Background: coolvector

Export Evernote to OneNote Correctly

How to export all of the notes, what apps to use, and fix missing titles. Based on my experience when switching from Evernote because of their expensive paid plans and limiting the number of times to unsync devices.

Install Onenote Importer

Download and install the official importer app from onenote.com

Install Older Evernote

If you have a lot of notes, maybe hundreds, go download and install an older version of Evernote app from help.evernote.com (Direct download: mac|win)

The current Evernote app (v.10.8.5) cannot export more than 50 notes at a time, so you will use the older app instead to do the exporting. But don’t do that just now.

Maximum 50 notes

Remove Ink, Reminders, and Encrypted content

OneNote Importer app cannot import any notes containing Sketch, Reminders, and Encrypted contents. So you will have to remove them manually.

But don’t worry if you forgot which notes have them. The excluded files will be listed on the OneNote Importer app after the import process is done.

Export Notes To Enex File

Run the older Evernote app, select all notes, and then right-click to open the menu. Select ‘Export Notes’. Make sure to save as ‘.enex’ file.

Export all notes with the old Evernote app

Fix The Evernote Enex File

That newly created .enex file contains errors that make most of the imported notes becomes untitled. This would be frustrating if you have 100+ notes.

Untitled imported Evernote notes on OneNote

Luckily user MarcoTin on the Evernote forum shared the solution for that. That is to replace some specific codes on the .enex file before importing it.

Open the file using text editors like Notepad and Wordpad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac).

Use `Find & Replace All`

Find:

<![CDATA[<!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM “http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd">

Replace all with:

<![CDATA[<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”UTF-8" standalone=”no”?><!DOCTYPE en-note SYSTEM “http://xml.evernote.com/pub/enml2.dtd"><en-note>

Import With The OneNote Importer App

Now open the App and select your .enex file to start the import process.

Choose your modified .enex file

And you’re done!

But if you receive this kind of screen:

Failed imports of notes containing Sketch, Reminders, and Encrypted contents

Don’t close it. Make it as a reference because you will have to edit all the notes that are on that list:

1. Remove any Reminders.
2. Delete Sketches.
3. Permanently decrypt any encrypted texts.

Then import them again 💀