Former ConnectedText users, what software did you switch to?

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Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 10, 2025 at 09:17 PM

Thank you for the friendly messages… I never really went away, I was just too busy with other things to post. It’s been nice be able to follow the adventures of long-time members here.

The nature of my work took me away from note-taking, outlining and writing for a few years, and for the type of work I was doing, WorkFlowy and RoamResearch were just fine (well, more than fine, I love both and use them every day).

But now I’m pivoting back to more extensive reading, note-taking and writing, and having just upgraded to a Windows 11 laptop, I also need to review which software and what data I can or should transfer from my old machine.

Thank you for all the suggestions. I’ve been checking out InfoQube, Obsidian, and Heptabase.

For now I’m gravitating towards Obsidian, as I like the interface, the distraction-free writing experience, and the fact that the underlying data can be backed up independently from the software or even read by multiple other software, and on top of that it’s free or relatively affordable with the sync.

I do like the Markdown approach, the relative simplicity of it.

Amontillado wrote:
Yes, very nice to see your post, Dr. Andus.
> >It was one of your posts that caught my eye via Google and brought me
>here. Any way you could be lured back?
> >Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I can’t really help, other than to recommend that if you end up NOT
>>choosing Obsidian, you might want to look at Heptabase.
>>
>>Steve Z.
>>
>>P.S. It feels like a blast from the past to see your name on the forum,
>>Dr. Andus.

Posted by Cyganet
Oct 13, 2025 at 08:21 AM

I moved my notes from ConnectedText to Obsidian. I used two methods for this. Both require that you have access to ConnectedText to export files. I used my old Windows 10 laptop for that.

1) The easier, more recent method
- Export the ConnectedText notes as HTML pages
- Use the official Obsidian importer to import the HTML files
- Then use Visual Studio Code Regex find and replace on the folder of markdown files to fix the internal links: search for \[(.+?)\]$.+?\.HTML$ and replace with [[$1]]. There’s also an Obsidian plugin to do regex across files, but I like the clarity of the VS Code interface for seeing the matches and the replacements that it will do
- Use VS Code Regex find and replace to remove all references to external.gif and ico_pdf.gif. Replace them with blank
- If you want, use Microsoft Power Rename to retitle the files from lowercase to Title Case. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/powerrename
- Obsidian will remove invalid characters in your note titles like ?: with _. You will need to do more Regex find and replaces to edit the links and file titles so they match up again

2) The harder, older method
- I wrote a Python program that uses Regex to convert CT markup to markdown
- This works on a folder of ConnectedText notes that have been exported as text files
- If anyone is interested, I can find a way to share it, e.g. via Google Drive?

Hope this is useful.

Posted by Cyganet
Oct 13, 2025 at 08:23 AM

edit: Obsidian will replace invalid characters like ?: with _

Cyganet wrote:
I moved my notes from ConnectedText to Obsidian. I used two methods for
>this. Both require that you have access to ConnectedText to export
>files. I used my old Windows 10 laptop for that.
> >1) The easier, more recent method
>- Export the ConnectedText notes as HTML pages
>- Use the official Obsidian importer to import the HTML files
>- Then use Visual Studio Code Regex find and replace on the folder of
>markdown files to fix the internal links: search for
>\[(.+?)\]$.+?\.HTML$ and replace with [[$1]]. There’s also an Obsidian
>plugin to do regex across files, but I like the clarity of the VS Code
>interface for seeing the matches and the replacements that it will do
>- Use VS Code Regex find and replace to remove all references to
>external.gif and ico_pdf.gif. Replace them with blank
>- If you want, use Microsoft Power Rename to retitle the files from
>lowercase to Title Case.
>https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/powerrename
>- Obsidian will remove invalid characters in your note titles like ?:
>with _. You will need to do more Regex find and replaces to edit the
>links and file titles so they match up again
> >2) The harder, older method
>- I wrote a Python program that uses Regex to convert CT markup to
>markdown
>- This works on a folder of ConnectedText notes that have been exported
>as text files
>- If anyone is interested, I can find a way to share it, e.g. via Google
>Drive?
> >Hope this is useful.

Posted by MadaboutDana
Oct 13, 2025 at 10:25 AM

An interesting journey. Since you’re gravitating to Obsidian for longer, more data-intensive work, can I recommend the plugin “Various Complements”, which is by far the fastest and most convenient way of mining the data in an Obsidian vault. While you’re typing, it automatically scans your markdown files for name matches and pulls them up in a dialog box just below the line you’re typing. You can then create a link to a specific note by selecting the relevant entry in the dialog box. It’s very unobtrusive, but if you’re looking for links with previous work, amazingly useful. It’s also useful for inserting contact details (I’ve transferred my contact management into Obsidian for precisely this reason: another plugin, “@Symbol Linking”, focuses exclusively on a contacts folder, if you’ve got one).

Cheers!
Bill

Dr Andus wrote:
Thank you for the friendly messages… I never really went away, I was
>just too busy with other things to post. It’s been nice be able to
>follow the adventures of long-time members here.
> >The nature of my work took me away from note-taking, outlining and
>writing for a few years, and for the type of work I was doing, WorkFlowy
>and RoamResearch were just fine (well, more than fine, I love both and
>use them every day).
> >But now I’m pivoting back to more extensive reading, note-taking and
>writing, and having just upgraded to a Windows 11 laptop, I also need to
>review which software and what data I can or should transfer from my old
>machine.
> >Thank you for all the suggestions. I’ve been checking out InfoQube,
>Obsidian, and Heptabase.
> >For now I’m gravitating towards Obsidian, as I like the interface, the
>distraction-free writing experience, and the fact that the underlying
>data can be backed up independently from the software or even read by
>multiple other software, and on top of that it’s free or relatively
>affordable with the sync.
> >I do like the Markdown approach, the relative simplicity of it.

Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 14, 2025 at 03:45 PM

Hi Cyganet, thank you so much for taking the time to spell all this out, this is fantastic advice!

May I ask in what respects is 2) the harder method?

It somehow sounds simpler, but then I don’t know much about Python, I’ve only been using scripts that others wrote for me.

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