Most migration guides are a click path: open this menu, pick that format, import on the other side. That tells you nothing about what arrives broken. This is for anyone sitting on years of notes who wants to move — or who just wants to know whether they could — and would rather find the damage now than halfway through.
The verdict, in one sentence
Export ten real notes and import them before you commit to anything, and treat whatever doesn't survive a round trip as a feature you're renting, not owning.
That's the whole idea. A feature you're renting isn't worthless — it might be the reason you like the app. But you should know which parts of your thinking live in a format you can carry out the door, and which parts exist only while you keep paying and the app keeps working the way it does today.
The ten-note test
Don't export everything. Pick ten notes chosen to be difficult, because ordinary notes usually migrate without trouble, so they tell you little:
- The note with the most attachments
- The note with the most links to other notes
- Your oldest note, from whatever the app looked like back then
- Your longest note
- A note with a table in it
- A note using your deepest tag nesting
- A note made from a template
- A note with checkboxes or a task list
- A note with code, math, or anything else in a special block
- A note in a language other than English, or with symbols and accents
Export those. Import them into the app you're considering. Then look at each one next to the original.
The four things that break
Attachments
How it breaks. Files stay behind, or the note keeps a reference to a location that no longer exists
What to check in the export. Are the actual files in the export? Does the note render with images visible while you're offline?
If it doesn't survive. Treat the app as a viewer for files you store yourself
Backlinks
How it breaks. Forward links come out as a URL scheme only the old app understands; the reverse index isn't in the export at all
What to check in the export. Click a link in the imported note. Does it land on the other note, or nowhere?
If it doesn't survive. Keep the link structure in note titles and text, not only in the graph view
Nested tags
How it breaks. A hierarchy gets flattened to one string, split into unrelated flat tags, or dropped with the metadata field that held it
What to check in the export. Is project/client/acme still one path, and can you still filter by the parent?
If it doesn't survive. Put the hierarchy in folder names or note titles, where it's plain text
Embedded tables
How it breaks. Formatting tables usually convert; database-style views typically lose filters, relations, and computed columns
What to check in the export. Are you looking at live rows, or a frozen snapshot with the logic gone?
If it doesn't survive. Keep the data in a spreadsheet or CSV and let the note point at it
Attachments
Attachments are an easy thing to overlook, because notes and the files inside them are often stored in different places. The note is text in a database; the PDF is a blob in cloud storage. An export can hand you the text and a link that resolves only when you're logged into the old account.
The offline check settles it. Disconnect, open the imported notes, and see what renders. Anything that goes blank was never in the export — it was being fetched.
Also look at what the files are called. If the export renames everything to a hash or an internal ID, you technically have your files and practically have a folder you can't navigate.
Backlinks
A backlink is a link from one note to another, plus the reverse index the app builds so you can see what points at the note you're reading. Those two things export very differently.
The forward link is in the note, but its syntax may be an internal address that only the original app can resolve. The reverse index usually isn't in the export at all — it's derived, rebuilt by whichever app is holding your notes. A new app will regenerate it only if it understands the link syntax it inherited.
So the question isn't "do my backlinks come with me." It's whether the new app can read the link format well enough to rebuild the graph. Test it by clicking, not by trusting the import summary.
Nested tags
Nested tags are hierarchical labels — a parent with children, written as a path. They have several distinct failure modes, because there is no single convention for storing them. A tag path can arrive as one long flat string, as several separate tags with the hierarchy gone, or not at all if it lived in a metadata field the new app ignores.
Open the raw exported file in a text editor before you import anything. If you can see your tags as text, they have a chance. If the export file has no trace of them, no importer can invent them.
Embedded tables
There are two different things called a table, and they behave nothing alike.
A formatting table is rows and columns of text inside the note. If the export format has table syntax, this generally comes through, sometimes with column widths and merged cells lost.
A database table is a view over structured records that live outside the note — with filters, relations to other records, and computed columns. An export can give you a static snapshot of the rows you happened to be looking at, or a CSV of the underlying data with the view logic gone. Both are lossy in ways that aren't visible until you need the thing the view was doing for you.
Do the round trip, not just the export
One direction isn't enough. Export from the old app, import to the new one, then export again from the new app and read that file.
The second export is where you learn whether you've actually gained portability or just changed which vendor holds your notes hostage. An app that imports generously and exports poorly is a one-way door, and it looks great right up until you want to leave.
Who should skip this
- If your notes are disposable. Meeting scratch, shopping lists, thinking-out-loud that has already done its job. Just move and let the broken bits break.
- If you have few enough notes to move by hand. Copy-paste is a perfectly good migration tool, and its failures are visible: you can see immediately when an attachment doesn't come along.
- If you're archiving, not migrating. If the old app stays installed and readable, you don't need fidelity — you need a working copy and a note about where the original lives.
- If you already keep your notes as plain text files in a folder. You've done the test by construction. Your risk is in the app's extras, not in the notes.
Your next step
Pick the ten notes described above, export them, and open the raw export file in a text editor before you import anything. Whatever you can't find in the export — as text in the file, or as an actual file beside it — is not coming with you — and knowing that now costs you one afternoon instead of one migration.