Sunday, September 28, 2025

Collaborating in Genealogy back up your Evernote

Something important - you can only back up one folder at a time for the simple method #1. This is why it is good to keep as few folders as possible. I have 50 folders and so it is just too tedious for me to back them up one at a time. So I just don't back up. I just wing it.

There are several ways to back up your Evernote notes, depending on how thorough you want the backup to be and how you’d like to use it later:

1. Export Notes from the Evernote App

On desktop (Windows or Mac):
1. Open Evernote and select the notes or notebook you want to back up.
2. Go to File → Export Notes….
3. Choose one of these formats:
  - ENEX (.enex) – Evernote’s own export format; keeps text, images, tags, and attachments, and can be re-imported into Evernote.
  - HTML (.html) – readable in any browser, but won’t re-import cleanly into Evernote.
  - MHT (.mht) (Windows only) – a single web archive file.
This is the most direct way to create backups you can re-import later.

2. Back Up the Entire Evernote Database

On Windows: Evernote stores data in C:\Users\[YourName]\Evernote\Databases\. Copy this folder to another drive or cloud storage.
On Mac: The data is usually in ~/Library/Application Support/Evernote/.
This creates a full local backup, but you’ll need Evernote to read it.

3. Use Evernote Web + Cloud Backups

If you log into Evernote Web, you’ll always have a copy in the cloud.
To be extra safe, you can regularly export your notes and store them in Dropbox, Google Drive, or another cloud service.

4. Third-Party Tools

Some tools can automatically sync or export Evernote data (e.g., Backupery for Evernote on Windows).
These can automate regular backups to ENEX or HTML.

5. PDF Backup (for Archival / Sharing)

For long-term preservation, especially genealogy or historical notes, you can export or print individual notes/notebooks as PDFs.
PDF is easy to read and archive but won’t re-import well into Evernote.

👉 If your goal is safety + future portability, I’d recommend doing both:

Export important notebooks as ENEX (so you can restore them to Evernote).
Also export or print as PDF/HTML for long-term readability outside Evernote.

Perfect — here’s a step-by-step guide to set up automatic Evernote backups so you don’t have to think about it:

🔄 Automating Evernote Backups

Option 1: Scheduled Manual Export (Easy, Built-In)

This keeps control in your hands but uses your OS scheduler.

On Windows

Open Evernote desktop app.
Select the notebook(s) you want → File → Export Notes….
Save as ENEX to a folder like C:\Backups\Evernote\.

Create a batch file (.bat) with this command (replace path):

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Evernote\Evernote\Evernote.exe" /export "C:\Backups\Evernote\backup.enex"

Use Task Scheduler (built into Windows) to run this .bat file weekly.

On Mac

Export notes manually once as .enex to ~/Documents/Evernote Backups/.
Create an Automator workflow that repeats this export.
Use Calendar app or launchd to run it weekly.

Option 2: Use Third-Party Backup Tool (Easiest)

If you don’t want to tinker with scripts:

Backupery for Evernote (Windows only): Runs in the background, exports ENEX or HTML automatically (daily/weekly).
Evernote2Onenote / Evernote2Markdown: If you also want to keep backups outside Evernote’s ecosystem.

Option 3: Cloud Sync Safety Net

Even if you forget exports, you can:

Store your Evernote database folder (Windows or Mac) inside Dropbox / Google Drive / OneDrive.
Cloud service automatically keeps old versions in case you delete something.

Option 4: PDF / HTML Archival Copies

For genealogy & historical notes you want permanent readability:

Export as HTML or Print to PDF.
Save to a “Permanent Archive” folder in your cloud storage.
Run a weekly/monthly sync tool (e.g., FreeFileSync, GoodSync, or built-in OS sync).

✅ Suggested Setup for You

Since you care about long-term preservation & genealogy, I’d recommend:

Weekly automatic ENEX backup (to restore in Evernote if needed).
Monthly HTML/PDF archive (so it’s readable 50 years from now).
Store both in Dropbox/Google Drive/Archive.org folder for offsite safety.

Collaborating in Geneaology - Ancestry.com

Sharing your tree: I don't think people really understand this, but you can share your ancestry.com tree without people being allowed to edit.

Thursday, September 25, 2025

Collaborating in Genealogy

I have a folder of public domain books. I share the folder with one other person. They have a personal (paid) Evernote account. (I can only share with paid accounts because their free trial only allows you to have 50 notes and my book folder has 450 notes)

Yes, it would be possible for people to request they see 50 specific books I have saved but I don’t have time for that.

For my example here I am going to say that Catherine shares a folder of books in pdf form with Mary. Both Catherine and Mary have paid Evernote accounts.

Some tips to make sharing Evernote easier:

TAGS

Tags are immensely useful! Use them!

A problem I see right off the bat is that when Catherine shared a folder with Mary all of Catherine’s tags could not be seen on Mary’s Evernote. This really sucks. But we have to just roll with it. Mary can start fresh. For example, she can choose her most important research targets, search that word and then do this: For example, search for Cockacoeske in the book folder. It will come up with a list. Maybe 25? Click the first note.

Then scroll down to the bottom of the list and hold the Shift button down and click the last note in the list. This will select all 25 notes.

A menu will pop up on the bottom of your screen, click the tags icon

Now add any tags that are going to help you find this group of notes again.

Web clipper: I suggest that Mary downloads the Evernote Webclipper extension. It will save a webpage directly to your Evernote. I have a notebook titled “inbox” and I designated that as my default notebook in the Web Clipper settings. Everything is saved in that folder. I use this about ten times a day!

With your Evernote account you get an email address where you can cc or forward any email and it will go in your Evernote automatically. This is what it will look like. Let's say, for example, Evernote gave you the email xyz@evernote.com for this purpose (find your special email address in your Evernote settings). You want it to go into a folder named “Spokane” (create that folder first!) and how you do that is you write @Spokane in the subject line.

You can also forward old emails using the same method.

A great use for this: say you are having conversations about family history with your great aunt Pearl. Teach her how to do this and ALL her emails will go into the designated folder.

Just a quick note about my Books folder: most of the books are public domain and fine to share, but a few journal articles are recent and still under copyright. Because of that, I can’t make the folder widely available.

Right now I’m only sharing it with one person since she understands she can’t repost or redistribute those articles. If you share your own folders, it’s good to make sure everyone knows the same ground rules.

Some glitches with Evernote:

Sometimes when you try to delete an image it deletes the whole note. You have to go to “trash” and restore the note
I have had a couple of books that were too large of a file for Evernote Desktop and it crashes Windows. What needs to be done then is to go to the web version of your Evernote and delete the note. Replace with a new note with just a link to the book and an explanation about what happened. I have only had this happen twice so far. One was “Wilderness Road”
In the past sometimes I would share a link to an Evernote note and when the user tried to see it, it required that they log in to Evernote. This is a bug. You do not need to have an Evernote account to see a shared note. This is a known issue. Hopefully it is fixed, I haven’t had it happen in a while.

Uploading a pdf to Evernote:

Go to the folder you want to upload to
From the dropdown menu choose “attachment”