It took the better part of an afternoon, and a year or two of considering the move, but today I exported everything out of Evernote and imported into Apple Notes.
My paid Evernote subscription was set to renew today and so I decided to cancel it, save $70 and move to a different note-taking app.
After more than 13 years as an avowed Evernote user and fan, this was no small exercise — and that was the problem.
I had shoved so much stuff into Evernote — oddly enough, I think that’s the best way to use it — but had also save many of these items elsewhere: in Outlook and Gmail archives and, to a lesser degree, Apple Notes. The downside was that some of the notes were just different enough that I wasn’t sure which one was the most current and accurate version. Nightmare.
Also, a lot of what I saved were PDFs of documents and things that were better saved (and, ahem, many already were) on my computer and in the cloud. Having three competing versions of stuff is neither wise nor efficient.
So, a looming renewal deadline and bad data management habits resulted a tedious afternoon — but worth it!
No, Apple Notes is not as full featured as Evernote, but it’s already on all my devices and it doesn’t cost me anything … other than a few hours spent exporting and importing.
I’ve been dabbling in notes apps seemingly forever and today I’m finally committing to Apple Notes.
If things don’t work out, I can always go back to Evernote. And if I do, I will be more selective in what I save, and where.
Mike McClary 