Convert ColorNote Notes to Nextcloud Notes

Sadly the android app "ColorNote" does not support any export.

I'm currently converting as much as I can to free software. Therefore I wanted to switch from ColorNote to Nextcloud Notes app. I found this article which helped a lot: https://haukerehfeld.de/notes/2017-02-colornote-export/

I'm using Ubuntu Linux 16.04. First I created an adb backup and extracted it as described in the link above.

Furthermore I installed and activated the "Notes" app in Nextcloud.

DB extract & Conversion

• mkdir -p ~/colornote_migration/notes
• cd ~/colornote_migration
• adb backup -noapk com.socialnmobile.dictapps.notepad.color.note
  • You need android adb installed on your system
• java -jar /home/klemens/bin/android-backup-tookit/android-backup-extractor/android-backup-extractor-20180521-bin/abe.jar unpack backup.ab backup.tar
  • You need https://github.com/nelenkov/android-backup-extractor and adapt the path
• tar -xvf backup.tar
• sudo apt get install sqlitebrowser
• Launch sqlitebrowser
  • Open "apps/com.socialnmobile.dictapps.notepad.color.note/db/colornote.db" (sqlite db)
  • SELECT datetime(created_date/1000,'unixepoch') as created, datetime(modified_date/1000,'unixepoch') as modified,title,note FROM notes ORDER BY created
  • Export as csv to colornote.csv
• I wrote a little php script which converts the csv to separate text files. See the zip archive below.
• vi convert.php

  • <?php
    
    $dir = "notes";
    
    //$row = 1;
    if (($handle = fopen("colornote.csv", "r")) !== FALSE) {
        while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) !== FALSE) {
          /*
            [0] =>
            string(19) "2019-05-09 16:44:08"
            [1] =>
            string(19) "2019-05-09 16:44:27"
            [2] =>
            string(xx) "title"
            [3] =>
            string(xx) "complete note text"
          */
          
           // remove illegal chars
           $filename = preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z0-9 _äöüÄÖÜß.-]/", '_', $data[2]);
           $path = $dir . '/' . $filename . '.txt';
           
           file_put_contents($path, $data[3]);
    
           // fix times
           touch($path, strtotime($data[1]));
    
        }
        fclose($handle);
    }

• php convert.php
• The separate .txt files should now be in subdir "notes"
• Select all files and copy them into the subdir "Notes/" of your nextcloud home dir
• Done, the notes are even sorted by modify date!