macOS Exporting all Apple Notes to PDF

marmiteturkey · Jan 30, 2017

I have a bunch of handwritten Apple notes (using the iPad Pro/Pencil) - I'd like to get them all into individual PDFs for importing/sharing/archiving. I can't find an AppleScript or similar that would do that - can anyone help? Printing individually would take an age; drag and drop doesn't work; and the only scripts I can find only deal with text or attachments.

Thanks,
MT

Cordorb · Jan 31, 2017

I have tried an old program that does iPhone Backup extraction from your own non-protected backups

useful for extracting photos, videos, Photo Stream, call history, notes, contacts, calendars, SMS messages

Not sure if the notes were in PDF format

marmiteturkey · May 16, 2017

I'm back here and still don't have an answer to this - I found an old AppleScript but it has errors in it and I am in no way qualified to debug it

- can't believe this isn't easily fixable - it must be something that people struggle with constantly? Without an easy way to bulk export handwritten notes, it's essentially off limits to me.

superscape · May 16, 2017

Hi,

I think the main issue is that there doesn't seem to be any way to tell Notes to output a PDF in the AppleScript dictionary. You can, however, get the name and contents of each note and add them to something that *can* be converted into PDF. Something like this very crude example I lashes together:

Code:

--start the HTML text
set theSourceHTML to "<html><body>"

tell application "Notes"
  
    activate
    set theNoteList to every note
  
    repeat with theNote in theNoteList
        --add to our HTML for each note
        set theBody to body of theNote
        set theName to name of theNote
        set theSourceHTML to theSourceHTML & "NAME: " & theName & "<br>BODY: " & theBody & "<p>---<p>"
    end repeat
  
end tell

--end the HTML text
set theSourceHTML to theSourceHTML & "</body></html>"

--write the html to file
do shell script "echo " & quoted form of theSourceHTML & " > ~/Desktop/notes.html"

--convert the html to pdf
do shell script "cupsfilter ~/Desktop/notes.html > ~/Desktop/notes.pdf"

...it goes through each note, gets it as html and then created a pdf from the html. You'll probably lose images and possibly lose some formatting, but I suspect that may be the best you'll get.

Hope that helps at least a little.

chown33 · May 16, 2017

superscape said:
...it goes through each note, gets it as html and then created a pdf from the html. You'll probably lose images and possibly lose some formatting, but I suspect that may be the best you'll get.

I see that Notes on a Mac can import formats like rtf and rtfd. This suggests it's using the Cocoa text conversion system.

There's a command-line tool that supports those same conversions: textutil.

Maybe if Notes can be told to export as rtfd (or a similar format), that can be processed by textutil into HTML (or similar), and then converted to PDF through the cupsfilter as shown above.

I don't have any Macs here running the Notes app, so I can't explore this myself.

On a different note, it might help us make more progress if the OP were to post the exact URL of the script that doesn't work. He says he can't debug it, but that doesn't mean no one else can. However, he's the only one who knows what that script is, which does mean no one else can do anything with it until he tells us exactly what the script is.

superscape · May 17, 2017

chown33 said:
On a different note, it might help us make more progress if the OP were to post the exact URL of the script that doesn't work.

A good point.

forrie · Dec 20, 2019

I just wonder why Apple didn't include a simple function to print multiple, selected notes into one PDF. That seems so obvious of a need.

Raymond32 · May 21, 2022

There're many 3rd party apps might fits your needs --
1) DEVONthink Pro 3
2) Bear(available on App Store)
3) Keep It 2(available on App Store)
4) Export(available on App Store)

I use DEVONthink Pro 3 at the moment. Still looking for better answer up until now.

Comparison, FYR.

Notes Export | Highlights

Highlights extracts annotations, images, tables and citations and turns them into powerful notes you can export directly to Evernote, DEVONthink, Ulysses, Bear, Keep It or Apple Notes. You can also save your notes as files in a range of formats including Markdown, TextBundle, HTML, and WebArchive.

highlightsapp.net

Slartibart · May 21, 2022

While I think that the OP wanted the possibility to automate the PDF export for several notes, saving individual once as PDF is straight forward - at least on iOS/iPadOS 15:

In Notes, open any note to export as a PDF.
Once in the note, tap the ellipsis (…) icon at the top.
Select Send a Copy.
Tap Markup to generate a PDF. Markup your document or not. 🤓
Once you're happy with your PDF, tap Done. Apple Notes will ask you to save your PDF.
Tap Save File To and select an appropriate location on your iPhone or iPad.
Finally, Save.

gustavoarcanjo · Aug 2, 2022

There is no way to go that at the moment.

The fastest way I could export several Apple Notes to PDF was by opening Notes on my Mac, then setting up a shortcut for the “Export as PDF…” menu action to something like Cmd+S, and then clicking each note one by one, pressing down Cmd+S tô generate the file and saving.

I hope this basic feature is added in the future.

chabig · Aug 2, 2022

I found an app on the App Store that purports to export to pdf.

‎Note Export

‎NoteExport allows you to export notes from the NotesApp to any location you choose. You choose which folders and accounts you would like to include in the export. Notes can be exported as PDF, Markdown, RTF, or Microsoft Word Documents. Attachments and embedded images in Notes are included...

apps.apple.com

f54da · Aug 2, 2022

I think the two general approaches are exporting via applescript scripting, or accessing the notes db directly. The latter used to be possible on <= 10.10, not sure if anyone's determined the storage format on later versions.

Tomfent · Jun 19, 2024

I've no idea why Apple would want to allow notes with multiple pages but not allow export. Probably a bug as it used to work (in High Sierra, at least). Users have ben complaining for several years.

If your notes are on a Mac not an iPhone, here is one way to do it:

Exporting multipage Note to PDF

1. Open the note and click on the Share icon (box with upward arrow) in the Notes menu bar

2. Pull down to Mail. (This immediately creates an email containing all the pages)

3. Select all of the pages in the email, then copy and paste them into a word processing app - e.g. Text Edit or Pages.
(Exporting just the email as a PDF only exports the first page again!)

4. Export the word processing app as a PDF file

Weird but it works for me!

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macOS Exporting all Apple Notes to PDF

marmiteturkey

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marmiteturkey

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chown33

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