How to Switch From Evernote to Obsidian 

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ❤

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

You should ABSOLUTELY shift from Evernote to Obsidian 😀

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.

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!!

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.

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.

You're so right!💖💖

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.

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!

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

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

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

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.

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?

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

This video almost makes me wish I had still been using Evernote, or still had an amount of notes stuck in Evernote, just for the satisfaction of the importing process into Obsidian. But I migrated from Evernote to Notion a few years back, and then more recently moved on to Obsidian and have been working on getting my notes from Notion into Obsidian.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

Cracking guide here

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.

Where can I learn more about the ACE file structure?

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?

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

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!

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.

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.

Thakns

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

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?)

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*

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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!

Good

You cant select more than 100 notes in evernote now

Love love love obsidian

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

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

How to segregate notebooks from evernote into Obsidian???

🔥🔥🔥🔥

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?

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

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

Hii

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

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 :/

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

😢

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.

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?

🎉

😮

You should.

can we able to create notebook stacks in obsidian?

Already trans to obdisian !

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

💀

😮😅

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.

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

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.

I would rather shift to MS OneNote instead.

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.

Good