Index Evernote Notes

DevonThink will now import Evernote notes quite handily. But instead of importing them into DevonThink, is it possible to have DevonThink index them?

Technically, you can. But, it is getting more difficult with every build of Evernote to make it work well. They keep moving stuff around, and the arrangement of folders is not as easy to navigate these days.

First, you have to find your database.
christopher-mayo.com/?p=135

Then, you have to point DEVONthink to it.

Then, you have to find your stuff, which is no easy matter when folders are named “DA340187-4F01-45BB-B9DF-42044FA42151.” But, it can be done, and at least your content is searchable. My recommendation, though, would be to export your stuff from Evernote as .html files on a regular basis into some folder on your drive and index THAT one, because then everything is named nicely for human eyes. There is probably an Apple script or Hazel rule you could set up for this. If you don’t need to put it into DT, just search with Spotlight.

The CloudHQ product from Salesforce.com will synchronize Evernote bi-directionally with various cloud storage services (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, Sugar Sync, Yandex). The local instance of the sync’d folders in your cloud service (your Dropbox, for example) can be indexed in DEVONthink.

Not free – the basic service is $99/year. But, it is backed by a company somewhat larger than DEVONthink that has a financial interest in preserving its monthly fees by keeping current on everyone’s APIs, so if the need for reliable sync is critical it might be a choice. CloudHQ does not have access to your data at rest, but it can see it in transit.

Just a thought. I don’t use CloudHQ for myself. My Evernote library tends to be static – notes go in but rarely get revised – so I don’t need updates to older notes and periodic incremental exports to DEVONthink are sufficient.

An alternative, if the OP is just looking for backups, is plugging in an external drive. They cost less than $100 for 1TB these days, they back up every hour, and they’ll catch every file change on your drive, not just Evernote. I’d recommend doing this as a precaution no matter what you are looking to do with Evernote.

Thanks everyone.
I’m just now trying to learn my away around DevonThink (and reading through Joe Kissell’s book “Take Control of Getting Started With DevonThink 2”) and it seems that–as a general rule–it would be better to let DevonThink “Index” notes and documents rather than “Import” them to avoid having two copies of each note or document. (I’m using a MacBook Air with a .5 GB solid state drive and am concerned about storage.) From your comments, though, it sounds that I would be better served importing the Evernote notes I need into DevonThink and index everything that exists elsewhere.

Even though this topic is eight months old I thought I’d toss in my two cents.

When I first tested indexing Evernote with DevonThink I thought, “Great, a simple way to marry my two most useful programs together without having to go through the effort of cleaning the redundancies and useless files from either (at least not right away).”

The problem: The initial index went fine, the problem came when I tried to update the index. No matter how many times I tried to update the index or start/restart both Evernote and DevonThink, DT wouldn’t recognize changes in the Evernote database.

I like Evernote and will continue to use it because I find it’s web clipper to be the best one available. In contrast to DT’s (which sometimes creates a clip with no data) Evernote clips consistently and I don’t feel like I have to verify each clipping every time I create one.

So if you’re thinking about using DT to index EN make sure that DT will update with the changes in the EN files. It didn’t work for me, but YMMV.

Um, duh and double duh. DT doesn’t index Evernote notes, it imports them. Please excuse my noob-dom. So DT is working as intend.

Now back to your regularly schedule programming…

Hi guys, just wanted to re up this thread to see if something new came up,
it would be really nice being able to index evernote notes, right now I basically have twice of the hd space needed taken by them (because of evernote database and devonthink import notes)

@salmone: Probably not going to happen. Evernote does not make it easy for others to have access to your data.