#1

I have no idea how to get started with Obsidian, so this is a very basic question. I’m using KeepIt which keeps all its notes in a folder of markdown files. I’d like to take a look at those notes using Obsidian to find connections. How do I get my markdown files into Obsidian? The instructions in the “Import Data from Roam” note say I can change vault location in Settings but there is no Vault entry in my settings. I tried dragging things onto Obsidian but they are ignored. Can someone point me to how to do this? Thanks!

#2

To open any folder as an Obsidian Vault, click in the Vault icon in the bottom-left corner
image

And then you’ll want to choose “Open folder as vault”
That will make the folder you choose a Vault with the files present in the folder.

If you don’t want the Vault to be in the KeepIt folder just create a new vault (through the same icon is the second option) and copy the files from the KeepIt folder to the new folder/Vault.

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#3

KeepIt stores the files in its Application Support folder, but you should be able to just drag and drop them to any folder on your system.

I wouldn’t recommend using these KeepIt folders as a vault, as KeepIt doesn’t track changes that are made from outside of it.

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#4

my goal is to import a large amount of different file types, but my user case is a bit different:

The files I wanna import is a mix of
rtf, doc, txt, py, rb, xls, HTML

These files are placed everywhere on my file system, so I’ve to pick them up as single or multiple files, time and time again to check all the paths containing the candidate files to import.

Luckily, Obsidian ships already with an importer plugin - but :

The Importer window tells me that

warning : the Importer plugin will convert all files in your vault, not just the current file. The files will be overwritten. Therefore it’s recommended to create a backup copy
(I translated from German)

How should I understand this explanation?

Basically, the only way to import new files without data loss is to create a new vault specifically for file conversion? And then, no guarantee whatsoever of a smooth conversion, without data loss?

And after the conversion I’m supposed to drag n drop the converted files to the desired vault, but navigating back and forth on my computer file system?

Sounds odd… Because folks, this is a standard plugin. Maybe this plugin needs some more update.

Are you using the default Importer plugin of Obsidian? What’s your experience?

#5

No advice here about Keepit, but I too felt lost the first couple days. But I then started creating notes from scratch instead of trying to import large amounts of previous work and Obsidian suddenly became intuitive.

I’m not saying people here can’t help you import your old data. Just might help to start fresh and get a feel for it first.

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#6

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