Import your Evernote notes: the .enex guide
Evernote can hand you every notebook as an .enex file. Gethrs reads that file in your browser and rebuilds notes, notebooks, tags, checklists and attachments. Here is the whole path, screen by screen.
1. Export an .enex file from Evernote
Export works from the desktop app only, not from the web or the phone. One file per notebook: that is how Evernote exports, and it is also how Gethrs recreates your notebooks.
Mac
Open Evernote. In the left sidebar, right-click (or Control-click) a notebook and choose «Export notebook…». Keep the format «ENEX (.enex)», tick «Include tags» and «Include attachments», then save the file.
Windows
Open Evernote. Right-click a notebook in the sidebar, choose «Export notebook…», keep «ENEX format (.enex)», make sure tags and attachments are included, then save the file.
Many notebooks
Repeat for each notebook you want to bring, or select all the notes in a notebook, right-click and «Export notes». Each file becomes one notebook in Gethrs, named after the file.
2. Import it from Settings → Import
Open the import window
In Gethrs, open the account menu (your initial, top left) and choose «Import from Evernote…», or go to Settings → Import.
Pick the files
Choose one or more .enex files. The window shows a counter per file while it works, and names any note it could not read.
Wait in the browser
Everything happens in your browser: the file is read one note at a time, images are uploaded one by one, and notes are saved in batches of 25. Keep the tab open until the counter stops.
3. What comes along
- Notes with their title, text, creation and update dates.
- One notebook per file, created by name if it does not exist yet.
- Tags, as colour tags across notebooks.
- Checklists, which stay checklists (and become real tasks in the Tasks area).
- Attachments: images, PDFs and other files, each uploaded and linked in its note.
- Headings, lists, quotes, code, tables and links.
Once the notes are in, search covers them too: titles, text, tags, and the text inside PDFs and photos.
Known limits
- Formatting Gethrs does not have (font colours, sizes, alignment) becomes plain text. A note stays readable, not identical.
- Importing the same file twice duplicates the notes: Evernote's export carries no note id, so there is nothing to match on. Import each file once.
- Very large attachments follow the same 50 MB limit as any file in Gethrs.
- Notebook stacks are not in the .enex file. Recreate them as spaces in a minute, by dragging notebooks.
Questions about importing
How long does it take?
A few hundred notes with pictures take a couple of minutes on a normal connection. The file is read in slices, so the size of the export does not matter, only the number of attachments to upload.
Does it work from the phone?
The import runs in the browser on any device, but the .enex export itself needs Evernote's desktop app on Mac or Windows.
Can I try with one notebook first?
Yes, and it is the best way: export one small notebook, import it, look around. If you like what you see, bring the rest.
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