Convert old Notemaster (ios app) notes to Apple Notes - a guide

How to convert Notemaster notes to Apple notes on MacOS

* Sync Notemaster to google drive, notes show up as google docs files.

* Export batch to download as .docx files. It can also export .PDF but that doesn’t help us here. It will download as a zip file but should keep your folder structure and embed your pictures.

* Apple notes cannot import .docx, but it can import .html files. To convert .docx to .html, download this free tool, “Pandoc”.

* Install using the downloaded executable appropriate for your system

* Pandoc is implemented with the Terminal with various commands. To start, navigate to your directory with your notes by typing
 cd (space after cd is important)
and then drag your folder over to terminal from the finder, and it will enter in the path. click enter to change directory

* in that directory with your notes, run this batch command to convert them to .html and embed the file name as a title in the note (otherwise apple notes titles the note whatever the first sentence/line is)


find . -name '*.docx' -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' f; do
  base="$(basename "$f" .docx)"
  out="${f%.docx}.html"
  echo "Converting: $f"
  pandoc --embed-resources --standalone \
    --metadata=title:"$base" \
    "$f" -o "$out"
done

* open one of the .html files it created and confirm it looks right, has any images.

* If you have multiple folders, repeat this process, navigate to the folder with the cd command and copy and paste the code. In the end you will have .html copies of the .docx files.

* Before import to Apple Notes, it may be smart to back up your notes by running Time Machine. To be extra safe you may manually backup your notes data by copying your folder at ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/ to somewhere safe.

* You may want to temporarily disable icloud note sync by turning off in System Preferences >Internet Accounts> iCloud> Notes, if you want to sandbox your import process

* Open Apple notes. Note, Restart Apple notes if you have been testing import with it, there is a bug that loses the pictures if you import and delete the same file over and over.

* In Notes, go to File > Import to Notes…

* navigate to your top directory. Check “Preserve Folder Structure on Import” if you have multiple folders you want to keep.

* import. Wee!

* if you opted to disable icloud, and want these imported notes on icloud, re enable icloud, then move your imported folders up to icloud, from “All on My Mac”

Hopefully this helps someone! It certainly took a while to figure out on my own.

[Edited by Moderator]