As the Mac version of Drafts is imminent I feel it’s a good time to make the switch from Simplenote. I’ve exported all my notes as a zip file and placed them in my iCloud Drive as a folder of .txt files (almost 2,000).
I haven’t upgraded to Drafts Pro yet but certainly will in the near future. How do I import all those text files?
Thanks in advance
Currently with the iOS version I’d use Shortcuts to get the zip, extract it, and open each note.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ccde4a45af9b4e8fb8555f749d550e00
Hmm, so I’d have to open each file individually? I’ve trimmed the list down to 1,800 but that’s still a lot of effort. Thanks for your answer!
Shortcuts will do the bulk of the work - you just have to locate the zip file for it. Of course, you’ll probably want to go off and eat a cookie whilst it zips through 1,800 notes…
Excellent, I’ll give it a try!
You’re a genius Rosemary. It worked!
I had a bit of trouble with hidden files created by my Mac but fixed that using this tip: https://wpguru.co.uk/2013/10/how-to-remove-__macosx-from-zip-archives/
Now I’m going to upgrade to Drafts Pro!
I don’t remember how SimpleNote stores the tags, but I suspect they’re in the metadata rather than the file itself so they can’t be imported. This just takes each note and imports it as is.
Appreciate this thread. It’s good to know I can actually import my simplenote notes, but not being able to also import them with each one’s associated tags is a deal breaker. I wonder if this will ever make it to the Drafts development checklist.
It does not appear SimpleNote offers a structured export format with tags clearly designated and suitable for direct import.
If you use the export notes feature and get the zip described above, the tags are in the files at the end of each file that had tags, in the text, like:
The content of the note
Tags:
tag1
tag2
It’s certainly possible to write an action in Drafts that could scan for those tags after importing the file and convert them to drafts tags.