Moving Notes Folder Contents in Apple Notes to Archival Folder

Question

Moving Notes Folder Contents in Apple Notes to Archival Folder

Greets:

I've been using Apple Notes, since about 2015. I have a new folder structure that I'd like to use, but I also want to move the contents of the Notes folder elsewhere. I have over 4,000 items in the folder.

On macOS Monterey, I selected all the notes. When I tried dragging them, I got a beachball that stayed stuck for about 3-5 minutes, with Notes otherwise unusable and locked into the Finder, so could not do a Force Quit from the Apple Menu. Eventually, the beachball returned to a cursor. After trying again, it seems that I am unable to move the contents of Notes to another folder for archiving.

Is it at all possible to do this? I don't wish to lose the older notes, but I want to start the Notes folder fresh and have the old content at least in another folder instead of gone altogether. Also, does not look like I can do this in iOS either.

Thanks!

Posted on Mar 28, 2023 9:21 PM

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Answer 1

dawngreg08

Community Specialist

Apr 1, 2023 11:58 AM in response to Velanche Stewart

Hello Velanche Stewart,

Great question about moving your notes to a different folder on your Mac.

Follow the steps below for help with moving them.

"Rename or move a folder

In the Notes app on your Mac, do any of the following:

Rename a folder: Control-click the folder, then choose Rename Folder.
You can also move the pointer over the folder in the sidebar, click the More button , then choose Rename Folder.
Place a folder inside another folder (make a subfolder): Drag the folder on top of the other folder.
Move a subfolder out from inside the folder: Drag the subfolder to the location you want.

Note: Use caution when moving a subfolder into or out from a shared folder. Doing so may affect who can read and edit the notes within the folder. See Share notes and folders."

The information above and more can be referenced in this article: Add and remove folders in Notes on Mac

Let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

Take care!

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Answer 2

Apr 1, 2023 6:46 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Hey folks:

I ended up getting those files in the Notes folder to Archive, albeit I had to do a workaround.

Apparently, the Notes folder has very limited options: you can't duplciate or rename it, or at least I couldn't, whereas most of the other folders (except maybe the All iCloud folder) you can.

The workaround I did was to create a Smart Folder and have them filter by Notes items. From that Smart Folder, I was then able to choose and move the items to Archive. But in the course of doing so, I ran into a quirk where there's a limit of how many notes I'm able to move at once. I do not have an idea on what that number is, or if it also depends on the size of the notes, since I have a number of them with attachments.

That's the workaround; quirky, but again, done.

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Answer 3

Apr 1, 2023 12:26 PM in response to Velanche Stewart

YMMV because I have only three (3) Notes. Those are not very very important but I anyway occasionally copy them to a .txt file as a backup because I do not 100% trust iCloud to preserve all notes. Especially because sometimes it seems notes added in some other device do not update on all devices.

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Moving Notes Folder Contents in Apple Notes to Archival Folder

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