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Importing and exporting

Importing​

Importing from Evernote​

Joplin can import complete Evernote notebooks, as well as notes, tags, resources (attached files) and note metadata (such as author, geo-location, etc.) via ENEX files. In terms of data, the only two things that might slightly differ are:

  • Recognition data - Evernote images, in particular scanned (or photographed) documents have recognition data associated with them. It is the text that Evernote has been able to recognise in the document. This data is not preserved when the note are imported into Joplin. However, if you have enabled OCR in Joplin, that recognition data will be recreated in a format compatible with Joplin.
  • Colour, font sizes and faces - Evernote text is stored as HTML and this is converted to Markdown during the import process. For notes that are mostly plain text or with basic formatting (bold, italic, bullet points, links, etc.) this is a lossless conversion, and the note, once rendered back to HTML should be very similar. Tables are also imported and converted to Markdown tables. For very complex notes, some formatting data might be lost - in particular colours, font sizes and font faces will not be imported. The text itself however is always imported in full regardless of formatting. If it is essential that this extra data is preserved then Joplin also allows import of ENEX files as HTML.
  • Links between notes are mostly preserved. However the ENEX format does not include all the necessary information to find out what the target of a link is (specifically, Evernote use an ID for the link but that ID is not associated with the target note). Instead Joplin tries to guess what note is linked based on the note title, which mostly works, but not always - for example if multiple notes have the same title, or if the link title is different from the target note title. If Joplin cannot guess how to restore the link, the Evernote link will remain.

To import Evernote data, first export your Evernote notebooks to ENEX files as described here. Then follow these steps:

In the desktop application, open File > Import > ENEX and select your file. The notes will be imported into a new separate notebook. If needed they can then be moved to a different notebook, or the notebook can be renamed, etc.

In the terminal application, in command-line mode, type import /path/to/file.enex. This will import the notes into a new notebook named after the filename.

In both cases you can either import a single file or a directory that contains multiple ENEX files.

  • If you import a single file, a notebook with the same name will be created, and all notes will be imported in this notebook.
  • If you import a directory, Joplin will create a notebook per file and import the notes into them.

Importing from Markdown files​

Joplin can import notes from plain Markdown file. You can either import a complete directory of Markdown files or individual files.

In the desktop application:

  • File import: Go to File > Import > MD - Markdown (file) and select the Markdown file. This file will then be imported to the currently selected Notebook.
  • Directory import: Go to File > Import > MD - Markdown (directory) and select the top level of the directory that is being imported. Directory (folder) structure will be preserved in the Notebook > Subnotebook > Note structure within Joplin.

In the terminal application, in command-line mode:

Type import --format md /path/to/file.md or import --format md /path/to/directory/.

Importing from other applications​

In general the way to import notes from any application into Joplin is to convert the notes to ENEX files (Evernote format) and to import these ENEX files into Joplin using the method above. Most note-taking applications support ENEX files so it should be relatively straightforward. For help about specific applications, see below:

Exporting​

Joplin can export to the JEX format (Joplin Export file), which is a tar file that can contain multiple notes, notebooks, etc. This is a lossless format in that all the notes, but also metadata such as geo-location, updated time, tags, etc. are preserved. This format is convenient for backup purposes and can be re-imported into Joplin. A "raw" format is also available. This is the same as the JEX format except that the data is saved to a directory and each item represented by a single file.

Joplin is also capable of exporting to a number of other formats including HTML and PDF which can be done for single notes, notebooks or everything.