How to Switch From Evernote to Obsidian

[@cemgencler5127]

Made the switch after 11 years with Evernote for almost 4K notes. Almost no or little migration issues. Keep on sharing your best practices. Highly valuable. Thanks a lot for guiding.

[@Arrow333]

I did shift from Evernote to Obsidian (even way beffore I watched this video)- and from rarely using my notes app to it being the main companion of my daily life, because I love the way I use my notes to think instead of just capturing now. One minor disgreement about the reasons why to switch from Evernote: The new owner being a company sitting in the EU lessens the worries I have about my data, because within the EU the laws regarding handling data are actually stricter than in the US. So I usually reconsider my usage of an application if the owner or headquarters of the company changes from EU to US, because that usually comes paired with a loss of privacy regulations in my experience.

[@robertmaxey5406]

I just bought an iPad and I moved my Obsidian notes to my new device. I installed Obsidian for iOS and moved the MD files to the new install. Everything is stored on my device and backed up to a micro SD card. It took about ten minutes, and it was done. Easy and a no brainier. And no cloud. Just one folder to move and I was done. Friends who use Notion really struggle moving to Obsidian. As for Evernote, I never liked it because of many issues you point out. If I were going to hack a site, I would hack Evernote. God only knows what you could discover if you have access to entry users files. Great video, keep going.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Thanks for your insights and commentary Robert!

[@OyvindSolstad]

I was customer number 39 180, Evernote told me in an e-mail some years ago. I've ha tremendous use of the app, but as of 2023, I'm no longer a customer. I exported out all my notes (took me a while), and I've put SOME of it in to Obsidian, which I have been using for a few years now. I can't even imagine going back to old "not-connected" notes. The way I can link information together in Obsidian, has changed my brain. I see more patterns, see relations between things, and think in a new and better way. Which isn't a small feat, as I'm a creative guy already, and have always been good at finding patterns, developing ideas and linking knowledge together. Obsidian is the single biggest change in how I learn, and has easily passed "spaced repetition" and "mind maps" on the top three of things I learned about learning as a grown up.

[@linkingyourthinking]

So interesting to hear this story and insights from you, thanks 🙏

[@MsRegrach]

Yeah, Evernote now require subscription to show back-links to your note. No, thank you

[@fluntimes]

This made my day. The Evernote experience has gone sour, the Android app is slow and sucks and the price keeps going up. I DON'T CARE ABOUT AI SORTING OF NOTES and am unsure why that means I have to pay another $60 minimum a year. This video is a lifesaver thank you from a new subscriber!!

[@Berniz123]

I did this recently, here's some important bits: - If you're exporting all notes (as in this guide) Make sure you don't have tons of pictures in some notes. I synced 6k+ notes and mobile Obsidian was taking 30s+ to load. Luckily I exported notebooks individually so disabling photo heavy notebooks was a remedy to fix mobile Obsidian but I'll now have to convert them to text notes first if I want Obsidian mobile to be responsive. - Obsidian search is not as good, omnisearch plugin works, OCR for images but it will find attachments and not the note itself. This can be further improved with Dataview and YAML, but those CAN'T be easily added to old notes and folders in bulk. And last one which I still don't know how to fix is how to convert existing notebooks with 100s of notes (I got 6k+) there's no easy way to convert to tags or MOCs in bulk. So I'm stuck with same folders structure just in Obsidian 😅 BUT I do prefer it and I'll put effort to make it work as I know it's better! Just the idea of sorting through 6k+ notes to convert them to MOCs and add tags is making me squirm 😅 A follow up on this video would be great! Thanks again for the video ❤

[@ChadMCrowell]

How did you export all 6k notes? I was only able to select 100 notes at a time :(

[@theXaint]

@@ChadMCrowell Same here. My guess that it's a new feature to make the breakup that much more painful.

[@sledr2]

@@theXaint YES. I swear they set this limit to prevent you from breaking up!!&^%$#@!! If you still have the legacy version of Evernote on a desktop, then you can export all 6K of your notes, all at once. However, if you upgraded to version 10, the latest version, then they limit you to exporting 100 notes at a time. Supposedly there is an exception to the 100 note limit. They say on the Evernote Forum, that you can still export a whole notebook, at once. I haven't tried it myself because I have refused to upgrade to version 10. But I'm pretty sure you can export a whole Notebook.

[@echuderewicz]

Thank you. I just exported from Evernote to Obsidian. Not looking back.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Awesome, happy to hear this was immediately helpful to you

[@GoMiashPrivate]

Very informative video! I am already using Obsisdian for my PKM. This is inspiring me to finally migrate my old notes in Evernote to Obsidian.

[@linkingyourthinking]

It's so easy now. Get it done, but keep it as a separate vault!

[@thecompanioncube4211]

The control you have with Obsidian and the freedom to have all your markdown files on your hard drive is just can't be replaced

[@kai-weihu2736]

Your video made me switch. You are magical

[@charlesbonfante9188]

Thank you! Evernote is a trainwreck since V10 and I'm a massive proponent Obsidian. Super good video, really useful. Many Thanks.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Nice to hear, thanks Charles!

[@travisfoley4923]

What is happening at 15:44 hahaha... good stuff man, as always love the content!

[@linkingyourthinking]

Hahah

[@ditchcomfort]

You should ABSOLUTELY shift from Evernote to Obsidian 😀

[@leannegolan]

Wow, I'm intrigued. Alas, it's time to break up with Evernote, but Obsidian looks so good! I think I need to learn about your system before importing EN, as I was thinking I'd like it all together instead of separate, but I'm sure there's a reason you recommend that. Here to learn!

[@toolfinderhq]

Cracking guide here

[@linkingyourthinking]

Hey many thanks Francesco!

[@andyir___]

You're so right!💖💖

[@janetmunin3034]

Thanks for this, Nick! I wasn't able to use your export notes process on my PC, but I did end up cleaning out and closing my Evernote.

[@clair_high]

I recently switched. I'm still going through a lot of my old notes because I didn't have the Importer plugin to help, and there's a lot to clean up. I am loving Obsidian and I am looking for new was to help me organize and navigate all this accumulated (and new) stuff.

[@PabloSanchezMartin]

Phenomenal video! Now, what would you recommend to replace Evernote Web Plug-in? Are there good Obsidian Chrome extensions to save articles directly to your Obsidian vault?

[@linkingyourthinking]

I would challenge the need to repeat that workflow in Obsidian. Maybe keep using Evernote exclusively for clipping articles (or better, Readwise), so Obsidian doesn't get filled with noise over time

[@MarkWhich]

If you still using Evernote Legacy even just for local notebooks, it's soon going to be retired, meaning soon you may not even be able to log-in to access your offline notes, there is no better time to switch. You can start by creating you new notebooks in Obsidian, and get the feel of it, then gradually export and import your evernote notebooks into into their new home, Obsidian, you won't be disappointed, it's fast, supports true light/dark modes and has countless options and plug-ins, and best of all, you don't even need an account! it's your future!

[@leej.4922]

Thank you so much!

[@sunsetrider45]

Evernote started out absolutely fantastic. But then they kept adding features and functionality that the majority doesn't need, and the interface was so busy that you couldn't create just a basic note anymore without taking extra steps.

[@linkingyourthinking]

it's true

[@edjwise]

Continuous delivery = Continuous features. This because features no one needs or wants, and it begins to distort the original purpose. I think of this like Henry Ford though of the car. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” But what makes Ford different? Vision, he had a vision for what transportation should be. Vision is something Evernote lost a long time ago, and you can see companies like Notion losing their vision too. but as Nick is showing, companies like Obsidian have much more clear vision. Vision that is not distorted by investors or marketing teams trying to cram in every possible feature.

[@TheShamansQuestion]

Maybe once Evernote got popular/well-liked, the people running it behind the scenes felt the need to justify their jobs by adding more features. I imagine that's where the continuous feature/delivery issue derived from. If the app remained simple, it wouldn't feel like there was the need for innovation, just the pragmatic issue of how to store more.

[@peternilsson390]

Thanks - great video! I'm convinced! Do you know what happens with notes in Evernote that are "locked" with a password?

[@linkingyourthinking]

I don't know, but you can test it by selecting that file, exporting to .enex, then importing it into Obsidian.

[@bomanson]

Sadly I'm thinking of migrating. Not sure if it's going to be Notion or Obsidian or maybe other apps. Your points helps shorten my thinking session.

[@veronbrown8112]

Great video! I can relate to your feelings. I have the free version of Evernote after using it for years and having so much data in it. How will I go about exporting my data when I only have the free version now? Please help.

[@mehrdadfeller]

Evernote does not allow me to select more than 100 notes at the same time to export. Is there a workaround for this limitation? They are taking my data hostage.

[@eyeojo]

Get Legacy Evernote version 7+

[@AleSuggests]

Right-click on a notebook, then click "export notebook"

[@psrosemary]

I’ve been using EN for 22 years and have over 4000 image-heavy notes. Also, I use Windows, Android, and several iPads. I wonder if converting would even be possible for me! Advice appreciated (as long as you don’t suggest using a Mac!) Thanks.

[@sophiaonyoutube]

I loved that you approached this topic like it's friendship. That very well sums up my relationship with these note taking apps. 😂 Who needs a best friend when you have Obsidian? Jk

[@linkingyourthinking]

Ha glad you liked the approach

[@charlesanderson7830]

Where can I learn more about the ACE file structure?

[@linkingyourthinking]

More to come soon...

[@bobbyv3]

I do not believe the path bar in Finder is enabled by default so if any of y'all are watching this and confused at 12:42, hit Opt+Cmd+P in a Finder window or View > Show Path Bar.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Nice thanks for adding this

[@evandileo9262]

I tried to select all my notes to export and Evernote told me I could only select 100 at a time... what a joke. I'm trying to find other ways to export them but hoping it wont be too laborious, Thanks for your help with this guide

[@theXaint]

Current Evernote version says: You cannot select more than 100 notes. Oh boy! I have 3K+ notes. Any advice?

[@tadgray2682]

so annoying -- feeling like a hostage

[@Wodawic]

So what was on the screen ljust now ooked like the ACE framework, not the broader ACCESS LYT (Ideaverse) one I downloaded earlier. I missed the first few minutes of this segment. So are ACE and ACCESS two different kits?

[@linkingyourthinking]

Yep, ACE is final form (Atlas, Calendar, Efforts). If you are using ACCESS, just put Cards, Extras, Sources under Atlas. And rename Spaces to Efforts. If ACCESS is working, stick with it. ACE is just the most universal form. If you're interested, here's the full reason why: forum.obsidian.md/t/the-ultimate-folder-system-a-quixotic-journey-to-ace/63483

[@gilfriend7055]

Thanks for this. I've been wanting to break up for a while! But why the music in the background. (Is that now A Thing?)

[@linkingyourthinking]

Maybe too much?

[@gilfriend7055]

For me, yes. It seems to be A Thing that people are doing these days. I find it distracting. (And sometimes irritating.) Your content is great, doesn't need a music track.

[@linkingyourthinking]

@@gilfriend7055 Trying to be more mindful of when, how, and how loudly we add a music track

[@Connygraf]

thank you for pointing this out, background music annoys me too. Here it’s not that bad but other creators have such loud music that it drowns their voice out. in that case I just leave and don’t bother

[@shamshermann]

Love love love obsidian

[@KhoaDương-h2c]

How can u fold/unfold pdf viewer in obsidian? What is name of the plugin?

[@Ambiox]

Thank you! That's a great way to switch, and I wasn't aware of the importer plugin. One thing I am missing in this video is seeing how the imported notes actually look like in Obsidian. It would have been great to see some examples :/

[@MarkWhich]

They appear quite satisfactory, you will lose your note colors, fonts, but your tables remain intact along with images, links and notelinks, etc, but the extra speed is worth it.

[@faisalvbbjnafees7366]

​@@MarkWhich88i8iiiiiiiiiiiiii8ii8ii

[@tadgray2682]

Very interested to know if there's a solution to the select limit (e.g., when you Cmd-Alt). It's limited to 100. Seems like it was unlimited when Nick created the video(?). Feeling like a hostage now.

[@quentinlemaitre2998]

I wish I could move completely to Obsidian, but I use the sync between my devices a ton, and unfortunately there is some obsidian plugins like annotator that does not work on my iOS devices for some reason, so I can’t.

[@M.HassanFatima]

Thakns

[@kerbalette156]

You cant select more than 100 notes in evernote now

[@vanwander]

CTRL - A on Evernote on Windows returns "100 notes selected" and a temporary red warning appears saying you can't select more than 100 notes.

[@AleSuggests]

Right-click on a notebook, then click "export notebook"

[@dujyt]

I'm using Evernote v 10.59.5 web 0 When I click on a note, I get the message that I can only select 100 notes at a time. When I try to use the same process on the 8 notebooks I have, I still get the 100 note limit. I'm on the free subscription. I'm guessing that is the issue? Any workarounds you know of? Thanks for this video!

[@linkingyourthinking]

Try downloading Evernote 7 and you can likely not have to start a subscription

[@dujyt]

@@linkingyourthinking Thanks for the information. I also think I found another solution. I was using the web app version to try your process out. I opened the desktop version and I was able to select all the notes and export as an .enex file. Thought I'd share this in case others were having problems.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Happy you shared. Yes, use the desktop!

[@RishabhAggarwal17]

How to work on obsidian data in your android device , iPad and mac book and windows laptop altogether ? Currently I am using OneNote and it sync perfectly in all.Please suggest as I am looking for bidirectional link note taking app.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Try out Obsidian Sync

[@horou.designa]

🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@tyrone_music]

I'm using the desktop version (Windows) 10.59.5. It only allows me to select 50 notes at a time. I wanna export all notes in one go! Do I have any options?

[@kbm8280]

I think it's not easy safely managing notes in local drive because of hacking or ransomware If I got those things, I'd lose all of notes. Though there is syncing service of obsidian's or google drive or Git. However If U use realtime syncing the notes in a sever would be damaged on attack. How could U prevent it?

[@kbm8280]

And learning Obsidian is very burdensome to normal people

[@dataecstasy]

evernote doesn't allows you to select more than 100 notes at once.

[@NaseerShah-q6u]

Good

[@runwinder]

11 years as a user I just cant believe how much they're charging now... I dont even have thousands of notes. I understand they need to make money + pay the wages of folks but the mere fact they laid off the original team just kinda tells me this is a money making scheme for them and not for the better of the app or the users.

[@PenguinHero007]

It looks quite impressive, but when I imported my Evernote notes (less than 100), not all of them appeared in the Obsidian vault. Curiously items from those missing notes appear in the _resources entry, so it seems that they were in the exported .enex file. *shrug*

[@linkingyourthinking]

strange....

[@Samwise_genji]

How to segregate notebooks from evernote into Obsidian???

[@linkingyourthinking]

Was I too harsh on Evernote, or not harsh enough? Are you switching to Obsidian, or have you already?

[@samuelitooooo]

From someone who dipped his toes in Evernote in like 2012 but didn't go deeper: could argue not harsh enough but I think this harshness is fine. I'm finding out today that a paid subscription is now required; that would definitely put me off.

[@rcbuyer]

Already switched. And enjoying the trip so far. Something new to learn everyday, very flexible, quite useful for deep focus work and future proof. Big fan of community plugins.

[@clair_high]

Having used Evernote for 13 years, this wasn't all that harsh. You could've gone much harder, but I'm glad you didn't. Evernote still has some use for some people. Maybe Bending Spoons will right the ship from all the neglect and mismanagement Evernote's experienced. Maybe.

[@linkingyourthinking]

@@clair_high Appreciate your perspective, and you're right, we don't know what happens next for sure

[@linkingyourthinking]

@@samuelitooooo Happy to hear your thoughts

[@markedgood]

Ugh, I waited too long. The Apple app store only keeps 6-months worth of version history.

[@DigitalBrooke]

Anyone else noticed that the new owners logo looks awful a lot like the creative cloud logo for Adobe?

[@steptoediy8935]

Evernote won’t let me copy more than 100 notes and it appears to have greyed out the export function.

[@lennylind4436]

Me too! Did you get a solution from anyone?

[@AM2K2]

How do you export hundreds of notes at the same time? When I tried it said there is a 50 limit? I pay for evernote on windows

[@linkingyourthinking]

try desktop

[@cobaltclam]

I can't open Evernote 7. It says my notes are being managed by a newer version. Sigh.

[@linkingyourthinking]

You'd likely have to uninstall the newer version first

[@cobaltclam]

@@linkingyourthinking I thought that too, but then I saw that i didn't have Evernote installed on this machine at all. The "go through Notion" method seems to be working. At least there's a way out.

[@HackionSTx]

I recently did this, but the hard way. My Evernote didn't have many files because I didn't have ONE second brain (as I didn't know better at the time). Indeed the reason to put everything in Obsidian is to have A second brain.

[@Connygraf]

I see that I would have to pay US$8/mt = US$96/yr for Obsidian synch which is about 130 Canadian Dollars but I've not paid more than $100 Canadian for my Evernote sub so far, so no saving and definitely not free. I do a lot of capturing on the fly on my phone and then later review and process in EN, so if I switch I might have to do a combo of capturing on my phone in another app and then manually typing it into Obsidian later ugh unless someone has a more elegant solution?

[@linkingyourthinking]

Dropbox or iCloud or other pre-existing cloud apps can be used outside of Sync

[@Connygraf]

@@linkingyourthinking ah thanks, I will look into that, I have dropbox

[@turanamo]

They have now limited access to just 1 device. Goodbye Evernote.

[@rcbuyer]

You should.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Ha, so simple!

[@asharchishti126]

​@@linkingyourthinking❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤.

[@gerardg1950]

I tend to trust a company under EU law more than any US company.

[@dogsncats]

Nick, we know you need to make $ off your content. That's a good thing. So, is Obsidian paying you as a content partner or for your enthusiastic support of the product?

[@linkingyourthinking]

No. I haven't asked and they haven't asked, and if either of us did, we'd both politely decline.

[@sadekomar]

@@linkingyourthinking why not?

[@savitatawar4300]

Sz

[@indiramali5006]

Hii

[@DigitalBrooke]

Wow. The new Evernote crew are literally exhibiting narcissistic behavior.

[@M.HassanFatima]

🎉

[@M.HassanFatima]

😢

[@leonlee9518]

Already trans to obdisian !

[@linkingyourthinking]

Nice!

[@M.HassanFatima]

😮

[@bobbyv3]

💀

[@William-the-Guy]

I had already decided to leave Evernote when I clicked on this video, so it wasn't really necessary to give me that five minute long metaphor about a bad relationship. Maybe break those into two videos? One video for wide leave Evernote, another video for what to do when you've already make up your mind.

[@BikramMandal-u4s]

😮😅

[@emmettobrien9243]

I wanted to love Obsidian, but I am going to regretfully crawl back to Evernote. I converted 27K of Evernotes into Obsidian, they are all now re-formatted terribly, and my Evernote tables are all trashed in Obsidian from conversion. I am tired of the terrible and slow Obsidian Search (and I was/am still on the older version of Evernote doing local but fast search), and Local Notebooks. I copy and paste a lot from web pages for technical and business projects, and Obsidian can't seem to Paste web content without it losing all the format, and me having to spend time reformatting it. I am tired of all the ##### and having to dash each and every bullet item in a list (where is the row range select, and hit the Bullet button??). I get it, I am a predominantly "Librarian" style note taker, but I don't want my notes spread out across three different apps, ie Evernote for Librarian content, Obsidian for "linking my thinking", and Notion for my workflow/kanban and dashboards. As far as the point of the video, with Obsidians push and management to improve monetization of Obsidian, I guess we will see how much management/leadership caves into all the same paths and problems that Evernote did. If you have to learn and love using Markdown in order to use Obsidian going forward, it will remain a niche product, with a limited user base unable to provide an ability to monetize and grow the product features, like improving Search.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Seems like Evernote has everything you need then

[@emmettobrien9243]

@@linkingyourthinking That wasn't my point at all. As a user of Evernote since 2013, I took the time to document Obsidian product use and experience feedback, from a longtime Evernote user perspective who migrated my notes (27K) and commit to using Obsidian, as opposed to just a "kicking the tires" type trial. I think the Obsidian product team needs all the feedback they can get their hands on to help them find their way to the much desired, and even required, "product market fit" for Obsidian, in order to grow beyond a niche, and $1M+/- in revenue (Evernote $100M+). Just my opinion but Obsidian's best and fastest growth strategy is to figure out how to win as many existing Evernote users, like myself, as they can during Evernote's vulnerable acquisition product transition, and Evernote raising prices, as opposed to Obsidian trying to mostly organically grow from winning brand new users to Notes app products. Job#1 for Obsidian should be nailing the Evernote ENEX to MD data migration, Copy/Paste from other apps into Obsidian, Note Search, and product feature support for those that don't have the desire or time to become MD syntax experts, while still continuing to support the 3rd-party app open ecosystem that can come from an open note format like Markdown.

[@linkingyourthinking]

Ah I see, these are great points

[@yuriperess4828]

I would rather shift to MS OneNote instead.

[@linkingyourthinking]

interesting

[@antcooper]

As much as I tried OneNote always seems messy and difficult to find things in. Have you had a better experience?

[@yuriperess4828]

@@antcooper If you have thousands of notes and don't organise them, it becomes messy. I found Obsidian not user-friendly, and you must buy a subscription if you want it to sync between devices.

[@adcrane]

You lost me at the contacts exaggeration. If you had just told us the facts without the bias you might have served your purpose. Sad, because your videos are usually very informative.

[@linkingyourthinking]

What was exaggerated from their PDF?

[@kkkk-wp8gv]

can we able to create notebook stacks in obsidian?

[@kai-weihu2736]

Your video made me switch. You are magical

[@RafayAhmed-mr3hd]

Good