MacOS – Importing Notes from one mac to another

backupmacosnotes.app

I was making extensive use of Notes on a loaner laptop for work. I just got my permanent machine, and after updating from the backed up data on CrashPlan, I found my notes didn't make it over. I looked into the issue, saw what I needed to copy over, and asked the build tech to email me the contents of group.com.apple.notes from the old machine. I extracted the zip he sent me, and in Notes ran "import notes" on the directory he sent. It doesn't seem like anything was copied over. Any idea why this might not work? Am I copying the wrong directory, or importing incorrectly or otherwise missing a step? What are the actual files that need to be copied over? Both old machine and new are running El Capitan.

Best Answer

The ‘Import to Notes’ function imports text files. Notes itself stores its files in a SQLite database, which is contained within the group.com.apple.notes group container.

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/

To use this as your Notes database, quit Notes and copy the contents to the group container on your current system.