François de La Bruère

Today I cancelled my #evernote subscription after 15 years. Like Dropbox & others, it started out as a great set of native apps with good UI and functionality, but over the years fell victim to feature creep, pushy upsell, and pretty dramatic price increases.

I imported my 5000+ notes to Apple Notes, which today happens to be the closest thing I could find to the OG Evernote experience. I'm sure I’ll find a few formatting issues here and there, but everything I’ve looked at so far has translated flawlessly, metadata and all.

Also shoutout to #fujitsu for continuing to support my ScanSnap 1300i 12 years later, including letting me scan OCR’d PDFs directly to Notes.

#evernoteexodus #AppleNotes #scansnap

Jan 29, 2024 at 1:43amWeb
Show threadBenediktJan 29, 2024
@fdlbt did migration to Apple Notes work for files, scans PDF and so forth as well? Or notes only?
Show threadFrançois de La BruèreJan 29, 2024
@BenVogel PDFs and images are the only types of files I would have in there, but I have TONS of PDFs, and yes, they migrated correctly, and Notes displays them all in line with other elements in each note like text or HTML. Unsurprisingly, HTML formatting is what suffered a bit, but it's not like Evernote did a perfect job importing from web sites to begin with.
Show threadFrançois de La BruèreJan 29, 2024
@BenVogel Also fair warning that although iCloud syncing worked fine and fairly quickly from my Mac to my phone and iPad, adding 5000 notes apparently means each device will then spend hours, perhaps days (still ongoing for me) indexing everything. So plan ahead for efficiency cores pinned at 100% and extra battery drain on mobile devices until that's all sorted out.
Show threadBenediktJan 29, 2024
@fdlbt thank you so much. This gave me trust. I just started my migration. Very easy. I am surprised how well the notes are formatted and how well all files are migrated from #evernote . The only thing I am not sure about is the export capabilities of Apple notes.
Show threadFrançois de La BruèreJan 30, 2024
@BenVogel That’s definitely the elephant in the room. There’s no export capabilities that I know of (aside from exporting one note at a time to PDF, which I know I'm never doing…), and would not expect Apple to ever provide any, so this is almost definitely a one-way trip.
Show threadFrançois de La BruèreJan 30, 2024
@BenVogel I just played around with that export to PDF function and if you have multiple PDFs in the same note, the exported version only includes the first page of each. So... yeah.
Show threadIain McJan 29, 2024
@fdlbt I am on the same path after a similar investment in #evernote. Interested in the scansnap settings for Notes though. How did you get that to work?
Show threadFrançois de La BruèreJan 30, 2024

@iainmccormack With the ScanSnap app running in background, right-click the app icon in the dock, and choose “Settings…”

In the Application tab, click the “Add or Remove…” button. Click the “Add…” button. Click the “Browse…” button, navigate to Notes and double-click it. Give it a name (“Notes” would make sense), test it if you like, then click the “OK” button. Click the “Close” button.

Back in the main ScanSnap settings window, open the “Application” pull-down menu and select the Notes app. Click “Apply”.

Your scanner should now output any new document you scan to a new note in the Notes app.

Show threadIain McJan 30, 2024
@fdlbt this is fantastic - really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Now I have some homework 😊