How to copy notes to a new Mac without iCloud

Support
1

I switched to a new Mac that does not sync with iCloud Drive. What do I need to transfer to the new Mac to have an exact copy of the Agenda status quo on my old Mac?

2

If you have no way to use iCloud Drive, you could use Dropbox.

  • Install the Dropbox app on each device
  • Create a free account if needed
  • Choose Dropbox from the settings in Agenda as sync engine
  • It will ask you to sign in. Do that
  • Repeat on each device, and give time to upload data

To find the Agenda settings:

  • On macOS, choose the menu Agenda > Preferences/Settings
  • On iOS, open the right panel, and tap on the button bottom-left

Kind regards,
Drew

3

I can’t use any cloud service.

Kind regards,
Christoph

4

Ah, I see.

Here is how to migrate a library from one machine to another (manually):

  1. On the old machine, click on Finder, and choose Go > Go to Folder
  2. Enter ~/Library/Group Containers
  3. Find com.momenta.agenda.macos
  4. Copy it to your new machine
  5. Repeat 1-2 on your new machine and drag in the copied folder, replacing what is there.
  6. Restart your Mac for good measure
  7. Launch Agenda
1 Like
5

Thanks! There’s a folder ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda. But it’s only 606 byte in size. BTW: The old machine runs macOS Ventura 13.7.5.

6

Were you running a recent version of Agenda on the old machine? The most recent is Agenda 20.2.

I say that, because several years ago we moved the data. Any modern version of Agenda should have quite a lot of data in that group container. You need to dig down a big, into “Release” etc, but it should be there. Are you sure you are looking at the complete amount of data there, or just what is in that root folder?

In any case, if you have used a recent version of the app on the old machine, that folder is what needs to be copied over.

7

It’s Agenda 20.2 (345) on the old machine.

$ du -sch ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda/
 20K	/Users/cbier/Library/Group Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda/
 20K	total

Only my new MacBook has no access to iCloud—for a couple of years the old machine had access to iCloud. So, I guess I have to search a different folder?

8

That folder is not in iCloud. That is just a normal folder, in your account on the Mac.

Try this:

  • Click on Finder on old machine
  • Choose Go > Go to folder
  • Enter ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda
  • Right click on group.com.momenta.agenda and choose “Compress”
  • Transfer the zip file you get to the other machine
  • Unzip
  • Move the contents of the zipped file into the same location using the same tricks
  • Launch Agenda
9

This folder is almost empty! du tells us, it’s only 20 K in size. Here’s the output of tree:

$ tree ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda/
/Users/username/Library/Group Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda/
└── Library
    ├── Application Scripts
    │   └── group.com.momenta.agenda -> ../../../../Application Scripts/group.com.momenta.agenda
    ├── Application Support
    ├── Caches
    └── Preferences

7 directories, 0 files

Zero files … but I have thousands of notes in Agenda.

Nevertheless, I did compress the folder. The ZIP file is 4,4 K in size:

$ ls -lh ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda.zip 
-rw-r--r--  1 username  staff   4,4K 26 Jun 10:38 /Users/cbier/Library/Group Containers/group.com.momenta.agenda.zip

I searched the disk of my old machine for large directories and found a folder /Users/username/Library/Group Containers/WRBK2Z2EG7.group.com.momenta.agenda.macos that is 3,7 GB in size, has 335 directories and more than 3000 files. Most of its data (3,5 GB) is in /Users/username/Library/Group Containers/WRBK2Z2EG7.group.com.momenta.agenda.macos/Release/Application/Stores. However, it looks to me as if only files that I had inserted into notes are stored there. There are 1415 PNG files …

How are Agenda notes stored on the disk? What file extension do I have to search for?

10

Ah, yeah, that’s it. Missed the ‘macos’. Copy that over.

The file format is not humanly readable. It is a complex sync format. The PNGs are probably things from your notes, but the notes themselves are stored in databases.

11

Copying WRBK2Z2EG7.group.com.momenta.agenda.macos from the old machine to ~/Library/Group Containers/ on the new machine solved my problem. Thanks!

12

Great to hear!