Moving your notes
Get your notes out, as files.
Every notes app is easy to move into and hard to leave. These guides are the way out of each one: how its export works, which free tools turn the export into a folder of plain Markdown files with your pictures and dates intact, and what to check afterwards. None of them needs Skysa Notes; the files are yours to open anywhere.
Evernote
Evernote exports a notebook at a time as ENEX, an XML format only Evernote reads. Free tools turn it into a folder of Markdown files, pictures and all.
Read the guideNotion
Notion will give you Markdown, but with a 32-character code stapled to every filename and link. A free pass with the right tool leaves clean files.
Read the guideApple Notes
Apple Notes keeps your notes in a database only it reads, and for years offered no way out but PDF. On a Mac, there are now good ones.
Read the guideOneNote
OneNote exports to its own formats, PDF and Word on Windows, to PDF one page at a time on a Mac, and to nothing on the web. The way out is to read the notebook files themselves, straight from OneDrive.
Read the guideGoogle Keep
Keep has no export of its own. Google Takeout hands you one HTML and one JSON file per note, and a small free tool turns them into Markdown.
Read the guideBear
Bear is already Markdown underneath and exports the whole library in one go. The only work is deciding what to do with its tags.
Read the guideSimplenote
Simplenote exports everything as plain text in one click. The notes were always just text; the export only needs a .md extension and a title.
Read the guideJoplin
Joplin stores notes in its own database but exports them as Markdown in a folder per notebook, with every attachment beside them. It is one of the easiest moves there is.
Read the guideStandard Notes
Standard Notes is encrypted end to end, so its export is a decrypted backup in JSON. A small free tool turns it into Markdown files.
Read the guideObsidian
Your vault is already a folder of Markdown files, so there is nothing to export. The work is in the few things Obsidian writes that other Markdown apps don’t read.
Read the guide
What every move has in common
Whatever you are leaving, the same few habits keep the move from going wrong:
- Export everything, then count. Note how many notes the app says you have before you start, and check the folder of files against it at the end. Exports that stop partway are the most common way to lose notes without noticing.
- Keep the original export. Converters improve, and you may want to run a better one later. The export is a few hundred megabytes at most; keep the file.
- Expect pictures to need a home. Every app stores attachments differently. The good converters put each note’s pictures in a folder beside it and rewrite the note to point there; check that a note with pictures still shows them.
- Decide what to do with dates. A copied file gets today’s date. The converters recommended here can write each note’s original created and modified dates into the top of the file, where Skysa Notes and most Markdown apps read them.
- Don’t delete the old account yet. Keep it for a month, until you have reached for a note in the new place and found it there.
Then bring them into Skysa Notes
Once you have a folder of Markdown files, the rest takes a minute, and it works the same whether you use the free app on one device or have storage connected.
- Open Skysa Notes. In the storage panel, open the menu (the gear, or the ⋯ beside a source) and choose Import a folder, then pick the folder the converter made. Import files takes a zip or loose .md files instead.
- The app shows what it will add and asks first. Nothing already there is changed or replaced; a name that is taken gets a number.
- The folder’s subfolders become notebooks, as deep as they nest. Every .md file becomes a note. Every other file, pictures and PDFs included, is kept beside the notes at its own path, so a note’s
still shows the picture.
Titles and dates. A note’s title is the title in its front matter, else its first heading, else its filename. Its dates are the front matter’s created and updated (modified, date created, date modified and lastmod are read too), which is why the guides favour converters that write them: a note without them is dated the day you import it. A tags list in the front matter is searchable. Front matter and the rest of the file are kept byte for byte until you next edit the note.
What renders. CommonMark and GitHub-flavoured Markdown: headings, lists, tables, task lists, strikethrough, footnotes, code, and HTML left as written. Not rendered: [[wikilinks]], math and Mermaid diagrams, and a note with reference-style links opens as raw Markdown. Callouts show as plain quotes. Files larger than 25 MB, and hidden files and folders (names starting with a dot), are left out.
On Dropbox there is a second way in: copy the folder into Apps/skysa-notes with the Dropbox desktop app, and the notes sync in. On Google Drive the app can see only the files it made itself, so use Import there.