How to Migrate Your Evernote data to Microsoft’s OneNote

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Last month the popular note taking service Evernote announced that its free product, Evernote Basic, would be limited to two devices and the prices for Plus & Premium tiers increased by 40%. If you look for a free alternative to Evernote, Microsoft’s OneNote may be the closest option, which works on the web and other popular platform including Android, iOS, Mac OS. But how to migrate your Evernote notebooks to Microsoft’s OneNote? To help users make the switch, Microsoft released an official tool to move your Evernote data into OneNote (available for Windows 7 & later). This post will show you the detailed steps of using the tool. Let’s get started.

To make the move work, you need a PC running Windows 7 & later, the desktop version of Evernote installed on your computer, and the OneNote Importer tool downloaded from Microsoft. Now perform the steps to do the actual migration:

  • Sign in to Evernote with your Evernote account and be sure to sync latest notes.
  • Double click to run the importer program. When the Welcome screen opens, check the “I accept the terms of this agreement” box and click “Get started”.
  • As the importer scans out and display all the Evernote notebooks it finds, you can select one, some or all notebooks for the migration, and then click Next button.

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If you are using Evernote on the Web, you need to export your notes to an Evernote export (..enex)file, and import the data form that file instead. To do this, click the “Import a file instead” link in “Select Evernote content” window. Then click Choose File button to navigate to where you save the .enex file, select the file you want to import, and click Open button. After you specify the file, just click Next button.

After importing your Evernote data, you’ll need to sign in to your Microsoft account to import them to OneNote. Now do the next steps in the OneNote Importer window.

  • Select the Microsoft account you have to save your content to OneNote.
  • Enter your Microsoft email address and password, and click “Sign in” button.
  • Click Import button to begin the migration process. Then your Evernote notes will become pages in OneNote notebooks. You can also check the “Use Evernote tags to organize content in OneNote” box before pressing Import button, then the tags you add to your Evernote notebooks will be imported as sections within the notebooks.
  • Once the migration is completed, click “View notes in OneNote” to open OneNote.

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Notice: the Evernote data you import to OneNote will be kept in the Documents folder in your OneDrive account online instead of your local machine, which makes it easier to access your OneNote data on any device for which OneNote is available. A Microsoft OneNote Security Notice may display to warn you that the location may be unsafe. Just click Yes to continue since your OneDrive account is a trusted source.

Now a welcome note will be added to the first notebook in the list you import and you can see the note there. You can access them on any platform that OneNote supports.

If you have questions about using the OneNote Importer, see here.

Any help needed?