How can I convert Evernote's notes to standard TXT files?

Question

I love Evernote, but I don't want to be locked into to it for life.

I know there's a way to export my data from there, but do you know how I can convert each individual note into a simple text file?

Answer 1

It is possible using Simplenote.

Download a Simplenote client that supports importing from Evernote and also supports exporting to text files. Here's a list of Simplenote clients to choose from.

Justnotes, for example, does that.

Answer 2

Here's a walkthrough. You'll need the Evernote desktop app. from http://www.documentsnap.com/how-to-export-your-data-out-of-evernote/

In the Notebooks section, right click on All notebooks
Choose Export Notes…
When the popup appears, in the Save As field give the export a name.  That will be the name of the folder (if you choose HTML) or the file (if you choose Evernote XML)
Choose the folder you want to save your export in
Decide whether you want to export as HTML or Evernote XML (read on to find out which one you want to choose)

UPDATE:

Based on OPs comments that existing export functions do not work, then the short answer mid no. By itself, without external apps, there is no way to export Evernote notes directly to text.

In order to get txt files, then data will have to be exported to a supported format such as HTML or XML and then converted to text using a 3rd party application.

Answer 3

There's a rich API you can use to get access to the data. See for example https://github.com/dvj/clevernote which uses the api to provide a command line interface to evernote. It converts the evernote markup to markdown, which is easy on the eyes, but still maintains the overall note structure.

I think there's a java implementation with similar goals.

Answer 4

Apologies for the self-post, but I've written a PHP script to try to address this exact shortcoming. It's called enex-dump. It will take an ENEX export and spit out a folder containing plain text files (any formatting/attachments get discarded). Command line usage is unfortunately required, but it should run on any platform that supports PHP, which is most of them.

https://github.com/panicsteve/enex-dump

Answer 5

I recommend you start by using the Export to HTML feature of Evernote. This obtains a directory full of HTML files, one per note.

On OSX, I then use textutil -convert txt and then pipe through uni2ascii to handle any unicode characters. On other operating systems, you can probably substitute Pandoc for textutil.

Answer 6

I found a simple way to convert Evernote notes to Text.

Just email the note(s) to your email client and then "save as" in text format.

You can even combine several notes in one email.

Of course, when you "save as" text format, you will lose any font formatting, images or file attachments, but the text of the note will all be there.

Answer 7

If you just want a text file then simply copy & paste. (CTRL + A to select all, CTRL + C to copy, CRTL + V to paste).