macos – How to export Apple Notes in bulk?

I exported all my Notes by using a modification of the script on this page. The result was an html file for each note, which has the advantage of preserving much text formatting and images and can be opened in Word.
The results were not perfect (see below), but it was easy to do. No need to know how to write scripts – just follow the procedure below if you want to try it:

1. Open the Script Editor (a program that comes with the Mac OS located in the Utilities folder; ie, Go>Utilities)

2. Change the dropdown menu at the upper left to JavaScript (see screenshot below)

3. Use File>New and then paste the following code into the Window
   [note to editor: I can’t get the code below to format properly]

// set things up
var app = Application.currentApplication();
app.includeStandardAdditions = true;
var notesApp = Application(‘Notes’);
notesApp.includeStandardAdditions = true;

// choose which notes
var notes = notesApp.notes;
var whichNotes = app.chooseFromList(notes.name(), { withPrompt: “Which Notes?”, multipleSelectionsAllowed: true });

if (whichNotes) {

// choose save location
var saveWhere = app.chooseFolder().toString();

if (saveWhere) {

    // loop through all notes
    for(var i=0; i<notes.length; i++) {
    
        // is this note one to be exported?
        if (whichNotes.indexOf(notes[i].name()) > -1) {
        
            // save file as html
        var efilename = notes[i].name().replace(/[^a-z0-9]/gi, '_').substring(0, 30);
        var filename = saveWhere+"/"+efilename+".html";
            var file = app.openForAccess(Path(filename), { writePermission: true });
            app.setEof(file, { to: 0 });
            app.write(notes[i].body(), {to: file});
            app.closeAccess(file);
        }
    }
}

}

It should be noted that this script differs from the one at the top of the page linked according to the last comment on that page by Masoud. Specifically, the lines beginning var efilename and var filename.

4. run the script (click the arrow in the upper right)

5. select all notes in the “Which notes?” dialog that appears (see screenshot below)

6. in the final dialog select a folder to save the notes

The script ran about 3 minutes for my 260 notes. In some cases strange characters were introduced due to, for example, curly quotes.

Here are images showing the kind of things you’ll see in steps 2 and 5

I’m using Mac OS 12.4 on a MacBook Air (M1, 2020).