I want to transfer all my notes from the desktop to my laptiop.
Instead of exporting all notes to a jex file and importing them to the new installation, something that takes a lot of time, alternatively can I just copy the joplin .config file which includes the resources and sqlite database to the new instalation on the laptop and be done with it? It's the same thing as importing the jex file right?
Out of curiosity, how long does exporting all notes to jex take for you?
My a few hundreds of notes are exported in fraction of a second. Same with import. But they are mostly text, not many pictures or other multimedia content.
the jex file has a size of 8GB and it takes many hours to export. Actually this came up because I'm having issues with exporting and importing the jex file. I export it from my desktop pc and try to import it on my laptop and at some point it throws an UNKNOWN error when trying to import a .md file. I tried locating that file in the resources folder and from within the sqlite database but couln'd find it.
The next attempt was to import it the jex file in the same joplin installation that did the export (desktop pc), to check if the exported file is valid and whether there's an issue with the laptop Joplin installation. The file is 8GB in size and the importing has started yesterday noon and till now today hasn't finished yet, that is over 12 hours. Joplin says 'importing please wait' ; I wonder if it got stuck.
I’ve not tried it, but I suppose it should works as you expect.
There are going to be a few differences between jex import/export and backing&restoring up profile directory, since profile directory contains not just sqlite database and resources but all your plugins and setting as well.
There is menu item Help menu to Open profile directory.
Also, you may want to file bug report, because exporting 8GB of data should take minutes, not hours.
Instead of exporting all notes to a jex file and importing them to the new installation, something that takes a lot of time, alternatively can I just copy the joplin .config file
Yes you can just transfer the joplin-desktop folder at %home%/.config to another pc without any issues. It is cross platform compatible as well with all desktop clients. The only thing you would have to do is enter your master password again if you use E2EE.
Please note: Only import a jex file if syncing to an empty sync target (otherwise all your notes will be duplicated). The standard procedure to set up a new client with the same notes is to just connect the sync on any empty client and let all your notes get downloaded via sync. Transferring the joplin-desktop dir to another pc instead however, will be faster than downloading all your notes via the sync if you have a lot of notes
Something sounds a little bit off because you don't have an enormous amount of data that it should be taking hours or overnight. It should take minutes depending on what's in your data set. My notes are primarily text with a few attachments here and there and a few pictures here and there and I have no issues whatsoever exporting and importing.
I wonder if the export or import function is getting stuck on something that you have attached to a particular note or something that you're doing repetitively that it doesn't like.
I wonder if there's a way to debug the export or import. A log file might capture something that could give you a clue.
Transfering the config directory to the new installation did the trick. As far as the time it takes to export the jex file, since I have joplin , which is a few years and various versions, it was measured in hours, not minutes. What could be the issue?
I recently had to do the same thing (copying the .config directory) because there are a handful of .jpg files that never get transferred. It’s some sort of sync error using file based syncing.
In fact, even if I’m on the same computer and create a new Joplin instance (the newish feature that lets you have multiple windows open) and use the same local directory for syncing, it still has these sync errors. So i copy the joplin-desktop/resources into the joplin-desktop-alt/resources (I should probably create a symbolic link to the directory…)
For my situation I think it’s the screenshots that I paste into Joplin that are too small to trigger the automatic resizing that Joplin does, but I’m not sure
I did the transfer and everything went fine. But I’m really puzzled , as others have noted, why the export takes many hours to perform instead of minutes? is it because I do have a lot of resources i.e jpgs? It’s becuase I use the Webcliper extensively to capture web pages into joplin
Most likely it’s a bug, or let’s say sub-optimal implementation of import/export. If there is a folder in your notes collection, which does not contain any sensitive data and takes about 20-30 minutes to export/import, you can open github ticket with this issue and supply exported jex archive, so that developers can replicate this issue and eventually figure out, if speed of import/export can be improved.
Joplin can export to the JEX format (Joplin Export file), which is a tar file that can contain multiple notes, notebooks, etc. This is a lossless format in that all the notes, but also metadata such as geo-location, updated time, tags, etc. are preserved. This format is convenient for backup purposes and can be re-imported into Joplin. A "raw" format is also available. This is the same as the JEX format except that the data is saved to a directory and each item represented by a single file.