- Obsidian imports the notes as follows:
- if Evernote note has no text, just the attachment (as is almost exclusively the case from automatically imported documents e.g. PDFs that were auto-imported to Evernote when dropped into the watched hot-folder on desktop), these notes and the PDF will be imported in the vault subfolder directly (likely the note matching the PDF file name, unless the Evernote note name was manually changed after it was imported)
- If the Evernote note has text and attachment, then the text will be imported into the note as usual but the attachment is placed in the subfolder _resources into another subfolder with the name matching the name of the note;
For obvious reasons this is the preferred way of managing attachments (for me at least) in Obsidian. Because of the two ways the import happens, now this is the mess to deal with. So one option to look into is to add some text to the (PDF only) Evernote notes before they are exported from Evernote.
If trying to get the PDF from the main folder in Vault into the _resources folder, you may need to move the PDF out of the Vault and then drag it back into the Obsidian note again from outside of the Vault. This was at least the case with one of the Attachment plugins.
- To continue with the system of placing attachments into their own subfolder (name matching the name of the note) which is a the subfolder in the _resources folder, I need to add one of the following addons:
Attachment Manager
Attachment Management
Custom Attachment Location
The first one is by a Chinese developer, just a note here, in case anybody needs to know and it does have a bug with the Hide Folder option, that doesn’t work, but the folder deletion function works (if note is deleted, delete the attachments; this can be done via another plugin, but this one happens automatic when note is deleted, not when the link to attachment is removed within the note itself)
Another option is the Consistent Attachments and Links.
This plugin also works but only manually, it doesn’t do this automatically, need to press a key combination to trigger.
Another plugin Note Compagnion Folder didn’t work for me but it seems it should work based on specs.
It takes a bit trial and error to get the settings of these plugins correct having the file and folder path in the configuration of the plugin pointing correctly.
Changes to settings for these plugins require a restart of Obsidian for changes to be loaded.
- After note is deleted or links removed, need to clean up the attachments. For that need one of these plugins:
File Cleaner Redux (Maybe also File Cleaner, original plugin)
Janitor
These plugins work well.
Another plugin Find orphaned files and broken links - didn’t work that well in this case. This plugin alternative name on Github is "Find Unlinked Files. The reason it doesn’t work well is because the plugin only deletes attachments after the note was deleted. If only delete a link to an attachment, while there is another attachment still used in the note, the plugin will not see the deleted attachment, it will ignore the attachment subfolder completely until the note gets deleted.
Another plugin Nuke Orphans - I didn’t like the way the plugin also scans the orphan *.MD note files and include in the cleanup report. If my note doesn’t have a link, it doesn’t mean I want to delete them. This plugin is risky to use so it’s not a fit.
Another plugin Dangling Links - only shows broken links, so not orphans - didn’t work for me.
Another plugin Remove Empty Folders - this function is included in the File Cleaner Redux plugin.
Note: The Remotely Save plugin (to sync with Dropbox and Onenote) also includes a function to delete empty folders.
- I need to hide the _resources folders
As mentioned above, the Attachment Manager function to hide the attachment folders didn’t work.
Following plugins do work:
Hide Folders
File Hider (also hides files)
File Explorer++ (also allows regex expressions)
- Pasted image
This is a nice to have - image pasted can be renamed so that the saved attachment has some meaning, other than “untitled 9999”.
Attachment Manager plugin has this function.
Also Past Image Rename Plugin can do that.
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Now my wish would have been the folder attachment management to be more robust in Obsidian.
It’s not sufficient to leave the organization to some 3rd party plugins and it would save a lot of time with imports to users.
Otherwise there is a chance attachments create a mess and a novice user, not knowing how markdown works, will create even more mess by trying to fix it the wrong way.
(PS I am aware of this post an numerous others dealing with the attachment issue:
)