BUG REPORT: Importing from OS X Notes.app

[DaddyWarpig]

Notes.app uses the first line of text to generate the name of a Note. If the line is too long, the name is truncated.

When you import from Notes.app to DEVONThink Pro Office, each newly created document has the same name as the OS X Note: the first line of text, sometimes truncated. In the new document, the first line of text that was in the original Note is omitted.

This means that not only is the first line of text missing after importing, you can’t reconstruct it from the title of the note. That information is just lost.

Example:

OS X Note
Title:

“Santayana had said, “That life is worth living is the most necessary…

Body:

“Santayana had said, “That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.”

Excerpt From: James, Glynn. “Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain.” iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

DEVONThink Import from Notes
Title:

“Santayana had said, “That life is worth living is the most necessary…

Body:

Excerpt From: James, Glynn. “Arisen, Book One - Fortress Britain.” iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

As you can see, the entire first line is missing from the imported Note, and cannot be reconstructed from the title. It’s just missing.

This is a big data loss bug, and makes it impossible to use the Notes.app import feature.

I would request that someone please fix this as soon as possible, or provide advice on how to import the entire note from Notes.app.

[korm]

@DaddyWarpig

This is a big data loss bug, and makes it impossible to use the Notes.app import feature.

With respect, I do not think it’s a bug with DEVONthink (or with Notes, for that matter).

Notes – like many applications – expects the first line to be the note’s title. DEVONthink respects that convention, and imports accordingly. First line == name; remaining lines == body of the note.

You might want to reconsider how you are using Notes?

As Notes’ Help says:

[cgrunenberg]

DEVONthink doesn’t modify the imported notes on its own, it just uses the body & title retrieved from Apple Notes (via AppleScript) and creates HTML pages using this information.