Evernote → Google Drive migration tool (preserves notes, media, and structure)

A simple tool to migrate Evernote notes to Google Drive or a local folder tree, preserving structure, timestamps, and embedded media.

Not a sync tool. Run it once to migrate, then you're done.

Features

• Mirrors your Stack / Notebook / Note hierarchy in Google Drive or on disk
• Two output modes — Google Drive (Google Docs) or local (.docx)
• Smart per-note layout — text-only → single doc · single attachment → raw file · mixed → doc + numbered siblings
• Formatting preserved — headings, bold/italic, tables, lists, checkboxes, font sizes and colors
• Inline image embedding — JPEG/PNG/GIF/TIFF/BMP
• Inter-note links — links between notes are preserved
• Web clips — rendered as "Reader view" PDFs
• Resume-safe — interrupted runs pick up where they left off
• Analyze mode — pre-flight inspection: analyze an export for note counts, tag census, MIME breakdown, and more.

Platform support

macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Overview

1. Export your Evernote data

2. Install the package

3. Migrate

Setup

Export your Evernote data

The tool takes a directory of .enex files as its input — one file per notebook. Notebooks that belong to a stack should be grouped inside a subdirectory named after the stack; the tool uses that folder structure to reconstruct your stack hierarchy at the destination.

Recommended — evernote-backup (whole account, resumable, stack-aware):

pipx install evernote-backup
evernote-backup init-db
evernote-backup sync
evernote-backup export ./export

This produces an ./export/ tree where stack-named subdirectories contain one .enex per notebook — exactly the layout evernote-to-gdrive expects. See the evernote-backup docs for more details.

Alternative — Evernote's built-in export: Right-click a notebook → Export Notes → .enex. Only practical for a small number of notebooks. Drop the files into a folder and pass that as input.

You can pass either a directory of .enex files (optionally grouped into stack-named subdirectories) or a single .enex file.

Install

Two options — pick one.

Option 1: Standalone binary (no Python required)

Pre-built single-file binaries for macOS, Windows, and Linux can be found here. Download the archive for your OS and extract it — you'll get a single evernote-to-gdrive executable.

# macOS / Linux
tar -xzf evernote-to-gdrive-*.tar.gz
chmod +x evernote-to-gdrive
./evernote-to-gdrive install-browsers   # only needed for web clips

On macOS, if you get a "cannot be verified" error - remove the quarantine attribute:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./evernote-to-gdrive

On Windows, unzip the archive, then from that folder:

.\evernote-to-gdrive.exe install-browsers   # only needed for web clips

Option 2: pipx (requires Python 3.10+)

pipx install evernote-to-gdrive
evernote-to-gdrive install-browsers

You can skip the install-browsers command if you don't have web clips in your evernote.

If you don't have pipx yet:

pip install pipx
python -m pipx ensurepath

Then restart your terminal.

Usage

Once you have your .enex export:

Inspect before migrating:

This is optional, but always a good first step

evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export --all

Migrate to Google Drive:

By default, the tool will migrate your notes to Google Drive.

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export

Notes are created under a folder called Evernote Migration in your My Drive. Use --dest to choose a different location.

Notes:

• This tool can only access folders and files it created itself. In gdrive mode, if you run --dest a/b and a folder named a already exists in My Drive but was created outside this tool, the tool cannot reuse it and will create its own a folder instead.

• On the first gdrive run, the tool opens your browser and asks for Google Drive permission.

  • If Google shows an unverified-app warning, click Continue.
  • On the permissions screen, approve the requested Google Drive access and click Continue.

Migration time — gdrive mode is throttled to ~3 Drive API writes/second. Actual duration depends on note count, attachment sizes, and network speed. As a rough reference, ~1,000 notes take about 1 hour. Local mode is much faster: less than a minute for 1,000 notes.

Migrate to a local folder (no Google account needed):

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --output local

Files are written to an Evernote Migration folder in the current directory. Use --dest to choose a different path.

Migrate a subset:

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --notebook "Recipes"
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --stack "Work" --stack "Personal"

Output

Folder structure

The destination mirrors your Evernote Stack → Notebook → Note hierarchy. Notebooks that belong to a stack live inside a folder named after the stack; notebooks without a stack sit directly under the destination root. The root is a folder in My Drive in gdrive mode, or a directory on disk in local mode — in both cases controlled by --dest (default: Evernote Migration).

Within each notebook folder, every note becomes one or more files according to the rules in the next section. A concrete example:

Evernote Migration/                   ← destination root (--dest)
├── World Cuisines/                   ← stack folder
│   ├── Italian/                      ← notebook inside the stack
│   │   ├── Pasta Basics              ← text-only note → single doc
│   │   ├── Pasta Shapes.pdf          ← attachment-only, single file → raw file
│   │   ├── Homemade Tagliatelle      ← text + inline images → single doc (images embedded)
│   │   ├── Ragù Bolognese_0          ← text + non-image attachments → doc ...
│   │   ├── Ragù Bolognese_1.pdf      ← ... + numbered sibling file
│   │   └── Ragù Bolognese_2.mp4      ← ... + numbered sibling file
│   └── Japanese/                     ← another notebook in the same stack
│       └── Dashi Stock
├── Baking/                           ← another stack
│   └── Breads/
│       ├── Sourdough Starter
│       └── Focaccia
└── Kitchen Basics/                   ← notebook with no stack (directly under root)
    └── Pantry Essentials

In gdrive mode, docs are Google Docs (no file extension shown above). In local mode, the same docs are written as .docx files (Pasta Basics.docx, Ragù Bolognese_0.docx, …).

Note-to-File conversion

Each note is migrated as one or more files depending on its content:

Images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP) are always embedded in the document. Other image formats (WebP, SVG, etc.) and non-image attachments (PDFs, audio, etc.) are written as separate sibling files alongside the document — except for the last case above, where --attachments files skips creating the links document entirely.

Tags

Tags are preserved differently depending on the output mode:

• Gdrive mode — written into the Drive file's description field (alongside Created:, Updated:, and source URL), not into the document body. The same description is also set on sibling attachment files.
• Local mode — written as a [tag:Foo, tag:Bar] line at the top of the document body. Not present on raw attachment files or sibling files.

To omit tags from the output entirely:

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --no-tags

Note timestamps

Gdrive mode — the Drive API does not allow setting a file's creation time. The tool sets the Drive's modifiedTime to either the note's updated or created time, depending on the --gdrive-modified flag (default created):

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --gdrive-modified created   # default: note's original creation date
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --gdrive-modified updated   # note's last-modified date

Both Created: and Updated: are written into the file's description field

Local mode — file mtime (modified time) is set to the note's updated (falling back to created). On macOS and Windows the file's birth/creation time is also set to the note's created; on Linux only mtime is set. Applies to the main document, raw single-file attachments, and all sibling files.

Source URL

When a note has a source URL (set by the Evernote Web Clipper, or manually), it is written as the first line of the generated PDF file. In gdrive mode it is also written into the Drive file's description field (alongside Created:, Updated:, and tags).

RTL language support

Notes written in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left scripts are rendered with correct text direction in both gdrive and local output.

What you keep / what you lose

Most Evernote content migrates cleanly, including notebook structure, note body content, formatting, attachments, timestamps, and links between notes when they can be matched.

There are a few limitations to be aware of:

• Tags - are stored in the file Description (gdrive) and as the first line in docx (local).
• Metadata - Author and geolocation, Tasks and Reminders - not preserved.
• Encrypted Evernote content - removed during migration.
• External image URLs - Some web clips may reference external image URLs that are not embedded in the export. When that happens, those images cannot be preserved.
• Inter-note links - links are matched by note title. If the target note cannot be matched by title, the link will remain unresolved. This can happen if the linked note was renamed after the link was created.
• Images limit (gdrive) - Google Docs is limited to 100 embedded images per note. Any images after the 100th are skipped with a warning. Local mode does not have this limit.
• Timestamps - see here

Web clips:
Web clips are converted into a clean reading view, so their layout may differ from how they looked in Evernote.

Analyze

analyze inspects your .enex export without uploading anything — useful for gauging scope and spotting issues before migrating. Default (no flags) prints a summary table. Combine any of the flags below; sections print in the order you list them.

Example flags:

evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export                              # summary (default)
evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export --all                        # every report
evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export --report-counts              # note counts per notebook
evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export --list-dups                  # notes with duplicate titles
evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export --findnote "Carbonara"       # which notebook has a note
evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export --all --write-csv ./reports  # write output to csv files

See the Reference section below for the full reference.

Advanced

Filtering partial migrations

--stack, --notebook, and --note are repeatable and composable:

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --stack "Work"
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --notebook "Recipes" --notebook "Travel"
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --notebook "Recipes" --note "Pasta Carbonara"

Useful for incremental runs or for re-migrating a single notebook after a change.

Resume and force re-export

By default the tool never re-uploads a note that already exists at the destination — so interrupted runs will skip all existing files . To override:

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --force

Duplicate note titles

Evernote can have two notes with the same title in a notebook. Both are migrated — neither is skipped:

• Local mode — the second, third, … get (2), (3), … appended to the filename to stay unique on disk.
• Gdrive mode — all copies keep the original name. Google Drive allows multiple files with the same name in the same folder, which matches how Evernote itself treats duplicates.

To see notes with same title before running a migration:

evernote-to-gdrive analyze ./export --list-dups

Web clips

The original page's URL is added as a source bar at the top of the PDF (along with the date it was saved), so you can always jump back to the source.

Notes that originated from a web clip are run through a Readability.js + headless Chromium pipeline to produce a clean, "Reader View"-style PDF — similar to Chrome or Safari Reader View. Because the page is re-flowed rather than reproduced verbatim, the result will not look exactly like what Evernote displayed — layout, fonts, and non-article chrome are intentionally discarded in favor of a readable article view.

Requires the install-browsers command (see Install).

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --web-clip pdf          # default
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --web-clip doc          # Google Doc or .docx instead
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --clip-theme dark       # PDF will be in dark theme

Inter-note links

Links between notes are preserved in both output modes.

• Matching is title-based — notes that were after a link was created will fail,to resolve.
• Unresolved links appear as [link to "title" not resolved], warnings printed to the console.
• Two-pass approach — pass 1 migrates all notes, pass 2 rewrites the links. Inter-note links only become live after pass 2 completes.
• Filtered runs (--note, --notebook) will not resolve links to notes that are not part of this run.
• Gdrive mode — links become clickable Google Doc or Drive file URLs.
• Local mode — links become relative paths between .docx files, clickable in Word/LibreOffice. Moving the entire output folder preserves them; uploading an individual .docx to Google Drive does not.

To opt out:

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --skip-note-links

Attachments policy

Applies only to notes that contain multiple non-image attachments and no text. By default a document is created with links to the sibling files. To skip that document and output only the raw files:

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --attachments files

Logging

evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --log-file migration.csv   # per-note CSV log
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --verbose                  # per-note lines printed

Custom credentials location

By default the first gdrive run stores credentials in the current working directory. Use --secrets-folder to point to a different directory:

evernote-to-gdrive auth    --secrets-folder /path/to/creds
evernote-to-gdrive migrate ./export --secrets-folder /path/to/creds

Most users should not need a manual setup for client_secrets.json . If the bundled auth flow does not work for your environment, a manual setup guide is available at docs/google-credentials-setup.md.

Reference

Type evernote-to-gdrive <command> --help to get the same reference below.

Commands

INPUT is a path to a single .enex file or to a folder containing .enex files (optionally grouped into stack-named subdirectories).

auth options

Authenticate with Google and save token.json.

install-browsers

Install Chromium for web clip PDF rendering.

Requires no flags.

migrate options

Migrate Evernote notes to Google Drive (gdrive) or a local folder (local).

Destinations

Filtering

Content handling

Run control

analyze options

Inspect .enex files and report statistics (no upload).

Summary reports

List reports

Lookup

Shortcuts

Getting help

If you found a bug or have a feature request, please open a new issue.

If you have a question about the tool or have difficulty using it, you are welcome to the discussions page.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.