Evernote managed to freak out a good share of it’s users today when they instigated a global password reset … with no warning!
The reason given was a breach of Evernote’s security, you can read the details on the Evernote blog.
Whether it is good policy to do this or not was secondary to the many thousands of users affected by the decision whose first thought was along the lines of “What if I lost access to all my Evernote data?”
Well I backup all my Evernote data every day to offline storage so in the event of a complete meltdown I’m only ever one day behind in my backups. It’s actually pretty easy to do and here’s how:
Navigate to the "All Notes" View
Navigate to the All Notes view by selecting View > Show All Notes from the menu or use the Shift & Command & A shortcut key.
The "All Notes" View
Ensuring you are in "All Notes" view (1) select all the notes:
- Via the Edit > Select All menu or
- The Command & A shortcut key (Control & A on Windows)
Selected notes have a blue border per (2)
A summary view is displayed of all the notes selected. This is shown in the notes pane too (3)
Export the Notes
Select File > Export Notes… from the menu
Export Selected Notes
Specify a file name and location in the Save As dialog box
Click Save
Export Complete
The Export process is very fast and once the export is complete a dialog box will be displayed to inform you the task is finished.
The ENEX File
The exported notes are contained in an ENEX file that can be imported back into Evernote or other applictions that support the ENEX format such as JustNotes
JustNotes
I use JustNotes to test the integrity of my ENEX files.
It’s a simple matter of selecting FIle > Import from the JustNotes menu and importing the ENEX file. That way I can be certain in the event Evernote fails I can still read my notes.
Elaine,
Do the files exported contain any embedded documents stored within the Evernote Note, such as PDF’s etc etc?
Yes they do. Everything that is in the original note is preserved including the tags. There’s a full description in the image above in the “Export Selected Notes” step.
I have just over 3,000 notes, about 10% of them have large attachments (25MB+) and the backup takes less than 90 seconds.
I use Evernote in the same way I would a normal paper based notebook. I don’t store anything in there that I can’t afford to lose.
I’m still a big fan of DevonThinkPro Office and use that a my secure notes repository.
Good way to work and that’s how I used Evernote for about 4 years but recently I’ve expanded the range of content I keep in there. Still nothing that I couldn’t afford to lose access to but making frequent backups I don’t tend to work about that anyway.
I extended what I used Evernote for because the portability of transient notes has become much more important over the past couple of years and I don’t want to have to stop and think about where my data is stored before I can access it.
I still use DEVONthink Pro Office for the majority of my digital filing/scanning and I certainly don’t keep sensitive information in Evernote. Couldn’t live without DTPO’s fabulous search options!
Great article Elaine!
I just did a test run of JustNotes. While I’m thrilled to have a backup of my textual notes (that doesn’t rely on the Evernote software), I was wondering how you back up attachments that you have stored in Evernote (pdfs, jpgs, etc). Also, what about web clippings? JustNotes doesn’t seem to even have the URL of a clipped note.
Thoughts?
Excellent question!
After a little testing it seems the best way is to create a HTML export of your data which creates a folder structure that contains all your images and attachments. I’ve detailed the process in a separate post: https://elainegiles.co.uk/back-up-your-evernote-notes-with-attachments/
Hope it helps!