onenote-md-exporter

OneNote Md Exporter is a console application running on Windows that exports your OneNote notebooks in different markdown formats.

This tool is usefull to :

• evaluate or migrate to an alternative Knowledge Management Software like Joplin, Obsidian or other softwares based on Markdown format
• backup your OneNote Notebooks in an interoperable and open file format

The tool is easy to install and use, and can produce better results than other OneNote export methods.

Requirements

• Windows >=10
• OneNote >= 2013, OneNote for Windows (from the Windows store) is not supported
• Word >= 2013

Getting started

1. Download the last release of OneNoteMdExporter from the Releases page
2. Extract the content of the Zip archive
3. Launch OneNote and be sure that notebooks to export are loaded
4. Export your notebooks :
   • Start OneNoteMdExporter.exe
   • Select the Notebook to export
   • Select the export format
   • [Optional] Edit advanced settings
   • Go take a coffee ☕
   • At the end of the export the export folder is open in Windows file explorer

Command line is supported, run OneNoteMdExporter.exe --help for instructions.

Export formats supported

Markdown

• Sections and section groups are exported as a folder hierarchy containing pages :

  Notebook1
  - Section1
    - Section1.1
      - Page1.md
      - Page2.md
  - Section2
  

• Settings
  • ProcessingOfPageHierarchy : page hierarchy as parent folder of md file (ParentPage\Child Page.md ; default value) or as md file prefix (ParentPage_ChildPage.md)
  • ResourceFolderLocation : images and file attachments can be stored in a single folder at the root of the export or in a folder next to each md file
  • AddFrontMatterHeader : add a YAML header containing page metadata at the beginning of each md file

    ---
    title: Page title
    updated: 2021-11-11 14:55:00Z
    created: 2021-11-11 14:54:43Z
    ---
    Page content
    

  • PanDocMarkdownFormat : choose the markdown syntax to use among those supported by pandoc. Use GitHub flavor by default.
  • OneNoteLinksHandling :
    • KeepOriginal: Keep the original OneNote link format (onenote://…)
    • ConvertToMarkdown: Convert OneNote links to markdown format “text”
    • ConvertToWikilink (default): Convert OneNote links to wikilink format “[[Page Title|Display Text]]”
    • Remove: Remove all OneNote links
  • UseHtmlStyling : disable if your markdown editor do not supports HTML.

Joplin Raw Directory

• Import format of the Joplin app
• More details available here

Features and limitations

Export format:	Markdown	Joplin
Hierarchy of sections	✅ Folder hierarchy	✅ Notebook hierarchy
Page ordering inside a section	🔴 Ordering based on md filename	✅ Order preserved
Page hierarchy	✅ Page prefix or folder prefix	✅
Notebook internal link (onenote://)	✅ *	✅ *

* Cross-notebooks links and links to sections are removed

---

---

All formats :
Attachment	✅
Image	✅
Simple table	✅ as markdown
Complex table	✅ as HTML*
Folded paragraphs	✅
Font color	✅ as HTML*
Background color	✅ as HTML*
Text tags (task, star…)	✅ Converted into emoticons
Drawing	🟠 Flattened as image
Password protected section	🟠 Lost unless unlocked before export
Handwriting	🔴 Lost

* Support of the feature requires a mardown editor that supports HTML (like Joplin and Obsidian)

FAQ

• An error Unhandled exception. System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException occurs after starting the tool

  • This error in usually caused by a problem specific to your computer installation. Consider :
    • Uninstall and reinstall Office
    • Export notebook from an other computer : export your notebook, import it on an other computer and run OneNoteMdExporter

• Some of my images are lost / broken during export

  • Try to enable the option Download all files and images from File -> Options -> Sync. Force synchronisation of your notebook and try again the export.

Technical characteristics

• DotNet 10 self-contained console application
• Export pages as DocX files and translate them in Markdown using PanDoc
• Offline : no dependency to Microsoft cloud
• Rely on OneNote and Word apps (based on Interop APIs)
• Pre-processing stage of OneNote page XML structure
• Post-processing stage based on Regex to fix formatting issues

Licence

Released under the GPL, version 3.

This software carries no warranty of any kind. Some data can be lost during the export process. I recommend to review your notes after export and keep a backup of your OneNote notebooks just in case.

Pandoc licence terms

OneNote Md Exporter uses PanDoc universal markup converter.

Pandoc is available at https://github.com/jgm/pandoc

Pandoc is released under the following licence terms, full licence details can be found on the pandoc site.

© 2006-2021 John MacFarlane ([email protected]). Released under the GPL, version 2 or greater. This software carries no warranty of any kind.

Build sources

• Install DotNet 10 : https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/8.0
• Clone this repository
• Extract pandoc.exe from pandoc-<Version>-windows-x86_64.zip from /src/OneNoteMdExporter/pandoc/ folder
• Build using Visual Studio 2019 or MSBUILD.exe (dotnet build do not currently support COMReference : https://aka.ms/msbuild/MSB4803)

Contribute

Bugs and feature requests can be reported under: https://github.com/alxnbl/onenote-md-exporter/issues.

You can contribute by adding an new feature or add translations. See this page for more details.

Support

I developed this tool on a voluntary basis, but if you like my work you can buy me a ☕.