enex2paperless

Description

CLI tool to help migrate attachements from Evernote notes to Paperless-NGX. It parses ENEX files and uses the Paperless API to upload the contents.

I've been using Evernote as a filing cabinet with mostly notes containing a single PDF file and various tags. This tool is specifically built to ingest these types of notes from Evernote to Paperless.

What it does:

• Go through an ENEX file, looking for notes containing allowed file types.
• Extract those files and upload them to Paperless

It will recreate the same tags and note title as they were in Evernote.

What it doesn't do:

It will not convert ALL your existing notes. Notes without allowed attachements will be ignored.

How To Use

Usage:
  enex2paperless [file path] [flags]

Flags:
  -c, --concurrent int        Number of concurrent consumers (default 1)
  -h, --help                  help for enex2paperless
  -n, --nocolor               Disable colored output
  -o, --outputfolder string   Output attachements to this folder, NOT paperless.
  -t, --tags strings          Additional tags to add to all documents.
  -T, --use-filename-tag      Add the ENEX filename as tag to all documents.
  -v, --verbose               Enable verbose logging

Example using Windows

• Export your Notes from Evernote to an ENEX file, e.g. MyEnexFile.enex

• Download enex2paperless.zip from Releases.

• Extract files to the same location as your ENEX file.

• Edit config.yaml and add your personal information. This depends on your installation of Paperless:

PaperlessAPI: http://paperboy.lan:8000
Username: user
Password: pass
Token: 
FileTypes:
  - pdf
  - txt
  - jpeg
  - png
  - webp
  - gif
  - tiff
  - zip

To authenticate against Paperless, you can either use a token or a username/password combination. Don't configure both variations at the same time.

• Open cmd.exe
• Navigate to the folder where you extracted the files, e.g.: cd C:\Users\JohnDoe\Desktop
• Run enex2paperless:

enex2paperless MyEnexFile.enex

Additional Configuration Options

1. Allowed FileTypes

You can select which file types should be processed. The MIME type of the Evernote attachements will be compared with the configured file types. If there's no match, the attachement will be ignored. This avoids trying to upload unwanted or unsupported filetypes.

If you want to upload any attachements, regardless, then you can include any in the list of filetypes, like this:

FileTypes:
  - any

If zip files are allowed, they will get extracted and the contents will be processed individually.

2. Multiple Concurrent Uploads

The tool is capable of handling multiple uploads concurrently. By default it will process the attachements one by one. You can use the -c flag to configure multiple workers, like this:

enex2paperless.exe MyEnexFile.enex -c 3

Attention: Depending on your Paperless installation, it might not be able to handle multiple requests at the same time efficiently. In that case, using multiple concurrent uploads would only slow down the process instead of speeding it up.

3. Output To Folder

Optionally it is possible to output all attachements to a specific folder, as opposed to uploading them to Paperless. If you want to use Enex2Paperless in that mode, then you have to provide a foldername:

enex2paperless.exe MyEnexFile.enex -o myfoldername

This disables uploads to Paperless and only outputs files to your provided folder. If zip files are allowed, this will create a subfolder for each zip file, named after the zip file (without the .zip extension), and extract its contents there.

4. Additional Tags / Filename As Tag

You can add additional tags to all files being processed using the -t flag and a comma separated list of strings:

enex2paperless.exe MyEnexFile.enex -t migration2024,taxes,important

If you set the -T flag, the ENEX filename (without extension) will be used as an additional tag:

enex2paperless.exe MyEnexFile.enex -T

This will add "MyEnexFile" as a tag to all processed files.

If you use neither the -t or -T flags, no additional tags will be added, and only the original Evernote tags will be preserved.

5. Verbose Logging

If you're running into problems, you can enable a more verbose log output by using the -v flag. This should help troubleshoot the problems.

Warning: When using verbose logging, be aware that sensitive information such as your credentials and authorization tokens may be printed to the log. Be careful when sharing these logs with others.

6. NoColor

If your console doesn't support colored output using ANSI escape codes, the output will look messed up, similar to this:

←[38;2;224;175;104m[08:46:55.211]←[0m [←[38;2;158;206;105m INFO←[0m] ←[38;2;192;202;245mprocessing file←[0m ←[38;2;187;154;247m{"file":"test.pdf"}←[0m
←[38;2;224;175;104m[08:46:56.734]←[0m [←[38;2;158;206;105m INFO←[0m] ←[38;2;192;202;245mENEX processing done←[0m ←[38;2;187;154;247m{"numberOfNotes":1,"totalFiles":1}←[0m
←[38;2;224;175;104m[08:46:56.734]←[0m [←[38;2;158;206;105m INFO←[0m] ←[38;2;192;202;245mall notes processed successfully←[0m

If that's the case, enable the -n flag to disable colored output.