How to move your notes out of Evernote

  News, Rassegna Stampa
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When it launched in 2008, Evernote became the go-to application for many for taking notes, tracking documents, organizing projects, and generally being the place to put anything you might want to find later. However, in the last few years, Evernote’s reputation has suffered due to an aging interface, privacy missteps, increased fees, and performance issues.

And now, it’s being acquired by app developer Bending Spoons.

When an app is depended on by a large number of people — especially one that’s been around long enough so that a number of its users may have a lot of data stored in it — the first thought that many will have is: what will happen to my data?

While it’s usually not a good idea to panic, it never hurts to back up your data in case you decide it’s time to bail. If you’re moving to another app, it could be easier than you’d think — several apps, such as Notion and Zoho Notebook, have created ways to import Evernote files directly. But even if you don’t plan to switch, it’s a good idea to know how to export your data, if only to have an independent backup of your content, just in case.

Evernote divides its notes into separate notebooks. On the one hand, this helps keep things organized; on the other hand, it means that you have to export each notebook separately.

There is an alternative of sorts. If you want to just export your notes without reference to which notebook they are in, you can — but you can only export 50 at a time (by selecting Notes and then clicking on Edit > Select All). On the other hand, if you export a single notebook, you can export all the notes in it (for example, I had one notebook that had over 1,100 notes and was able to export that without a problem). But you can’t export all your notebooks at once — it has to be one at a time.

As far as formats are concerned, you have two choices: HTML or Evernote’s .ENEX format. If you export in HTML, you can easily read the files in a browser; in addition, some note-keeping apps will import HTML files. On the other hand, some competing apps, such as Notion, OneNote, and Zoho Notebook, will automatically import Evernote’s ENEX format or guide you through the process — obviously, to encourage Evernote users to migrate.

But let’s suppose you just want to export your content as a backup or for just in case. Here’s how.

Pop-up window over Evernote offering different choices for exporting a notebook.

You can only export data using the Evernote local application for PCs or Macs; you can’t do it from the web or mobile versions.