One of the more popular posts on DocumentSnap (especially in light of recent price increases) is How To Export Your Data Out Of Evernote. Evernote gives you built-in ways to export to HTML or XML, but your organization structure isn’t preserved and the result is not nicely formatted. I always hoped that someone would write a great Evernote export tool, and I think I may have finally found it.
The author of the ExportNote reached out to me, so I decided to give it a try.
ExportNote is a small Mac or Windows application that does one thing and does it well: it exports your notes to nicely-formatted PDF or HTML, and keeps your organization structure intact.
Running The ExportNote Evernote Export Tool
ExportNote comes in two versions:
- Basic: Exports your entire Evernote database to HTML. Keeps everything organized in your stacks, notebook, and note structure.
- Advanced: Lets you export to HTML or PDF. You can capture the tags and dates of your notes, and choose which notebooks you want to export.
I’m using the Advanced version in this article.
Now, ExportNote doesn’t actually download anything. You install it on your Mac or Windows computer and it will use the database that you already have downloaded with the Evernote client.
When you start it up, you have a small window where you choose where you want the export to be saved (in my example I’m using my Desktop), and if you have the Advanced version you choose which format(s) you want, whether you want to include dates/tags, and whether you’d like to export everything or choose specific notebooks.
I’ll do it all, and hit Export. It took about 4 hours for me to export my 9310 Evernote notes. Obviously your time will depend on the amount you have to export and the speed of your computer.
The ExportNote export results
Once the export is done, you’ll have a folder starting with exportnote and a date/time stamp.
In there you’ll have a html and/or a pdf folder depending on your export options.
Using the pdf folder as an example, when you go in there you will have a number of folders. Default Stack will contain all your notebooks that are not a part of any stack. If you use Evernote stacks, you will have other folders containing them.
When you drill into a stack (or Default Stack), you’ll see a folder for each notebook.
In each notebook folder, you’ll see your notes.
Notes Without Attachments
If you have a note without any PDFs or other attachments, you’ll see them as a single PDF file.
When you open up the PDF, you’ll see the contents of your note. The title of the note will be the title of your PDF.
One weird thing: In some of my notes with photos, the photo is split between pages. I don’t know if that’s ExportNote’s fault or Evernote’s or what. Here’s an example:
This only happens with PDF exports, not HTML. Instead of shrinking the image to a page, it splits it up over multiple pages. In those cases maybe it’d be better to just export it like a PDF attachment?
Notes With Attachments
If the note has an attachment, you will see a folder with the note name as the folder name.
When you drill into the folder, you’ll see a file called note.pdf which shows the note content. The attachments will also be in the folder.
You Don’t NEED ExportNote To Export, But It’s Nice
As I said at the start of this article, Evernote gives you everything you need to export your notes. The results just aren’t very user friendly.
If you want to have your export nicely formatted and organized, ExportNote worked well for me. If it was faster it would be even better, but maybe that is something the author can improve over time.
The Basic version is $4.99 and the Premium version is $14.99, for both Mac and Windows. You can check out more at ExportNote’s site.
