Exporting Gospel Library Annotations

Hi! I'm sorry if it is not the correct place to post this question, but I'm tryng to unify my LDS accounts, and found this article that helped me with it, but I have too much annotations in the account I need to delete, the wich one is not related with my membership informations. Is there some way to export those annotations in Gospel Library on that account I will delete and import it on the account I will mantain?

Mvrodrigues wrote: Tue Feb 28, 2023 7:44 am Hi! I'm sorry if it is not the correct place to post this question, but I'm tryng to unify my LDS accounts, and found this article that helped me with it, but I have too much annotations in the account I need to delete, the wich one is not related with my membership informations. Is there some way to export those annotations in Gospel Library on that account I will delete and import it on the account I will mantain?

Gospel Library doesn't provide import/export functionality for annotations, unfortunately (except for a CSV download option at https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/notes, which doesn't always work reliably). Your best bet may be contacting the Global Services Department and asking them to move your membership record number to the other account (make sure you're clear with them about which account you want to keep – otherwise they might delete the wrong one).

Thank for your response! I will try this way.

I would also like to know if there is way I can export and store the annotations. If there was an API that we could use to get the data back in JSON format or something similar that would be really helpful. I try to keep all my notes in a note taking app and my scriptures are really the only ones I can't do this for.

CameronZ wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2024 3:50 pm I would also like to know if there is way I can export and store the annotations. If there was an API that we could use to get the data back in JSON format or something similar that would be really helpful. I try to keep all my notes in a note taking app and my scriptures are really the only ones I can't do this for.

Does the Download option on https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/notes meet your needs?

TimRiker wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2024 5:12 pm

CameronZ wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2024 3:50 pm I would also like to know if there is way I can export and store the annotations. If there was an API that we could use to get the data back in JSON format or something similar that would be really helpful. I try to keep all my notes in a note taking app and my scriptures are really the only ones I can't do this for.

Does the Download option on https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/notes meet your needs?

No, when I use that option it just gives me a CSV file that contains the links to the various sources that I highlighted in. It does not contain the text that I highlighted. How do you get the export to show the text that I highlighted?

The download option is not quite sufficient as an emergency backup. It's missing data: I don't see cross links, and I don't see tags.

I have thousands of annotations and I'm terrified of losing them!

I love that this option is there. (At https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/notes. There is a download icon.) I'm not sure of the sort order in the .csv but I believe all my information is contained in the download including tags, notes, notebooks (which is called "journal" in the export), marks (there is a link to where the mark is), and even created and updates dates. I'm not sure if cross links are there. I'd have to dig deeper. Apostrophes convert to weird characters. Hopefully there are some improvements in the export in the future, but for now, I'm just glad it's available.

mcclurebr wrote: Wed Jul 16, 2025 6:12 pm Apostrophes convert to weird characters.

How were the notes entered? There's the plain-Jane ASCII apostrophe ( ' ), and then there's the one that Microsoft Office likes to use ( ’ ). The latter is likely to export as Unicode. Quotes are another one that Office likes to change.

mcclurebr wrote: Wed Jul 16, 2025 6:12 pm Apostrophes convert to weird characters.

Are you opening the CSV file in Excel? Excel sometimes mangles non-ASCII characters in CSV files (that would happen after you download; not a bug in the downloaded file itself).

Both of you are right. Excel doesn't treat apostrophes, quotation marks, and some hyphens well. I opened my .csv file in Google Sheets, for example, and it treated the characters correctly. When in Gospel Library and I type them directly, Excel handles them fine. But when I copied and pasted them from somewhere else, that's when those characters don't show correctly in Excel. Thanks for your help.