Evernote used to be great, but now it’s less so. In 2020 the company overhauled the Windows and macOS apps, replacing them with a clumsy web-based one that users really didn’t like. This only came to make matters worse, as Evernote had already made the controversial decision of constraining syncing capabilities to only two devices and limiting monthly uploads to 60 MB for free tier users. It got so bad that the company, once valued at $1 billion, was sold off in 2022 to a lesser-known Italian company.
If you refuse to pay for a premium Evernote account then it’s understandable that you might want to find a replacement. The good news is that you won’t have to start fresh. Exporting all of your notes and moving them to apps like Joplin, Apple Notes, Obsidian, Zoho Notes, or Notion, is easy.
Export your notes from Evernote
Before setting up shop elsewhere, you’ll need to download your notes from Evernote. Open the desktop version of the app, right-click the notebook you want to export, and choose Export. On the emerging menu, choose to save the notebook as an ENEX file. Repeat this process for every notebook you want to migrate over to another service.
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If you want to move loose notes over to another app, you can also select them in bulk and repeat the process. Just press Command (on Mac) or Control (on Windows) and click on the notes you want to export. When you’re done, right-click on one of them, choose Export, and save the items as an ENEX file.
Migrating notes from Evernote to Joplin
Joplin is an open-source notetaking application reminiscent of Evernote back in the early 2010s. It’s lightweight, runs locally, and organizes your notes into notebooks. It also supports importing ENEX files from Evernote.
To start go to File and choose Import. There are two options that can work with Evernote: Markdown and HTML. We recommend using the Markdown option as it will make editing easier. But if you’ve clipped a lot of websites or otherwise have a lot of notes that are heavily formatted, the HTML option might be a better fit. The process should complete within seconds depending on how many notes you’re importing.
It’s worth noting that Joplin stores all your notes right on your computer inside text documents. This means that just by importing your notes to this app you’re actually archiving them, which is useful even if you don’t intend to use Joplin itself.
Migrating notes from Evernote to Apple Notes
The Notes app on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad supports importing content from Evernote. On a Mac computer, you can do this by going to File, clicking on Import to Note, and browsing to the ENEX files you exported earlier. On your mobile device just open the ENEX using the Notes app.
All of your notes will show up in a couple of minutes in their own folder, but any attached file or feature that Notes doesn’t support won’t show up. That is the case with task lists, for example, where neither the name of the note nor its contents were imported properly. Scroll through your notes and make sure everything is there. Repeat the process if necessary.
Migrating notes from Evernote to Zoho Notes
Zoho Notes has a built-in tool for importing Evernote notebooks. To use it, click on your profile picture in the top-right corner of your screen, and go to Settings. Scroll down and you’ll find the Migrate From Evernote option. A notification will pop up informing you that the process will take a while and the result may not be perfect.
After clicking Start Migration Zoho Notes will ask you to log into your Evernote account to grant the necessary permissions, and then you’ll have to select which notebooks you’d like to import. Eventually, you’ll get an email notifying you that the process is complete and your Evernote notebooks will show up as such in Zoho Notes.
Migrating notes From Evernote to Obsidian
Obsidian is possibly the ultimate power user note-taking app. The application is built around simple text documents in folders, but you can also link to other notes, creating a personal wiki on your computer. Even better, there are hundreds of plugins you can install allowing you to use the app however you want, too.
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The bad news is that there’s no direct way to import notes from Evernote to Obsidian—but that’s why Yarle (which stands for Yet Another Rope Ladder from Evernote), exists. This third-party app can convert any ENEX file into a folder that you can then drag into Obsidian’s vault. To keep things in order, the app also allows you to configure all kinds of things before you drop your files in, from the date format to how Evernote’s tags show on the app.
When the process is done you will have a folder of properly formatted Markdown files, which you can then use in Obsidian or with any application that can edit such files, including Joplin.
Migrating notes from Evernote to Notion
Notion is another application that offers a built-in tool to migrate content directly from Evernote. You can find it on the web and desktop versions of the platform, but not on mobile.
To use it, click the Import button in the left-hand sidebar and go to the Evernote option. You will need to log into your Evernote account and then decide which notebooks you want to move. Your Evernote notebooks will soon show up in the sidebar as pages, and every note will be an item on that page.
