How to export notes from ColorNote on rooted Android

This is a short instruction manual on how to export the text of your notes from ColorNote to your computer locally, i.e., without setting up online synchronization in ColorNote. The method was tested with data from ColorNote version 3.9.51 on Android 4.1. It may be outdated.

1. Get root access on your Android device where you’ve been using ColorNote. You will need it to access the app data directly. Warning! This may void your warranty.

2. Use a root-enabled file manager like Root Explorer or the Android version of Total Commander on the device to copy the file colornote.db from the directory /data/data/com.socialnmobile.dictapps.notepad.color.note/databases/ to the SD card (usually something like /storage/sdcard0).

3. Transfer that file to your computer over a USB cable, using a cloud service like Google Drive or Dropbox, or in some other way.

4. Install Sqliteman on your computer. (OS X instructions, Windows download; on Linux get it from your distribution’s repositories.)

5. Open colornote.db in Sqliteman. You will see a window that looks a lot the screenshot below.

6. Copy the following text into the query box (top right) and click the green “Run SQL” button or press F9:

SELECT date(created_date / 1000,'unixepoch'),date(modified_date / 1000,'unixepoch'),note FROM notes ORDER BY _id

7. Click the “Export Data” button below the query window. A dialog will appear.

Select the export format (HTML table, SQL, CSV, Excel spreadsheet) and click “OK”.

8. That’s it. You’re done.