Evernote Alternatives: What Each One Can Import From Your Existing Notebooks

While we have popular names being Obsidian, Joplin, Notion, OneNote, and Apple Notes appearing on most lists of “best alternatives” to Evernote, it’s the specifics about what each option can pull from your existing notebooks that determines the best fit; none of these sites take into consideration the different meanings associated with what they mean by “way in.” Only through the desktop app does Evernote allow you to take notes to other destinations; therefore, that other application determines what’s left over from the Evernote export and how it’s imported.

Out of these five, one of them can’t read an Evernote export file, one doesn’t ever deal with a file; it accesses your Evernote account directly, and another one doesn’t keep any of your tags when transferring files unless you rename them before exporting. All of this information can be found on the help pages of each vendor, which is how people usually miss it — no one reads five help centers before selecting a new application. Therefore, start with which applications are actually capable of accepting your notebooks; everything else will stem from there.

Which Note Apps Can Actually Import Your Evernote Notebooks

The names of each app’s import feature are all identical, but the function of each app’s import feature is different — five different actions occur in the background when a user presses the import button, and one of these actions results in nothing being done.

Three of the five read your file directly:

• Obsidian converts each notebook into Markdown notes through its official Importer plugin. The import runs in two passes — you review what it’s about to create, then you run it — which turns out to matter later.
• Joplin has the importer built in: File > Import > ENEX on the desktop app, and it can take a whole folder of export files in one go, building one notebook per file.
• Apple Notes imports on a Mac through File > Import to Notes. The catch is version-shaped: tags inside the file only come across on macOS 13 or later, according to Apple’s Notes guide.

The other two programs operate on different principles, and one is completely non-functional. Notion does not interact with your Evernote files directly. When you sign into your Evernote account from Notion and select which notebooks to import, Notion will create a page for each of your selected notebooks and then import your notes from those notebooks into Notion as data entries. Notion’s documentation states that you cannot import your notes using either the mobile app or the mobile version of the Notion website. As for OneNote, there is no way for it to accept or open an .enex file (as confirmed in a Microsoft support response published on the Microsoft Q&A website). There is no built-in functionality in OneNote to convert or translate your notes to OneNote format.

Speaking of the .enex file, it refers to the format that Evernote uses to store your files. It is an XML file that contains your notes and all of the metadata including tags, dates, and all attachments. Most lists of free Evernote alternatives rank OneNote or Notion at the top — which highlights the importance of differentiating between the two options. When selecting OneNote because it is included as part of your Microsoft 365 subscription, you are choosing to perform a conversion rather than an import. When you choose Notion, you will need to keep your Evernote account active (and signed in) until the import process is completed. Other than OneNote and Notion, all other applications must utilize an importer program, and before they can initiate this process, the Evernote user must first obtain the .enex file, which is only available from the Evernote desktop application.

How to Get Everything Out of Evernote First

An export is simply a copy of your information. The actual copy of your notebook is not created until you have it saved as a file on your computer. Up until that point, the only copy of your notebook will reside on Evernote’s servers, so migrating content from your notebook to your computer comes first in the process, and prior to comparing the two notebooks or deciding which version to delete.

When migrating content from Evernote, there has been quite a lot of scepticism on whether Evernote has intentionally made the export process more difficult to discourage users from exporting their notes. However, there is evidence that suggests that this is not the case, as indicated in the graphic on Evernote’s own help page that allows free users to export their notes without having to subscribe to the premium version of Evernote. The friction is real but narrower than folklore has it, and nearly all of it sits in choices you make inside one dialog:

1. Open the Evernote desktop app on your Mac or PC. Exporting doesn’t exist on the web version or the phone apps.
2. Right-click a notebook and choose Export.
3. Pick ENEX as the format — not either of the HTML options.
4. Leave every attribute box ticked: tags, created date, author. Each one is stored as metadata inside the file, and anything unticked isn’t in the file for any importer to rescue later.
5. Click Export. The file lands on your desktop. A notebook too big for one file gets split automatically — you choose the maximum piece size, from 300 MB up to 2 GB.

Export by notebook, not by selection

The 100-note limit, as stated verbatim in Evernote’s help section up to September 2026, only affects handpicked notes when exporting. Even though you can export an entire notebook without hitting the 100-note limit, if you export only certain notes, the 100-note limit applies. One Reddit poster noted that exporting their 4,000-note notebook would require “40 exports”; therefore, the notebook-level export provides greater reliability at larger scales. One user of Evernote’s own community forum, who exported 1,762 notes in one large file, talked about waiting over three hours to see any progress being made. They then repeated the process over a series of 100-notes batches, which they said took “all evening”, but at least it did work out in the end.

When determining which notebook to start with, it would be best to begin with the notebook that you are least likely to be willing to lose. This is also your first test notebook as you will utilize it to test out the importing process with one of your smaller notebooks first.

Why ENEX and not HTML

Evernote has three formats for exporting: ENEX, HTML (single page), and HTML (multi-page). As the HTML exported files are opened with a web browser, they seem like a good option until you remember that the intent is to import them back into your Evernote account, not read them. Therefore, all of the other importers referenced in this article will only import from ENEX exported files. Thus, all of the HTML exported files will only serve as archives of your notes.

There is also the evernote-backup command-line tool that can be used to download the entire Evernote account and export it back as ENEX files. This tool is open-source and will require you to give it access to your Evernote account (with your login credentials). Therefore, it is not an “official” release by Evernote so you should think of it as a project or an approach to take when dealing with large accounts. The process here is the same as with the other alternatives to Evernote, simply export each notebook, keep the files, and do not change anything on the account for now.

Regardless of which of the Evernote alternatives you have chosen, the export/import sequence will be same. First, you will want to export every single notebook, then store the exported files in a safe place. Finally, you should not make any changes to your Evernote account at this point. However, just because you successfully imported an ENEX document does not mean that everything was successfully imported; therefore, the items that were missed are often much more subtle than a failed export, as they will typically appear to be successfully imported. Hence, before you finalize your decision, the subtleties of what was missed are the most crucial factor to compare before making your decision.

What Each Alternative Imports — and What It Quietly Drops

Whatever you used Evernote for, the archive that has to be converted to other services ultimately consists of four basic elements: all the text from every note, all the files attached to those notes, all the tags that were assigned to those notes, and all the dates that were assigned to the notes. All of the importers presented will transfer the text. The other three are where the quiet losses live, laid out per destination below:

Read down the date column and the pattern jumps out: dates are the attribute no importer advertises, the one that fails without an error message.

The dates are where imports fail quietly

The Date behaviour is not supported by either Joplin or Apple Notes, as silence means no guarantee of a Date. For the Obsidian Importer, the only clear documentation for this Date behaviour is the near misses. In the case of the Obsidian Importer, the source for the Template Variables list includes the creation and modification dates as variable values that are empty when not available. This is a convenient way of saying that the creation and modification dates are not guaranteed to be included in the converted note. The Obsidian Community Forum example provides a real-world example of an Obsidian Importer user who imported several hundred notes from Joplin and experienced the following: All creation dates were shown as the time of the import, for every note. Of the notes for which modified dates were incorrectly stored, approximately 20% were assigned wrong modified dates. A second user attempted to use the HTML export as an alternative method for importing and found that it did not preserve the creation or modified dates. The solution that was marked as the “correct” response to the original poster’s question was a converter that imports the original timestamps as properties within each note. There is more information below about this converter and how to use it. Notion acknowledges the problems associated with importing Joplin notes. In fact, Notion states that established dates after importing “can be expected to be incorrect.” The suggested solution is to add a Date Property to the imported notes after importing them into Notion.

Tags survive; the shape above them doesn’t

While all ENEX files include tag names, Obsidian’s import documentation indicates that ENEX files do not include the hierarchical structure of those tags. There is a virtually identical process to fixing that issue on Evernote’s side prior to export to Obsidian. The process is simply to change the name of any child tag to include the name of the parent tag in the tag name (for example, Parent Tag/Child Tag). As a result, the text representation of the parent/child relationship is maintained. Additionally, Evernote’s term for folders that contain multiple notebooks is “notebook stacks”. These stacks are completely absent from an export of a notebook; therefore, Obsidian recommends that when importing, the filenames of the notebooks be changed to include the name of the stack (i.e., Stack 1@@@Notebook A), which will instruct the Obsidian importer to create stack folders. Note that Apple Notes does not import any tags from versions of macOS earlier than 13. Notion’s help only specifies importing of notebooks and notes, so it is unclear whether Notion will have any guarantee of importing tags. Finally, Joplin is the only service that specifically documents that it will import tags, so it is the only service that offers the clearest depiction of how tag-related data will be imported.

Scans, attachments, and the links between notes

In Joplin the import page especially mentions what you should and shouldn’t expect to lose, and it directly tells you what’s been lost thus providing an easy checklist to compare to all your imports. Joplin not only lists the file, it also lists all the note metadata (for example: the author and where it came from). Joplin doesn’t give you any of the Recognition data associated with the files imported; recognition data is the term Evernote uses for the text that Evernote’s OCR technology has extracted from your scanned images and documents, so if you want to search for a specific word that only appears within your scanned images, that is your way to find that particular word. You won’t receive any recognition data for your notes unless you enable the OCR setting within Joplin. In standard markdown form, all colour, font size and font face will not be imported. It does not mean you won’t get the actual text itself, just that Joplin provides an additional form of ENEX-to-html importation, so you can easily format your notes as they appear in the notes you originally exported from Evernote. In the unlikely event that the location for your note is not available and an internal link has a corresponding file ID, Joplin will attempt to identify the link target based on the target note title, and it is “mostly (but not always)” correct. Both Notion and Joplin make it clear not to expect images inside Evernote to look good. Apple does not list any losses in any comprehensive way; that’s just one more reason this checklist exists.

Another type of row in the chart is OneNote; not a loss in terms of imported content, but an omission.

If the App You Want Can’t Import Your Notes

A blank row isn’t a low score — it’s a missing road. Microsoft’s support answer states the problem flatly: “OneNote can’t recognize .enex file.” The official Evernote-to-OneNote importer Microsoft once shipped was retired in 2022, as the opening post of an r/OneNote thread on exactly this predicament notes — its author had “hundreds of notebooks, thousands of notes” and asked how anyone is supposed to manage the move now.

Currently available alternatives include some that are third party solutions; these third-party products do not provide equivalent functionality. On the Windows operating system, there is a free/open-source application called Evernote2Onenote which can convert .enex files into note entries in OneNote on the desktop application. One of its documented issues is that if you migrate notes with multiple tags, you will have as many copies of the note as their are tags due to Evernote tags being applied to the note in the new application. Most of the paid options from OneNote Batch work in a similar fashion to the free/open-source options with more visual appeal. One poster referred to this software as “ugly but functional.” Another wondering poster had their security software flag this program while it was being installed, resulting in them abandoning that effort because they could not process their payment. Anyone completing migration of their material from Evernote to OneNote using these types of methods should be aware of potential risks involved with the use of unverified software to manage such large amounts of information. Many people have successfully completed the migration of their material in this way, however it should be noted that using trial migration methods is a recommended practice prior to deciding to undertake the larger migration process.

Two more quiet exclusions should be noted. The first is that Evernote TEAM content will not import into Notion; the second is that Notion does not currently have a mobile version for phone users. Finally, if you’re already paying for a service that you find works best for your household (Like Notion), and you intend to use it as a replacement for Evernote, then using a conversion path (from Evernote to Notion) is an acceptable option. You can test this out by converting a single notebook, as opposed to trying to get all of your notebooks done at once. The next big decision is how to do that testing and which of the two methods (converting or importing) you will use to make your transition from Evernote to Notion.

Import Directly, or Convert Your Notes First

The default method to import to Joplin, Apple Notes, and Obsidian is “Direct.” If your destination document imports ENEX, import your exported files and you’re finished. Only in three situations do you need to convert first.

The first situation is if the original timestamps matter. If the destination is Obsidian and you want to keep the date from when the notes were created and modified, the standard import will fail you here; therefore, you will probably want to use Yarle, an open-source tool that converts ENEX into Markdown with the correct dates included in the properties (the workaround described in the “Date loss threads” above).

The third situation occurs when the destination requires plain text files. Joplin is somewhat in the middle of the migration pathway. Joplin is thoroughly documented with regard to imports down to individual attributes, and a fairly recent Reddit post on r/Evernote suggests using Joplin as a temporary step between Evernote/Obsidian — “Joplin has an Evernote .enex import that worked perfectly for me,” the author said. So import into Joplin, export Markdown from Joplin, and move the folder.

The third is formatting. Joplin’s standard conversion drops colours and fonts; where specific notes need that fidelity, its ENEX-as-HTML import keeps the extra data that Markdown leaves behind.

One notebook before the library

No matter what the process is, testing is done on one notebook. You import a single file (notebook) and run tests as described in the next section before you point the remainder of the library (all the other notebooks) in the same direction as the first. This procedure allows you to catch two problems: 1) a misbehaving converter will cost you no more than the redo of one notebook rather than the redo of a weekend’s worth of work; and 2) if you have a formatting surprise, you will find out about it before it is too expensive to fix. Notion’s path has its own precondition — it will sign into your currently active Evernote account; therefore, your active Evernote account remains open and safe from harm until the successful completion of the import process. During this entire import process, no information gets deleted from your Evernote account; the last section is the gate that determines when that happens.

Before You Delete Anything: Checking That It Arrived

When an imported item does not produce any kind of error message, it does not tell you much about what has happened. There are several reasons that would result in a huge loss of data, including: resetting of all dates to the day an item was imported; the flattening of all tag trees (these are often VERY large; especially with multiple imports); missing attachments; and possibly an entire notebook missing at note #400 (as an example). Many of these issues do not make themselves known during the import process, therefore it is imperative that each note book pass this initial check before any irreversible damage is done to the Evernote account. This is a simple top-to-bottom check for every note book, and it serves as the gate to all other functions.

The export-then-import checklist

1. While the notebook is still in Evernote, write down how many notes it holds.
2. Import that one notebook into the destination. Not the library — one notebook.
3. Compare the counts. If the destination says 318 and Evernote said 320, you know something is missing before you’ve read a word.
4. Open five notes from different years. The text, images, and attachments should all be there and open.
5. Open your most heavily tagged note and compare its tags against Evernote’s.
6. Sort by created date. A block of notes all stamped the day you imported means the dates didn’t come; open a few of your oldest notes to confirm.
7. Click two or three links that point from one note to another.
8. Search for a word that exists only inside a scan or screenshot. Finding it means the searchable-image layer made it across; not finding it means that layer is gone.

Every failure has its corresponding next step. If the count doesn’t match, that likely means that the import was interrupted before it was completed. According to Notion’s troubleshooting notes, it is possible for an interrupted import to continue on its own. The only solution that Notion recommends in that case is using smaller batches. One user who experienced two different problems importing content noted that when importing notes that were sorted alphabetically, he was able to identify the point of the failed import based on the ordering of the titles. His writeup provides the clearest example of how to track down the point of failure using this method. Dates that appear wrong can be traced to either the convert-first method discussed above or the method recommended by Notion of creating a Date property after import. Tags or attachments that are missing can be remedied by deleting the incomplete import or by performing another import alongside of the incomplete one, in which case, the duplicate will be created. Before the import can be completed, you need to go back to Evernote to resolve the cause of the problem before re-importing.

Once the above is completed (notebook counted, sampled, sorted, and searched), you can permanently transfer your Evernote notes to another application without having to worry about the nature of the transfer or how it will affect your Evernote account. The setup and migration guides for all other destination applications will start at exactly the same point as the above checklist.

The step to run before you close your Evernote account

Until your entire notebook content, including all attachments, tags, and dates, have all landed in the new application through exported files on your computer, there is nothing safe about transferring notebooks from Evernote. It is vital to follow the checklist notebook by notebook to ensure that you have all necessary files and data before closing your Evernote account. You should continue to keep your Evernote account open and untouched until the last notebook has been successfully transferred to the new application. If you delete a notebook in Evernote, any files that may have been transferred quietly out of your Evernote account with that notebook are gone forever, and you should not delete your Evernote account until you are certain the new application meets your expectations and requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I export my Evernote notes?

Using the Evernote desktop client on either a Mac or Windows computer (as opposed to their web-based client, which does not support exporting options) — right-click on the desired notebook, choose “Export,” select “ENEX” as the export file type, and the entire contents of the selected notebook will be exported in one single file (individual entries selected via hand will NOT exceed a total of 100).

Which alternative should I pick if I don’t want to pay?

Of all of the open-source picks, Joplin has the most comprehensive documentation around how it imports files. Joplin directly imports ENEX files while also specifying exactly what it does keep and what it does not keep when importing those files. With the release of macOS 13, Apple Notes now also supports importing ENEX files. However, Apple Notes only allows for the use of the Tags feature with macOS 13 or newer versions.

Can I try an app before moving everything?

Yes, an import of your exported files doesn’t consume them. Therefore, you can compare the same notebook against both applications before committing to either application. Only using one notebook at a time ensures that your comparison is fair and correct.

Can I cancel Evernote while I’m still verifying?

Cancelling a subscription does not erase or delete anything that has been uploaded to Evernote. According to Evernote’s own help page, when you cancel your subscription, you revert back to the Free Plan; your account remains intact and you will still have access to all of your notes, as well as the ability to view, edit and export those notes. The primary concern when using Evernote is not about cancelling your subscription, but rather regarding deleting a note or account from the account before you have verified the import of the notes.