You've decided to try Mem. Maybe your current tool is too complex, maybe you're tired of maintaining an organizational system that fights you more than it helps, or maybe you just want AI to handle the parts of note-taking you've never enjoyed. Whatever the reason, you have hundreds or thousands of notes sitting in another app, and you need to bring them over.

This guide covers the practical steps — what to export, how to import, and what to do once your notes are in Mem. It also covers the less obvious stuff: what to expect from the transition, how to avoid common pitfalls, and how Mem's AI starts working on your existing notes immediately.

Before You Import: Set Your Expectations

A few things worth knowing upfront:

You don't have to bring everything. If you have thousands of notes, some of them are probably outdated, duplicated, or irrelevant. You can import everything and let Mem's Clean Up feature help you tidy things later, or you can be selective and only bring over what's actively useful.

Your organizational structure won't transfer 1:1. If you've spent years building a folder hierarchy in Notion or a graph of backlinks in Obsidian, that structure won't map directly into Mem — and that's intentional. Mem doesn't use folders or manual linking as its primary organizational model. It uses AI to surface relevant notes when you need them. The structure you spent hours building? Mem builds something equivalent automatically. For a deeper look at why this tradeoff works, see why your Notion setup might be working against you.

Imported notes are immediately searchable and available to AI. As soon as your notes land in Mem, they're part of your knowledge base. Mem Chat can query them, Heads Up can surface them, and Smart Tags can organize them. You don't need to do anything special to "activate" imported notes.

Importing From Notion

Notion exports as Markdown files, which Mem handles cleanly.

1. In Notion, go to Settings & Members then Settings, and select Export all workspace content

2. Choose Markdown & CSV as the export format

3. Download the resulting ZIP file

4. In Mem, go to Settings then Import and select the Notion option

5. Upload the ZIP file

What to expect: Notion pages import as individual Mem notes. Nested subpages become separate notes. Databases import as individual notes per row. Basic formatting (headers, bold, lists, checkboxes) transfers well. Notion-specific blocks like toggles and linked databases won't carry over their interactive functionality.

What to do after: Don't try to recreate your Notion workspace. Start using Mem naturally — capture new notes, try Chat queries against your imported content, and let Smart Tags organize things. The structure you maintained manually will emerge organically.

Importing From Obsidian

Obsidian stores notes as Markdown files on your local filesystem, making the export straightforward.

1. Locate your Obsidian vault folder on your computer (it's a regular folder full of .md files)

2. In Mem, go to Settings then Import and select the Obsidian option

3. Select the vault folder or upload the files

What to expect: Markdown formatting imports cleanly. Obsidian-specific syntax like [[wikilinks]] will import as text but won't create Mem links (Mem uses a different model for connecting notes). Tags in the #tag format will come through as text. Any plugins you relied on (Dataview, Templater, etc.) won't have equivalents — their output is static text in the imported notes.

What to do after: If you were a heavy Obsidian user, you probably invested significant time in manual linking and graph maintenance. In Mem, that work is handled by AI. Instead of manually linking notes, capture your notes and let Heads Up surface connections automatically. Instead of maintaining a graph, ask Chat to find relationships between ideas. The transition is less about learning a new tool and more about unlearning the habit of manual organization.

Importing From Evernote

1. In Evernote, go to Notebooks and select the notebooks you want to export

2. Right-click and choose Export Notes, then save as an ENEX file

3. In Mem, go to Settings then Import and select the Evernote option

4. Upload the ENEX file

What to expect: Evernote's rich formatting generally imports well — text formatting, checkboxes, and basic tables come through. Attachments and images are preserved. Notebooks don't map to any structure in Mem (since Mem doesn't use folders), but you can create collections for important groupings after import.

What to do after: If you've been on Evernote for years, you likely have a lot of stale notes. This is a good moment to let Mem's Clean Up feature identify and archive notes that haven't been relevant in a long time.

Importing From Apple Notes

1. In Mem, go to Settings then Import and select the Apple Notes option

2. Follow the on-screen instructions — the process uses your iCloud data

What to expect: Apple Notes content imports as plain text with basic formatting. Sketches, scanned documents, and Apple-specific features like shared notes won't transfer their interactive elements, but the text content will come through.

What to do after: Apple Notes users are often coming from a minimal-organization mindset, which actually aligns well with Mem. You're already used to capturing without complex structure. The difference now is that AI makes all of that casual capture retrievable and useful. If you've been using Apple Notes because you prefer simplicity, see how Mem compares to Apple Notes.

For detailed import instructions and troubleshooting, visit the Imports help page.

What to Do in Your First Week

The migration itself is the easy part. The transition — changing how you think about notes — takes a little longer. Here's what to focus on in week one:

Start capturing new notes immediately. Don't wait until you've reviewed all your imports. The mix of old imported content and fresh notes is what makes AI retrieval powerful.

Ask Chat a question about your old notes. Try: "What do my notes say about [project/client/topic]?" You might be surprised at what comes back — context you'd forgotten, decisions you made months ago, ideas you never revisited.

Create a few collections for active projects or people. You don't need to organize everything, but collections for two or three active things help establish the pattern. As you add new notes, Chat and Heads Up deliver increasingly useful context.

Try voice capture. If you haven't used Voice Mode before, your first week is a great time to start. Record a meeting, capture a thought while walking, or dictate a summary of your day. Voice notes are fully transcribed and indexed instantly.

The Compounding Effect of Migration

Here's what most people don't expect: importing your old notes doesn't just preserve history. It accelerates how quickly Mem becomes useful.

A brand-new Mem account with zero notes has no context to draw from. Chat can't find patterns, Heads Up can't surface connections, and Smart Tags have nothing to organize. But an account with hundreds or thousands of imported notes? That's an AI system with a running start.

The day you import, Mem already knows your projects, your people, and your patterns. It can surface notes from months ago when they're relevant today, answer questions about decisions you've already made, and connect ideas you captured in different tools and different time periods — because now they're all in one system. For more on how consistent capture creates this compounding effect, see our guide on the capture habit.

Get Started

1. Export your notes from your current tool using the instructions above

2. Import into Mem via Settings and Import

3. Ask Chat a question about your old notes — see what it surfaces

4. Start capturing new notes immediately — don't wait for the perfect setup

5. Give it a week — the value becomes clear as you naturally interact with both old and new content

You don't need to organize your imports. You don't need to review every note. You just need to get them in, start capturing fresh content, and let AI do what it does best: find the patterns, surface the connections, and give you the right information at the right time.

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