How to move your notes and other items out of Evernote

Evernote has long been the go-to application for note-taking, document tracking, project planning and, generally, placing everything you want to find later.

However, in recent years, Evernote's reputation has suffered from an aging interface, rising fees, a series of layoffs and a new CEO. Although nothing indicates that the application is about to disappear, and that it still counts (according to most accounts) a few hundred million users, it does not struggling to have a plan B in place in case you decide that it is time to bail.

Fortunately, many applications such as Microsoft OneNote, Zoho Notebook, Simplenote and Google Keep seek to compete with you to keep your ideas, ideas and other elements. In this article, we will tell you how (or if) you can migrate your Evernote data to any of these applications.

However, whether or not you plan to change the system, it makes sense to know how to export your data, if only to have an independent backup of this information, just in case.

How to export your Evernote data

Evernote allows you to divide your notes into separate notebooks. When you export your data, each notebook must be exported to a separate file in Evernote's .enex format (you can also export to an HTML file if you wish).

You can only export data using the local Evernote application for PC or Mac; you can not do it from the online version. To try it, I used a Mac on which I had installed Evernote version 7.9. Here's how you do it; the process for a PC is very similar.

• Click Notebooks in the left menu of Evernote or select View> Notebook from the top menu. This will give you a list of all your Evernote notebooks in the main window.
• Select the notebook or notebooks you want to export. (If you want to export your entire Evernote file, select them all.)
• Right-click on the selected notebook (s) and choose "Export Notebook Notes". You can also go to the top menu and select File> Export Notes.
• In the pop-up window, type the name you want to give to your export file and select the folder in which you want to save it. You can also decide if you want to export the associated tags (assuming you've used them). Click Save.

Now that you have your data, where do you want to put them? I'm looking at four of Evernote's most popular alternatives – Microsoft OneNote, Zoho Notebook, Simplenote and Google Keep – to find the easiest way to transfer your data to each of them (assuming you can ). Two of them, OneNote and Notebook, offer importers to simplify things as much as possible. Simplenote provides a fairly simple way to import your .enex files once you have exported them from Evernote. And keep … well … it will not happen.

Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is perhaps the most compared application to Evernote, and Microsoft has taken advantage of it by offering very explicit instructions and providing its users with an importer to simplify their tasks as much as possible.

There is one exception: if you use the Evernote client on a Mac and you have downloaded your version of Evernote from the Mac App Store rather than the Evernote site, you will not be able to use it. importer to automatically import your data directly. . Instead, you will need to use the link in the importer (see below) that helps you to import your .enex Evernote files.

However, assuming you have the right version:

• Go to the "Change Evernote to OneNote" page and download the importer. (Depending on the page, this will work for PCs with Windows 7 or later, or Macs with OS X El Capitan 10.11 or later.)
• Make sure your office copy of Evernote is closed. Otherwise, the importer will simply tell you that you have installed it successfully, but that you will not go further.
• The importer then goes to work creating .enex files for each of your notebooks (without uploading them to your OneNote account).
• The importer will then ask you to choose the notebooks you wish to select. All notebooks are automatically selected, but you can also choose specific ones. In case of problem during the import, a link will help you import your own .enex file.
• If you have not logged in to OneNote, you will be prompted to do so. Otherwise, click Import.
• Once the operation is complete, you will be notified of notes that failed to import. In the case of OneNote, reminders and encrypted content will not be imported.

In my case, switching to OneNote worked well. each Evernote notebook has been moved to a OneNote notebook and all my PDF files, images, text and other contents (except for a reminder) have been immediately recognizable. As OneNote divides its notebooks into tabbed folders, unlike Evernote, most of my new OneNote notebooks had a single tab. However, the one with 114 notes was divided into three tabs; I do not know why.

Zoho notebook

Zoho also simplifies the migration of your Evernote data. You can import the data into Zoho iOS, Android or macOS clients, or using the online version (I used this one). Along the way, Zoho warns repeatedly to be patient because of Evernote's quirks. However, I had no difficulty.

• In Zoho Notebook, click on "Settings" in the right menu.
• In the Settings window, scroll down to "Migrate from Evernote" to the bottom of the list.
• The next page warns you to wait until all Evernote data is migrated to Zoho Notebook and ensures that Zoho will send you an email to inform you that the migration is complete.
• You then access your Evernote account (and you are prompted to log in if you are not), where you must allow Zoho to access your account. You can choose the duration of the authorization, up to one year; I chose a day. The migration process then begins.
• Unfortunately, I have not found any way to choose specific notebooks and I have a lot content in my Evernote account. As a result, I received an e-mail telling me that the migration was complete about 15 hours later.

As with OneNote, Zoho Notebook was able to import all of my Evernote content and, after what I could say, reconstruct the structure of my notebook. The only difference was that, unlike Evernote, there were no "stacked" records.

Simplenote

As its name implies, Simplenote is a much simpler application for notes, which is still on the "best of" list. However, the migration process from Evernote to Simplenote is not so simple.

For starters, you can not import into the online application, but you must use the Mac or PC version. Once again, Mac users are at a slight disadvantage: the version of Simplenote that you download from the Mac App Store does not support importing. You must use a version available on the Github site. (This can be particularly confusing, because the Mac App Store link is the one on Simplenote's main page.)

Assuming you are using a Mac and have not yet installed Simplenote:

• Go to the Github site. Scroll down until the Simplenote-macOS-1.5.0.dmg file appears. (The version number may change.)
• Click on the link and download the file. Install it on your Mac.
• Go to the application menu, select File> Import Notes from the application menu. You will have the choice to import Simplenote, Evernote or plain text files.
• On the next screen you will be able to drag your .enex file into the import area or click on the box and select the file. The import will then begin.

Unlike OneNote and Zoho Notebook, you can not import multiple notebooks at once, and since Simplenote does not use the notebook format, the categories of those blocks will disappear. One way around this problem is to create labels for each notebook before exporting them from Evernote; you can import the tags and search each series of notes in Simplenote this way.

Simplenote does not matter either images or other media. Therefore, if you use Evernote to collect images of business cards or other photos, you are not lucky.

Google Keep

Google Keep is a very simple and useful note app – if you start it from scratch. There is currently no way to transfer data from Evernote (or any other application) to Google Keep, even if you wish.

It's always hard to get used to a new application when you invest a lot of time, effort, and content in an app like Evernote. But if you can easily switch from one application to another, as is the case with at least three of these applications, the most difficult part is supported.

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