Workflow: Getting Evernote Into Standard Notes

Let me start off by saying that I do not recall if Evernote always had a 50-note limit on selecting them. This will cause a headache for importing a large amount of related notes. However, it may be a nice way of enforcing mindfulness during the process.

So, "vanilla" Standard Notes treats tags the way one might treat folders, in that all notes with the same tag will be retrieved at once. I like this because it makes sense and, it allows me to create new notes based on the current tag.

Anyway, I'm looking through my Evernote account to see which tags are still relevant. The example for this post is license. Notes with this tag have my software keys, download instructions and welcome emails, which often contain useful links in addition to the keys and instructions. I definitely want to keep them. So The steps are as follows:

1. Select Tags in Evernote
2. Type, or select the desired tag (license, in this example)
3. Make note of how many notes have this tag!
4. If I have more than 50, I will do the remaining steps multiple times
5. Cull unwanted notes by right-clicking each and selecting Move to Trash (Interestingly, the notes count remains unchanged!)
6. Select all (or whatever number will convert without trouble)
7. The new version will warn me if I tried to select more than 50 notes
8. Click the three dots (More Actions)
9. Select Export... from the menu
10. In the file dialog, name the export evernote-tags-license
11. Wait for Evernote to finish
12. Navigate to Extended Dashboard (tools)
13. Uncheck the box to preserve text formatting
14. click the Choose File button
15. navigate to the folder containing evernote-tags-license.enex
16. As soon as you click OK in the file dialog, the export begins
17. The tool creates a file named evernote-to-sn.txt
18. If that file name already exists, the tool will append a unique number to the new file, such as evernote-to-sn(1).txt
19. Using the Standard Note desktop app, click Account
20. Click Import Backup
21. Find the converted file and select it
22. Standard Notes should display a success message
23. Optional: rename the export file and store it, along with the .enex file in a backup folder. This serves as a reminder of what's already been done.

I'll be so glad when this project is completed. I'm not going to was time bashing Evernote. It simply stopped being an effective tool for me.

Standard Notes is more aligned with my evolved philosophy of integration and automation. Basically, I want my tools to do everything for me.

Is that too much to ask?

This post is my step-by-step reminder. I was blowing up the SN Slack, claiming that the Import wasn't working. After a few hours, where I read some helpful feedback, I realized that I had skipped steps 12-18 and kept trying to import the enex file directly!