Moving from Evernote to Markdown files

Checked November 2026 against Evernote's export guide and help article, Yarle on GitHub and Obsidian's help. Coffee isn't affiliated with Evernote, Yarle or Obsidian.

Evernote doesn't export Markdown. Its desktop app exports ENEX, an XML file of your notes, and a converter turns that into Markdown files. The two free converters I can describe from their own documentation are Yarle and Obsidian's Importer plugin. So the move has two steps: export each notebook as an ENEX file, then convert.

Do it notebook by notebook. It suits how Evernote exports, and it keeps your notebooks apart when they arrive as folders.

Export from Evernote

Exporting needs the Evernote desktop app on a Mac or Windows. Evernote's help article says it can't be done on Evernote Web, and its export guide says the mobile apps are limited, so use the desktop app. You don't need a paid plan to export.

To export a whole notebook, as Obsidian's help describes it:

1. Go to the Notebooks screen.
2. Click More actions (•••) beside the notebook and choose Export Notebook.
3. Choose ENEX as the format.
4. Pick where to save the .enex file.

Repeat this for each notebook. You end up with one ENEX file per notebook, and that's what both converters expect.

To export only some notes, hold ⌘ and click each one, then choose File > Export and pick ENEX, as in Evernote's export guide.

The limits to know

Evernote's two pages don't quite agree on limits. Its help article says you can export up to 100 notes at a time, or entire notebooks. Its export guide says there's no strict limit and suggests breaking large volumes into batches. Either way, exporting by notebook avoids the question.

Two other things get lost, according to Obsidian's help:

• Stacks. An ENEX file holds one notebook and says nothing about the stack it was in.
• Tag hierarchy. Your tags come through, but not which tag sat under which.

Both can be worked around before you export, as below.

What ENEX does keep, according to Evernote's guide, is the note structure, tags and other metadata, and attachments, including embedded files and images.

Convert with Yarle

Yarle is an open source converter, MIT-licensed, made for exactly this. It has desktop apps for Mac (Apple silicon), Windows and Linux, and can also be run from the command line. You give it one ENEX file, or a folder of them for several notebooks, and it writes Markdown files.

From its README, it handles:

• Tags, optionally with a # in front, and nested tags written as parent/child
• Links between notes and to the web, code blocks, images, attachments and web clips
• Dates, with each file's timestamps set to match the original note
• Attachments, placed in a _resources folder so the notes' folder stays tidy
• Output shaped for Obsidian, Logseq and others, as well as plain Markdown

The part worth time is the template. Yarle's template guide lets you choose what goes at the top of each note: title, tags, created date, source URL and more. It includes a tags placeholder, {tags-array-block}{tags-array}{end-tags-array-block}, that it describes as compatible with Obsidian's YAML front matter. If you want your tags in front matter, which is where Coffee reads them, put that on a tags: line between two --- lines and turn off the option that adds # in front of each tag. Then check a converted note says something like tags: [work, planning].

One caution from the README: links across notebooks can convert wrongly when two notes have the same name. It suggests exporting a table of contents note with each notebook to reduce this.

Convert with Obsidian's Importer

Obsidian's Importer plugin reads ENEX files too. Obsidian is free and stores notes as Markdown files in a folder, so you can use it for the move and then open that folder in any editor.

1. Create a vault, which is just a folder.
2. In Settings, Community Plugins, install and enable Importer.
3. Open Importer and choose Evernote (.enex) as the file format.
4. Select your ENEX file.
5. Select Import to see the template and a preview of your notes, then Import again.

Two tricks from Obsidian's help make up for what ENEX loses:

• Keep a stack. Rename the ENEX file to Stack@@@Notebook, with your own names, and the notes land in a Stack/Notebook folder.
• Keep a tag hierarchy. In Evernote, before exporting, rename each child tag to Parent/Child.

Obsidian's Evernote page doesn't say how it handles attachments or links between notes, so check those in a test import.

Check the result

Convert one notebook first, ideally one with images, PDFs, tables, checklists and links to other notes. Then open some of the files in TextEdit, to see them as plain text, and look for:

• Attachments. Is each one a file in the export, and does its link in the note work?
• Links between notes. Do they point at files that exist?
• Tables and checklists. Are they still Markdown tables and - [ ] lists?
• Web clips. These are often the messiest. Decide whether each one is worth keeping as text, or better kept as a link to the page.
• Tags. Are they where your next editor reads them?

Keep your Evernote account until you've checked a sample from every notebook. Exporting doesn't delete anything.

Where Coffee comes in

Coffee has no Evernote importer and doesn't read ENEX files. Convert with one of the routes above, then choose the folder as your library when Coffee first asks, or later in Settings. Coffee reads .md, .markdown and .txt files where they are, and takes each note's title from its file name.

A few things in Coffee suit a library that's just arrived:

• Folders. Each notebook folder appears in the sidebar as it is on disk, with pinned notes, and each folder can be sorted by date modified, title or date created.
• Tags. Read from front matter only. Tags written as #work in the text stay as text.
• Links. [[wiki links]] between notes work, and are updated when you rename a note.
• Clean-up. Replace in All Notes (⌥⇧⌘F) finds text or a regular expression in every note, shows what each match becomes, and can undo the whole replace.
• History. Every note has version history, with each version saying what changed.

Coffee is a writing app, not a web clipper or a scanner, and it has no sync of its own. It runs only on a Mac with macOS 15 or later. You can try it for 14 days without a card, then it's €3 a month, €29 a year, or €79 once with two years of updates.

Questions

Can Evernote export to Markdown?

Not directly. Evernote's desktop app exports ENEX or HTML. A converter such as Yarle or Obsidian's Importer turns ENEX files into Markdown.

How many notes can I export from Evernote at once?

Evernote's help article says up to 100 notes at a time, or entire notebooks. Exporting notebook by notebook gets round the number.

Do my tags survive the move?

Yes, but the hierarchy doesn't, according to Obsidian's help. Rename child tags to Parent/Child in Evernote before exporting to keep it. Where the tags end up in each file depends on the converter's template.

What happens to attachments?

Evernote's guide says ENEX keeps attachments. Yarle puts them in a _resources folder beside the notes. Check a test conversion to see that the links work.

Does Coffee import Evernote notes?

No. Convert your ENEX files to Markdown first, then open the folder in Coffee.