Manual method
Export Evernote notebooks as ENEX for migration and HTML for browsing.
- Use Evernote for Mac or Windows and let the selected notebooks synchronize.
- Select a notebook or up to 100 notes, right-click and choose Export.
- Choose ENEX or HTML; include the metadata attributes you need.
- Export each notebook separately and preserve HTML resource folders alongside their pages.
Coverage and limitations: The documented export requires the desktop app; the web app cannot do it. Entire notebooks can be exported beyond the selected-note limit. ENEX and HTML serve different purposes; neither should be assumed to recreate every account setting.
Size and time to allow
Illustrative small / central / large case: 0.1 / 5 / 100 GB (decimal GB). These are planning assumptions, not a measured average per person. 5 GB models a long-running notes collection with many scanned receipts and PDFs; plain notes are much smaller.
Preparation: Local generation after synchronization. Estimate several minutes per large notebook; initial attachment sync may take substantially longer.
For the central 5 GB example, network transfer alone is approximately:
| Connection | Estimated transfer |
|---|---|
| 10 Mbps | 1.6 hours |
| 50 Mbps | 19.0 minutes |
| 100 Mbps | 9.5 minutes |
Assumes 70% sustained use of the stated connection. Provider throttling, many small files, retries, local extraction and copying add time. For online backup use your upload speed. These are not estimates of the provider’s preparation queue. See calculation and large-file advice.
Store and verify the archive
An encrypted external drive is a practical main archive; a USB key can carry a copy if it has sufficient free space. Keep an additional encrypted copy on another device or private online backup, outside the source account’s sync folder.
Create evernote/YYYY-MM-DD/originals/, preserve the untouched download, and extract a separate working copy when needed. Allow extra free space for archive plus extraction; compressed text can expand far beyond twice its size. Record account/scope, export date, date coverage and missing items in a local README without passwords.
Check tags, created dates, PDF attachments and representative notebook contents. Keep the original ENEX even if you migrate successfully. Reopen a sample from the second copy before deleting or replacing any source. Storage choices and verification.
Sources and review
Public documentation was reviewed on 27 October 2026. No signed-in export or restoration was performed. Account options and availability can change; follow the current provider instructions.