Evernote to Markdown: A Migration Guide That Actually Works

Evernote exports are recoverable, not clean. Plan for a conversion with checks rather than a one-click move.

Step 1: export ENEX, not HTML

In Evernote, select a notebook, then File, Export Notes, and choose ENEX. HTML export loses tags and creation dates; ENEX keeps them.

Export one notebook first. The whole point of this step is discovering what your particular notes do before you commit to the full set.

Step 2: convert

Yarle is the tool most people end up using. It is free, open source, and built specifically for this. It gives you .md files, keeps attachments in folders alongside, and can preserve tags as frontmatter and creation dates as metadata.

Pandoc works too and gives you finer control over the markdown flavour, but you will handle attachments yourself.

Configure Yarle to keep tags as frontmatter and creation dates, because both are hard to reconstruct later and easy to preserve now.

Step 3: check the conversion before trusting it

Open ten notes at random, deliberately chosen to be awkward:

• One with a table
• One with an inline image
• One with an attachment
• One clipped from the web
• One with a checklist
• One in a language other than English
• The oldest note you have

You are checking whether the content is there, not whether the formatting is perfect.

What converts reliably

• Headings, paragraphs, bold, italic, lists
• Links, both internal and external
• Inline images
• Checklists, as markdown task lists
• Tags, as frontmatter
• Creation and modification dates

What does not

• Complex nested tables. Markdown tables are simple by design.
• Web clips with heavy layout. They arrive as text, having lost the styling.
• Handwriting and scanned-document text layers.
• Reminders, saved searches, and Evernote-specific structure.

Step 4: decide the folder structure now

Your Evernote notebooks became folders. This is the one moment where you can reorganise cheaply, before anything links to anything.

Two things worth knowing:

• Tags beat folders for anything that belongs in two places. A note can carry several tags but lives in one folder. Markdown frontmatter supports tags, and most apps read them.
• Flat is usually better than deep. Search is faster than navigation once you have more than a few hundred notes.

Step 5: open the folder, do not import it

Point a markdown app at the folder rather than importing into another database, otherwise you have swapped one lock-in for another.

Apps that read a folder in place: Obsidian, iA Writer, Typora, TypeFire. Before you pick, check whether it rewrites files on save , right after a conversion is exactly when you would not spot it.

Step 6: do not cancel yet

Keep Evernote for a month, read-only. You will discover what you miss, and re-exporting a notebook is trivial while the account exists and impossible afterwards.

What you gain

Files you own, that open in any editor, that Spotlight indexes, that your backup already covers, with no account and no plan tier. Most people also notice things simply open faster.