I exported my EN data one notebook at a time and imported the .enex files into EagleFiler.
I still use Evernote and just paid for another yearās subscription. IMHO it is best in class for a cross-platform notes app. Iāve been a user since 2008.
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Appreciate the advice and the detail! Since I use Evernote as a repository for notes(text) and documents (PDFs) AND, I tag Judiciously to help with searching, Iāll have to do some tests with each option recommended.
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Fair point. I actually donāt have a problem with Evernote since I only use it as a repository of text and documents. My issue is, as has been said in this thread, it keeps changing and getting slower (I have about 11,000 notes). Since it appears to be losing popularity (at least with MPU community), will it be around in 10 years when Iāll have 20,000 notes? And now the price has gone up substantially. The Web Clipper is a feature Iād hate to lose, but I donāt use it enough to justify the cost.
I would be fine using DRAFTS app for my texts but it would not solve my pdf document storage problem. Ideally, Iād need to tag files to search via categories also.
I do appreciate the feedback. I many need to think harder about what I save and how.
This is a legitimate doubt, but as long as the procedure pointed by @timstringer works, you could delay the answer to that question by doing frequent full enex exports from your notebooks as a way of backing everything up.
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Ex-Evernote user here. After many, many years, I finally dropped my subscription, exported all of my Evernote content as HTML, and ported it over to Dropbox. Iāve downgraded my Evernote account to a free one, so Iāve got limited access to my old stuff if I really have to locate something in there and canāt get to it any other way. I use Drafts for everyday note-taking, and Iām using Notes to store archival PDFs (search engineās decent).
Couldnāt justify an Evernote subscription on top of iCloud AND Dropbox anymore. Itās been a good few months since I let my subscription lapse, but I havenāt missed it so far.
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I am fighting the āshiny new thingā syndrome by not switching out of Evernote. Works well enough for me, tho I donāt put financial/vital data in it, since no more local notebooksā¦
For those it applies to, Evernote JUST put out an update that speeds up the app on M1 Macs noticeably. I was pleasantly surprised to tell a real difference!
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I actually toyed with the idea of coming back, but I see theyāre $90 a year now. Thatās more money than my Office 365 sub that my entire family uses. I donāt know ā that seems high. But Iād be lying if I said I wasnāt contemplating a return to Evernote for everything.
Yarle is another option for getting Evernote notes out of Evernote, and into something better. Seems to be actively developed too.
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I switched to Obsidian a while back. Maybe 6 months or so.
For all the talk about it being super transportable and better than Evernote - I get it and I donāt. I understand with Obsidian, your files are stored locally and you own them. I also understand theyāre just text files.
But if someoneās Obsidian workflow relies on a bunch of different plugins to display notes properly (Kamban, data view etc), is it still easy to take the data out?
Let me give you guys and girls and example. When I left Evernote I exported everything into Joplin (I think as enex) but I donāt recall. Point is, Joplin and things like Yarle are setup to read Evernote files - Even Apple notes. YMMV on how well those imports go, but generally speaking for me, it wasnāt awful.
Now if I want to take some stuff out of obsidian (eg to my colleagueās OneNote file) One Note displays markdown symbols everywhere and images in Obsidian notes donāt come over when I copy a note.
So to me, yeah, Obsidian is plain text and right there on your PC, but the power comes from tying them all together and the plugins which - if you ever want to use something more pedestrian at some point - the app will have difficulty reading it.
Finally, Obsidian not storing images within the note itself could potentially spell disaster at some point no? Especially when you delete a note containing multiple images and the attachments stay behind, orphaned in their folder or wherever they may be.
On the surface Obsidian is way more future proof, but there are use cases and scenarios where it could take a heck of a lot of work to cobble things back together, no?
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OneNote isnāt really designed to read Markdown though, is it? I would think another Markdown editor would be right at home with the format of the text.
Iām wondering what you mean by ādisasterā. Orphaned images donāt feel particularly disastrous to me. 
Yes and no. If you lost Obsidian, youād lose all of your visualizations into the data - but no more so than completely losing any other app.
If, for example, you completely lost Word and had to cobble things back together just from the data, without a dedicated Word parser, youād have as much work or more than youād have with Obsidian. Software that embeds images in files either does what Obsidian does (separate image file), or they do a weird proprietary encoding of the image. Neither option is more accessible than Markdown if the program that created the data goes away.
And the thing about Markdown is that you, the human, can tell whatās what just by reading the file. So you open up a data file, and you see an image link. You know where that image is (or at least where it was when you linked it!) on disk, because itās telling you right there in the markup. And the image is stored in whatever format you initially put it in, meaning itās likely readable as-is. The data is all there, and the format is easy to see.
Yes, youād have to come up with another system for viewing and such. But that would be true as much or more if you were using any other proprietary software.
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Appreciate your approach. Lots of great feedback from the community. Clearly, Iāll need to think through my workflow more intentionally if Iām going to parachute out of EN:
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99% of my notes are created in DRAFTS and then pushed to EN.
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PDFs (business cards, receipts, appliance manuals, birthday cards, presentation slides, flyers Contracts, Invoices) are SHARED or SHORTCUT(ed), TAGGED and saved to EN
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websites (via the web Clipper) are again SHARED, TAGGED and saved to EN
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IF THIS THEN THAT (IFTTT) actions automatically land in EN (seldom used so, no biggie)
Iāve gotten a bit lazy in that I donāt think about where these COULD go since Iāve relied on EN for so long. In the end, I really only open EN when I need to find something or during my personal weekly planning (review meeting notes for lost tasks). @pantulis makes a good point: The sky āainātā falling today. I could just periodically perform one of the export actions that @timstringer shared and stop focusing on the cost. @DianaF and @cellerās reminder that, new and shiny over tried and true may not be worth the brainpower it will take to rewrite my SHORTCUTS, develop/adjust other workflows/mindset in order to jump and pull the ripcord!
Thanks to your all! Really good points to consider!
Interesting. By comparison:
- 99% of my notes are created in Drafts and stay in Drafts. Evernote was always more archival than anything active for me; with Drafts I actually get things done. I think some of us underestimate how useful Drafts can be as a destination rather than a pass-through app.
- PDFS etc go to Notes.
- Iāve stopped clipping websites! For anything worth noting, I tend to share text selections to Drafts and add my own notes there. If I need to reference a site or a whole web page, Iāll bookmark it in Raindrop, which stores archival snapshots. Raindrop is now offering highlighting, but I havenāt tried that thus far.
- IFTTT: I used to use Evernote as an endpoint for automation, but as you said, not much of it was actually necessary/useful. Since IFTTT introduced paid for user accounts Iāve questioned my usageā I donāt begrudge any developer their subscription fees, but with the way subscriptions add up, I have to be sure that any subscription Iām taking on is adding real value to my set-up, and most of my IFTTT automations were generating things I really didnāt needā¦
Took me years of thinking about it every time my Evernote subscription came up for renewal before I made the jump. Every time I stayed, it was just in case there was something Iād overlooked. Iām entering a phase in which Iām much more interested in paring down, focusing on a smaller number of useful tools that do what I need, and being more intentional about my set-up, rather than keeping anything hanging around ājust becauseā. Seems to be working for me thus far!
Good luck with your thinkingā¦
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Thatās cool that you got all these apps to work with the same set of files 
Iām with you on this. Iāve been on this journey for ~ a year but things have settled down quite a bit. At present, I have a very streamlined workflow with limited apps. Everything is working great and I alway have the ability to convert files to other formats using the native app to do so or with DEVONthinkāmy Swiss Army Knife.
This is a screenshot of what preloads and runs on my computer all day. I only occasionally need to launch other apps, for example DT, Word, if someone sends me a Word file, Scrivener when working on my book, etc. I have Bartender, popclip, Dropbox (for Scrivener) and Backblaze running in the menu bar. Otherwise, that pretty much it.
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Notionās does not work. They know it does not work. Yet the still offer it on their site as if it does work. Thus ended my attempt to move to notion.
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Notionās does not work. They know it does not work. Yet the still offer it on their site as if it does work. Thus ended my attempt to move to notion.
I just did a quick test with Notion. Specifically, I imported an Evernote Notebook with 21 notes. All 21 notes were imported, complete with tags. It seemed to do a good job of converting the formatted/HTML text to Markdown. Though, none of the photos/attachments were imported. I assume this is by design (i.e. the import is only intended for text).
I canāt speak to how well this works with larger notebooks.
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Yes, Iām sorry. I should have specified. It does not work with large notebooks, pdf attachments, or anything complicated. I have the emails from Notion support to affirm my findings.
Thanks for the additional information. Good to know.
Just wonderingā¦ why Drafts rather than just Notes?