Apple Notes Import

DEVONthink Tips
1

I just imported all of my Apple Notes into DEVONthink Pro Office and have everything synced to my phone using iCloud. I see that according to the help file, they are imported as Formatted Notes by design. However, I can’t edit any of them on my iPhone! And they are all so tiny, I can barely read them. I tried converting them to Rich Text using the Mac app, but then I lose all of the dates & times. Is there any way to get them imported from Apple Notes into Rich Text format so they can be edited, while preserving all of the note dates? Without having to convert and manually change the date and time on each note one at a time? That doesn’t sound like much fun for 700+ notes :smiley:

Thanks!!
Bryan

2

UPDATE…
I just realized that all of my Evernote notes were imported as Formatted Notes and I can edit them just fine on the iPhone and they show up at the correct text size that I set in preferences. Apparently the root of my issue is that my imported Apple Notes in Formatted Notes format are all read-only on the iPhone. I don’t get an “Edit” icon, I only get a “Refresh” icon. Any idea why? TIA!

3

Not out of the box, no. Apple has made some really unpleasant changes that makes sharing data with other apps difficult or impossible (and some of Apple Notes is proprietary, ie. black box to us).

There is a way to do some converting, but (1) you’re going to lose the styling, and (2) attachments would be lost.

4

2nd update…
So I can open each note in the Mac DEVONThink app, do something to change it (add a space, press return for a new line, etc.) and save, and then it is re-saved in an editable format on the iPhone.

So I guess my final questions are:

  • Is there any way to import Apple Notes into DEVONthink where they can default be edited on the iPhone?
  • If not, is there any way to convert them to editable without having to manually open each one and add an extra line and re-save?

Thanks for bearing with me. I have been a computer geek for 25 years, but I am definitely new at this program!

5

Thanks for your reply! I just posted a second update, getting to the root of the issue I believe. Please check it out if you have time and see if you have any insight :smiley:

6

The export from Notes’ AppleScript mechanism isn’t even full valid HTML. HTML being as wonky as it is in general can display despite this. When you make a change, DEVONthink resaves the file with proper headers and trailers.

In the long run, this is something Development would need to address.

In the short term, here’s an AppleScript you can run on a selection of the imported Notes. You can unzip, open, and run it from Script Editor or install it in ~/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2/Scripts/ if you want to run it at a later time too.

Obviously, test it out on a few, syncing them with DTTG first.
DT Apple Notes Fix.scpt.zip (3.5 KB)

7

It worked perfectly, and I used the built in script to copy the creation date back to modification date. Man, you are amazing. Thank you so much for your help. I appreciate it so much! :smiley: