Merge notes and update backlinks

[malecjan]

solution/workaround: (for merge only)

@malecjan

Aim: Merge (“B” + “A”) → “A”
Assumtion: “Automatically update internal links” is turned ON.

Process:

1. Add content from “A” (copy or cut) into “B” (paste). (You have control over the order of merging)
2. Delete “A”. (links to “A” will be dead temporarily)
3. Rename “B” to “A”. (Now links to “B” are updated and original links to “A” are resurected.)

[wodecki]

My dream feature: select multiple notes and merge them into one.

Reference models: Scrivener, Ulysses, Evernote.

Extremely useful in the final stage of writing, when I combine “atomic” notes into the final paper.

I’m aware of Merge two documents and update backlinks
but in my case I think about merging multiple notes from a side panel.

Yours,

Andy

[dsteinbock]

Can you say more about your use case? I take it transclusions aren’t a solution because you want to edit the merged product?

Combining into a final paper sounds like you want to copy, rather than move, the content of multiple notes into a combined note, and then edit the new note into a final form. Is that right? As opposed to permanently merging the atomic notes together so they are no longer atomic?

[wodecki]

Yes. This is typically the final stage of my writings: I have plenty of atomic notes, and then I merge (by copying the content) them into one note. But atomic notes themselves remain unchanged.

[malecjan]

Indeed, officially prefered method of voting according to FAQ:
quote:

Rather than posting
“+1” or “Agreed”,
use the Like button.

[Barycenter]

Did this ever get answered as a possible or existing feature? It’s probably the biggest setback for me. I see two different merge types - 1. Merge A into B or B into A, 2. Merge multiples A,B,C…Z into a new note.

[Ynwaps]

This works perfectly fine if you want to merge notes and update backlinks in Obsidian.

#SEO Optimizing this thread lol

[Osmanzy]

There is a bit long workaround, that may be useful if you have lots of notes, not just 2 or 3, but I’m not sure what it doe with links and back links. It might be really useful if your interest is in just the text, if you are joining notes for a paper or so.
This is done using Joplin:

1. Import the notes from Obsidian to joplin
2. Merge the notes in Joplin
3. Export the resulting note as one .md file (or html if you like)

[PhucLe]

Work around:

1. Assume you want to Change all [[Machine Learning]] link to [[AI]] link .
2. Create “Machine Learning” page. You should see all the linked references with [[Machine Learning]].
3. Rename the page “Machine Learning” to “AI|Machine Learning”, despite the warning “link will not work with special char”, the important thing is Obsidian still allow you to rename file.
   3.5 Wait until the noti for renaming links completed.
4. Now all the new links show up in “AI” page as “[[AI|Machine Learning]]”
5. Copy content from Machine Learning page to AI page and delete the page afterward.
6. Profit.

[ianlhayes]

I used @dcb’s excellent DayOne to Obsidian script to import about 3,000 journal entries into Obsidian, and the only downside is that multiple entries from the same day are imported as separate notes with lettered suffixes, e.g. three entries from today would appear as 2021-05-25, 2021-05-25a, and 2021-05-25b. When I search for entries “on this day” in history, I can’t get the search to find those suffixed entries, I only get the first entry of each date in the past.

Being able to merge notes would provide an obvious solution to this problem because I could just find all of the entries with lettered suffixes and merge them into one note that appears in my search query for "On this day" for Daily Notes.

[mmin]

@malecjan

solution/workaround:

Aim: Merge (“B” + “A”) → “A”
Assumtion: “Automatically update internal links” is turned ON.

Process:

1. Add content from “A” (copy or cut) into “B” (paste). (You have control over the order of merged content parts.)
2. Delete “A”. (links to “A” will be dead temporarily)
3. Rename “B” to “A”. (Now links to “B” are updated and original links to “A” are resurected.)

I’m thinking someone should write a little merge plugin that would essentially automate these steps. To be on the safe side, it should also try to be smart about aliases, i.e. display the old link name in the links pointing to the notes that got merged into the merged note. Unfortunately my skills are nowhere near enough to be that someone.

[dcb]

Hi Ian. Glad it worked so well. When building it I had so few cases that a, b etc was the easiest thing for me to work with, rather than build a merge function. This was very much a get the job done, rather than get it perfect script.

[ianlhayes]

It is a great script and you saved me tons of time—thanks again! My issue is less with the separate issues and more my limited understanding of the search function. @Silver says “merge” should eventually be a standard feature, so I’m just going to practice patience in the meantime.

[WhiteNoise]

This will be implemented in 0.12.6