Moving from Apple Notes, Evernote, or Notion

Moving notes apps is mostly dread.

You have years of notes in one place, and the fear is that they'll arrive in the new one as a heap of plain text with the dates wrong.

Here's what actually happens when you bring them into Scratchpad, including the parts that don't come across.

What Scratchpad Reads

Scratchpad doesn't connect to your old account. You export a file from the old app, and bring that in from Settings → Your data → Bring notes in (there's also an import button at the top of the note list).

It reads:

• Markdown and plain text, where the file name becomes the note's title
• HTML, keeping headings, lists, tables, links, and inline images
• Word (.docx) and RTF, keeping paragraphs, headings, lists, bold, and italic
• JSON, which carries many notes at once with their folders and original dates
• Evernote's .enex, one notebook to a file, with its dates, tags, and attachments
• A zip of any of those, whose directories become folders

Headings, lists, checklists, tables, code blocks, quotes, and links arrive as themselves, not as Markdown symbols you have to tidy up.

An import never overwrites anything: every file becomes a new note.

The Short Version

From Apple Notes

Apple Notes has no way to export everything at once, so we made one.

1. Download the Apple Notes exporter.
2. Double-click the zip to unzip it.
3. Open export-apple-notes.applescript in Script Editor (it's in Applications → Utilities on every Mac).
4. Press Run.

It writes one file to your Desktop, apple-notes-export.json. Bring that file in and the whole library arrives in one go.

It only reads. Nothing in Notes is changed, and nothing leaves your Mac until you import the file.

What comes with it:

• Every folder and note, with its formatting and tables
• Pictures and attached files: PDFs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, text files, zips, and audio, each put back in its note
• Original dates

What doesn't:

• Password-protected notes are skipped, and counted, so you know how many (remove the password in Notes first if you want them)
• Recently Deleted stays behind
• Videos are named in the note, for you to drag in by hand
• Files over 100 MB are left out
• Checklist ticks: a checklist arrives as a bulleted list, because Notes doesn't tell a script which items are ticked

To move just a few notes by hand, macOS 26 and later can export one at a time as Markdown (File → Export as → Markdown). Zip the files and bring the zip in.

From Evernote

In Evernote's desktop app, export a notebook as .enex, and bring the .enex in. One notebook becomes one folder, and a zip of several .enex files works too.

What comes across: each note's title and dates, pictures, PDFs and other documents, audio, checklists with their ticks, and tags as #tags.

Encrypted sections and videos are left out, with a line in the note saying so.

From Notion

Export your workspace, or a page with its sub-pages, as Markdown & CSV, and bring the zip in. Pages become notes, and nested pages become folders.

Three things to expect:

• Long IDs in titles. Notion adds one to the end of each exported file name, so some titles will carry it until you rename them.
• Databases as CSV. Scratchpad doesn't turn those files into notes, though the pages inside a database do come across.
• Pictures beside the pages. Notion exports pictures and files beside the pages rather than inside them, so add the ones you need again.

What Doesn't Come Across From Anywhere

Dates. Only a JSON or .enex file carries a note's original dates. Everything else arrives dated the day you import it.

Deep folders. Scratchpad keeps three levels of folders. A deeper tree isn't refused: it keeps the outermost three, so Taxes/2024/Q1/January lands under Taxes, then 2024, then Q1.

Front matter. A --- block at the top of a Markdown file arrives as text in the note rather than becoming its title.

A Ten-Minute Try

Don't move everything first. Move twenty notes you know well.

1. Pick one notebook, folder, or Notion page that has a bit of everything: a checklist, a table, a picture, a long note.
2. Export it the way described above for your app. (A minute or two.)
3. In Scratchpad, open Settings → Your data → Bring notes in and choose the file. (Under a minute.)
4. Open five of the notes beside the originals. Look at the checklist, the table, and where the picture should be. (Five minutes.)

Then you know what the rest will look like.

If you're happy, delete the test notes before you bring in the whole library. Importing the same files twice makes duplicates rather than replacing anything.

Twenty notes and ten minutes will tell you more than any list of features, mine included.

The full list of formats is in Bringing your old notes in.

No import is perfect, and this one isn't either.

Try it small before you trust it big.