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Tutorial / script: ScribblePapers -> Joplin (Export/Import) with OLE Images (Windows only)

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so I imported all my notes from scribblenotes into Joplin and like to share how I did it…

after fiddling around with a couple of tools (OpenOffice, pandoc, wxPython,…which all failed to produce usable output) to convert the rtf-export from scribblepapers into markdown I decided to export to text and import images by hand. You will loose all formatting, but I think it’s the cleanest way.

I wrote a little python script to clean out export headers and to find out which notes contain OLE objects(images, pdf etc.) to add manually after importing the cleaned text into joplin.

cleaned export size for me (1000 notes, 10 images) was around 30x smaller than scribblepapers…

this is how it’s done:

script at github

text and rtf export / identify notes containing images

  • in ScribblePapers put all notes and folders in 1 top level folder e.g. root
  • from ScribblePapers export root with all subfolders as text
  • from ScribblePapers export root with all subfolders as rtf
  • name these export folders sp_txt and sp_rtf
  • place cleanupSP.py into same dir where sp_txt is
  • run cleanupSP.py. converted text files (with export headers from ScribblePapers removed) can be found under sp_fixed
  • log with missing images can be found in sp_fixed\___Missing Images___.txt
  • text notes with missing images will contain a message in bold heading
  • convert images manually and insert(see below)

how to extract images and pdfs from rtf files

  • make sp_images dir where all saved images will go
  • open rtf files from ___Missing Images___.txt in OpenOffice (which allows saving images)
  • save images (right click on image and save)
  • if image is an OLE-Object (frame around it): double click once more and export image
  • if OLE object is pdf: open in scribblepapers and save as pdf or save as image with windows snippingtool
  • export fotos as jpg / drawings screenshots as gif or png (try which one is shorter). png is better if image contains gradients I think

final step

  • compare and think about size of sp_fixed + sp_images(now including all images and pdfs etc. of all the rtf files from the log) with the size of the sp_rtf (which contains the original data from ScribblePapers
  • import all text files from sp_txt into Joplin
  • drag all the images etc. from sp_images into the corresponding notes using ___Missing Images___.txt
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