I am looking to migrate from Evernote to DEVONthink. I downloaded it and did the “Import from Evernote” (on a Mac). It seems to have succeeded without error, but what I see in the database now is all the different attachments and pieces of stuff that I had inside my notes. Where are the actual notes themselves, showing the text and the attachments etc. in order? I think I am not understanding how the import/conversion works - where do I see the actual Notes I had in Evernote?
Text notes from Evernote are imported as “Formatted Notes” (The “KInd” column will reveal this if that column is active.)
Aha! Now I see them, thanks! So, how does this work - why am I also seeing all the separate documents internal to each note - can I define some sort of view where I only see the formatted notes and see the attachments inside the notes (like they were on Evernote)? It’s nice to have the attachments as individual items in the database if I want them, but mostly I want to use the Notes as they are (because they group my stuff the way I wanted it), in a list not cluttered by all the attachments. Is that possible? Also, when I imported, did my Notebooks and groupings of Notes come too - where would I see those? I’d like to have a view as similar to my original Endnote as possible.
Do you mean Evernote (as Endnote is an app our Users also use)?
Notes are not imported with attachments appear in-line as they are within Evernote. Evernote does not make it easy to get stuff out - and the display of in-line attachments is pretty much limited to the Evernote client.
(Assuming Endnote is a way of spelling Evernote 
) When you import into DEVONthink you get one group in DEVONthink per Evernote notebook. Within that group you get all notes in that notebook. Each of the notebooks is a subgroup of an “Evernote” group at the root of the database. DEVONthink is not going to look like Evernote.
Notes are not imported with attachments appear in-line as they are within Evernote
Some of the notes do indeed show up with images still inside the note, so that’s good. But a lot of the elements showing up in the same list as the Notes themselves are other attachments. Perhaps only images go inline, and anything more complex (PDF, .ZIP, etc.) become their own items. That’s ok but is there any way to preserve the links - so that I know which of the file items belong to which original Note? I don’t need them to be in-line, as long as they can be grouped under each Note somehow. Or does the import process completely lose the association between files and the Notes in which they lived in Evernote?
(Assuming Endnote is a way of spelling Evernote
yes sorry, I also use a program called Endnote, and I slipped…
ou get one group in DEVONthink per Evernote notebook. Within that group you get all notes in that notebook. Each of the notebooks is a subgroup of an “Evernote” group at the root of the database.
that’s perfect; I just need the files that lived in each Note to be somehow associated with the note item in Devonthink. For example, couldn’t it make each notebook a group, and each Note a subgroup, and each of those Note’s embedded files a list inside that Note subgroup? Right now everything is a linear list under each Notebook, and I can’t tell which files belong to which which Note. Or maybe keep them a flat list, but replace the embedded files with links that can be followed (pointing to files in the database)?
As it is now, that feature would have to be done by importing with a custom script. For most people one group per note might be too many groups?
On the other hand, you can manually walk through an imported notebook and group items however you wish. Just select a note and its related files and chose Data > Group Items.
that feature would have to be done by importing with a custom script.
ok, that’s good to know. I’ll need to find someone who’s good with scripting this stuff.
you can manually walk through an imported notebook and group items however you wish. Just select a note and its related files and chose Data > Group Items.
I could, except that I have hundreds of Notes, and worse yet, now that each notebook has all of its’ Notes’ attachments in a flat list, I have no way of knowing which ones belong to which Note, so I wouldn’t know what to combine. I need the import to be automatic, to preserve that structure of what belongs to which Note.
I think it is pretty easy to get stuff out of Evernote, but perhaps not so easy to take that and put it into another app like DT. It kind of depends on how you have your account set up. I always organize my stuff in any app with the assumption that I will have to move out someday – everything is kept as portable as possible.
I migrated from Evernote a little differently, because I had my account set up with no tags or notebooks. In addition, most of my attachments were kept in notes (everything in Evernote is contained within a note) separate from the plain-text notes I had (with links to the attachment notes), so the import was pretty easy. I exported as .html from Evernote, converted the .html to text notes, and imported them into DT. It took about 15 minutes and looked just like it had in Evernote. This left me with about 15,000 or so text notes and a few thousand other files (images, pdfs, etc.). The filenames for the attachments in my text notes automatically linked to all of the other files (a setting you can change in DT’s preferences). Perhaps something similar would work for you.
Exporting as .html will give you links to the attachments. Consider these notes as “archived” stuff from your Evernote days. If you ever need to modify a note, move it into your active folder by copy/pasting the text and dragging over all of the attachments.
For future readers – it would be helpful if you posted a bit more “how-to” on the underlined steps mentioned below:
True.
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On plain text
christopher-mayo.com/?p=14 -
On minimalistic organization
christopher-mayo.com/?p=367 -
On markdown
christopher-mayo.com/?p=1564 -
On automator and textifying stuff
christopher-mayo.com/?p=551 -
On .html to .txt (this is how I did it when I migrated out of Evernote)
discussion.evernote.com/topic/4 … /?p=253832 -
On wikilinks
takingnotenow.blogspot.jp/2014/1 … think.html
“DevonThink will automatically create links when you type in the titles of other pages. You just have to turn on the WikiLinks option under Preferences > Editing (and click the button for “Names and Aliases”). This works on plain text as well as rtf documents.”