How to move from Evernote to markdown

Evernote’s export dialog does not produce markdown, so the move happens in three steps. Export your notebooks from the Evernote desktop app as .enex files. Run those files through a third-party converter such as Yarle, evernote2md, or Joplin. Then open the resulting folder of .md files in any markdown editor.

Expect a good conversion rather than a perfect one. Note text, headings, lists, and tags usually survive. Attachments and web clips are the two things you have to check by hand. Convert one small notebook first, look at what came out, then do the rest.

Step 1: Export your notebooks as ENEX

Export only works in the Evernote desktop app, not the web version. Select a notebook, right-click, and choose Export. Pick ENEX rather than HTML, because ENEX carries tags, dates, and attachment data that converters can read.

Select whole notebooks rather than individual notes. Note-by-note selection is capped, notebook export is not, and one file per notebook keeps the conversion easy to redo. Notebooks full of images produce large .enex files, which is rarely a problem, since converters take them one at a time.

Decrypt any encrypted note text inside Evernote before you export. Encrypted blocks do not convert, and you will not notice they are missing until much later.

Step 2: Choose a converter

Every option here is third-party. That is not a warning against them. It is a fact worth knowing before you hand one of them years of notes.

Tool	What it is	Worth knowing
Yarle	Open-source ENEX converter, desktop interface and command-line build	The most configurable. You control frontmatter, tag handling, and where attachments go
evernote2md	Small open-source command-line converter	Fast and simple, with few options. A good fit for text-heavy notebooks
Joplin	A note app that imports ENEX, then exports markdown plus files	Useful as a staging area if you would rather click than script
Obsidian Importer	Official Obsidian plugin that reads ENEX exports	The obvious choice if Obsidian is your destination

The command-line tools are quickest to try. Install evernote2md with Go, or download a binary from its GitHub releases page, then point it at one file and an output directory:

go install github.com/wormi4ok/evernote2md@latest
evernote2md MyNotebook.enex ./converted/MyNotebook

Convert your smallest notebook first, then open five or six of the results, including one with an image and one with a table. Decide there whether the output is good enough for the remaining thousands.

Step 3: Check attachments and web clips

This is the manual part. Skip it and the problems surface after you have cancelled, when the .enex files are your only recourse.

Your converter pulls attachments out of the ENEX file and writes them next to your notes, usually in a resources or _resources folder. Check that the markdown links point at those files, that PDFs and images open, and that files with duplicate names were not overwritten.

For a folder too big to check by eye, list the image targets and test whether each one exists:

cd converted/MyNotebook
rg -o --no-filename --replace '$1' '!\[[^\]]*\]\(([^)]+)\)' -g '*.md' \
  | sort -u \
  | while read -r target; do [ -e "$target" ] || echo "missing: $target"; done

Image links are relative to the note that holds them, so run that inside one notebook folder at a time.

Web clips are the messier problem. Anything captured with the Evernote Web Clipper started life as a full web page. Conversion gives you either long markdown full of leftover formatting or a stripped version that lost the layout. Fix the handful of clips you actually reread, and accept that the rest are searchable text rather than faithful copies.

What does not come across

ENEX carries notes, not the structure around them. Anything Evernote kept on its servers stays behind.

What you lose	What to do about it
Search inside images and scanned PDFs, which Evernote ran on its servers	Rename image files descriptively, or type a line of context under each
Reminders and Tasks	Move them into your calendar or task app before you cancel
Note history, since ENEX holds only the current version	Nothing. Take the last export as your baseline
Saved searches and notebook stacks	Rebuild them as folders and saved queries in the new app
Internal links using the evernote:/// scheme	Rewrite them as ordinary markdown links, covered in step 4
Shared notebook links other people are using	Tell those people before the links stop working

The image search is the one that stings. Nothing in the markdown world replaces it, and a scanned receipt is only a picture once it lands in a folder.

Step 4: Shape the folder and fix the links

You now have a folder of plain markdown files. Give it the shape you want before you get used to the shape the converter chose. Most people keep one folder per Evernote notebook, and this is the moment to delete the ones you kept only because deleting felt risky.

Leave tags alone at first. Most converters already write Evernote tags into YAML frontmatter, so confirm the format matches what your new app expects rather than redoing the work.

Broken internal links need a decision. Standard relative links like [Project plan](Project-plan.md) work in every markdown tool. Wikilinks like [[Project plan]] are shorter and give you backlinks, but only some apps resolve them, Obsidian and Jotura among them. Choose relative links for maximum portability, wikilinks if you have already settled on an app that reads them.

Step 5: Pick a markdown app

Because the output is ordinary files in an ordinary folder, you can open it with anything: Obsidian, Joplin, Typora, VS Code, or your operating system’s text editor. Nothing about the folder is locked to one app, which is most of the point of moving.

Jotura is worth a look if you want a WYSIWYG editor with a source toggle on top of the folder you just created. It is free for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android, with no iOS app, and it opens an existing Obsidian vault as it stands. Text-bearing PDFs, Word files, and spreadsheets get searchable markdown mirrors, which helps with the attachments your export dropped beside your notes.

Two limits matter for this migration. Jotura has no ENEX importer, so you still convert with a tool from step 2 and open the folder afterwards. There is no web clipper either, so if clipping articles is why you used Evernote, that habit needs a different tool. Beyond that, there are no plugins, no graph view, no canvas, and no publishing to the web, and the code is closed source.

If you want a plugin ecosystem, Obsidian is the better answer. If you want open source with a built-in ENEX importer, Joplin already did the conversion for you in step 2, and how the two compare is a separate question.

Step 6: Sort out sync and backups

Your notes are files now, so any file sync works. Syncthing, iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or a Git repository will each carry a markdown folder between machines, at the cost of resolving the occasional conflict yourself.

If you want sync built for notes, Jotura Sync is £4 a month or £40 a year, with no free trial. It is end-to-end encrypted, so the server holds no plaintext, no file names, and no keys. Version history goes back three years with attribution, and encrypted sharing works when the person on the other end also has Sync.

Leaving Evernote for good

Keep the original .enex files somewhere safe, on a drive and in one backup. They are the only complete record of what Evernote held.

Before you cancel, open a sample of converted notes from every notebook, confirm the attachments open, and read a few web clips. Move reminders and tasks into whatever you actually use, and warn anyone holding a shared notebook link. Export is free, and so is waiting a month.

Frequently asked questions

Can Evernote export markdown directly? No. The desktop export dialog offers ENEX and HTML, and single notes can be saved as PDF. Markdown always comes from a converter afterwards.

Do I have to use the command line? No. Yarle has a desktop interface, and Joplin imports ENEX and exports markdown entirely through menus.

How long does this take? The conversion runs in minutes. Reviewing web clips and attachments takes an evening, and that is the part worth doing.