How to Import Files from Evernote

Importing from Evernote is a two-step process, repeated once for each notebook you want to move over. If you’d rather watch than read, there’s a four-minute walkthrough at the bottom of this page.

The two-step import process

Step 1: Export the notebook from Evernote

Open Evernote and right-click the notebook you want to export. Select Export Notebook. In the export dialog, make sure ENEX Format is selected and every box under Export Attributes is checked. Click Export and save the resulting .enex file to your hard drive.

Step 2: Import the ENEX file into Enoch File

In Enoch File, first navigate to the cabinet where you want the Evernote notebook to live. Once you’re in the destination cabinet, open the Utility Menu and click Import from Evernote.

Select your .enex file or drag it into the green landing zone, then click Start Import. Your notes will be imported into their own drawer inside the current cabinet. The drawer takes its name from your old notebook, and each file takes its name from the corresponding note. You can leave everything where it lands or move files wherever you want them.

Note

If you import multi-part notes — notes that contain multiple files, or a mix of text and one or more files — the importer creates a folder in the drawer to hold all the pieces together. Each multi-part note becomes its own folder, with the note’s files inside.

Watching the import progress

Once the import is running, you’ll see a progress bar showing which file is currently uploading and how many notes remain. A big notebook may show something like “Note 11 of 429” as it works through your export.

There’s a Cancel Import option, but treat it as emergency-only. If you cancel partway through and then re-import the same notebook later, you’ll create duplicate files for everything the first pass already brought in.

How to import like a pro

A few habits that make large migrations go more smoothly:

• Create a dedicated cabinet first if you have more than four or five notebooks. Something like Imported Notebooks keeps your Evernote migration self-contained and easy to reorganize later. Switch to that cabinet before starting each import.
• Do a small notebook first as a test run. A few dozen notes is plenty to give you a feel for how the process works and roughly how long different file types take to process.
• Expect large notebooks to take real time. A notebook with 1,000+ files can take about an hour unless you have a very fast upload connection. Images, videos, and other large files take longer than PDFs and Office documents.
• Disable sleep on your computer for long imports. If you’ll be walking away mid-import, make sure your machine won’t shut off partway through.
• Break up giant notebooks before you export. If a single Evernote notebook has thousands of files, splitting it into smaller notebooks before you create the ENEX file makes the import more manageable and easier to resume if something goes wrong.
• Skip cellular data. Importing on a phone hotspot or over a mobile connection is slow, expensive, and prone to interruptions. Use Wi-Fi.
• Your Evernote tags come with you. Tags on the original notes are preserved and searchable in Enoch File once the import completes.

Video walkthrough