Takao wrote the move on 27 March 2025. He called it relatively easy, then listed the two things that were not.
Evernote’s own desktop export died on a notebook of about 3,000 notes. Password login died on MFA. He used evernote-backup and Obsidian’s Importer instead.
If you are looking at the same route, start with the Evernote → Obsidian playbook. His post is a complete run of that path on 3,481 notes.
Backup first
On a Mac he installed evernote-backup with Homebrew. init-db without --oauth failed. Adding --oauth got him past MFA.
sync stopped mid-download. Rate limit. Restart in 30 minutes 48 seconds. The second run finished. 3,481 notes downloaded. 28 notebooks to export.
evernote-backup export output_dir/ wrote standard .enex files. He said that step was easy and error-free.
That is the tool I would reach for when the official desktop export errors out on a heavy notebook. Takao says a few dozen notes were fine. Heavy users should skip the official button.
Import in vault order
He created a vault and used the community Importer plugin, the same Evernote path Obsidian documents.
The output folder is the top of the vault. He imported in hierarchical order so stacks and notebooks landed where he wanted.
Two items errored. He searched for them in Evernote, decided he did not need those articles, and ignored them. Search in the new vault was fine.
The graph view was dull. Notes without links do not become a web because you changed apps.
What 10 years weighed
The leftover pile was about 20GB of notes and clips. Usage had already dropped. He still wanted it out of Evernote.
He does not describe reminders, tasks, or shared notebooks. I am not assuming those survived.
He mentioned GitHub as a later sync idea. That is a follow-on, not part of the export.
What I would copy
Use --oauth on the first try if the Evernote account has MFA. Do not debug the password flag for an hour.
Budget a rate-limit pause on a multi-thousand-note account. Leave the command ready to rerun. The tool resumes from its local database.
Import one notebook, open two notes you care about, then do the rest. Takao’s two errors were ones he could drop. Yours might be the notebook you need.
The Evernote → Obsidian playbook is the checklist. Use Takao’s log for the MFA flag, the 30-minute backoff, and the official exporter’s 3,000-note ceiling.