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Migrate from Evernote to Joplin

On my journey to move away from closed services I was looking for a note taking application, an Evernote replacement to be specific and stumbled across Joplin. Even though not using Evernote very frequently anymore I wanted to preserve my notebooks, some of them being well-maintained collections of particular topics.

Joplin

Advantages of choosing Joplin:

  • synchronisation capabilities (Nextcloud yay!)

  • import Evernote notebooks

  • desktop and mobile applications

  • write notes in Markdown (various plugins available, see Joplin's Markdown Guide)

This all sounded really good so I planned my further steps:

  1. install the desktop and mobile app

  2. export Evernote content

  3. set up Nextcloud sync

  4. import Evernote content

  5. evaluate results

  6. use Joplin

  7. delete Evernote account

With Joplin one can create, write and manage extensive collections of any topic. This is just one among many options, see also 12 Best Open Source Evernote Alternatives 2022.

The headache of exporting Evernote content

Getting notebooks out of Evernote became a bit tricky because one cannot just export them in the web browser interface or mobile app. The export function is exclusively available on one of the desktop applications. You can easily install the application on Windows and MacOS but this is a static blog so of course I am using Linux...

There is however the straw of a repackaged Evernote client for Windows available for Linux which is not open source:

Unfortunately you still have to export your notebooks one after the other.

Nextcloud WebDAV URL

If you follow the Nextcloud synchronisation instructions, you must input the WebDAV URL, not just the Nextcloud instance. This information is to be found in the Setting on the bottom left (see figure).

/images/joplin/webdav.png

Aaaand we are done

The Joplin desktop client has a similar application structure. It lacks fancy widgets (pro or con, you decide) and has a cleaner look.

/images/joplin/desktop.png