#Import from Nimbus Notes

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

dreamy hull
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I am a current Nimbus Notes user and would like to migrate my workspaces from there to Notesnook. There is no direct importer, or there doesn't seem to be one. Nimbus is kind of an outlier in the notes space, so that's not entirely unbelievable.

I would like to not lose my tags. Anyone tried this and is there a clean way to do it?

cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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PDF and HTML

cerulean escarp
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That's it? They don't have their own backup format or something like that?

dreamy hull
cerulean escarp
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Do the HTML files contain tags someplace?

dreamy hull
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I'm looking. Some of my notes have been through multiple services. The one I was just looking at the HTML export for, I thought I'd identified the HTML for it, but it turned out to be from Bear. 😦

cerulean escarp
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We support textbundle imports (supported by bear & a few other notes apps).

dreamy hull
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I stopped using Bear because it wasn't cross-platform.

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I don't think it includes the tags

cerulean escarp
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Yep. No tags.

dreamy hull
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And they're not in the PDF export, all you get when you do that is as if you printed the page.

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They do backups, but you can't download the backup

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Just restore from it

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The world won't end if I can't export the tags.

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It's just a PITA

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I need to experiment with their bulk export too, see how it structures the notes. Notesnook says it can import HTML, but I'm sure there has to be a particular structure to it.

cerulean escarp
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@dreamy hull do you have some coding experience?

dreamy hull
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some.

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Some, but I'm no programmer.

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Now I wonder if the export works from the Mac, from their Windows client, their instructions on the web don't match the menu structure of the note.

cerulean escarp
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I think the directory structure represents tags

dreamy hull
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They tell you that you have to use the desktop client(s) to do a bulk export, but neither one of them has the described options in the menu

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On the Mac their client is Electron.

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On Github I found a python script to transform their export into SimpleNote, but if you can't bulk export, it isn't worth much

cerulean escarp
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You're right. No bulk xport.

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The docs are invalid

dreamy hull
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This'll teach me to not save previous export files 😦

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Shoulda saved the file when I left Evernote, at least then I'd have something.

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I opened a support ticket with Nimbus, will report on what they say.

cerulean escarp
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They might be able to give you a backup.

dreamy hull
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Watch them provide a SQL dump or something.

cerulean escarp
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Haha well if it doesn't work out, tell me and I can probably write up a quick n' dirty script to automate exporting for you.

dreamy hull
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scrape their web client?

cerulean escarp
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Yep

dreamy hull
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I'll let you know what they say.

cerulean escarp
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Alright.

dreamy hull
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Thanks!

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp Well, I was directed to this support post, where they make available a version of their Windows client that supports the notes export.

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What you get is a folder for each folder you have in the client, inside of which you have a zip file for each actual note. If the note has attachments, they are included in the zip file.

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Still no tags, but hey, you can get the actual data out.

cerulean escarp
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@dreamy hull Locking out users is not great and there should be a way to get all the data + metadata out.

In any case, I took a stab at their API and was able to wire up an exporter that can export everything including tags. It's not finished though.

Let me know which you'd prefer.

dreamy hull
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I'm certainly game to test, how do I go about it?

cerulean escarp
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I haven't finished it yet but once its done, I can ping you here.

Oh and if I take too long feel free to ping me as well.

dreamy hull
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Sounds good.

dreamy hull
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I got something the importer could digest (in that it produced no errors as a result of the import), but I wouldn't call the result usable.

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Which is totally a result of the input data, not the import tool.

dreamy hull
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And it didn't bring the attachments, which... Simplenote, so only makes sense. (sigh)

cerulean escarp
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@dreamy hull yes that won't work.

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp well yeah, but I wanted to try.

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp Did you get anywhere with a Nimbus importer?

cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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Ooo, then I can kick Nimbus to the curb.

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I saw there were a couple of issues opened on Github from people wanting to import Nimbus, so I’m not the only one.

cerulean escarp
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For sure. Although the amount of those users isn't that big but we'll support what we can.

dreamy hull
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Hello @cerulean escarp Any update/news on the Nimbus Notes importer? Thanks!

cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp W00t!

cerulean escarp
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@dreamy hull alright so I published the exporter. You can use it and see if it can export all your notes etc. More details here: https://github.com/thecodrr/nimbus-note-exporter

NOTE: this is the exporter. Not the importer. I still have to add support for this in Notesnook Importer but that should be trivial.

GitHub

Contribute to thecodrr/nimbus-note-exporter development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Let me know if you don't understand something.

dreamy hull
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I have to install npm locally? will try tonight!

cerulean escarp
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yes

dreamy hull
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actually fsck that

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one moment

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hm, "found 0 notes across 0 workspaces"

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"waiting for download urls" and it's got a spinning cursor

cerulean escarp
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Yeah, because there's no notes so it is stuck.

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The main problem is that it isn't finding the workspaces for some reason.

dreamy hull
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there are three

cerulean escarp
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Can you send a screenshot of the output it shows?

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See what it returns

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You also forgot to mask your email in the screenshot. Feel free to delete your message.

dreamy hull
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tks

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all i get is a pair of braces

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[ ]

cerulean escarp
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Ah so that's why.

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It should have a list of all your workspaces. It was working for me but I might have to find a different way to get the workspaces.

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I'll take another look at this in a couple of hours and then ping you for another try.

dreamy hull
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ok

cerulean escarp
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@dreamy hull update and run again. Should work now.

dreamy hull
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Ok I'm on transit on my way home, if you're around in a hour or so I will post a result then.

cerulean escarp
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Awesome

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp Well, I did 'sudo npm update', it didn’t claim to have updated anything. I am not a node/npm user, just a dabbler, so wouldn't necessarily know if it had updated anything

cerulean escarp
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No do the installation steps again just for the exporter.

dreamy hull
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'k, moment

cerulean escarp
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You don't need to update npm or node.

dreamy hull
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oh, THAT'S what that syntax means

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Well, that's the right number of workspaces, but not nearly the right number of notes

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And then it stalled again at the waiting line

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There are over 2500 notes between the three workspaces

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it does a bunch of "exporting garbagethatisprobablyanoteid as html" before it stalls at"waiting for download urls" again

cerulean escarp
cerulean escarp
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@dreamy hull update and try again. I added pagination that should take care of you getting all the notes.

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp It stalls after the password prompt now with just a spinner and "logging you in..." I'm sorry to be a pain.

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I think they're having a problem, the web app is slow slow slow

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but it finally connected

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I came back to the exporter terminal and it had moved on

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I'll let you know what it says when it finishes. It says it's getting tags right now

dreamy hull
cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp Ok, starting again. Let's see how it works. ^_^

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Folders now!

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I left it running this morning and it got wedged here: "Saving download urls (2583/2791)" ... but I'm sure that was THEM

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp It got stuck again. Any way to tell what it's doing? It hasn't created any files in the current directory.

dreamy hull
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Still stuck @2785 notes

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Which is odd because Nimbus itself thinks there are only 2776 notes

cerulean escarp
cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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there are things in the trash, I can clear them out if that's the problem. It's not like I expected them to be exported

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whatcked

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whacked, even

cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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I thought you meant that it stalled (it's been sitting on the same number for the last couple hours) because of the trash

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I hate Nimbus

cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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Now the tool thinks there are 2769 notes

cerulean escarp
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It might not be a bad idea to introduce a cache so you can continue where you left off.

dreamy hull
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and Nimbus' management tool thinks there are 2754.

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My head hurts

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This is one of the reasons I want out, their tools are so... messed up

cerulean escarp
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Not sure where those extra notes are coming from.

dreamy hull
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Yea, it doesn't say how many are in each workspace.

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I mean Nimbus does, but who knows if it can be trusted

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I assume the API is rate-limited, it takes a long time to fetch URL's

cerulean escarp
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They don't make it easy or simple.

dreamy hull
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I like the analogy.

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That's another reason to leave them they're deliberately taking steps to make it hard to leave

cerulean escarp
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That they are. This should be part of the main app's functions.

dreamy hull
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Makes me wish for Evernote again (shudder). And that''s bad.

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There aren't a lot of truly cross-platform notes systems

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Probably would benefit from even a timeout, if it no longer gets responses offer to save what it has. OTOT, if I understood you correctly, it;'s just building the list, and it might get just as stuck when it actually tries to download the data.

cerulean escarp
dreamy hull
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That's kinda appropriate (although not useful) if doing something like this is truly crashing their endpoint. Poetic justice.

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp I've been cleaning up, I cleaned out two workspaces, deleted a ton of notes, the current version of the exporter still thinks there are two more notes than there are, so it gets to the end, and it stalls I assume waiting for the download URL of those last two notes.

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It shows the total number of notes twice, the first time it has it right, the second time there are two more.

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The "getting notes metadata" line has the right number of notes.

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Then when it starts this, it's added two.

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✔ Found 2137 notes across 2 workspaces
⠼ Saving download urls (534/2137)..

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The actual number is 2135.

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As I was cleaning out stuff, the difference between them would change, but the "notes metadata" line was always right. Or I think it was always right.

cerulean escarp
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@dreamy hull what would be the best way to find those 2 notes?

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp What is it doing that the two numbers don't match? If the one message line says there are N notes, then when it actually goes to try getting download URL's, why is it N+somenumber?

cerulean escarp
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The fix would be to detect which 2 notes are extra and then see why they are being included and how to ignore them.

dreamy hull
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@cerulean escarp I wonder if you can have it write out, whether to a file, or to stdout/stderr, the titles it thinks it's trying to export. I've continued to trim out old crud from Nimbus, and I'm down to a count of one difference between the two limits, so it still hangs. 😦

dreamy hull
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Ok, status:

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✔ Found 1 organizations
✔ Found 2 workspaces
✔ Found 2 folders across 2 workspaces
✔ Found 1164 notes across 2 workspaces
⠼ Saving download urls (1163/1164)...