What I did: Imported apple notes
What happened: Exactly nothing
What I expected: Folders imported
Things that might be helpful to know (Agenda version, OS and model, etc): Apple Notes, macOS Catalina 10.15.2 Beta (19C39d).
Sorry about this. A few people have mentioned it.
Did you see a message appear asking if you allow Agenda to access Notes? A message from the system?
Another way to get the notes across is to install Exporter from the Mac App Store. It will export the Apple Notes as markdown, and you can then import into Agenda.
Kind regards,
Drew
Yes, I saw the message and clicked on accept it and apparently it was successful, but I did not obtain satisfactory result in the import, ie, nothing.
What is the name of the app to export Apple Notes as markdown?
Sorry for my mistakes, the app " EXPORTER" from Notes Exporter, is not available in my country (Brazil).
Do you know another alternative?
Hmm, it looks like Exporter has been removed from sale, as well as another Apple Notes export program. I have a bad feeling that Apple may have blocked the apple scripting needed for this, and that is why it is also failing in Agenda.
We will investigate. It could be that this is curtains for the Apple Notes import 
Hi there, first time (free) user… like the app but not able to complete the import of Apple Notes. The command executes through the File > Import menu - then the progress bar stalls halfway… I left it about 5 mins but nothing happened. Tried again after enabling Agenda access for everything through security and privacy settings - still same result - had to kill it. Also tried a workaround via Exporter App + .md files - although this time the import option here does work - it does not recognise files in folders - so only works one-at-a-time… not so useful afterall! Quite disappointing as I think this is the app for me but without continuity with Apple notes its a non-starter. Feedback welcome - mac OSX Catalina 10.15.5
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I’m afraid transferring notes between apps is always a pain in the neck. They all use different formats, and have different semantics. Agenda has a very date oriented design, which is already quite far from apple notes. And Apple Notes also doesn’t give us any formatting info, such as headings, lists etc.
So even if it worked perfectly, it would be imperfect. In fact, I think Agenda is the only note taking app that even provides the Apple Notes import option. Most don’t bother.
For now, Exporter is still your best bet. Or continue to use Apple Notes for certain types of notes, and use Agenda for project oriented work.
We will try to make the import from Apple Notes more efficient in future. Sorry for the trouble.
Hi Drew,
I hear you, I think you are doing a great job and Apple is not helping! I will transition to Agenda from Notes selectively - the all in one go option was tempting though. Thanks for the info
Cheers
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I just had this exact same experience over the past 2 days. Running the latest version of macOS Monterey on my 13” MacBook Pro i5 with TouchBar, 16GB RAM & 1TB SSD.
I tried the Apple Notes import method in Agenda and the progress bar froze halfway. Left it for over 6 hours and no progress past 50% on the progress bar.
FYI I setup the Energy Saver settings to prevent the MacBook Pro from sleeping or locking, just to make sure that there were no interruptions.
So then I tried using Exporter, and it took over a day to export all my Apple Notes as .md markdown files. When it was finally done, I went to import them & realized I couldn’t do them all at once as they’re in folders. So I just did one folder at a time & selected all of the .md files in that folder & imported them into a new Agenda category named after the folder.
However the very unfortunate thing is that all of the imported notes are set to today’s date in Agenda! Not the date they were created in Apple Notes? This is not what I expected, as I had read in this forum that Apple Notes were supposed to import into Agenda with the correct date for each note, so that today’s date isn’t flooded with all of the imported notes?
Anyways today is April 22, 2022 and I couldn’t find any recent posts in the Agenda forum about importing Apple Notes since about 2020 (I think this is one of the most recent posts about it).
So I was wondering if there has potentially been any progress or plans on improving the process of importing Apple Notes into Agenda?
Please let me know thanks!
Cheers
Chris
P.S. I just wanted to say thanks to the dev team (as I’m new here) I’m enjoying the concept of Agenda so far & I was happy to pay for the premium features to help support the developers. Cheers
Thanks for your support, Chris!
This is a bit of a thorn in our side. Apple will export the notes to us, but with very incomplete data. It makes it difficult to make something useful out of it.
I think the date may get carried over if you are able to import directly, but not if you first have to export to markdown with Exporter.
This is probably something we should take a new look at. When we wrote that importer, we didn’t allow subcategories. It may be possible to make a better hierarchy now, and perhaps we can try to make it more efficient and not stall. The fact that Exporter also took that long does make me wonder if it is just a limitation of the scripting bridge Apple gives us though.
Note that although you probably have the same creation date on each note, that is not the same as the assigned date. In Agenda you can assign any date you like to any note. So you can apply a new date where that makes sense, at least for you new or recent notes. (Doing them all would be too much work!)
Sorry for the trouble. We will see if we can take a new swing at this. (We are quite busy with some big projects at the moment.)
Kind regards,
Drew
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