

 

[drefson]

I tried to import .enex files to Notes. The text came across fine, but PDFs and JPGs disappeared, except for enigmatic notes like this: {{NotesAttachment:da4f66787e03b6fe4b2eda274bc8c4bf}}

I am using Sonoma 14.1.2 on a Mac Studio. I have heard this may be a Sonoma problem. Any solutions?